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.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait share a political foundation based on the “1992 consensus” and opposition to Taiwanese independence, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today said during her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Both sides of the Strait should plan and build institutionalized and sustainable mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation based on that foundation to make peaceful development across the Strait irreversible, she said. Peace is a shared moral value across the Strait, and both sides should move beyond political confrontation to seek institutionalized solutions to prevent war, she said. Mutually beneficial cross-strait relations are what the
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
RSS