Several dozen protested in Taoyuan on Thursday in front of the city hall on September 1st, calling for the preservation of Qing dynasty railroads. Ironically enough, the historic railroads are threatened by construction for a contemporary MRT station...
The Control Yuan condemned the construction process for the Miramar Resort in Taitung late last month, arguing that an investigation should be carried out into the construction process for the beach resort. The Control Yuan made the assessment after visiting the site of the planned Miramar Resort and interviewing local residents...
The Constitutional Court ruled earlier this week that the Tsai administration’s nationalization of seventeen irrigation organizations was constitutional. The move was one that was resisted by the KMT, seeing as it was aimed at breaking the traditional pan-Blue stranglehold over irrigation organizations...
Taipower, Taiwan's state-run energy utility, won out in a recent ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court that exempted it from needing to pay 30 million NT for failing to remove low-level nuclear waste from Orchid Island. Low-level nuclear waste refers to items that have become contaminated with radioactive material or become radioactive through exposure, as distinguished from intermediate-level nuclear waste, high-level nuclear waste, spent fuel rods, or other nuclear waste materials...
Clashes broke out in Miaoli earlier this week over the Kunyu landfill, when local residents demonstrating the landfill’s construction were allegedly attacked by men that they allege were gangsters hired by the construction company. The clashes took place around 3 AM yesterday, in the early morning hours of Thursday. Eight were injured, consisting of five men and three women, including a student whose glasses were broken during the struggle...
Pan-blue media personality Jaw Shaw-kung, one of the leading figures of the “Fighting Blues” within the KMT, recently took a strong stance against the Tsai administration’s energy transition policy. Jaw criticized the Tsai administration as overly reliant on LNG terminals and instead called for the extension of Reactor No. 2 and Reactor No. 3’s operational lifetimes, as well as the restart of the controversial Lungmen Reactor No. 4. Jaw’s comments are worth examining for how this sheds light upon the pan-Blue camp’s framing of Taiwan’s current energy issues...
The Taichung city government has made moves to rein in air pollution, with new regulations targeting steel mills having been submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency for review by Taichung’s Environmental Protection Bureau. The Taichung city government touts such restrictions as the strictest in the country and hopes that they will take effect before the end of this year...
The Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan protested outside of a McDonald’s earlier this month to call on the fast-food chain to transition toward using cage-free eggs, rather than from chickens raised in cages...
A report by the Executive Yuan on the Asia Cement mine on Indigenous land in Taroko Gorge has led to backlash from Indigenous community representatives, after the findings of the report were that there was not any illegal activity in the land leases for mine. The report’s conclusions have been criticized as reflecting a certain political viewpoint, as well as being contradictory to the report itself. Issues have also been raised with the writing process for the report. Asia Cement is a subsidiary of Far Eastern Group, one of Taiwan’s largest conglomerates...
President Tsai Ing-wen stated that Taiwan was committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 in comments made in the same timeframe of the 26th U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties, more commonly referred to as COP26, in Glasgow earlier this week. The statement by Tsai proves interesting, in that global climate change is rarely the political framework for discussing environmental issues in Taiwan...