FINANCE: The opposition has set five principles for signing cross-strait agreements, including protecting national and public interests and establishing risk mechanisms
By Flora Wang and Loa Iok-sin
Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Chairman Sean Chen (陳冲) yesterday said he would ensure that Taiwan enjoys equal footing if it signs a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on financial supervision with China.

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By Flora Wang
A boycott by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday threw a wrench in the legislature’s plan to allow a number of proposed amendments to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生法) to skip a preliminary review.

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By William Lowther
Gerald Connolly, a Virginia democrat, has become the new co-chairman of Washington’s Congressional Taiwan Caucus.

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By Shelley Huang
In response to recent complaints by former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) about the freezing of her family’s assets, prosecutors yesterday said that based on their calculations, the former first family still had about NT$60 million (US$1.9 million) in active assets.

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Expanding the MRT system connecting Taipei City and County to the east to neighboring Keelung City is imperative to bolstering regional development, Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) said yesterday.

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ONE-DAY EFFORT: A top NPA official said Thursday’s campaign had worked, but people on the street, on the Internet and even the minister of the interior disagreed
By Loa Iok-sin
National Police Agency (NPA) Deputy Director-General I Yung-jen (伊永仁) may have declared Thursday’s one-day anti-fraud campaign a success, but some members of the public were not so sanguine.

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In light of increasingly frequent media reports about cruelty to animals, lawmakers across party lines passed a resolution on Thursday demanding the Council of Agriculture (COA) set up an animal protection division to improve care for stray animals. They threatened not to review the council’s budget if it fails to do so.

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KAOHSIUNG COUNTY: The DOH said health officials would test duck meat, eggs and related products, as well as aquaculture products from polluted areas
By Vincent Y. Chao
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday said it is conducting ground pollutant and chemical analysis at seven places in Kaohsiung County where it suspects the soil has been contaminated with steel furnace slag and foundry ash.

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SCIENCE: Chu Ying-hao and his team are working with US researchers and others on trying to make the material more environmentally friendly
By Vincent Y. Chao
A Taiwanese researcher’s findings on piezoelectric materials has promising implications for the field of clean, renewable and efficient energy production.

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A study released on Wednesday has found that the chances of mosquito-borne dengue hemorrhagic fever occurring increase in a region where outbreaks of dengue fever last two weeks or more.

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SPEEDIER SERVICE: Once completed, the NT$15.5 billion project on the 155km stretch of railway will knock 30 minutes off the journey time between the two cities
By Shelley Shan
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) is scheduled to start work on the electrification of the railway line between Hualien and Taitung next month.

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By Flora Wang
Packing a Tatung rice cooker, Hung Shen-hsing (洪慎杏), who has a master’s degree from National Taiwan Normal University’s (NTNU) Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, set off for New York in August as one of the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) “exported Mandarin teachers.”

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■CRIME
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