In the absence of a real scandal, Next Magazine (壹週刊) is certainly not above insinuating one, as long as there are a few tidbits of "evidence," preferably photographic, that make the story appear semi-credible. So, this week, the gossip rag snuck into Jacky Wu's (吳宗憲) room at the Macau Hyatt, where he, fellow TV host Nono and a bevvy of other B-grade starlets, were shooting an episode of their Sunday show and discovered two used condoms in his bedside trash can and printed some rather gross photos of the offending prophylactics. By this point, everyone knows that Jacky is not exactly the paragon of family man, so somehow his much-storied and colorful sex life barely seems to qualify as a scandal. And doesn't he deserve some credit for practicing safe sex? The Department of Health would be the first to endorse that view, given the abysmally low rate of condom use in Taiwan.
More hanky panky was in the news this week when The Liberty Times
Jordan's on-and-off love interest Cecilia Cheung (
In Hong Kong, actress Shu Qi
Taiwan's newspapers had a field day with TV actor Lee Wei
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
There is considerable frustration and confusion among many, both in Taiwan and abroad — including in Washington — as to why the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) seems so dead set on using their legislative leverage to slash defense spending and disrupt the ability of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration to function. Are they pawns of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Are they traitors? In reality, there are multiple reasons. In the first column in this series on this subject, “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How and why the TPP and KMT help Beijing” (Sat May 16, page 12), we examined three
It took 12 years and months of standing in the same mountain location for director Liang Chieh-te (梁皆得) to capture a few seconds of footage: Taiwan’s largest resident raptor locking talons with its mate and spinning through the air in a courtship ritual. With only about 1,000 left in the wild and very short flight windows, the mountain hawk-eagle remains among Taiwan’s most elusive birds. The species generally produces only one offspring per year. Using forest cameras, the film crew and research teams document the arduous process the monogamous pairs go through for the chick to hatch and grow up, weathering
May 25 to May 31 Few believed that apples could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Taiwan’s high mountains. When horticulturalist Cheng Chao-hsiung (程兆熊) first proposed the idea in 1955, both American and Taiwanese colleagues dismissed it as implausible, arguing that temperate fruit could not be reliably grown on a subtropical island, especially on rugged terrain. However, it was this terrain in the Central Mountain Range where many Chinese Civil War veterans were resettled in the late 1950s. With limited job prospects and no family in Taiwan, they were placed on cooperative farms aimed toward self-sufficiency. Some say the conditions