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...
Hello! 新年平安 and happy holidays from New Bloom! We wanted to let you know that Radio New Bloom is going to take a little break for Lunar New Year. We hope that you’ve enjoyed this last season of our podcast and we’re looking forward to share more content, conversations, and recordings that we’ve been working on with you in this next upcoming season. We hope that wherever in the world you are listening that you’re staying healthy and we wish you a happy new year, and we’ll catch you all in the Year of the Tiger....
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...
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...
