Taipei  - Nearly 2,000 Chinese tourists arrived in Taiwan on a cruise ship Monday, the first such arrival by sea in over half a century.

The Keelung Harbour in north Taiwan spread the red carpet and performed a dragon dance to welcome the 1,600 mainland tourists who arrived from Shanghai aboard the Legend of the Seas, owned by the Royal Caribbean International shipping line.

The tourists were all employees of Amway China. Amway plans to send 12,000 Chinese employees to Taiwan in nine groups on the ship.

Taipei  - Taiwan said Sunday that its diplomatic ties with Paraguay and the Dominican Republic are firm, despite calls for the governments of the two countries to recognize China.

Foreign Minister Francisco made the remark to the Central News Agency (CNA), after visiting Paraguay and the Dominican Republic to consolidate ties. The two nations are among the 23 mostly small countries that recognize Taiwan.

Taipei  - Taiwan on Friday welcomed the prospect of a visit to the island by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao after Wen expressed his wish to see Taiwan and meet its people.

"We welcome Chinese leaders at all levels if they want to visit Taiwan, but we need to make careful planning," Premier Liu Chao-shiuan told parliament. "The higher their status is, the more careful the planning must be."

Wen made peace overtures to Taiwan Friday morning at a news conference in Beijing at the end of the annual session of China's nominal parliament, the National People's Congress.

Taipei  - Taiwan is opposed to China's plan to extend China's national railway network to Taipei, calling it unnecessary, according to a newspaper report Friday.

According to the Taipei Times, both the Presidential Office and the Mainland Affairs Council have called China's plan unnecessary from both economic and political perspectives.

"China would have to take professional and political aspects into consideration," presidential office spokesman Wang Yu-chi was quoted by the paper as saying.

Taipei  - A Taiwanese handbag thief who tried to withdraw cash from his victim's bank account was caught in the act by the victim's daughter, who happened to work at the bank branch.

Taipei police said Chang Shih-chun, 55, broke into the house of a retired teacher Tuesday and stole her handbag containing some cash, a bank book and an ink seal used by the victim to stamp her signature when withdrawing money.

Hanoi  - Taiwanese-owned condiment company Vedan has agreed to compensate Vietnamese farmers for damage from pollution it illegally discharged into a Vietnamese river for more than a decade, the company and farmers said Thursday.

"On the basis of our humanitarian responsibility to society, Vedan has offered a solution to share the farmers' losses to some extent," said Vedan lawyer Hoang Nhu Vinh.

Vinh said farmers would have to agree never to sue Vedan in order to receive payouts from the company.

Vedan representatives spent Monday and Tuesday negotiating with Ho Chi Minh City and Dong Nai province farmers' associations over the settlement.