Sat, Feb 07, 2026
The partisan standoff over President William Lai’s (賴清德) proposed defense budget has raised questions about the nation’s ability to adequately fund its own defense, the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in a report released on Tuesday.The report, titled Taiwan: Defense and Military Issues
The Legislative Yuan should be able to approve the Taiwan-US tariff agreement this month, providing certainty for businesses, Deputy Legislative Speaker Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said yesterday.While touring a production line at Victor Taichung Machinery Works yesterday with American Institute in Taiwan (
Iran and the US were yesterday holding talks in Oman that were seen as a critical chance to avert any new escalation between the foes, after US President Donald Trump threatened military action.With a US naval group led by an aircraft carrier in Middle Eastern waters, Iran has insisted the talks wou
CONTRIBUTION: Canberra has signed deals across the Pacific region and boosted efforts to increase influence as Washington leans on allies to help deter Beijing Australia and Indonesia’s leaders yesterday signed a security deal, one of a series of agreements that Canberra has secured with neighboring countries to reinforce ties and limit China’s influence in the region.At a signing ceremony, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto told Australian Prime Minist
‘NO CHANGE’: A US White House official said Washington’s Taiwan and cross-strait policies remain unchanged and that it would cooperate with both sides of the Strait Relations between Taiwan and the US are “rock solid,” and cooperation programs would not change, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in a phone call urged US President Donald Trump to handle arms sales to Taipei “with prudence.”China’s state-run Xinhu
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) held back-to-back calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump this week, which analysts said was rare and significant as Beijing positions itself as a stable global power.Xi’s video call with Putin on Wednesday afternoon was followed j
RAILWAY RECKONING: Opponents to the planned HSR extension to Yilan County filed an appeal against the impact assessment, urging reconsideration of the plan Opponents of a plan to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Yilan County yesterday filed an administrative appeal against its environmental impact assessment (EIA) conclusion, while more than 200 supporters protested outside the Ministry of Environment.The Alliance Overseeing the High Speed Rail Exte
The Taipei City Government confirmed yesterday that it has negotiated a royalties of NT $12.2 billion (US$380 million) with AI chip giant Nvidia Corp, with the earliest possible signing date set for Wednesday.The city has been preparing for Nvidia to build its Taiwan headquarters in Beitou-Shil
SAFETY AND EFFICIENCY: The subsidy, taking effect in July, would promote leasing over buying smart assistive medical devices for late-life home care The long-term care subsidy amount is to be boosted to NT$60,000 over a three-year interval from July for each applicant who chooses to lease smart assistive devices instead of buying them, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday.The ministry is to include smart device leasing as a subsidy
The Miaoli County Industry and Commerce Development Division on Tuesday issued a five-point information bulletin in the hopes that surprise packages hoping to bring fortune and luck, or Fu Dai (福袋), would not be sprung upon the public in a bad way.Customer rights are protected under the Mandatory an
Doctors on Thursday warned that the combination of sodium, alcohol and fluctuations of sympathetic nerves from social interaction could cause a cerebral hemorrhage and urged people to drink rationally during Lunar New Year gatherings.Taipei City Hospital’s Zhongxing branch Department of Medicine and
Taipei Zoo welcomes the Lunar New Year this year through its efforts to protect an endangered species of horse native to central Asia that was once fully extinct outside of captivity.The festival ushering in the Year of the Horse would draw attention to the zoo’s four specimens of Przewalski’s horse
A cold front is expected to affect Taiwan from today, bringing a chance of snowfall in northern mountainous areas above 1,000 meters over the weekend, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA).CWA forecaster Cheng Chieh-jen (鄭傑仁) said the cold air mass will lower temperatures nation
SELECTIVE BENEFITS: The amended bill is designed to benefit only a small group of people in a KMT-held constituency, contravening constitutional principles, Cho said Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said he would not countersign a bill to fund the relocation of a military dependents’ community in Taipei, saying it would benefit certain firms and people at public expense and against constitutional principles.Amendments to the Act for Rebuilding Old Quarters f
READINESS: The exercises would follow ‘real troops, real locations, real equipment and real-time’ scenarios to train for modern combat, Koo said This year’s Han Kuang military drills would maintain last year’s 10-day, nine-night schedule, focusing on decentralized command and control, operations in designated “kill” zones, and urban resilience, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said.Since last month, the military has also ful
INVESTMENTS: Taiwan is to remain its main production base, drawing more than half of its planned capital expenditure to support its customers’ expansion, an official said Wistron Corp (緯創) yesterday said it is highly optimistic about its artificial intelligence (AI) server business this year, as widening AI applications boost demand for servers that utilize graphics processing units (GPUs) and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).The company expects last
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios.The chip designer is
CHALLENGES: The platform brings together accounting and legal experts in the two nations to deliver coordinated advisory services on investment and risk management PwC Taiwan has launched a Taiwan-US service platform to help Taiwanese companies expand into the US, underscoring a shift in corporate investment priorities, as nearly 40 percent of local firms now rank the US as their top overseas destination.The platform brings together accounting and legal profes
The Taiwan Association for Sexuality Education, the Chinese Association for the Development of Affective Education and the Action Alliance on Basic Education on Monday advocated for the implementation of more comprehensive sex education programs, saying that more emphasis must be placed on interpers
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Li Zhenxiu (李貞秀), who was born in China and moved to Taiwan after marrying a Taiwanese citizen, is one of the party’s new legislators-at-large. However, she has not yet renounced her Chinese nationality.Article 20 of the Nationality Act (國籍法) clearly stipulates
Immediately after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) “Justice Mission” exercise at the end of last year, a question was posed to Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal regarding recent developments involving the exercises around Taiwan, and how he viewed their imp
SUPERSTAR DELIVERS: Victor Wembanyama scored 29 points and pulled down 11 rebounds to propel the Spurs to a 135-123 victory over the Dallas Mavericks The Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday shook off the early exit of injured star Luka Doncic, rallying without him in the second half for a 119-115 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers.Austin Reaves, again coming off the bench in his second game back from a 19-game injury absence, scored 13 of his 35 poin
Team Taiwan has announced its 30-man roster for the upcoming World Baseball Classic (WBC), which includes two Taiwanese-American players set to suit up for the first time.The roster, unveiled yesterday and captained by 2024 WBC Premier Most Valuable Player Chen Chieh-hsien, consists of 16 pitchers,
Ademola Lookman on Thursday scored on his Atletico Madrid debut in a 5-0 rout of Real Betis Balompie that sent Diego Simeone’s team to the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey.David Hancko, Giuliano Simeone, Antoine Griezmann and Thiago Almada also scored for Atletico as they advanced to the last four fo
France head coach Fabien Galthie on Thursday lauded his team’s attacking performance after their dazzling 36-14 victory over Ireland in their Six Nations opener.A brace of tries from Louis Bielley-Biarrey and one from mercurial flyhalf Matthieu Jalibert helped France storm into a 29-0 lead before ta
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government.Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly ins
Japan would switch the world’s largest nuclear power plant back on next week, after a glitch with an alarm forced the suspension of its first restart since the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster.Takeyuki Inagaki, the head of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant run by Tokyo E
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore.In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known
On paper, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) enters this year’s nine-in-one elections with almost nowhere to go but up. Yet, there are fears in the pan-green camp that they may not do much better then they did in 2022.Though the DPP did somewhat better at the city and county councillor level in
As much as I’m a mountain person, I have to admit that the ocean has a singular power to clear my head. The rhythmic push and pull of the waves is profoundly restorative. I’ve found that fixing my gaze on the horizon quickly shifts my mental gearbox into neutral.I’m not alone in savoring this kind o
On a recent weeknight, long after the swarms of tourists had left Rome’s Colosseum, a small group of people walked around outside the darkened amphitheater, pausing every so often to take in a new aspect of its history, art or architecture with every sense but sight.Michela Marcato, 54, has been bli
People praise the wisdom of owls and the loyalty of dogs, yet pigs are rarely commended for anything. Branded as lazy and dirty, they’ve long had a bad rap. But if you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find that pigs are among the most underestimated animals of all. If you’ve watched the animated
A: Apart from Pokemon, ancient Egyptian relics have attracted much attention lately.B: Are you talking about the “King of Egypt: Pharaoh” exhibition at Tainan’s Chimei Museum? Apparently, it’s the largest exhibit of its kind ever in Taiwan.A: Yup, Chimei is displaying 280 relics from The British
A: The world’s first Pokemon-themed “PokePark Kanto” in Tokyo’s Yomiuriland amusement park is opening today.B: Nintendo Co.’s Pokemon series has swept across the world ever since its launch in 1996. Anything special about this new park?A: PokePark Kanto includes two main zones featuring about 600
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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