SOCIETY
Local pianist wins US prize
A Taiwanese pianist based in the US won the top prize at the San Antonio International Piano Competition on Saturday and was also honored for best performance of a Baroque work. Lin Lo-an (林洛安) pocketed US$15,000 for winning the competition’s gold medal and earned the chance to perform a solo recital with the San Antonio Symphony in the future. Lin, who began practicing piano at the age of five, has made a name for herself with several high-profile performances, including one at the Kennedy Center in Washington in 2006 and an appearance at the National Concert Hall in Taipei in June this year. The Taiwanese native, who went to the US to pursue her musical education nine years ago, also represented the US at a concert with the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada, in 2007. She is currently enrolled in the Artist Diploma program for gifted musicians at the Yale School of Music.
NATURE
Cross-strait talks on birds
A delegation from the Chongming Dongtan Birds Nature Reserve in Shanghai, China, will visit southern Taiwan from Saturday through Nov. 2 to promote exchanges on bird conservation, the Taijiang National Park said. It will be the first visit by officials from the world-class conservation area in China since a cooperation agreement on bird conservation and restoration was inked between the two sides in May this year, according to the park in Greater Tainan. The delegation will visit Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), Alishan (阿里山) and the wetlands in Tainan to observe black-faced spoonbills, which migrate to the island every year, park officials said. A former bird hunter, who is now considered a national treasure in China, will be part of the Chinese group, the officials said.
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
The US’ joint strikes with Israel on Iran dismantled a key pillar of China’s regional strategy, removing an important piece in Beijing’s potential Taiwan Strait scenario, said Zineb Riboua, a senior researcher at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Peace and Security. In an article titled: “The Iran Question Is All About China,” Riboua said that understanding the Iran issue in the context of China’s “grand strategy” is essential to fully grasp the complexity of the situation. Beijing has spent billions of dollars over the years turning Iran into a “structural strategic asset,” diverting US military resources in the
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