China says has goodwill towards Taiwan, but won’t allow separation BEIJING, January 25 (Reuters): China is willing to show utmost goodwill towards self-ruled Taiwan but won’t allow its separation from China, the country’s defence ministry said on Thursday after Taiwan’s president said she does not rule out the possibility of a Chinese attack. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said this week she does not exclude the possibility of China attacking them, amid heightened tensions between the two sides including an increasing number of Chinese military drills near Taiwan. Beijing has taken an increasingly hostile stance towards Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, since the election two years ago of Tsai of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. China suspects Tsai wants to push for formal independence, a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing, though she has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace. Asked about Tsai’s attack remarks, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said China is willing to show the greatest amount of goodwill to seek “peaceful reunification”. “But we will certainly will not allow Taiwan to separate from the motherland,” Wu told a regular monthly news briefing. In recent months, China has stepped up military drills around Taiwan, alarming Taipei. China says the exercises are routine. The Chinese aircraft carrier the Liaoning has this month sailed twice through the Taiwan Strait, the narrow stretch of water separating the two sides. Italian police arrest 31 in Rome beachside mafia blitz ROME, January 25 (Reuters): Police in Rome said on Thursday they had arrested 31 people on suspicion of mafia activity in Ostia, a seaside suburb that has been one of the hotspots in a major anti-mafia investigation in the Italian capital. Thirty-one members and affiliates of a suspected clan allegedly run by the Spada family were picked up in raids starting at dawn in the Ostia coastal neighbourhood, a police official said, while one suspect remained at large. Ostia was the only one of Rome’s 15 districts to be put under direct government control because of alleged mafia infiltration after a wide-ranging investigation dubbed “Mafia Capital” led to dozens of arrests in 2014. The spotlight returned to Ostia in November when Roberto Spada, gym owner and brother of a convicted mobster, was filmed headbutting a journalist who asked whether he supported a far-right group. The city’s mayor Virginia Raggi thanked police, prosecutors and the Interior Minister for the arrests, writing on Twitter: “Rome gets a new lease of life with the operation against the Spada clan in Ostia ... Together we say no to criminality. #MafiaGetOutofRome.”
