Taipei - Taiwan's former president Chen Shui-bian Friday quit the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as investigators were looking into alleged money laundering activities implicating him and his family.

"I have committed a serious mistake and I don't fancy for forgiveness from the public, but I absolutely take responsibility for my own behaviour," he said in a statement in announcing his withdrawal from the party.

Taipei - Taiwan said Friday it has changed tact in its United Nations membership bid by seeking to access special organizations of the global body instead.

"The motion raised by our allies this year is to urge the UN assembly to propose that its special organizations accept the meaningful participation of Taiwan and its 23 million people in their respective bodies and activities," said Vice Foreign Minister Hsia Li-yan in a news conference in Taipei.

Taipei  - Taiwan, in a move reflecting improved cross-strait ties, on Thursday allowed the Taipei Zoo to import two giant pandas from China.

The Council of Agriculture (COA) favored the Taipei Zoo over the Leofoo Village Theme Park in Hsinchu, west Taiwan, which has also applied to receive the two pandas China offered Taiwan in 2005.

COA officials said it rejected the application from Leofoo Park because its medical facilities for pandas and tourist education programmes are not as good as those of the Taipei Zoo.

Taipei  - Four Taiwan men involved in a car accident quit arguing about who was to blame after they discovered a numerology twist in their birthdates, a television channel reported Tuesday.

The four-car collision occurred Monday evening in a highway tunnel in Chiayi County, west Taiwan. No one was injured in the accident, but when the four men went to a police station to file a report, they saw their birthdates were June 6, July 7, August 8 and September 9, TVBS reported.

The succession of 6/6, 7/7, 8/8 and 9/9 was so unusual that the men forgot about assigning blame for the accident and began to marvel at the coincidence, the cable TV channel said.

Taipei  - A Taiwanese student's hopes to set a world record for having the world's longest leg hair were in peril Monday as he accidentally pulled out the hair, news reports said.

Lin Kuan-wei, a third-grade high school student in Pingting City, southern Taiwan, displayed the 13.4-centimetre leg hair to reporters Monday, saying he hopes to set a Guinness world record because the current record is only 12.4 cm.

Taipei - Taiwanese are busy searching for information about spirits during Ghost Month, Taiwan press said on Sunday.

Internet searches related to Ghost Month taboos led the hits on Taiwan's search engine Yahoo-Kimo, with the phrase "10 major Ghost Month taboos" in Chinese ranked second most popular as many users looked for information about the most frightening month of the year, the Taipei Times daily and the Central News Agency (CNA) said.