For the eighteenth episode of Radio New Bloom, we present the recording from the discussion and Q-and-A that followed our event last month screening New Bloom member SueAnn Shiah's documentary HuanDao at our space in Wanhua, Taipei...
TTY Biopharm is currently under investigation for insider trading, with 26 company officials held by authorities, and close to thirty locations raided. Among those detained was Robbin Shih, the company’s general manager. Top executives were released on two to three million NT bail, with fifteen of those detained requiring bail...
DPP legislator Huang Kuo-shu announced that he would be withdrawing from the party and not pursuing reelection in 2024 earlier this week after the Liberty Times reported that he had served as an informant during the KMT during authoritarian times. According to the report, Huang was involved in spying on fellow students who were involved in political dissidence in university...
The issue of "deepfakes" has been widely discussed in Taiwan after YouTuber "Xiao Yu" was found to be responsible for a Telegram group used to sell, commission, and circulate "deepfake" porn videos of women, who were mostly public figures. Xiao Yu, whose real name is Zhu Yu-chen, was subsequently taken into custody. Xiao Yu is primarily known for humor videos, though some of his viral stunts have caused controversy in the past...
Taiwan's Ministry of Health and Welfare has made a name for itself in past years through its firmly progressive political stances. This has been demonstrated in public service announcements calling for respecting freedom of gender expression, particularly from the young, and calls for migrant workers to be able to undergo COVID-19 screenings without having their working papers checked, something that might discourage undocumented workers from visiting hospitals...
Plans to construct a LNG terminal off the coast of Datan, Taoyuan have been controversial, seeing as construction will threaten seven-thousand-year-old coral reefs. Environmentalists have been organizing for the preservation of the reefs, which run along 27 kilometers of coastline, since 2014...
In the past week, the Chinese government has sought to tar Taiwan’s efforts to build stronger diplomatic relations with Somaliland, with state-run tabloid Global Times alleging that the Taiwanese government is paying off politicians in Somaliland in return for diplomatic recognition. Such claims, which have been denied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, draw on Taiwan’s reputation for “dollar diplomacy” ...
46 died in a building fire in Kaohsiung yesterday, with at least 41 injured. A total of 55 were taken to the hospital, with 14 found to have no signs of life, while 32 bodies were found on-site by firefighters. The fire is the deadliest in the history of Kaohsiung...
It proves a darkly humorous phenomenon that western tankies—authoritarian leftists who whitewash China’s actions—have taken a recent AP report as proof that reports of massive “reeducation” camps in Xinjiang in past years were a western fabrication. Such claims have been shared by the Qiao Collective, among other groups and individuals...
The Ministry of Labor announced on October 8th that Taiwan’s minimum wage will increase by five percent, starting next year on January 1st. According to the ministry’s Minimum Wage Review Committee, the minimum monthly salary will increase from 24,000 NT to 25,520 NT, while the hourly wage will increase from 160 NT to 168 NT...
