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The Tai-Ex opened up 280-points this morning from yesterday's close, at 15,987 on turnover of 11-billion N-T.
Asian shares are rising today, despite a late Wall Streeet dip yesterday.
Investor confidence is being boosted by expectations of large U.S. stimulus under incoming President Joe Biden, and oil prices perked up (有所改善；有起色) on positive Chinese trade figures.
The Council of Agriculture says the recent cold spell has resulted in islandwide agricultural losses of an estimated (估計；估算) 118.14-million N-T.
The most heavily damaged crop was wax apples, which accounted for over 70-million N-T of the total losses from between December 30 and January 14.
According to agriculture officials, a total of 657 hectares of crops were damaged.
Heavily affected sectors included aquaculture farms that produce milkfish, which sustained total losses of 21.79-million N-T, while livestock losses stand at around 25,000 N-T.
Pingtung was the hardest hit area, suffering agricultural damage of 66-million N-T, which was 56-per cent of the national total.
Yunlin County sustained the second-highest losses, totaling 16.13-million N-T, followed by Penghu, with 8.64-million N-T in agricultural damage.
The Indonesian government is deferring the implementation of a policy that would have mandated employers of Indonesian migrant workers pay part of placement costs rather than the workers themselves.
The policy was scheduled to take effect today.
The Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers says it will hold a news conference later today to formally announce the extension of the transition period.
According to the Ministry of Labor, it was notified of the decision to postpone the policy prior to (在先的，在前的；居先的) a planned video conference aimed at discussing issues regarding settlement costs for Indonesian migrant workers here in Taiwan.
That video conference was canceled.
And labor ministry's Workforce Development Agency says it is now requesting Taiwan's representative office in Indonesia help arrange further meetings to discuss the matter.
Authorites in Washington and around the nation are bracing for (（為困難或壞事）使防備；使作準備) possible violence tied to the inauguration.
AP correspondent Mike Gracia reports.
The government of Brazil's Amazonas state has decided to fly 235 COVID-19 patients out of the state as the health system in the city of Manaus collapses amid a dwindling supply of oxygen tanks.
Manaus authorities recently sounded the alarm, calling on the federal government to help reinforce its dwindling (減小；降低；減少) stock of the gas needed to keep COVID-19 patients breathing.
In its first peak, Manaus consumed a maximum 30,000 cubic meters of oxygen per day, and now the need has more than doubled.
The state governor has decreed new new restrictions on activity Thursday despite protests against such measures.
Siegfried Fischbacher, namesake (同名者；同名物) partner in the entertainment duo Siegfried & Roy, has died in Las Vegas at age 81.
His publicist said Thursday that Fischbacher died Wednesday at his home from pancreatic cancer.
Fischbacher's longtime partner in the iconic illusion act using rare animals, Roy Horn, died last year of complications from COVID. He was 75.
The duo astonished millions with their extraordinary magic tricks until Horn was critically injured in 2003 by one of the act's famed white tigers.
They are being remembered for drawing a world spotlight to the Las Vegas Strip entertainment industry.