Migrant workers rallied yesterday to demand the right to transfer jobs. Counts place the number of participants at over 400. The rally took the form of a march from the DPP's headquarters near Shandao Temple to the Ministry of Labor near the 228 Memorial Park...
The prospect of cooperation between Taiwan and Lithuania on semiconductors has been raised recently, as flagged by a Politico article regarding a 200 million USD investment plan from Taiwan...
Thousands of Vietnamese factory workers are on strike at a factory owned by Pou Chen, a Taiwanese company. Pou Chen is the world’s largest footwear manufacturer and supplies to Nike and Adidas...
There have been calls to take measures against drunk driving after a series of DUI incidents in the last few months. This includes proposals in the Legislative Yuan to publicize the names and photos of repeat drunk drivers...
News that Ugandan students were forced to work in factories at the Chung Chou University of Science and Technology is the latest incident of international students being coerced into forced labor in Taiwan. Chung Chou University is located in Yuanlin in Changhua...
The Central Epidemic Command Center, which coordinates Taiwan’s response to COVID-19, announced 12 domestic cases today. 58 imported cases were also reported, along with no deaths. Of particular concern are that four of the cases from today are from an electronics factory in Taoyuan. This occurred due to a previously known case that worked at the Taoyuan International Airport, who transmitted it to her child and husband and friend, who then spread it to four co-workers. The factory has 280 workers, who have all been sent into quarantine, and the factory has halted work...
The pan-Green camp saw a victory today, with independent legislator Freddy Lim retaining his seat in Zhongzheng-Wanhua in Taipei District 5, and Lin Ching-yi of the DPP winning the by-election for Taichung District 2, which includes Shalu, Longjing, Dadu, Wuri, and Wufeng. Voting took place in Taichung and Taipei from 8 AM to 4 PM. Vote counting in Zhongzheng-Wanhua was more or less finished by 5 PM, while Lin showed a clear lead in vote counting in Taichung earlier on. Although it was originally expected that results would be known by 7 PM, results were known far earlier...
There have been increased concerns about espionage in the Taiwanese military after a report by Reuters that was released late last month. According to the report, China conducting spying efforts through a number of ways...
A cluster infection linked to Taoyuan International Airport has expanded to twelve people, as of last night. The Taoyuan Airport cluster takes place following five clusters at quarantine hotels in Taiwan since December that are thought to possibly be the result of the increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant...
The Kaohsiung Juvenile and Family Court made a historic ruling last month, allowing a gay couple to adopt a child that neither of the two is biologically related to. At the same time, the ruling is case-specific, only applies to that couple, and does not overturn current laws in Taiwan, which only allow gay couples to jointly adopt if the child is the biological child of one of the couple...
Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance journalist, as well as a translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018 and is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme.
