■ Education
Nanking loses prominence
The "Rape of Nanking" will no longer feature prominently in the nation's revised history textbooks, a newspaper said yesterday. The Chinese-language United Evening News said that in the new versions of history textbooks, which no longer consider China's history to be national history, only passing references are made to the massacre. A textbook from one publish-ing house does not mention the World War II atrocities committed by the Japanese in China, while textbooks from four other publishers only make a brief reference to it. The Ministry of Education decides the content of the textbooks, but they are printed by private publishers. The "Rape of Nanking" refers to the massacre which began after Nanking, then the capital of China, fell to Japanese troops on Dec. 13, 1937. Japanese soldiers carried out acts of rape, execution, arson and looting in and around Nanking that lasted for six weeks. China estimates the total death toll at about 300,000.
■ Environment
Cherry saplings planted
The Southern Taiwan Science Park Administration held a ceremony in the park in Tainan on Saturday to plant 250 cherry saplings donated by a Japanese cherry cultivation association. A tablet commemorating the friendship between Taiwan and Japan was also unveiled. Chimei Group founder Shi Wen-long (許文龍), presidential adviser Huang Kun-hu (黃崑虎) and scores of Japanese businesspeople were present at the ceremony, according to a park spokesman. The Japanese businesspeople performed Japanese folk songs, accompanied by Shi on mandolin, with the aim of creating the atmosphere of cherry blossoms apprecia-tion event in Japan, the spokesman said. National Science Council Deputy Minister Tai Chien (戴謙) said that there were 15 Japanese firms in the park, which has established the closest relationship with Japan among all of the nation's science parks. He said the cherry cultivation association donated the saplings because of a suggestion from Huang and the result will be that people working in the park and local residents will be able to enjoy Japanese cherry blossoms.
■ Economy
Post office posts record
Total postal savings deposits surpassed NT$4 trillion (US$123 billion) last year, marking a record high, according to the latest tallies released by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. The statistics showed that total postal savings deposits last year increased by NT$363.8 billion, or 9.9 percent, over 2005. The postal savings system accounted for 15.4 percent of total deposits among all financial institutions in the nation last year, representing a 0.6 percent year-on-year increase, while the total value of postal simple life insurance was NT$830 billion, a decrease of NT$ 23.3 billion, or 2.7 percent, compared with the previous year. The value of money orders transferred by postal services reached NT$1,491.1 billion, posting an increase of NT$85.8 billion, or 6.1 percent, year-on-year. Meanwhile, a total of 17.9 million postal parcels were delivered last year, or 49,000 parcels on average per day. This represents a 13.5 percent growth over the previous year, marking the fourth consecutive yearly rise. One area did see a decline. The number of letters posted reached 2.66 billion, or an average of 7.3 million per day.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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