In a room at the back of her house, Vera Alves da Silva Oliveira keeps the air-conditioning on day and night to protect bags of seeds gathered by hand from Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannah.Oliveira is one of more than 700 seed gatherers in the Xingu Seeds Network working to help recov
As devices from toys to cars get smarter, gadget makers are grappling with a shortage of memory needed for them to work.Dwindling supplies and soaring costs of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) that provides space for computers, smartphones and game consoles to run applications or multitask was a
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. T
Jan. 12 to Jan. 18 At the start of an Indigenous heritage tour of Beitou District (北投) in Taipei, I was handed a sheet of paper titled Ritual Song for the Various Peoples of Tamsui (淡水各社祭祀歌).The lyrics were in Chinese with no literal meaning, accompanied by romanized pronunciation that sounded clo
The primaries for this year’s nine-in-one local elections in November began early in this election cycle, starting last autumn. The local press has been full of tales of intrigue, betrayal, infighting and drama going back to the summer of 2024. This is not widely covered in the English-language pres
There’s a few special words that will perk the ears of many a dog — hungry, park and of course T-R-E-A-T.But a choice group of gifted canines appear to have remarkable capacity for learning human vocabulary, to the point that they acquire language by eavesdropping the way young toddlers do.That’s ac
Hsu Pu-liao (許不了) never lived to see the premiere of his most successful film, The Clown and the Swan (小丑與天鵝, 1985).The movie, which starred Hsu, the “Taiwanese Charlie Chaplin,” outgrossed Jackie Chan’s Heart of Dragon (龍的心), earning NT$9.2 million at the local box office. Forty years after its pre
It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of Dog Day Afternoon is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire, a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.In February 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company in downto
Where did our species first emerge? Fossils discovered in Morocco dating back more than 773,000 years bolster the theory that Homo sapiens originally appeared in Africa, scientists said in a study Wednesday.The oldest Homo sapien fossils, dating from over 300,000 years ago, were found at the Jebel I
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang’s (黃國昌) New Year’s resolution was to get healthy and fit. On New Year’s Eve, he released a video detailing his journey and released photos showing off not only his progress but also his newly buff physique. Regardless of what one thinks of his pol
With Taiwan getting unprecedented levels of press over the past few years, it’s hard not to feel that there has been a fair amount of bandwagon-jumping amid the slew of books that has appeared. At first glance, this novel by veteran BBC journalist Frank Gardner could certainly appear opportunistic —
China’s government has long made efforts to tempt top scientists from abroad, but researchers say its institutions themselves are increasingly attracting talent thanks to their generous funding and growing prestige.State-backed initiatives like the Thousand Talents Plan have dangled fast-tracked hir
Sure, Nvidia, AMD and Intel all had important chip and AI platform announcements on the first day of CES 2026, but all audiences wanted to see more of was Star Wars and Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) little robot buddies.CES is a huge opportunity annually for companies both large and small to parade products
The Golden Globes return Sunday. The boozy, bubbly kickoff to Hollywood’s awards season will feature nominees including Timothee Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael B. Jordan, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo and Emma Stone.The 83rd Golden Globe Awards ceremony begins at 8pm Eastern at the Beverly Hilt
Words of the Year are not just interesting, they are telling. They are language and attitude barometers that measure what a country sees as important. The trending vocabulary around AI last year reveals a stark divergence in what each society notices and responds to the technological shift.For the A
It’s a good thing that 2025 is over. Yes, I fully expect we will look back on the year with nostalgia, once we have experienced this year and 2027. Traditionally at New Years much discourse is devoted to discussing what happened the previous year. Let’s have a look at what didn’t happen.Many bad thi
Jan. 5 to Jan. 11Of the more than 3,000km of sugar railway that once criss-crossed central and southern Taiwan, just 16.1km remain in operation today. By the time Dafydd Fell began photographing the network in earnest in 1994, it was already well past its heyday. The system had been significantly cu
This is the year that the demographic crisis will begin to impact people’s lives. This will create pressures on treatment and hiring of foreigners. Regardless of whatever technological breakthroughs happen, the real value will come from digesting and productively applying existing technologies in ne
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