Taipei - Shipments

Taipei - The United States will approve the sale of 12 P-3C Orion anti-submarine aircraft before the year-end, a newspaper reported Friday, quoting a military official.

The Apple Daily quoted Navy Admiral Wang Li-shen as saying that the US will approve the sale of 12 P-3Cs before the year-end, and the P-3Cs will join the Taiwan Navy in 2012.

US naval personnel recently inspected facilities at an airbase in Taoyuan, near Taipei, to see if it was capable of receiving the P-3Cs, the daily quoted Wang as saying.

Taipei- The majority of the people of Taiwan favor maintaining Taiwan's status quo with China and are satisfied with Taipei's policy seeking peace with Beijing, an opinion poll showed Thursday.

According to the poll of 1,094 people conducted by the government's Mainland Affairs Council, more than 80 per cent want to keep the status quo with China, the same percentage as in previous polls.

Taipei - Taiwanese authorities Thursday charged a former top security chief with concealing documents that hampered investigations into alleged money laundering implicating former president Chen Shui-bian.

"We have sought a jail sentence of two and a half years against Yeh Sheng-mao for hiding important documents that resulted in prosecutors losing their optimal time in their probes into the alleged money laundering case," said chief prosecutor Lin Chin-chun in a news conference.

Taipei - Four Taiwan prosecutors flew to Singapore Wednesday to seek the city-state's help in investigating suspected money laundering by former president Chen Shui-bian.

The prosecutors want to check a bank account of Wu Ching-mao, brother of Chen's wife, Wu Shu-chen, because she had allegedly wired some of Chen's campaign funds to the account.

Singapore has told Taiwan that it is willing to offer legal assistance because Singapore does not allow foreigners to use its financial system to conduct illegal activities, Taiwan's Central News Agency said.