20120529 9am

9AM Intro

Good morning, it's 9 o'clock. I'm Bill Thissen

9AM TAIWAN NEWS ....

The legislative caucuses of the K-M-T and D-P-P proposed their respective versions of a capital gains tax yesterday during a public hearing. The K-M-T proposed a dual tax system - which will allow individual investors to opt to declare their capital gains through stock trading as personal income tax, or by substituting the capital gains tax with a stock transaction tax. The D-P-P's version does not exempt foreign institutional investors from the tax -- a move the party says is aimed at erasing incentives for companies to camouflage themselves as foreign institutional investors to avoid paying the tax. The hearing was the first to be held by the Finance Committee in an attempt to solicit public opinion on the issue before formal reviews on the various draft proposals begin on June 4-th. ---------- Bilateral cross-strait fell sharply in the first four months of 2012 from a year earlier. According to figures released yesterday ... bilateral trade totaled 47.64-billion U-S dollars from January to April -- down 8.2-percent from the same period last year. Taiwan's imports from China totaled 10.23-billion U-S dollars during the period -- down 10.3-per cent from the year before. Exports to China totaled 37.41-billion U-S dollars -- representing an annual decline of 7.7-per cent. ------- Culture Minister - Long Ying-tai - is interested in expanding cultural exchanges with regions such as Latin America and Africa. Speaking during a meeting yesterday with ambassadors and representatives from over 40 countries -- Long said she hopes eight more cultural centers will be stationed in regions ranging from Europe and Asia to South America and Central America. Long added that her ministry is also seeking to cooperate with more academic institutions from around the world and to have more cultural exchanges with communities from different language zones.

syria

A weekend massacre of more than 100 people emerged as a potential turning point in the Syrian crisis Monday, galvanizing even staunch ally Russia to take an unusually hard line against President Bashar Assad's government. Analysts said Russia may be warning Assad that he needs to change course or lose Moscow's support, which has been a key layer of protection for the Syrian government during the uprising that began in March 2011. Russia has grown increasingly critical of Damascus in recent months, but Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's latest comments were unusually strong. Although he said opposition forces have terrorists among them, he put the blame for 15 months of carnage primarily on Assad's government.

egypt

Violence has erupted after Egypt's presidential election. The APs Mark Lavie reports from Cairo.

virus

Security experts say a highly sophisticated computer virus is infecting computers in Iran and other Middle East countries and may have been deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage. Evidence suggest that the virus may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010. Iran has accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.

tuna

Radioactive bluefin tuna have made their way from Japan to waters off the Southern California coast. The APs Mike Gracia reports.

vatican

The biggest scandal to rock the Vatican in decades widened Monday with the pope's butler, agreeing to cooperate with investigators

WEATHER AM .....

mostly cloudy skies and showers islandwide -- w/ a high of 28 in the Taipei area and a high of 31 in both Taichong and Gaoxiong. Current Temperatures .... Taipei -- 25 Taichung -- 27 Gaoxiong -- 29

9AM Outro

That's the ICRT News at 9. I'm _____