Sun, Jun 16, 2024
Leaders of the G7 nations on Friday reiterated the importance of stability and peace in the Taiwan Strait, while expressing support for Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.“We reaffirm that maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is indispensable to international s
BUILDING TIES: A US House version of an NDAA bill would require that the Pentagon report on efforts to bolster defense industry cooperation with Taiwan The US Senate Committee on Armed Services on Thursday released an executive summary of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025 with a provision asking the Pentagon to establish a “regional contingency stockpile” of arms for Taiwan.The committee voted 22-3 to advance the US
New China Coast Guard rules yesterday took effect, allowing it to detain foreigners for trespassing in the disputed South China Sea, where neighbors and the G7 have accused Beijing of intimidation and coercion.Beijing claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea, brushing aside competing claims
The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) new Yunlin patrol vessel would enhance maritime patrol capabilities in the south, President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday told a commissioning ceremony in Kaohsiung for the 4,000-tonne vessel.The Yunlin, one of four Chiayi-class offshore patrol vessels ordered fr
World leaders yesterday were joining Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Switzerland for a summit on peace in his country, but with Russia staying away it is seen as the first step in a long process.The Swiss hosts have sought to temper expectations at the two-day gathering, with an agenda la
EXTERNAL FOES: Taiwan and the US must insulate their economies and societies from foreign interference, former AIT chair James Moriarty told President William Lai President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday emphasized Taiwan’s determination to defend itself and cooperate with other democracies to handle global challenges, in a meeting with former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman James Moriarty.The nation is to continue strengthening its defensive capabil
SEMICONDUCTOR ECOSYSTEM: Soliciting investment from suppliers of TSMC is one of the main purposes of the delegation’s trip, the Czech Senate vice president said Visiting Czech Senate Vice President Jiri Drahos said that developing modern technologies with Taiwan is of the utmost importance.In a meeting with President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday at the Presidential Office in Taipei, the two leaders praised mutual cooperation and expressed the hope for even s
PREPARATION IS KEY: Although it is uncertain whether Beijing will act, Taipei is getting ready with the help of ‘many friends, including the US,’ Alexander Yui said Taiwan is deepening economic integration with other democracies and working with partners, including the US, to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) from ordering an invasion of the nation, Taipei’s envoy to Washington said.“China — will they act or not? We don’t know,” Representative to the US
The US would intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan, retired Japanese lieutenant general Hirotaka Yamashita said.Yamashita made the remarks in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) on Friday. He is in Taiwan to promote his book on Taiwan Strait security.Yama
STANCE: Ma said his belief is that the Republic of China includes Taiwan and the mainland, and that neither side of the Taiwan Strait recognizes the other’s sovereignty President William Lai (賴清德) has come under fire for saying that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) once said the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are not subordinate to each other.Asked about comments made during his inaugural address that “the ROC and the PRC are no
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is hindering cross-strait relations, while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has to keep “putting out fires” the DPP started, KMT Deputy Chairman Sean Lien (連勝文) said.Lien was in China to attend the 16th Straits Forum as the head of a KMT delegation. He made
HIGH TEMPERATURES: The number of people hospitalized for heart failure has increased ninefold in 10 years, with temperatures rising, a cardiologist said, warning people to be careful As temperatures soared to 38°C in many places after the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, a cardiologist yesterday advised people with heart failure to drink sufficient water, but not too much to avoid swelling (edema) in the legs or pulmonary edema.The cardiologist also said that the number of people h
National Taiwan University (NTU) on Wednesday increased the amount of indigenous ceremonial leave students can take to four days each semester, with an additional two days of multicultural leave, the NTU Student Association said yesterday.NTU’s Student Counseling Committee approved revisions of the
In the courtyard of the Chung Hsing private high school, desks and chairs are piled high like a monument or an unlit bonfire. Mounds of debris cover the play area, as two construction workers pull more broken furniture from empty classrooms, throwing them toward a pickup truck.The Taipei private sch
NEW WAVE: The nation is seeing another COVID-19 outbreak. Most patients in recent months had mild cold-like symptoms, such as a runny nose or cough Taiwan has sufficient stock of antiviral drugs for treating COVID-19, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) said yesterday in response to concerns about a drug shortage given the increasing number of local COVID-19 infections.The CDC on Tuesday said that the n
A Matsu (媽祖) temple in Tainan is threatening legal action against a shrine in the city that produced a poster proclaiming the marriage of the sea goddess to Guan Gong (關公), the deity of war and martial arts, and conducted a pilgrimage to unite two idols.Luermen Tianho Temple (鹿耳門天后宮) in a statement
In a middle-class suburb of Mumbai, workers at Softbank Group Corp-backed Swiggy’s grocery warehouse race against time to deliver orders within 10 minutes. Their speed is tracked by the seconds on a screen that flashes red warnings if they are going too slow.Outside in the sweltering heat, Swiggy’s
Lasse Stolley was looking for a change in scenery after a planned apprenticeship fell through. So nearly two years ago the teenager began living on German trains.The epic journey has taken the 17-year-old from a small community in Germany’s windswept far north to the country’s southern borders and b
Bite-sized bliss. The currywurst is considered a fast-food delicacy in Germany, and the perfect treat before a game.The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) said that soccer supporters from across Europe would find this savory German invention on offer at stadiums throughout the country du
The Hong Kong High Court’s decision on May 30 to convict 14 democracy advocates on charges of “conspiracy to commit subversion” for organizing unofficial primaries to select candidates for the Legislative Council elections is another nail in the coffin of the territory’s claims to be a polity in com
The Kremlin has announced that preparations are being made for Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit North Korea. As Putin chose North Korea as the second country he would visit after retaking power by an overwhelming vote, the close relationship and illegal arms trade between North Korea and Ru
From May 31 to June 2, 37 ministers of defense attended the 21st International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, including Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍). Anyone who tried to separate Taiwan from China would be “crushed to pieces,” he said during t
BAD STATS: Boston were outrebounded 52-31 and outscored in the paint 60-26, and had their lowest-scoring half all season when they were down 61-35 at halftime Jayson Tatum on Friday had his step-back three-pointer swatted away, then ended up in a heap on the floor and was called for a loose-ball foul on a night to forget for the Boston Celtics, who got knocked down hard in Game 4 of the NBA Finals when they had a chance to complete a sweep of the Dallas M
Hosts Germany could hardly have wished for a better start to the UEFA European Championship on Friday as goals from Florian Wirtz and Jamal Musiala in an imperious first half set them on the way to a 5-1 win over 10-man Scotland in the curtain-raiser.While Germany did not really have to break sweat
The Waikato Chiefs yesterday reached the final of Super Rugby Pacific for the second consecutive year, beating the top-ranked Wellington Hurricanes 30-19 in the second semi-final.They are to play the Auckland Blues, who are hosts for the final after beating the ACT Brumbies 34-20 on Friday.The Chief
CRICKETSuper 11 win in TaipeiTaipei Super 11 yesterday won their opening match in Group A of the Taiwan Premier League, beating the Taipei Indians by three wickets at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei’s Songshan District. The Indians reached 136-8 batting first and had their eye on two points fo
ESCALATING: The US Navy trained for decades to face world powers, but has instead been fighting Houthi rebels armed with a seemingly inexhaustible arsenal of drones The US military unleashed a wave of attacks targeting radar sites operated by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over their assaults on shipping in the crucial Red Sea corridor, authorities said yesterday, after one merchant sailor went missing following an earlier Houthi strike on a ship.The attacks come as the
UNCHARTED WATERS: Analysts said the nation’s first coalition government might face complications given the stark differences between the ANC and DA South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was on Friday re-elected for a second term, after his party struck a dramatic late coalition deal with a former political foe just hours before the vote.Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress (ANC), won convincingly in Parliament against a surp
When Iranians worry about life’s big questions, many seek answers in the works and wisdoms of Persia’s most revered poet, Hafez — sometimes with the help of a parakeet.Retired housewife Mitra, 61, had questions about whether her son married the right woman, so she went to the tomb of Iran’s beloved
June 17 to June 23Sixty B-24 heavy bombers from the US’s Fifth Air Force appeared over the port city of Keelung on June 16, 1945, escorted by eight P-51 long-range fighters. One group unleashed a torrent of 260-pound (117kg) bombs onto the ships in the harbor, while another squadron dropped 1,000-po
With the inauguration of President William Lai (賴清德) complete and everyone moved into their new offices, the Lai administration and Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) are getting to work. As in many cases regarding government terminology in the Republic of China, Taiwan (ROC), using “Lai administration” and
In Tainan’s Annan District (安南), a pond-pocked wedge of land juts out into the Yanshui Estuary (鹽水溪口). Salt scents the breeze and the soft slapping of water against mangroves is broken only by the occasional dinosaur squawk of an egret in flight. Gazing seawards from the tip of this wedge, Sicao Bri
Back in the 1980s, when World No Tobacco Day was first created, the world was a much different place from how it is now. Although the dangers associated with cigarette smoking were known back then, a much larger percentage of the global population engaged in this harmful activity. To encourage peopl
The New York Times has launched a legal fight against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing their AI chatbots, ChatGPT and Copilot, of unfairly benefiting from the newspaper’s work. The lawsuit claims that millions of New York Times’ articles were used to train the AI tools without permission. This allowed
A: Apart from the Taipei Dome Sogo, six other shopping malls are set to open soon.B: Among them, the two in Taipei are set to open by the end of the year.A: I know one of them is the Uni-President Group’s “Dream Plaza,” which will house the world’s largest Starbucks Coffee, measuring over 1,000 pi
It’s certainly been a pleasure watching the presidential campaign launch of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜) lurch painfully about like a wounded pachyderm in search of an elephant graveyard. Hou’s fall to third place in some polls last week appears early, and it might still be recoverable. But grumbling in his party about replacing him has already begun. Indeed, all indications are that the party that twice gave us Lien Chan (連戰), the most despised politician in Taiwan, as a presidential candidate and later offered voters Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), is arcing along its normal descending trajectory, the North Korean missile test of electoral politics. A KIND OF POLICY PLATFORM Last week the KMT doubled down on this path with Hou’s calls for nuclear power and more death penalty executions, standard KMT fare for decades (the latter is unnecessary since so many potential criminals are likely to die in traffic accidents long before they harm anyone). Apparently KMT policy institutions are not echo chambers so much as mausoleums where dead ideas are embalmed and then periodically put on display. The lack of public policy imagination is obvious. A less obvious facet of KMT ineptitude: with years of speculation that Hou would be their man in 2024, neither Hou nor the party insisted on interesting or experimental public policies to showcase Hou’s greatness in preparation for the showdown. Of course, that is even more true of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Hou’s slide and the media buzz surrounding it are obscuring the truly urgent problem the pro-Taiwan side faces: DPP presidential candidate William Lai (賴清德) has not expanded his voter support beyond the party base. In most polls he remains below 40 percent. Independent voters are staying away in droves, and for the moment the young are turning to
July 17 to July 23 When Yeh Ken-chuang (葉根壯) came of age, the traditional skills of architecture and carpentry that had been in his family for four generations were disappearing. After helping his uncle Yeh Teh-ling (葉得令) construct ships, residences and temples for more than a decade, Yeh struck out on his own at the age of 28 in 1960 as a damusi (大木司, chief carpenter), earning his lifelong title “Chief Chuang” (壯司). Around this time, builders in his homeland of Penghu were increasingly using reinforced concrete instead of wood, due to the humid climate. The period also saw a frenzy in temple construction as the economy improved, meaning there was plenty of work for Yeh. Adept in non-structural techniques such as doors, windows and furniture, as well as the intricate carvings and detailed decorations that adorned the structures, Yeh was able to adapt his skills, leading the reconstruction of the historic Hsiliao Daitian Temple (西寮代天宮) on Penghu’s main island in 1963. According to the book Crossing Traditions in Yeh Ken-chuang’s Large-scale Carpentry Skills (宮廟巧藝 :跨越傳統的葉根壯大木作技術), it was Penghu’s first temple that used a purely reinforced concrete structure. Before his life was cut short, Yeh created more than 70 temples and related structures across the various islands of Penghu and left behind more than 230 building plans. Although Yeh could have built temples and other structures on Taiwan proper, he only worked on a handful of projects outside of Penghu because he wanted to be close to his family. CLAN OF CARPENTERS The Yeh family’s woodworking tradition began with Yeh Ma-li (葉媽利), who learned the architecture and carpentry trade from an unknown master on Kinmen. The Yehs trace their roots to Kinmen, although this branch had been living in Penghu since the early 1600s. Yeh Ma-li was Penghu’s chief temple builder between 1860 and
New Taipei City | 14-23 | 10% | ![]() |
Hsinchu County | 14-22 | 10% | ![]() |
Hsinchu City | 14-22 | 10% | ![]() |
Taipei City | 14-22 | 10% | ![]() |
Miaoli County | 12-22 | 10% | ![]() |
Taoyuan City | 14-22 | 10% | ![]() |
Keelung City | 15-21 | 10% | ![]() |
Yunlin County | 14-24 | 0% | ![]() |
Taichung City | 14-24 | 0% | ![]() |
Nantou County | 14-24 | 0% | ![]() |
Changhua County | 14-23 | 0% | ![]() |
Chiayi County | 13-24 | 0% | ![]() |
Chiayi City | 14-25 | 0% | ![]() |
Tainan City | 15-22 | 0% | ![]() |
Kaohsiung City | 17-23 | 0% | ![]() |
Pingtung County | 16-25 | 0% | ![]() |
Yilan County | 14-22 | 10% | ![]() |
Hualien County | 16-22 | 10% | ![]() |
Taitung County | 17-23 | 10% | ![]() |
Kinmen County | 11-18 | 0% | ![]() |
Penghu County | 17-20 | 0% | ![]() |
Lienchiang County | 10-13 | 10% | ![]() |