Mon, Mar 23, 2026
Amendments to the National Security Act (國家安全法) proposed by the Executive Yuan would support digital security, close legal loopholes, align with international conventions, and bolster enforcement and penalties, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in a report to the Legislative Yuan.The council w
CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) yesterday announced they would increase gasoline and diesel prices by NT$1.8 and NT$1.4 per liter respectively.The announcements came as severe traffic disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s intensifying attacks on key energy infr
NEGOTIATING SAFETY: Passage through the Strait of Hormuz is open to all except ‘Iran’s enemies’ and is possible by coordinating with Tehran, an official said US President Donald Trump and Iran threatened to escalate their war by attacking energy facilities in the Gulf, a potential widening of hostilities that could deepen a regional crisis and add to concerns in global markets. Air raid sirens sounded across Israel from the early hours yesterday morning,
Italians yesterday began voting in a two-day referendum on reforms that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said would make the judiciary more independent — but which critics said would do the opposite.The poll risks turning into a referendum on the far-right leader herself, ahead of parliamentary
SUFFICIENT: The president said Taiwan has enough oil for next month, with reserves covering more than 100 days and natural gas enough for 12 to 14 days A restart plan for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) and the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township (恆春) would be submitted to the Nuclear Safety Commission by the end of the month, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, reve
MORE VISIBILITY: The nation’s participation as an adviser is an upgrade from its observer status and signaled a deepening Taiwan-US supply chain cooperation Taiwan last week joined a US-led initiative in an advisory capacity, which discussed bolstering the defense industrial resilience of the US and its partners for the Indo-Pacific region, a US Pentagon official said.The Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience (PIPIR) on Wednesday convened i
DANGEROUS: On certain sections, climbers are heavily reliant on guide ropes, one of which was intentionally cut in 2022, resulting in a climber falling down a 20m slope The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency has issued an emergency warning for hikers on Yuanzui Mountain (鳶嘴山) in Taichung after discovering that 28 sections of safety ropes had been intentionally cut or loosened.Fifteen sections of rope were found to have been cut and another 13 loosened, the age
WELCOMING: While Taiwan is ‘extremely Muslim-friendly,’ the nation still has room to grow, such as by providing more prayer rooms, a Muslim man said Thousands of people yesterday gathered at Daan Forest Park in Taipei for an Eid al-Fitr celebration marking the end of Ramadan, filled with food and activities.The annual event featured performances, workshops and a halal bazaar with about 40 booths offering everything from food and Muslim-themed me
A map of Taichung depicting locations frequented by illegal sex workers, which has gone viral online, is not a joke, but rather a reflection of the city’s unbalanced development and the entrenched nature of the sex industry, Taichung city councilors said yesterday.The area showed in the “Map of the
Five suspects have been arrested following the discovery of a disfigured corpse in Changhua County’s Yuanlin City (員林) on Saturday, police said.The body, found by passersby along Hushuei Road, bore multiple deep slashes across the face, and the eyeballs had been gouged out, police said.The two main
The worldwide population of black-faced spoonbills has surpassed 7,700 birds, with Taiwan recording 4,719 — an all-time high, the Tainan Wild Bird Society said yesterday.The International Black-faced Spoonbill Census, released on Friday by the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society on the eve of this year’
The German Institute Taipei on Saturday celebrated the life of late National Taiwan University (NTU) professor Wolfgang Kroll, a theoretical physicist who was the first scientist in Taiwan to publish in an international scientific journal.Germany’s overseas representative office in Taiwan honor
Western Taiwan is expected to see mixed cloudy and sunny conditions this week, while northern Taiwan, eastern Taiwan and mountainous areas are forecast to experience localized brief showers, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday.Three weak frontal systems carrying limited moistu
BELEAGUERED BILLS The Cabinet’s NT$1.25 trillion special budget will contend with the TPP and KMT’s considerably smaller proposals in committee meetings The Legislative Yuan is expected to host tense debates when it begins reviewing three competing special budget bills on arms procurement today, including a Cabinet proposal totaling NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.1 billion).The Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee and Finance Committee are holdin
Taiwanese officials attended a ceremony last week for the delivery of the first two of four MQ-9B Skyguardian drones purchased from the US, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) announced yesterday.A delegation led by Deputy Minister of National Defense Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) and joined by Taiwan’s Re
AMAZING ABUNDANCE: Elon Musk has announced plans for a new facility in Texas which would manufacture chips for Tesla and SpaceX to use in robotics and AI Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and space data centers — would be built in Austin and jointly run by Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX).Musk, the chief executive officer of th
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 fr
Blackstone Inc’s flagship private credit fund posted its first monthly loss in more than three years, one of the clearest signs yet of weakening performance in the US$1.8 trillion market.The US$83 billion fund, known as BCRED, lost 0.4 percent last month, according to its Web site. It was the first
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) earlier this month said it is necessary for her to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and it would be a “huge boost” to the party’s local election results in November, but many KMT members have expressed different opinions, indi
China’s supreme objective in a war across the Taiwan Strait is to incorporate Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic. It follows, therefore, that international recognition of Taiwan’s de jure independence is a consummation that China’s leaders devoutly wish to avoid. By the same token, an Ame
Today marks the 30th anniversary of Taiwan’s first direct presidential election. This year also marks a broader democratic milestone, as the years Taiwan has spent as a free nation have now exceeded the years it endured under martial law. Taiwan’s democracy remains a living project, still growing st
‘HURTS A LOT’: Liverpool coach Arne Slot said key injury absentees and a swift turnaround from Champions League commitments had a role in the defeat Chelsea on Saturday failed to take advantage of another Liverpool stumble in the race to qualify for next season’s UEFA Champions League, hammered 3-0 by Everton to remain outside the top five. Champions Liverpool had slipped to a 2-1 defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion in the early kickoff — their 10t
Tadej Pogacar on Saturday claimed another landmark victory by edging the thrilling Milan-Sanremo, finally adding a fourth of road cycling’s five “Monument” races to his collection. Pogacar pipped Tom Pidcock in an enthralling two-man sprint climax, even after his race strategy was blown to bits by a
Giggles and songs ripple across a field in rural eastern Uganda where elderly women swing cricket bats to reshape what aging, health and sports can look like in later life. The “cricket grannies” are bound together by a growing love of a game they initially knew nothing about, but is now helping the
Armand Duplantis on Saturday won another pole vault world title after he was pushed all the way by Greece’s Emmanouil Karalis. Duplantis won his fourth consecutive world indoor championships with a tournament record vault of 6.25m, a 10cm improvement on his winning height a year ago in Nanjing, Chin
LAW CONSTRAINTS: The US has been pressing allies to send warships to open the Strait, but Tokyo’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution Japan could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz if a ceasefire is reached in the war on Iran, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi said yesterday.“If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping c
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the nati
Chasing an endless summer, one shorebird species undertakes a grueling annual journey from the arctic to the tip of South America and back — a feat increasingly fraught with peril.The Hudsonian godwit is one of the world’s most remarkable travelers, but its population has plunged 95 percent in four
What was the population of Taiwan when the first Negritos arrived? In 500BC? The 1st century? The 18th? These questions are important, because they can contextualize the number of babies born last month, 6,523, to all the people on Taiwan, indigenous and colonial alike. That figure represents a year
March 23 to March 29Kao Chang (高長) set strict rules for his descendants: women were to learn music or cooking, and the men medicine or theology. No matter what life path they chose, they were to use their skills in service of the Presbyterian Church and society. As a result, musical ability — partic
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on March 14 held a joint “Chasing Dreams in Taiwan, Building Our Future” press conference headlined by their respective chairs, Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文). They laid out a joint framework for cross-party cooper
1. 他們昨天早上七點到那裡。ˇ They got there at seven yesterday morning.χ They got to there at seven yesterday morning.註：there 是副詞，通常前面不該有介詞，也不可用 *I come to here，應說 I come here。但from here/there, near here/there, over there, up here/there 等都可以用。例如：Let’s go up there.Do you see that man over there?I can’t see it f
A new international study revealed that spruce trees in an Italian forest can respond to a solar eclipse. To be more specific, they actually anticipate it by synchronizing their bioelectrical signals hours before the event. To monitor this phenomenon, scientists attached special sensors to the tree
Heavy rain brought by Typhoon Ragasa caused the barrier lake above Matai’an Creek in Hualien’s Guangfu Township to overflow on Sept. 23 of last year. The sudden rush of water and mud destroyed a major bridge and swept through nearby villages, leaving significant damage in its wake. The barrier lake
Two moves show Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) is gunning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party chair and the 2028 presidential election. Technically, these are not yet “officially” official, but by the rules of Taiwan politics, she is now on the dance floor. Earlier this month Lu confirmed in an interview in Japan’s Nikkei that she was considering running for KMT chair. This is not new news, but according to reports from her camp she previously was still considering the case for and against running. By choosing a respected, international news outlet, she declared it to the world. While the outside world likely paid little attention, domestically the message was unmistakable: She is moving on to a larger stage. Part of the dance is to leave options open before formally committing, and with the chair race due in late September, she has time. If something goes wrong in the meantime, or if power brokers in the party offer her a deal that provides more benefits than taking on the role of chair, she can pivot accordingly. Earlier this year, I suggested that strategically, she would be better off concentrating on her job as Taichung mayor until she is term-limited out of office in December next year. Taichung mayor is obviously a full-time job, and concurrently running the Taipei-headquartered party runs the risk of doing one or both jobs poorly and making mistakes that could imperil her shot at the presidency in 2028. The situation has changed. Current KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), knowing he is likely to face challengers of a higher caliber than the three relative nobodies already declared, has gone all in on appealing to the base. The base is more likely to turn out to vote in the chair election, so this makes some strategic sense in the short term.
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan. Last spring at Arunothai’s Jiaolian School, principal Wang Mingming (王明明) had forewarned me of the division between villages, saying, “We are not like the people in Mae Salong. They are rich. Because of the Taiwanese.” Arunothai has in recent years become split in its loyalties between Taiwan and China (see part one, “A tale of two schools,” on May 15), but in Mae Salong, links to Taiwan remain strong. Taiwan-funded monuments pay homage to the Lost Army, villagers wear T-shirts emblazoned with the Republic of China (ROC) flag and tea plantations grown Taiwan’s most famous tea varieties, including Dong Ding (“frozen peak”) Oolong, Oriental Beauty and Jin Xuan (Golden Daylily or Milk Oolong). Even the numerical classifications of the teas — Oolong No. 12 or No. 17, for example — are the same, and the shops resemble those found on Alishan. At the tomb of General Tuan Hsi-wen (段希文) — perched on a Mae Salong hilltop with a view of his ancestral homeland in China’s Yunnan province — a third generation villager wearing a vintage KMT army uniform, Yan Si-Chung (岩思中), greets visitors with sharp military salutes. “Both my father and my grandfather were soldiers in the KMT army,” the 44-year-old
| New Taipei City | 27-28 | 20% |  |
| Hsinchu County | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Hsinchu City | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Taipei City | 27-28 | 20% |  |
| Miaoli County | 24-26 | 10% | |
| Taoyuan City | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Keelung City | 27-28 | 20% | |
| Yunlin County | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Taichung City | 26-28 | 10% | |
| Nantou County | 25-26 | 10% | |
| Changhua County | 27-28 | 10% | |
| Chiayi County | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Chiayi City | 25-27 | 10% | |
| Tainan City | 27-28 | 10% | |
| Kaohsiung City | 27-28 | 10% | |
| Pingtung County | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Yilan County | 25-26 | 30% |  |
| Hualien County | 25-26 | 30% | |
| Taitung County | 25-27 | 30% | |
| Kinmen County | 27-28 | 10% | |
| Penghu County | 27-27 | 20% | |
| Lienchiang County | 27-28 | 20% | |
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