The Central Weather Bureau said yesterday it may issue a sea alert for Typhoon Sepat this morning and does not exclude the possibility of issuing a land alert immediately afterwards.
Sepat will affect Taiwan's weather beginning on Saturday.
`SERIOUS THREAT'
"Sepat poses a serious threat to Taiwan," said Daniel Wu (
As of press time, Sepat was located 820km east of Manila, moving northwest at 11kph and packing winds of up to 175kph. The radius of the storm has expanded to 300km.
The bureau forecast that by 8am today, the typhoon will be 640km northeast of Manila.
Sea vessels operating along the east coast of the Philippines and in the Bashi Channel have been told to be on the alert as Sepat may develop into a stronger typhoon today.
The bureau said the typhoon has a solid structure and is extremely powerful.
SOUTHWEST FRONT
Meanwhile, a southwest front affecting the nation has weakened. Nevertheless, forecasters are still predicting rain nationwide, particularly in the south and southeastern regions, as well as in Kinmen and Matsu.
The chances of afternoon thunderstorms were high in central and northern regions, the bureau said.
In related news, Pingtung County authorities dispatched 10 helicopters yesterday morning to evacuate 150 residents of Haocha Village (
Media reports said more than 30 households were buried by mudslides on Tuesday. No deaths or injuries were reported.
CROP DAMAGE
Figures from the Council of Agriculture show the recent rain has caused an estimated NT$278 million (US$8.4 million) worth of crop damage since last Thursday. Up to 2,668 hectares of farmland have been affected, 19 percent of the nation's total area. Crops affected include watermelon, melon, cantaloupe and loofah.
The bad weather has also been blamed for the deaths of an estimated NT$33 million worth of farm animals, including 491,000 chickens, 75,000 ducks, 11,000 geese and 683 pigs.
Additional reporting by Angelica Oung
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching