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...
President Tsai Ing-wen's New Year address touched on a number of points with regards to domestic policies. For the most part, there were few surprises in Tsai’s comments. But as with other national addresses of this nature, its foreign policy implications were primarily focused on in international media coverage...
Indigenous groups have been critical after a performance held by the Presidential Office as part of new year’s celebrations. In particular, the performance featured five performers that were supposedly dressed as Amis Indigenous, singing traditional songs. Nevertheless, Indigenous groups such as the Indigenous Youth Front have criticized this performance as an act of cultural appropriation, seeing as the clothing worn by the performers was not authentic to cultural customs, appeared to be cheaply rented costumes, and the songs performed fit Han stereotypes regarding Indigenous traditional music...
Yen Kuan-heng, who is the KMT’s candidate for the by-election to fill the seat formerly occupied by Chen Po-wei of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party, has taken to alleging media bias against him. In particular, Yen filed forty-five complaints at the National Communications Commission alleging unfair media coverage that has disproportionately focused on him in national television networks...
Hong Kong online media outlet Stand News announced that it was ending operations as of today, with the platform’s editor-in-chief Patrick Lam resigning and all staff dismissed...
Chang Ya-chung and Dennis Peng came together to organize a rally questioning the validity of Tsai Ing-wen’s dissertation outside of the Presidential Office on Saturday...
The past month has been blanketed by non-stop media coverage of Taiwanese American singer Wang Leehom, following allegations of abuse and infidelity by his wife, Lee Jinglei, who is Taiwanese. These allegations were posted by Lee on her Instagram, shortly after the announcement of their divorce...
After the results of the referendum that took place earlier this month, internal splits have deepened in the KMT. What is notable, however, is to what extent these splits deepen the gap between moderates and hardliners within the party...
Lab leak theorists seized upon a suspected case of contamination at Academia Sinica in Taiwan earlier this month in order to bolster claims that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan and was of manmade origin. Nevertheless, such claims are spurious and disregard many details of what took place in Taiwan...
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.