Taipei  - Taiwan's ex-president Lien Chan and Chinese President Hu Jintao, in Peru for the upcoming APEC summit, will meet Friday amid signs of improved ties between Taiwan and China, according to a TV report.

Lien and Hu will meet at the Delfines Hotel in Lima, where Hu is staying, at 10:45 am Friday (1545 GMT), cable TV channel TVBS reported, quoting an unnamed Chinese source as confirming the meeting.

The Lien-Hu meeting will be open to the press, TVBS said.

Taip

Taipei - Taiwan's economy, hit hard by the global financial turmoil and a slump in exports, contracted in the third quarter, signaling the start of recession, officials said Thursday.

"We have to revise downward our third-quarter growth to negative 1.02 per cent from 3.04 per cent forecast in August, and this is the biggest decline since the fourth quarter of 2001," said Shih Su-mei, head of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.

Taipei  - Taiwan t approved issuing shopping coupons Thursday in its latest move to boost the economy which has been hit by the global financial crisis.

Chen Tain-jy, minister of the cabinet's Council for Economic Planning and Development, said Taiwan will start issuing shopping coupons on January 18, one week before the start of the Chinese New Year holidays.

Taipei  - Taiwan has donated 18.2 million US dollars to the Central American Integration System (SICA) to be spent on cooperation projects, Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) said on Wednesday.

Taiwan signed the agreement on six cooperation projects at SICA's foreign ministers' meeting held in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa on Tuesday, CNA said.

Costa Rica, which is a SICA member but cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan to recognize China in June 2007, did not send its foreign minister to the SICA meeting.

Quoting Honduran Foreign Minister Angel Edmundo Orellana Mercado, CNA said the pact covers improving agriculture and fishery, wiping out livestock diseases and promoting social developments.