英倫翻譯社/ Trsmaster

Taipei, Dec. 16 (CNA) Taiwan and New Zealand will soon begin a joint feasibility study into a bilateral economic cooperation agreement (ECA), Executive Yuan spokesman Philip Yang said Friday. According to Yang, New Zealand is the first non-ASEAN country to agree to explore the feasibility of an ECA with Taiwan. The two sides have recently completed separate studies into the issue, which concluded that signing the ECA will help boost their trade and investment ties. He said the latest progress signifies that the government's strategy of attaching equal importance to cross-Taiwan Strait peace and Taiwan's global presence has produced results. The government will continue to work to negotiate economic agreements with other trade partners in the future, he said. (By Angela Tsai and Y.F. Low)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The three presidential rivals were preparing their final live televised debate to be broadcast Saturday, reports said.

Kuomintang candidate President Ma Ying-jeou, Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen and People First Party Chairman James Soong first met each other at a similar debate on December 3. One week later, their running mates confronted each other.

The final debate before polling day on January 14 will follow a different formula, with representatives of 12 different social action groups putting questions about their own specialist subjects to the three candidates. The topics will range from health reform, agriculture and education to women’s rights, taxation and labor rights.

One of the people chosen to ask a question is Yang Ju-men, a man once known as the ‘rice bomber.’ After Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization in 2002, he planted 17 bombs in parks, restrooms and telephone booths around Taipei. Only two exploded, and nobody was injured. Yang was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison but was released after only two years.

On the side of the candidates, DPP campaign officials reportedly feared for Tsai’s performance because she had a cold and found it difficult to speak, reports said Friday. She was already hoarse when she participated in a discussion about her cultural policies on Thursday afternoon, and her speech grew increasingly difficult at a rally in a park later that evening, aides said.

She was present at a first rehearsal with campaign staff at the DPP headquarters, but didn’t speak in order to save her voice for Saturday, reports said.

Aides said most of the questions at the debate would be targeted at Ma because he represented the government. Tsai would try to join in the criticism of the president, they said.

Ma was rehearsing the debate on Friday morning, but aides estimated that preparing was hard because it was difficult to tell which kind of questions the activists would ask.

The Ma campaign expected that both Tsai and Soong would band together and launch fiercer attacks than before on the president, turning the debate into a two-against-one affair. Soong had been described as the outsider after the first debate, which meant he would likely change his strategy and be tougher on Ma, reports quoted presidential campaign staff as saying.

The PFP chairman had no public events planned for Friday because he wanted to study the social groups asking questions at the debate, reports said.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Premier Wu Den-yih called on the Kuomintang to return to political issues Friday, while the Democratic Progressive Party condemned the government for abusing the judiciary in its campaign against presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen.

On the day he officially took leave to devote himself fulltime to his bid as vice-presidential candidate in the January 14 election, Wu said that his poll performance had only improved by 2 percent after the Yu Chang case came to the fore, but that half the public believed the allegations against Tsai and half did not.

The KMT has alleged that Tsai approved government investment in Yu Chang Biologics Co. when she was vice premier in early 2007 with the full knowledge that she would leave the Cabinet and chair the company later in the year. Tsai has denied the allegations, saying she did not manage the government investment and was only invited to chair Yu Chang by prominent scientists after she left the Cabinet.

Wu said Friday that the topic should not take center stage in the election campaign, but that the KMT should return to defending the government’s performance in office.

The DPP accused the ruling party of using a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, top party leaders like Wu called for a truce, but KMT lawmakers kept holding news conferences to launch accusations against Tsai, the opposition party said. KMTlegislators said they would continue to demand explanations from Tsai as long as their leadership didn’t order them to stop.

The ruling party was damaging the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and accusing Taiwan’s top biotechnology experts of being opposition supporters, DPP legislator Tsai Huang-liang said.

On Thursday, the DPP presented the recording of one of the founders of Yu Chang, scientist Chen Lan-bo, saying Tsai at first had never been considered as a candidate for company chairman.

He said Taiwanese people should be angry about the allegations and stand up to protest. The accusations against Tsai were completely unfair, he said.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – President Ma Ying-jeou is only 1 percent ahead of Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen in an opinion poll published by the Chinese-language Liberty Times Friday. The difference is within the poll’s 2.56 percent margin of error.

Less than a month before the January 14 presidential and legislative elections, Ma received 34.5 percent to Tsai’s 33.26 percent, according to the survey. People First Party Chairman James Soong was a distant third at 10.81 percent.

Over the past three months, the parties exchanged fire over issues ranging from Ma’s proposal for a peace accord with China, the right level of pension stipends for farmers and allegations of corruption and illegality against Tsai and her running mate, Su Jia-chyuan.

The six opinion polls conducted by the Liberty Times over those three months show the leadership position changing hands between Ma and Tsai several times, but neither of the candidates succeeded in building a strong lead, the paper said.

The poll found 21.43 percent of voters who had not made up their mind yet.

Looking at young voters, the survey saw Tsai holding a strong lead of 32.76 percent against 25.29 percent for Ma for the age group from 20 to 29. Voters from 30 to 39 gave Tsai an even more pronounced 13-percent lead over Ma, according to the Liberty Times.

Tsai was also catching up with Ma in the traditional Kuomintang strongholds of Northern Taiwan, the paper said. She was only 1.83 percent behind the incumbent in New Taipei City.

The poll was conducted by phone from December 13 through 15, interviewing a total of 1,461 people of voting age.

Hopes or fears that a live televised debate between the three contenders on December 3 would provide a clear winner failed to materialize. Their running mates debated on December 10, while the main candidates will have a final opportunity for direct confrontation on Saturday.

The KMT said most polls showed it had achieved a stable lead, while the DPP said the situation was still at a stalemate, with a fifty-fifty chance of winning for both Tsai and Ma. A PFP spokesman said the showings in the Liberty Times poll were too far from the party’s own survey results.

India's central bank held key interest rates steady Friday as it struggles to foster growth amid high inflation, disappointing businesses who were looking for more drastic action.

The Reserve Bank of India kept the short-term lending rate, or repo rate, at 8.5 percent and the reverse repo rate _ the rate it pays to banks for deposits, at 7.5 percent. The bank also kept the cash reserve ratio for commercial lenders unchanged.

"Downside risks to growth have clearly increased," the bank said in a statement. "However, it must be emphasized that inflation risks remain high."

The bank's 13 rate hikes since March 2010 are starting to choke growth in Asia's third largest economy. Growth slipped to a two year low of 6.9 percent in the September quarter and industrial production fell 5.1 percent in October, its first contraction since June 2009. But inflation remains above 9 percent.

"I would like to see RBI do a major rate cut now," B. Muthuraman, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry and vice chairman of Tata Steel, told CNBC-TV18 before the policy decision.

He said he would have liked the bank to cut rates by half a percentage point and reduce the cash reserve ratio to boost lending. That would help small and medium sized businesses _ which are crucial to jobs and output in India's manufacturing sector _ get more affordable financing to grow.

"Government inaction is a big cause of concern for industry," Muthuraman said, citing coal shortages, land acquisition difficulties and slow decision making. "We can have a growth rate in excess of 8 percent, if only we'd had reforms. It's a very sad story."

The rupee, which has been trading at record lows, strengthened Friday, after the central bank took to steps to curb speculation.