Eight preschool children at a private preschool in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) have tested positive for barbiturates and benzodiazepines. Prosecutors in the past few days have questioned teachers at the school, who parents accused of drugging their children. The incident sparked a massive public outcry, not only toward the school, but also toward the New Taipei City Government, with many saying its response to the incident was too slow.
The case emerged on May 14 after the parents of three children told police that a teacher at the preschool had drugged their children and imposed corporal punishment on them. However, the city’s education department said it received the report the next day and immediately launched an investigation. Prosecutors searched the preschool on May 18 and detained and questioned the accused teacher. She was released on bail and suspended from work. On May 22, the preschool offered drug tests for children at a medical center. Instead, a parent took his child to three hospitals for blood and urine tests between May 22 and May 29, with results coming back positive for barbiturates on June 1. More parents contacted the police and took their children to get tested.
Two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers and a parent held a news conference on June 2, in which the parent said he only got a phone call from the education department about the incident. A New Power Party lawmaker and other parents held another news conference on Monday where only one parent said she received a call from the department. Moreover, a DPP lawmaker on Wednesday said a parent said they reported the case to the city government’s 1999 Citizen Hotline and to the mayor’s public contact e-mail in late April, but received no response, so they reported it to the police.
After the news conferences drew public attention, the New Taipei City Department of Health on Monday conducted drug tests at the preschool. Prosecutors conducted an expanded search on Thursday at the homes of the preschool principal and seven teachers, also detaining them for questioning. The education department had planned a meeting with the parents of 67 children at the preschool on Thursday, but suddenly changed it to one-on-one counseling sessions. It held a second closed-door meeting on Friday with New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), but many parents still blamed the city government, demanding that it step in and help them.
As of yesterday, over a dozen parents had filed charges. Eight out of 28 children who underwent drug tests tested positive for barbiturates or benzodiazepines, both controlled substances available only through medical prescription. Both barbiturates and benzodiazepines, which depress the central nervous system, lower the heart rate and induce sedation, are used to treat sleep disorders and anxiety. However, as they are highly addictive, they are used sparingly only for specific, medically supervised cases. Long-term use can cause complications. Withdrawal symptoms include agitation and anxiety.
Hou apologized several times since Thursday, but the city government denied it received a report in April. It said it responded immediately in the middle of last month, evoking the death of a two-year-old boy nicknamed En En (恩恩), who died of complications from COVID-19 last year. The emergency services in New Taipei City were blamed for responding too slowly.
While prosecutors are investigating the preschool case, the city government should promptly offer remediations -— health consultations, school transfers and legal services to help the children and parents. It should also ascertain if drugging has occurred in other preschools or nursing homes, and improve its reporting and investigation procedures, as in the instance of child abuse cases by licensed caregivers or preschools that are also reported each year. Even one case is too many.
What began on Feb. 28 as a military campaign against Iran quickly became the largest energy-supply disruption in modern times. Unlike the oil crises of the 1970s, which stemmed from producer-led embargoes, US President Donald Trump is the first leader in modern history to trigger a cascading global energy crisis through direct military action. In the process, Trump has also laid bare Taiwan’s strategic and economic fragilities, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Repairing the damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure could take years, suggesting that elevated energy prices are likely to persist. But the most
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), during an interview for the podcast Lanshuan Time (蘭萱時間) released on Monday, said that a US professor had said that she deserved to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize following her meeting earlier this month with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Cheng’s “journey of peace” has garnered attention from overseas and from within Taiwan. The latest My Formosa poll, conducted last week after the Cheng-Xi meeting, shows that Cheng’s approval rating is 31.5 percent, up 7.6 percentage points compared with the month before. The same poll showed that 44.5 percent of respondents
Taiwan should reject two flawed answers to the Eswatini controversy: that diplomatic allies no longer matter, or that they must be preserved at any cost. The sustainable answer is to maintain formal diplomatic relations while redesigning development relationships around transparency, local ownership and democratic accountability. President William Lai’s (賴清德) canceled trip to Eswatini has elicited two predictable reactions in Taiwan. One camp has argued that the episode proves Taiwan must double down on support for every remaining diplomatic ally, because Beijing is tightening the screws, and formal recognition is too scarce to risk. The other says the opposite: If maintaining
India’s semiconductor strategy is undergoing a quiet, but significant, recalibration. With the rollout of India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 2.0, New Delhi is signaling a shift away from ambition-driven leaps toward a more grounded, capability-led approach rooted in industrial realities and institutional learning. Rather than attempting to enter the most advanced nodes immediately, India has chosen to prioritize mature technologies in the 28-nanometer to 65-nanometer range. That would not be a retreat, but a strategic alignment with domestic capabilities, market demand and global supply chain gaps. The shift carries the imprimatur of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, indicating that the recalibration is
RSS