Australian a cappella group The Idea of North will give a special charity concert on Thursday to support the training of seeing-eye dogs in Taiwan. The Taipei Philharmonic Foundation and the Australian Commerce and Industry Office are organizing the concert, which benefits the Taiwan Guide Dog Association.
Taiwan, which has an estimated 50,000 visually-impaired people, currently suffers from a shortage of seeing-eye dogs. The Association estimates that there are just 20 trained guide dogs in the country, while at least 500 guide dogs are currently needed. Many people wait up to three years to get a four-legged helper of their own. To meet the demand, trained dogs are often brought in from countries including the US, the UK, Norway, South Korea and Japan.
The funds raised by the concert will contribute to the building of a seeing-eye dog training center in Taiwan, which will give the Association a safe and convenient place to train the dogs. “At the present, all we have is an office, so we have to train our dogs on the sidewalk or in parks,” says Joyce Feng (馮倩華), the Association’s spokesperson.
The group also hopes that eventually it will be able to increase the number of dog trainers in Taiwan and deepen their expertise. At the present, Feng says, the Association’s dog trainers must travel internationally and learn how to work with the dogs from instructors in different countries.
The concert by The Idea of North is part of the Taipei International Choral Festival, which runs from July 26 to Aug. 2 at the National Concert Hall and is sponsored by the Taipei Philharmonic Foundation. The quartet has been performing original songs and covers since 1993, and its cross-genre style combines influences from jazz, folk, gospel, pop and classical music.
The Idea of North, which consists of Trish Delaney Brown, Naomi Crelin, Nick Begbie and Andrew Piper, has produced several albums and was the first group outside the US to win The Harmony Sweepstakes, the largest international a cappella competition in the world. The group’s latest CD is The Gospel Project, a collection of spiritual and inspirational songs. The Idea of North tours for about a third of each year and has performed in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, the US, New Zealand, Japan, Korea and Malaysia.
Taiwanese chip-making giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) plans to invest a whopping US$100 billion in the US, after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on overseas-made chips. TSMC is the world’s biggest maker of the critical technology that has become the lifeblood of the global economy. This week’s announcement takes the total amount TSMC has pledged to invest in the US to US$165 billion, which the company says is the “largest single foreign direct investment in US history.” It follows Trump’s accusations that Taiwan stole the US chip industry and his threats to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent
On a hillside overlooking Taichung are the remains of a village that never was. Half-formed houses abandoned by investors are slowly succumbing to the elements. Empty, save for the occasional explorer. Taiwan is full of these places. Factories, malls, hospitals, amusement parks, breweries, housing — all facing an unplanned but inevitable obsolescence. Urbex, short for urban exploration, is the practice of exploring and often photographing abandoned and derelict buildings. Many urban explorers choose not to disclose the locations of the sites, as a way of preserving the structures and preventing vandalism or looting. For artist and professor at NTNU and Taipei
The launch of DeepSeek-R1 AI by Hangzhou-based High-Flyer and subsequent impact reveals a lot about the state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today, both good and bad. It touches on the state of Chinese technology, innovation, intellectual property theft, sanctions busting smuggling, propaganda, geopolitics and as with everything in China, the power politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PLEASING XI JINPING DeepSeek’s creation is almost certainly no accident. In 2015 CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping (習近平) launched his Made in China 2025 program intended to move China away from low-end manufacturing into an innovative technological powerhouse, with Artificial Intelligence
From insomniacs to party-goers, doting couples, tired paramedics and Johannesburg’s golden youth, The Pantry, a petrol station doubling as a gourmet deli, has become unmissable on the nightlife scene of South Africa’s biggest city. Open 24 hours a day, the establishment which opened three years ago is a haven for revelers looking for a midnight snack to sober up after the bars and nightclubs close at 2am or 5am. “Believe me, we see it all here,” sighs a cashier. Before the curtains open on Johannesburg’s infamous party scene, the evening gets off to a gentle start. On a Friday at around 6pm,
RSS