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One of the top stories from this past week was that China has agreed to delay the use of four controversial new flight routes along its southeastern coast. Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Adminstration (CAA) said the two sides reached an agreement over the new flight plan late Monday.
The north-south M503 path near the median line of the Taiwan Strait will be moved six nautical miles further west of the originally planned route. The implementation of the route will also be delayed for an undetermined period of time. The other three east-west routes connected to the M503 path will also be scrapped for now. China was planning to start using the new routes on March 5 to ease congestion between Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta. Taiwan protested the plans, saying they would compromise Taiwan’s national security.
Mainland Affairs Council Minister Andrew Hsia said on Tuesday that the results of the talks were not completely satisfactory, but that they were acceptable.
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Also this past week, Malaysia's IOI Properties Group has abandoned a plan to buy a 37.17% stake in the Taipei Financial Center Corp., which owns the landmark Taipei 101 skyscraper. That’s the word from the finance ministry on Friday.
The Malaysian conglomerate was planning to buy the stake for US$799 million from the Ting Hsin Group. Ting Hsin is seeking to sell off its stake after becoming the target of a massive public outcry over its involvement in several food safety scandals over the past year. But IOI announced on Friday that it decided to back out of the deal.
IOI’s bid had faced public opposition from government officials and politicians partly over fears that capital from China might be involved in the takeover plan. Critics also expressed reluctance to have such a famous landmark fall under foreign control.
After IOI’s announcement on Friday, the finance ministry said that it will continue with its original plan to acquire over 7% of shares from Ting Hsin in order to have a majority in the board of directors.
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And finally, this past week, Taiwan is among the happiest countries in the world. That’s according to Bloomberg’s latest misery index survey.
The survey of 51 economies is based on Bloomberg’s calculation of inflation and unemployment, two major factors that can contribute to unhappiness. Thailand took the title of the world’s happiest country thanks to its unusually low jobless rate. Following Thailand in second place was Switzerland.
Japan, which has just emerged from decades of deflation, took third place, while South Korea and Taiwan finished out the top five.