60266    With the Cabinet reshuffle in Taiwan at the end of last year, Xiao Wan Chang, an advocate of the direct service, was appointed as the minister in charge of Taiwan's policy toward China.

60267    Many people have a view that the US made the move judging that the direct service will be realized soon.

60268    Though China, opposing Pena's visit to Taiwan, rejected his visit, which was originally scheduled in January, it is China that wants the direct service the most.

60269    The move of the US, which makes the direct transportation more likely, is also beneficial for China.

60270    We can lose sight of how the political game among three countries, the US, China, and Taiwan, develops if we only look at the conflict on the surface.

60271    The Office of the US Trade Representative gave a notice of sanctions worth totally 2.8 billion dollars against China on the 31st, saying it has not taken effective reform measures to protect intellectual property rights.

60272    The sanctions go in to effect as of February 4th.

60273    Xinhua news agency says People's Bank of China, the central bank of China, will raise the interest rate on loans to financial institutions, which we call the official discount rate, by 0.24% on average, starting 1st.

60274    This means the interest rate on loans for a year will be 10.62%.

60275    The financial services negotiations of the Japan-US Framework for New Economic Partnership in Seattle closed on the 30th with specifics undecided, carrying the end result over to new year's meeting.

60276    It was thought that both sides would rush to conclude the agreement, as Japan gave huge concessions to the US request to open Japan's public pension market to foreign investment advisory companies, the biggest focus of these negotiations.

60277    While the US says, "There was great progress," it wanted to finalize the details of issues like deregulation of the development of new products in the bond market, the corporate market, and deregulation of operation of employees' pension fund, which led to putting off the end result.

60278    Though the date for the next talks has yet to be set, it is likely to be after the 4th, before Murayama's visit to the US, as a senior official of the Finance Ministry says, "We don't have to give up our New Year's vacation to go to the US."

60279    The sculptor Tsuchiya consistently works with hard materials, spanning iron, wood and stone.

60280    He seems to be attracted to the materials' inherent strength, as he does not attempt to create sculpted, carved, exquisite "artistic sculptures".