If the attendees at the WE MEN magazine launch party last Saturday on the 86th floor of the 101 building are any indication of who will grace the pages of the latest addition to Taiwan's newsstands, then get set for one more magazine full of Asian models, celebrities and pop stars.
Among pages of beautiful models, expensive clothes and accessories are articles, in both English and Chinese, aimed at savvy, fashion-conscious readers. WE's emphasis on style, with pages devoted to high-end clothing and male skin-care products, might not appeal to Maxim readers, but it's not trying to. It's directed at a consumer society where looking good is equally important to being good.
Praised as the David Beckham of Asia, Nakata was surrounded by a troupe of models during the party. He didn't show much love to Taiwan's reigning prima donna Lin Chih-ling (林志玲), but seemed taken with Sun Zheng-hua (孫正華) instead. Bai Ling (白靈) also turned up, after managing to flash her breasts and underpants at an earlier press conference last Saturday.
PHOTOS: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
The magazine's editor-in-chief, Kevin Lee (李冠毅), writes in his introductory letter that WE MEN caters to a new breed of men in the 21st Century and serves as a reference point for those who want to strive to be a better man for the woman he loves."
WE is the project of Lee, who assumes the role of editor-in-chief, creative director and publisher. It is a Taiwanese version of the Hong Kong-based West East Magazine, which explains why Lee's premier issue is filled with references to and articles from Hong Kong. This will all change when the Taiwanese editorial staff releases its official first edition in September.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and the New Taipei City Government in May last year agreed to allow the activation of a spent fuel storage facility for the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門). The deal ended eleven years of legal wrangling. According to the Taipower announcement, the city government engaged in repeated delays, failing to approve water and soil conservation plans. Taipower said at the time that plans for another dry storage facility for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) remained stuck in legal limbo. Later that year an agreement was reached
What does the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) era stand for? What sets it apart from their allies, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)? With some shifts in tone and emphasis, the KMT’s stances have not changed significantly since the late 2000s and the era of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) current platform formed in the mid-2010s under the guidance of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and current President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity. Though their ideological stances may be a bit stale, they have the advantage of being broadly understood by the voters.
In a high-rise office building in Taipei’s government district, the primary agency for maintaining links to Thailand’s 108 Yunnan villages — which are home to a population of around 200,000 descendants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies stranded in Thailand following the Chinese Civil War — is the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC). Established in China in 1926, the OCAC was born of a mandate to support Chinese education, culture and economic development in far flung Chinese diaspora communities, which, especially in southeast Asia, had underwritten the military insurgencies against the Qing Dynasty that led to the founding of
Artifacts found at archeological sites in France and Spain along the Bay of Biscay shoreline show that humans have been crafting tools from whale bones since more than 20,000 years ago, illustrating anew the resourcefulness of prehistoric people. The tools, primarily hunting implements such as projectile points, were fashioned from the bones of at least five species of large whales, the researchers said. Bones from sperm whales were the most abundant, followed by fin whales, gray whales, right or bowhead whales — two species indistinguishable with the analytical method used in the study — and blue whales. With seafaring capabilities by humans