Despite the government's push for the Kuokuang Petrochemical Development Project, one official has expressed his opposition to the project's construction at its current site in Changhua.

A habitual sex offender confessed Monday to strangling a girl to death while attempting to rape her less than two months after he completed a nine-year jail term for sexual assault and theft.

Premier Wu Den-yin said yesterday that he was supporting an initiative to tighten the threshold for parole in cases of repeat sex offenders, as a way of helping to protect innocent people.

Changhua County recently announced that the annual National Contest of Princess Grapes is now open for applications. Also, in order to celebrate the nation's centennial, the organizer of the event has decided to broaden the scope of the yearly contest in 2011.

Malabar chestnut plants, one of the major exports of Changhua County in central Taiwan, are being affected by an unknown bacteria that has affected yields and sales, a township chief in the central county said earlier this month.

HSBC Taiwan announced that they will sponsor the 2011 Taifong Ladies Open in Dacun Township, Changhua County. This is the second consecutive year in a row that HSBC Taiwan has sponsored the Taifong Ladies Open, hoping that Taiwanese female players may have the opportunity to showcase their golf skills on an international level.

A documentary commissioned by the Changhua County government was shown on local TV Dec. 25-26, to improve local people's understanding of migrant workers and their lives in Taiwan.

The Changhua County government has decided to extend its child birth subsidy for another year as the policy has proved effective in boosting the county's birthrate.

At first glance, there is little to distinguish the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park from Taiwan's other manufacturing complexes. Towering power-generating windmill turbines hover nearby, but the spaciousness of the 3,650-hectare industrial park — Taiwan's biggest — seems to dwarf everything else, including the factories that dot the wind-swept landscape.

Central Taiwan's Changhua County has reached a preliminary agreement with Madhya Pradesh to export bicycle components to the Indian state, the county chief said yesterday.