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...Defense Department's approval of a new arms package to Taiwan on Wednesday was the best new year's gift that President Ma Ying-jeou could ask for. Ma's new year started with an embarrassing diplomatic crisis this week over U.S. beef imports. Lawmakers from Ma's party overturned a U.S.-Taiwan agreement, just signed in October, lifting a ban imposed in 2003 on U.S. beef parts. The new legislation, passed Tuesday, reinstitutes the ban on the import of beef skull, brains, eyes, spine, intestines and ground beef from places with cases of mad cow disease within the past...
...meeting appropriate beef safety standards. Many Taiwanese, however, are still not convinced. After the new agreement was signed in October, thousands protested in Taiwan, with one student even eating a cow dung burger (worms and all) in front of the presidential office to demand the government renegotiate. "The Ma administration underestimated people's worries," says Yen Chen-shen, a research fellow at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Relations. "They never really tried to ensure Taiwanese consumers that this is going to be safe...
...With these public fears in mind, Ma's party lawmakers, who have the legislative majority, joined the opposition this week to pass the controversial amendment. The U.S. immediately expressed its disappointment, saying the move "undermines Taiwan's credibility as a responsible trading partner." Upcoming bilateral trade talks, originally scheduled for February, have been indefinitely postponed. Taiwan, the sixth largest importer of U.S. beef and the U.S.'s ninth-largest trading partner, had been hoping the talks would pave the way for a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. Yen says Ma probably was counting on progress in U.S. trade...
...Still, the U.S. Defense Department's face-saving gift on Wednesday is surely a comfort to Ma, whose popularity was down to 33% in December 2009, after local elections where Ma's party lost ground. Despite objections from China about selling arms to Taiwan, the U.S. awarded Lockheed Martin Corp the contract to provide Patriot missile systems as part of a $6.5 billion arms sale package to Taiwan passed by the US Congress in 2008. The U.S. missile systems could shoot down Chinese short-range and mid-range missiles. China has over 1000 missiles pointed at Taiwan, a democratic island...
...opened before news of Tiger Woods' philandering first broke and ended just as the fourth of his myriad alleged mistresses went public, but in a late surge he nonetheless earned an honorable mention.) Claiming the top spot on both the FAIL moments and FAIL people lists is Kanye ("I'ma let you finish") West. (See a video of Ben Huh, patron saint of FAIL blog...