SOCIETY
Fishing skipper missing
Two Keelung-registered fishing boats collided in waters close to Huaping Island (花瓶嶼) off northern Taiwan early yesterday, tossing the crew of one boat into the water. Five crew members were rescued, but the captain is still missing. The collision occurred at about 4am. The crews of the Li Fa No. 1 (立發一號) and Hsin Ling Po 16 (新凌波16) did not seem to notice that the distance between the two boats was narrowing before the collision occurred, officials said. The Hsin Ling Po was able to rescue the Li Fa’s five crew members — one Indonesian and four Chinese — but not its 54-year-old skipper, Lin Chih-nan (林志男), Coast Guard Administration officers said. An airborne service helicopter, coast guard, navy vessels and other fishing boats were mobilized to search for Lin.
CULTURE
Win motivates practice
Pianist Wu Kuan-han (吳冠漢), who won third place in the Vienna International Piano Competition earlier this month, yesterday said that his win has motivated him to work even harder. The 28-year old Chiayi native competed against 26 musicians from eight countries in the competition, which wrapped up on Aug. 10. It was his first international competition and Wu said he felt enormous pressure, practicing almost eight hours each day beforehand. Winning third place was a valuable experience that will serve to push him to work harder, he said. He major in music at National Taiwan University of Arts and now resides in Vienna, Austria, where he has been studying under pianist Roland Batik since 2014.
HEALTH
Man dies of dengue
A Taiwanese man who was infected with dengue fever in Thailand has died, days after he was sent home for treatment, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. It was the first dengue fever death reported in Taiwan this year, the agency said. The man, who was in his 70s, went on a business trip to Thailand in the middle of last month and came down with a fever early this month, the CDC said. He was admitted to hospital the day after he fell ill and three days later was diagnosed with dengue fever, the CDC said. By that time, he was in a semi-conscious state and was sent home on a medical charter flight, but died four days later, it said.
WEATHER
Warmer fall forecast
A warmer-than-usual autumn is likely this year due to a strong Pacific high pressure system that has lingered above Taiwan longer than expected this summer, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. “The high pressure system should have pushed further north to Japan by now, but it remains around Taiwan,” Weather Forecast Center Director Lu Kuo-chen (呂國臣) said. The system will keep water temperatures in the northwest Pacific Ocean relatively high, which in the past has usually signaled a warmer autumn. Lu said one to two tropical storms might strike Taiwan next month or in October.
SOCIETY
Japanese athletes hailed
Some Japanese athletes competing in the Taipei Universiade have been hailed since a series of photographs of them cleaning a park was posted on social media by a New Taipei City councilor yesterday morning. The photos show the Japanese athletes using brooms and dustpans to clean Linkou Community Sports Park near the Universiade Athletes Village in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口).
SOCIETY
Visitor numbers fall 6%
The number of international visitors to Taiwan fell almost 6 percent in the first six months of the year, due mainly to a drop in arrivals from China, statistics from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications showed. In the year to June, visitor arrivals totaled 5.12 million, a decline of 5.7 percent from the same period last year, the data showed. Of that number, 3.61 million visited for tourism purposes, a year-on-year drop of 6.9 percent, according to the statistics. China was the largest source of visitors in the six-month period, accounting for 1.26 million, but the number was the lowest in five years and represented a 40.1 percent decline from the same period last year, the data showed. However, visitor arrivals from several other countries increased, with arrivals from South Korea rising 30.2 percent year-on-year to 530,000 in the first half, the data showed.
SOCIETY
Ministry wins award
The Ministry of the Interior has won an Asia Geospatial Excellence Award for its achievement in promoting integrated land use monitoring, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday last week. The award was presented in Putrajaya, Malaysia, on Wednesday last week as part of the annual GeoSmart Asia conference and was accepted by Cheng Tsai-tang, a deputy chief of the National Land Surveying and Mapping Center, the ministry said. The system allows authorities to compare satellite images from different times to identify ground feature changes and suspected illegal uses, center officials said. In the past, such monitoring was conducted by the Construction and Planning Agency, the Council of Agriculture’s Soil and Water Conservation Bureau and the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Water Resources Agency.
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