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ROME (CNS) -- The Taiwanese ambassador to the Vatican was so impressed with seeing "an inner peace and happiness" in the Catholics he met while living and working in Rome that he decided to convert to Catholicism. Ambassador Tou Chou-seng was baptized Catholic during an April 17 Mass in his parish Church of St. Eugenio in Rome. The 20th-century church is run by the personal prelature of Opus Dei, and Spanish Bishop Javier Echevarria Rodriguez, head of Opus Dei, presided over the Mass and baptism. The 64-year-old diplomat told Catholic News Service April 19 that he was "very happy" about...

China to rehearse Taiwan 'invasion' By Oliver August July 08, 2004 CHINESE soldiers will for the first time practise a D-Day style invasion of Taiwan on a densely populated island off the mainland coast this month. The 18,000-man mock landing on the beaches of Dongshan Island is to involve amphibious assault craft, Russian-built fighter jets and submarines operating in the Taiwan Strait to ward off a simulated counter-attack by the US Seventh Fleet. Reports of the exercise were greeted with thousands of supportive messages yesterday in mainland internet chatrooms, a sign of the immense popularity of Beijing's policy of striving...

Text of report entitled: "An official of the Information Bureau under the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office says: The scheme of Taiwan's 'Mainland Affairs Council' to attack and defame the policy of 'one country, two systems' will be futile", carried by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency) Asia-Pacific service Beijing, 2 July: Recently, some Hong Kong people held rallies. A Xinhua reporter interviewed an official of the Information Bureau under the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office. Text of report entitled: "An official of the Information Bureau under the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office says: The scheme of...

Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian was shot in the stomach on Friday while campaigning for reelection - but is expected to survive the assassination attempt. Vice President Annette Lu was also wounded in the attack but was not badly hurt, officials told Reuters. "They are both conscious and their lives are not in danger," Chen's chief of staff, Chiou I-jen, told a news conference. The Taiwanese leader was not wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time of the assassination attempt. He was rushed to a local hospital where he received 14 stitches for what Chiou I-jen described as a shallow flesh...

Tensions between mainland China and Taiwan have made many cross-strait trade issues become politically- oriented disputes, the latest incident involving the sale of beer. China-made beer Tsing Tao is a favourite brand among many Taiwanese. But some sectors in Taiwan are calling for a boycott of the popular liquor. The angry protestors from some pro-Taiwan independence groups say it is unfair that Tsing Tao is allowed to be sold in Taiwan, while the island's own brewery cannot sell its beer in China under its formal name "Taiwan Beer." Instead, the company is required to sell "Taiwan Beer" under a new...

Amid growing tensions with Taiwan, China has revealed that it has built a missile defence shield to protect the Three Gorges dam from the threat of military attack. China Radio International broadcast the news in apparent response to a recent report in the Taibei-based China Times Weekly that said Taiwan has conducted a computer-simulated military exercise in which state-of-the-art F-16 fighter jets launch an attack on the dam. The F-16 is currently the only fighter plane in Taiwan’s arsenal that could undertake this long-range attack, carrying either a “smart bomb” or air-to-surface “maverick missile,” reporter Lu Zhaolong wrote in the...