China has again set records with drills directed at Taiwan, carrying out “strike drills” around Taiwan in the past week. This is in response to US president Joe Biden signing the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act into law. Part of the provisions of the law authorized 12 billion USD in loans for Taiwan to purchase arms across six years, between 2023 and 2027, with 2 billion USD per year...
President Tsai Ing-wen today announced the extension of the military draft to one year from the current four months at a press conference that began at 3:30 PM. This took place after a meeting between Tsai, the National Security Council, Vice President William Lai, Premier Su Tseng-chang, Minister of Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng, and members of the DPP legislative caucus earlier this month. The announcement was expected in advance, with details of the plan reported on earlier this afternoon...
FoxConn founder Terry Gou has recently begun publicly criticizing the Central Epidemic Command Center that coordinates Taiwan’s COVID-19 strategy over its apparent failure to purchase BioNTech vaccines. Instead, Taiwan is primarily depending on the next-generation Moderna bivalent vaccines for its next round of vaccinating the population against COVID-19...
Gang-related ties and past criminal charges did not prove to be an obstacle for pan-Blue candidates winning office in the last set of elections. Namely, criminal wrongdoing by pan-Blue politicians–whether that be with regards to corruption or even gang-related murder and assault did not prove an obstacle to such politicians winning office...
Media reports from pan-Blue outlets suggested earlier this week that 12 Vietnamese students had gone missing from a university of science and technology in Taoyuan. In particular, reporting on the incident suggested that three students from the university had been found to have been coerced into sex work by labor brokers...
Questions have been raised about whether pan-Blue independent Chung Tung-chin, who is the current Miaoli county magistrate-elect, may be removed from office and the results of the election invalidated. Namely, three individuals have been detained by prosecutors in connection with a vote-buying scheme to aid Chung, who won with 42.66% of the vote. Prosecutors are also moving to invalidate the vote. ...
The DPP suffered a loss in the Chiayi mayoral election over the weekend. This adds another defeat to the losses suffered by the DPP in nine-in-one elections...
Pan-green legislators from the DPP and NPP held a press conference last weekend to call attention to the issue of unregulated organ harvesting and trafficking from China. The legislators called for the enactment of a law targeting organ harvesting and trafficking, in particular, targeting live organ harvesting. The law would mostly aim to target China and Cambodia. The press conference took place on December 10th, also known as International Human Rights Day...
The offices of TPP legislator Ann Kao, who is the mayor-elect of Hsinchu, were searched by prosecutors yesterday. Kao and other witnesses were also questioned by prosecutors...
