The Central Weather Bureau followed up its sea warning for Typhoon Sepat yesterday morning with a land warning at 8:30pm last night as the storm continued to approach.
At 8pm, the typhoon was centered 640km southeast of Taitung and was moving northwesterly at 20kph, packing maximum sustained winds of 191kph.
Forecasters said Sepat posed a threat to shipping southeast of Taiwan and in the Bashi Channel.
Lu Kuo-chen (呂國臣), a section chief at the Weather Forecast Center, said the eye of Sepat was clearly visible on satellite pictures, which indicated that it could be very destructive. With a radius of 250km, Sepat covers an area of 196,250km2 -- greater than the area of Taiwan, he said.
If Sepat stays on its current course, the fringe of the typhoon could affect the island early today and possibly make landfall over southeastern Taiwan tonight, the bureau said.
Airlines have canceled some flights and they urged passengers to confirm their flights well ahead of the scheduled departures.
All Uni Air flights to Taitung from Taipei after noon today have been canceled, as has the 8:40pm Kaohsiung to Taipei Uni Air flight, the company said.
All Far Eastern Air Transport flights after noon today have been canceled, the company said.
TransAsia Airways has canceled its afternoon flights to Hualien and Pingtung, as well as its flights to Kaohsiung and Tainan after 6pm, while Mandarin Airlines has canceled its flights to Kaohsiung, Hualien and Makung City today.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS