INDUSTRY
Ghost Month hits car sales
With the start of Ghost Month on July 31, car sales in the first 10 days of this month tumbled by more than 20 percent from the same period last month, according to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Getting married and buying houses or cars are considered taboos during Ghost Month — the seventh month on the lunar calendar. A total of 3,244 cars were sold in the first 10 days of this month, down 23.8 percent from the same period last month. Of the total, 995 were imported, down 27.3 percent, ministry data showed. Nonetheless, overall car sales are still on a growth track, ministry officials said. As of Aug. 10, car sales had gone up by 17.5 percent from a year earlier, with 231,209 cars sold. After Ghost Month, car sales should enter their peak period and are expected to reach 350,000 for the year, officials said.
WEATHER
New rainfall monitors set up
Three new precipitation monitors have been set up along Suhua Highway in the northeast to better predict the likelihood of disasters caused by heavy rainfall, the Central Weather Bureau said, adding that one more will be installed before the end of the year. In October last year, torrential rain brought by Typhoon Megi caused landslides in Yilan County, through which the coastal Suhua Highway runs, leaving more than 20 tourists dead or missing. The bureau said the new installations had narrowed the gap between monitors from 13.8km to between 8km and 9km, to facilitate data collection on rainfall statistics. There were originally only six rainfall monitors along the highway.
ENERGY
Bihai plant to start in October
After 16 years of construction, the Bihai Power Project in Hualien County will start operating in October, adding hydroelectricity to the country’s power supply system, Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) said on Thursday. A power generation test will be carried out in the middle of this month before the plant commences full operations in October, Taipower said. The plant has a capacity of 61,200kW and can supply about 237 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, it said. It can supply about six hours of electricity per day during peak periods, a Taipower official said. The power facility, adjacent to Heping South River in Hualien, is located in a mountainous area where there are no paved roads for vehicles or people, the official said, adding that the renewable energy project was the result of hard work in a demanding environment. Taipower had to create a disposal site for the huge amount of excavated material that is now buried beneath vegetation, the official said.
WEATHER
Moon may eclipse Perseids
Stargazers may be disappointed when a full moon makes it harder to see the annual Perseid meteor shower early this morning, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. One of the year’s most fascinating sky events, the Perseid meteor shower has a rate of about 100 meteors per hour from a radiant near the North Star, where the Perseid meteoroids strike the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. Running from late last month to the middle of this month, the meteor shower will hit its peak at about 2am today. The full moon might wash out the fainter meteors and dim the brightness of the visible ones, the bureau said. “You should feel very lucky if you are able to see one-tenth of the Perseids when they go head-to-head against a full moon,” said Cheng Chen-fong (鄭振豐), an engineer with the bureau’s astronomical observatory.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard