An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale struck southern Taiwan early yesterday morning, the Central Weather Bureau’s (CWB) Seismological Center said.
No damage or casualties were reported.
The quake, which struck at 4:57am, was centered 31.6km southwest of Fangliao (枋寮), Pingtung County, at a depth of 50.5km, seismologists said.
Moderate shaking was felt in Kaohsiung City and Pingtung County’s Siaoliouciou Island (小琉球), as well as in Pingtung City and Tainan County’s Cigu Township (七股), they said.
Slight shaking was felt in Taitung County’s Anshuo Village (安朔), Tainan City, Chiayi County’s Lioujiao Township (六腳) and Yunlin County’s Sihhu Township (四湖).
Last Monday, an 6.5 magnitude earthquake rattled Taiwan at 8:05am, which the CWB said was the strongest quake to strike the country this year.
No damage or casualties were reported in that quake, either.
The epicenter of last Monday’s quake was 187.7km east-southeast of Hualien, at a depth of 11km below the Pacific Ocean floor.
QUAKE ZONE
Taiwan is located in a strongly oblique convergent zone between the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate.
Underground tectonic activity in the area is responsible for between 16,000 and 18,000 detectable earthquakes in Taiwan each year, about 250 of which reach magnitude 4.0 and beyond.
About 30 quakes a year measure 5.0 or higher on the Reichter scale, two to three of which are magnitude 6.0 or bigger, the CWB’s Seismology Center said.
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
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
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