Taipei - Taiwan plans to reopen its domestic Taipei Airport for international flights, eyeing Haneda Airport in Tokyo as the first possible target in a bid to promote tourism, aviation officials said Thursday.

"Relevant agencies from Taiwan and Japan will hold talks next month in Tokyo for the revision of the Taiwan-Japan aviation agreement, during which we will propose that the two sides launch flights between Taipei and Haneda airports," said a senior official with the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA).

Taipei - Two giant pandas sent as a goodwill gift to Taiwan from China will make their debut at Taipei Zoo on the first day of the Chinese New Year, which falls on January 26, a spokesman said Thursday.

"The month-long quarantine for the pair at the Taipei Zoo will end on January 23 and we plan to formally introduce them to the public on January 26," said Yang Hsiao-tung, spokesman for the Taipei City Government.

Taipei - Taiwan's central bank Wednesday announced a benchmark interest rate cut of 50 basis points following a sharp decline of the island's total exports in December.

"Effective from Thursday, the benchmark interest rate would be lowered to 1.5 per cent from 2 per cent," the central bank said in a press release after an unscheduled board meeting.

It stressed the cut was to reflect the sharp decline in the island's total exports, which slumped by 42 per cent in December at 13.64 billion US dollars, due to the global economic recession.

Taipei - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou Tuesday said his government still needs time to digest the content of a goodwill speech on cross-strait relations recently made by his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.

"We are still making further efforts to try to understand what exactly (Hu) wanted to convey through his speech," said Ma in a meeting with a group of visiting US scholars.

Through a press statement, he said the Chinese leader "had in certain aspect made concrete responses to some of Taiwan's concerns." Ma did not elaborate.

Taipei - Police detained a Taiwan woman Tuesday for joking that there was a bomb in her hand luggage.

The woman, identified only by her surname Wu, was preparing to fly from Tuesday afternoon Taipei to Singapore on a Singaporean Airlines flight at the Taoyuan International Airport.

After she had boarded the plane, an air hostess helped her put her carry-on luggage into the overhead bin and quipped: "It seems kind of heavy. What's inside?"

"There is a bomb inside," Wu joked.

The air hostess called the flight captain who ordered Wu and her luggage removed from the plane for security checks.

Taipei  - Taiwan's Evergreen Marine Corp, expecting recovery of the global economy by 2012, plans to order 100 container ships and boost its competitiveness, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

The Economic Daily News cited Evergreen Marine owner Chang Jung-fa as saying that Evergreen plans to order the new ships to expand its fleet and to replace
30-year-old ships.

Evergreen, Taiwan's largest and the world's fourth-largest container shipping operator, has 178 container vessels, out of which 100 are self-owned and the rest rented.