Wed, Jun 10, 2026
PREPAREDNESS: Previous exercises required troops to enter positions a week in advance, but this time they arrived only one day before the drill, an official said The army’s 10th Corps yesterday conducted artillery drills around the northern and southern banks of the Dajia River (大甲溪) estuary in Taichung, simulating a scenario in which Chinese amphibious forces attempt to invade central Taiwan in a combat scenario with limited preparation time.Despite heavy r
About 92 percent of children aged between six and 15 years old use artificial intelligence (AI), and 53 percent of them are happier scrolling, playing games or watching content on computers than socializing, a survey released yesterday showed.The three-year tracking poll of elementary and junior-hig
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said an Israeli airstrike on Tyre killed at least eight people yesterday, with the Israeli military warning the entire city to evacuate shortly after the strike. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported raids on more than a dozen other locations
The Philippines yesterday said that it has filed a formal protest with China over a “floating structure” spotted near the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), the site of repeated clashes in the South China Sea. Scarborough Shoal lies 240km west of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon
Doctors yesterday treated patients in tents set up under a scorching Philippine sun — including helping a young mother give birth — as the death toll from a major earthquake that collapsed buildings topped 40. Thousands remained displaced and more than 450 injured following the magnitude 7.8 earthqu
PLEA: ‘If Taiwan’s sovereignty is not recognized, then who are we to say that we’re sovereign? Might as well eliminate all small countries,’ the Palauan president said Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr expressed strong support for Taiwan during Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) visit to the Pacific ally, saying on Sunday that failure to recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty would call into question the sovereignty of all small countries. “If Taiwan’s sovereignty is
TOKYO-MANILA DELIMITATION TALKS: Beijing is attempting to use this opportunity to normalize patrols and law enforcement in the waters east of Taiwan, MOFA said China has no law enforcement authority over the waters east of Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, accusing China of undermining regional peace and stability.The Chinese Ministry of Transport on Saturday evening announced that it had launched a “special maritime law enforc
China Coast Guard (CCG) ships operating around Taiwan over the past few days have been “harassing” commercial shipping by asking them for information about their point of origin and destination and claiming jurisdiction, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday.Beijing was angered after J
Subsidies for taxis are to increase by NT$9,000, bringing the total to NT$15,000 per vehicle, to help stabilize public transportation fees amid rising crude oil prices, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced on Monday.The measure is part of the ministry’s expanded transport fare
Security experts yesterday urged the military to retain frequency hopping as a required feature paired with other technologies for next-generation radios to increase counter-electronic warfare capabilities and interoperability with US forces.In a solicitation that has since been withdrawn, the army
PEACE PLAN: While urging the US president to end the zero-sum game with China, Cheng said she has a pragmatic solution to settling cross-strait differences US President Donald Trump would be the “greatest statesman of the 21st century” if he achieved peace in East Asia with China, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said on Monday.Speaking at a seminar held by the Asia Society in New York City, Cheng said that successfully man
The Canadian Trade Office in Taipei is to hold a Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF) event in Taipei at the end of this month to raise awareness about foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) efforts, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.The event, titled “Buil
Prosecutors yesterday requested a combined prison sentence of 21 years and six months and fines totaling NT$23 million (US$727,434) for Xu Chunying (徐春鶯), who was born in China and former head of the Taiwan People’s Party’s (TPP) New Immigrants Committee.The New Taipei District Court set the verdict
PEAK SEASON: Officials said a woman in her 60s was diagnosed with Japanese encephalitis, while a man in his 50s was diagnosed with paratyphoid fever The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported this year’s first cases of Japanese encephalitis and paratyphoid fever.CDC Deputy Director-General and spokeswoman Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) said that a woman in her 60s living in southern Taiwan was diagnosed with Japanese encephalitis after develo
ACQUISITION PLANS: An executive said if its takeover of Foodpanda is approved, it would ensure couriers a stable income and implement technological advances Grab Holdings yesterday pledged to support Taiwanese couriers and food businesses, and ensure cybersecurity if regulators approve its acquisition of Foodpanda, amid scrutiny of the deal.The Singapore-based courier service platform in March announced that it planned to buy Foodpanda in Taiwan from it
RECORD SETTING: Exports are at their all-time second-highest monthly amount, while imports are at their all-time high, driven by AI, the finance ministry said Taiwan’s exports jumped 51.7 percent year-on-year to US$78.48 billion last month, the second-highest monthly figure on record, while imports climbed to an all-time high of US$60.57 billion, up 54.9 percent annually, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.As a result, Taiwan’s trade surplus was up 41
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), a key supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and high numerical aperture EUV pods to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), yesterday said it is confident about artificial intelligence (AI) demand over the next three to five years, brushing off fears
A bipartisan pair of US senators on Monday urged US President Donald Trump’s administration to tighten rules on chip contract manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to prevent them from making advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips for overseas subsidiaries of C
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” Milan Kundera wrote in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.The June 4 Incident, sarcastically referred to by some as the 35th of May — as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forbids mentions of the actual date — refers t
A number of local governments have been promoting elementary-school testing in recent years, ostensibly to better understand students’ learning needs and provide reference points for teachers and education policy planning. In practice, the testing system has diverged from this original intent to bec
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) landed in Pyongyang on Monday for his first visit to North Korea in about seven years, and the choreography was immediate. Gun salutes, children offering flowers and a banner reading “unbreakable friendship” set the tone before any talks had even begun. The visit h
NOT UNBEATABLE: New York’s winning streak was halted two shy of the NBA playoff record of 15 wins by the Golden State Warriors on the way to the 2017 title Victor Wembanyama on Monday scored 32 points to spark the San Antonio Spurs over New York 115-111 in the NBA Finals, snapping the Knicks’ 13-game winning streak with US President Donald Trump booed as he watched.Frenchman Wembanyama added eight rebounds, six assists, three blocks and two steals at M
Andrew Vaughn on Monday had four hits and four RBIs, including a two-run double that tied the score in the ninth inning, as the Milwaukee Brewers outlasted the Athletics 15-14 in 12 innings at Las Vegas Ballpark in a wild game that featured 11 homers.Automatic runner Christian Yelich scored the deci
Denmark’s Anthon Charmig on Monday broke clear on the final climb of the long second stage of the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes to claim the biggest win of his career.The 28-year-old was part of a 10-man breakaway on the hilly 234km stage from Saint-Martin-Le-Vinoux to Le Puy-en-Velay, but as the breaka
Award-winning Somalian referee Omar Artan has been dropped from officiating at the World Cup after being barred from entering the US, world soccer’s governing body FIFA said on Monday.A FIFA spokesperson confirmed in a statement that Artan, who was refused entry to the US after arriving at Miami Int
IMAGE ‘DAMAGED’? Ted Tseng, who emigrated to the US from Taiwan, was concerned the espionage case would deepen animosity against Asian Americans In 2024, voters in the Southern California city of Arcadia elected the first all-Asian city council in the city’s history. Now, one of those politicians has pleaded guilty to being an illegal agent of the Chinese government. Former Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang’s (王愛琳) plea, entered in federal court on
Beneath a busy flyover in India’s financial capital Mumbai, a row of pastel-colored shipping containers houses an unlikely school serving some of the city’s most marginalized children. Despite laws guaranteeing free schooling for children aged six to 14, poverty and migration continue to keep many o
France and Germany on Monday said they had agreed to abandon a joint fighter jet program due to disagreements between the companies involved, in a blow to European efforts to boost defense cooperation. The Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program was launched in 2017 to replace France’s Rafale jets a
Taiwanese sure do like their eggs, and they’re quite partial to chicken meat. Per capita intake of chickens’ eggs has crept up to around 380 per year, and shortages in the first half of 2023 dominated the news cycle. Many of the processed egg products used by bakeries and fast-food chains, such as d
Long championed as a leader in adopting digital technology, Sweden is set to ban mobile phones in schools beginning in the fall for the next academic year as part of a broad, international reversal on the use of screens in classrooms.Since 2023, the Scandinavian country’s center-right coalition gove
Audiences in Leicester, Cardiff, London and Sheffield will this month gather to watch a series of black-and-white Taiwanese-language films made more than 70 years ago. On the surface, these screenings commemorate the seventieth anniversary of taiyupian (台語片) — Taiwanese-language cinema. Yet the sign
Sometimes the most revolutionary inventions emerge from apparent failures. The Post-it Note, now found in offices and homes worldwide, originated from a “failed” adhesive developed by a 3M scientist, Spencer Silver, in 1968. While attempting to create an ultra-strong glue, Silver instead produced an
Laptop chipmakers such as Intel and AMD should be worried about their new rival Nvidia, experts say, after the US hardware titan announced on June 1 a push into the personal computer market. But despite Nvidia boss Jensen Huang’s assertion that homes will soon contain AI supercomputers, the race is
對話 Dialogue清清：華華，你剛剛做的那份簡報太頂了！內容好完整。Qīngqing: Huáhua, nǐ gānggāng zuò de nà fèn jiǎnbào tài dǐng le! Nèiróng hǎo wánzhěng.華華：真的嗎？我連續熬夜改了好幾次，還很擔心不夠好。Huáhua: Zhēnde ma? Wǒ liánxù áoyè gǎile hǎojǐ cì, hái hěn dānxīn búgòu hǎo.清清：不會啦！我看見經理頻頻點頭，應該很滿意。Qīngqing: Búhuì la! Wǒ kànjiàn jīnglǐ pínpín diǎntóu,
Two moves show Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) is gunning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party chair and the 2028 presidential election. Technically, these are not yet “officially” official, but by the rules of Taiwan politics, she is now on the dance floor. Earlier this month Lu confirmed in an interview in Japan’s Nikkei that she was considering running for KMT chair. This is not new news, but according to reports from her camp she previously was still considering the case for and against running. By choosing a respected, international news outlet, she declared it to the world. While the outside world likely paid little attention, domestically the message was unmistakable: She is moving on to a larger stage. Part of the dance is to leave options open before formally committing, and with the chair race due in late September, she has time. If something goes wrong in the meantime, or if power brokers in the party offer her a deal that provides more benefits than taking on the role of chair, she can pivot accordingly. Earlier this year, I suggested that strategically, she would be better off concentrating on her job as Taichung mayor until she is term-limited out of office in December next year. Taichung mayor is obviously a full-time job, and concurrently running the Taipei-headquartered party runs the risk of doing one or both jobs poorly and making mistakes that could imperil her shot at the presidency in 2028. The situation has changed. Current KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), knowing he is likely to face challengers of a higher caliber than the three relative nobodies already declared, has gone all in on appealing to the base. The base is more likely to turn out to vote in the chair election, so this makes some strategic sense in the short term.
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan. Last spring at Arunothai’s Jiaolian School, principal Wang Mingming (王明明) had forewarned me of the division between villages, saying, “We are not like the people in Mae Salong. They are rich. Because of the Taiwanese.” Arunothai has in recent years become split in its loyalties between Taiwan and China (see part one, “A tale of two schools,” on May 15), but in Mae Salong, links to Taiwan remain strong. Taiwan-funded monuments pay homage to the Lost Army, villagers wear T-shirts emblazoned with the Republic of China (ROC) flag and tea plantations grown Taiwan’s most famous tea varieties, including Dong Ding (“frozen peak”) Oolong, Oriental Beauty and Jin Xuan (Golden Daylily or Milk Oolong). Even the numerical classifications of the teas — Oolong No. 12 or No. 17, for example — are the same, and the shops resemble those found on Alishan. At the tomb of General Tuan Hsi-wen (段希文) — perched on a Mae Salong hilltop with a view of his ancestral homeland in China’s Yunnan province — a third generation villager wearing a vintage KMT army uniform, Yan Si-Chung (岩思中), greets visitors with sharp military salutes. “Both my father and my grandfather were soldiers in the KMT army,” the 44-year-old
| New Taipei City | 27-28 | 20% |  |
| Hsinchu County | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Hsinchu City | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Taipei City | 27-28 | 20% |  |
| Miaoli County | 24-26 | 10% | |
| Taoyuan City | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Keelung City | 27-28 | 20% | |
| Yunlin County | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Taichung City | 26-28 | 10% | |
| Nantou County | 25-26 | 10% | |
| Changhua County | 27-28 | 10% | |
| Chiayi County | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Chiayi City | 25-27 | 10% | |
| Tainan City | 27-28 | 10% | |
| Kaohsiung City | 27-28 | 10% | |
| Pingtung County | 26-27 | 10% | |
| Yilan County | 25-26 | 30% |  |
| Hualien County | 25-26 | 30% | |
| Taitung County | 25-27 | 30% | |
| Kinmen County | 27-28 | 10% | |
| Penghu County | 27-27 | 20% | |
| Lienchiang County | 27-28 | 20% | |
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