The suicide of taxi driver Chen Tsai-fu (
What added to the anxiety the Peng Wan-ju case caused was that it came just days after the murder of Taoyuan county commissioner Liu Pang-you (
As for the Liu and Peng killings, since the police announced late yesterday that blood and fingerprint evidence showed that the hapless Chen was not Peng's killer, both cases remain unsolved.
The Liu-Peng-Pai cases were interpreted by many as showing that society was becoming unacceptably violent and dangerous. Eventually massive demonstrations occurred demanding the ouster of Lien Chan(
Yesterday's brief resurrection of the Peng case served to remind us of the absurd gestures that Taiwan cops seem prepared to make to prove they are on top of high profile cases. The problem is that when they don't follow through on these promises, as they invariably don't, they compound the impression of bad police work by appearing to have a regrettable lack of personal integrity. And if the top cops can't be trusted, what can be said about the small fry? The problem these cases showed up two years ago was how unprofessional Taiwan's police were since the force, for 40 years under martial law an adjunct to the military, was versed almost entirely in crowd and traffic control. What worries us is that, as these cases are now almost forgotten, so is the need for change.
Would China attack Taiwan during the American lame duck period? For months, there have been worries that Beijing would seek to take advantage of an American president slowed by age and a potentially chaotic transition to make a move on Taiwan. In the wake of an American election that ended without drama, that far-fetched scenario will likely prove purely hypothetical. But there is a crisis brewing elsewhere in Asia — one with which US president-elect Donald Trump may have to deal during his first days in office. Tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have been at
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hypersonic missile carried a simple message to the West over Ukraine: Back off, and if you do not, Russia reserves the right to hit US and British military facilities. Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik,” or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Thursday in what Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with US and British missiles. In a special statement from the Kremlin just after 8pm in Moscow that day, the Russian president said the war was escalating toward a global conflict, although he avoided any nuclear
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”
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