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.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it