Sun, Apr 05, 2026
Several national universities in Taiwan continue to have sister-school partnerships with Chinese institutions that are affiliated with the United Front Work Department (UFWD) or closely linked with China’s military industry, despite warnings from the Ministry of Education (MOE).The Mainland Affairs
US President Donald Trump on Friday proposed boosting defense spending to US$1.5 trillion in his budget for next year, the largest such request in decades, reflecting his emphasis on US military investments over domestic programs.The sizeable increase for the Pentagon, about 44 percent, had been tel
A Russian drone yesterday hit a covered market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Nikopol, killing five people and wounding 19, officials said, as Moscow pressed on with intensified daytime attacks. Regional governor Oleksandr Ganja said that three women and two men were killed, adding that a 14-year-
‘HERCULEAN EFFORT’: The astronauts could set a record after their planned loop around the moon by venturing farther from Earth than any human before The Artemis II astronauts yesterday passed the halfway point between Earth and the moon as they sped toward a planned lunar flyby, with NASA releasing initial images of Earth taken from inside the Orion spacecraft.Astronaut Christina Koch said the crew had a collective “expression of joy” upon being
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities.The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg S
EXPERIENCED: The nation could learn from Israel’s experience in building cybersecurity defense systems, protecting critical infrastructure and cultivating talent, an official said The military’s Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command is implementing plans to bolster cybersecurity protection, including a “Dedicated Communication Network Bandwidth Service” contract with Chunghwa Telecom for NT$5.457 billion (US$170.68 million), which was signed this week, a so
CEREMONIAL POWERS: The KMT has criticized the Control Yuan, calling it a party tool for the DPP, and has declined to submit candidates for the next term The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have announced that they would not be recommending candidates for the Control Yuan.The term of the sixth-term members of the Control Yuan expires on July 31. The Presidential Office has sent letters to political parties requesti
EXECUTIVE DICTATORSHIP: The convening of the CEC is stalled until at least five members are in place, with the Cabinet reportedly to recommend a new nominee list The appointments of four Central Election Commission (CEC) nominees hinge on the Legislative Yuan to demonstrate sincerity, the Cabinet said yesterday after the opposition-dominated legislature vetoed its three nominees.The legislature on March 13 approved the Cabinet’s nomination of Michael You (游盈
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) upcoming China visit has a “pre-arranged itinerary” orchestrated solely by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an official familiar with cross-strait affairs said yesterday.Cheng on Monday said she has accepted an invitation from Chinese
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed.The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university studen
PLANES, TRAINS: Taichung and Tainan airports had to halt services due to thunderstorms, while train tracks were covered with water in Miaoli and Hsinchu counties Flooding caused by heavy rain has disrupted railway services in western Taiwan, with only single-track operations available between Miaoli County’s Miaoli and Jhunan (竹南) stations yesterday morning, Taiwan Railway Corp said.Taiwan Railway said that floodwater submerged tracks in Miaoli and Jhunan To
FILLING A GAP: The researchers said the mammals were known to live around Japan before going extinct, but their presence near Taiwan was not known before A team of Taiwanese and Japanese scientists has identified sea lion fossils in waters around Taiwan proper in a breakthrough discovery that raises new questions.The team, which includes Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修), an associate professor of life sciences at National Taiwan University (NTU), and Naoki Kohn
Despite soaring international crude oil prices amid military conflict in the Middle East, CPC Corp, Taiwan yesterday said that it would leave domestic gasoline and diesel prices unchanged this week, with benchmark 95-octane unleaded gasoline to stay at NT$33.9 (US$1.06) per liter.State-owned oil sup
The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) yesterday announced an expansion of the treatment duration for the Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT) program to seven days from five days, effective immediately, allowing people to reduce the frequency of hospital visits.The decisi
A career in sports topped the list for elementary school students in a survey conducted by the Mandarin Daily News, with e-sports and social media influencer next in line, while teaching was among the 10 least popular choices.The top 10 favored professions were professional athlete, e-sports, online
Welcome to the new-look movie set, where the quiet hum of a coding floor has replaced the cacophony of cameras, clapperboards and shouted directions.The Collective Artists Network, a top talent agency for Bollywood A-listers, has long brokered the careers of real-life superstars. Now, it is engineer
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday.A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “syst
Good news for people who regret the Gmail address they came up with when they registered for an account: Google is now letting users change it.Google started quietly rolling out the change late last year in India and said this week in a blog post that it is now available for all Google Account users
Sunshine Women’s Choir (陽光女子合唱團), a Taiwanese production that premiered in China yesterday, received a massive backlash for calling itself the “all-time box office champion for Chinese-language films from the China-Taiwan region” in its promotional post on Chinese social media.Democratic Progressive
Yesterday was Children’s Day, but the mental health of children and adolescents across Taiwan is raising serious red flags. According to statistics, while the declining birthrate has caused the total number of students to drop by 630,000 over the past decade, reported cases of student suicide and se
For more than a millennium, the lines from the Tang Dynasty poet Du Mu (杜牧) — “pure brightness, dual souls” — have defined the emotional architecture of Qingming (清明). Arriving around April 5 as the fifth of the 24 solar terms, Qingming is a dual entity: A celestial marker of late spring and one of
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR? The Magic withstood a 51-point performance from Cooper Flagg, who got 24 points in the fourth quarter, in their victory over the Mavericks Jaylen Brown scored 26 points, while Jayson Tatum added 23 on Friday as the Boston Celtics thrashed the Milwaukee Bucks 133-101 to maintain their grip on third place in the NBA Eastern Conference.Tatum added 11 rebounds, nine assists and three steals before he and Brown sat out the fourth quarter wi
Top seeded Jessica Pegula on Friday once again fought back from a set down to reach the WTA Charleston Open semi-finals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win against Russia’s Diana Shnaider.Defending champion Pegula has lost the first set in all three of her matches at the tournament so far, but again dug deep t
At least one person died and 47 more were injured on Friday night in an unspecified “incident” at Alejandro Villanueva Stadium in Peru’s capital during a rally ahead of a soccer derby, the Peruvian Ministry of Health said.“There has been an unfortunate incident at the stadium in which 47 people have
Olympic bronze medalist Chen Nien-chin yesterday advanced to the semi-finals of the women’s 65kg division at the Asian Boxing Elite Boxing Championships as the Taiwanese contingent continued their strong showing at the event in Mongolia.Chen, who won bronze in the women’s 66kg division at the 2024 P
‘CONCERNING’: Inmates who have committed ‘crimes against authority’ would not be released, but a group said those charges have been used as instruments of repression Cuban authorities on Friday began to free prisoners after announcing it would pardon 2,010 inmates, the second release in less than a month as it faces heightened US pressure.More than 20 inmates came out of La Lima penitentiary in east Havana, holding their release papers, crying and hugging relati
‘no-strategy war’: An Iranian official mocked the US, saying its war has been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’ Iranian and US forces yesterday raced to recover a crew member of the first US fighter jet to go down inside Iran since the start of the war.Tehran said it had shot down the F-15 warplane, while US media reported that US special forces had rescued one of its two crew members, with the other still mi
A French container ship and a Japanese-owned tanker have crossed the Strait of Hormuz, in what appear to be the first such transits since the war in Iran shuttered the crucial waterway.The CMA CGM Kribi container ship exited the strait on Friday, ship tracking data compiled by Bloomberg and two peop
April 6 to April 13 Few expected a Japanese manga adaptation featuring four tall, long-haired heartthrobs and a plucky heroine to transform Taiwan’s television industry. But Meteor Garden (流星花園) took the nation by storm after premiering on April 12, 2001, single-handedly creating the “idol dra
Polling data often confirms what we expect, but sometimes it throws up surprises. When examined over time, some patterns appear that speak to something bigger going on. In this column, whenever possible, Formosa’s polls are used. Despite the sometimes cringeworthy antics of Formosa’s Chairman, Wu Tz
It’s only half the size of its more famous counterpart in Taipei, but the Botanical Garden of the National Museum of Nature Science (NMNS, 國立自然科學博物館植物園) is surely one of urban Taiwan’s most inviting green spaces. Covering 4.5 hectares immediately northeast of the government-run museum in Taichung’s
Visitors walking down the streets of London and other major English cities might notice a curious sight. Many of the old __1__ have some of their windows boarded up. What’s even stranger is that there doesn’t appear to be any consistent pattern as to which windows get covered. This architectural __
Despite being a basic tool, pens come in a wide variety of forms. Classic styles include fountain pens, which deliver liquid ink smoothly through metal tips. Another common type is the ballpoint pen, which is easy to use. There are even special felt pens that are especially popular among artists. __
A: Apart from the musical The Phantom of the Opera, off-Broadway classic “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” and musical-themed concert “Broadway Hits Live” are also touring Taiwan.B: Musical-themed concert? That sounds interesting.A: Set for April 18 and 19, the show will feature a group of Br
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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