■ Weather
CWB issues sea warning
The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) issued a sea warning for typhoon Damrey yesterday, anticipating rough seas in the Bashih Channel and torrential rain for southern and southeastern Taiwan for the next several days. The tropical storm, with a radius of 200km, was centered 340km south-southeast of Taiwan's southernmost tip of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) at 5pm yesterday, moving in a west-northwest direction toward Taiwan at a speed of 12kph, CWB meteorologists reported. Damrey, the 18th typhoon reported in the Pacific this year, is forecast to continue moving toward the South China Sea over the following two days and to directly affect the Bashih Channel area. The eastern part of Taiwan as well as the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島) at the southernmost tip of Taiwan were expected to begin experiencing heavy rain by nightfall yesterday when these areas came under the influence of the typhoon, while the northern and northeastern parts of the country are forecast to see rain starting today.
■ Society
Women upset with figures
Nearly 75 percent of Taiwan's career women are unsatisfied with their figure, but only 12 percent regularly exercise to improve their figure and health, a poll showed yesterday. According to the poll of 1,782 career women by the E-Woman Weekly, 74.6 percent are unsatisfied with their figure. Of those, 55 percent are unhappy about their thighs, and the rest don't like their abdomen or their behind. However, only 12 percent of Taiwan's career women regularly exercise, 31 percent occasionally exercise and 57 percent never exercise. Reasons for not doing exercise were laziness (65 percent) as well as being too busy and lacking an exercise partner. When asked what kind of exercise they do, 42 percent said window shopping, 21 percent mentioned using Hula Hoops and 10 percent said walking and hiking.
■ Religion
Religious terms suggested
A civic group yesterday resurrected its call for the government and media to support a campaign to change what they say are discriminatory Chinese translations for terms related to Islam and Judaism. The Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan yesterday requested the government and media replace the commonly-used Chinese translation for the religion of Islam, hui chiao (回教), with yisilan chiao (伊斯蘭教) and Muslim, hui chiao tu (回教徒), with muslin (穆斯林) because hui has a connotation of paganism. The foundation also called for substituting the Chinese characters 尤太 (you tai) for the currently used characters for "Jew", 猶太 (also you tai). The foundation said that you (猶) with the "dog" radical refers to a type of monkey and has the connotation of stinginess.
■ Education
More students study abroad
More than 30,000 Taiwanese students went abroad to study last year, nearly 80 percent of whom opted to go to English-speaking countries, according to tallies made public yesterday by the government. A total of 32,525 Taiwanese students applied for visas for academic purposes with foreign representative offices in Taiwan last year, up 23.6 percent over the 2003 figure, but down by 3.7 percent from the peak number posted in 2002, statistics compiled by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) show. The US attracted the largest number of students -- 14,054 -- while the UK and Australia came second and third, luring 9,207 and 2,246 students from Taiwan, respectively.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
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