Typhoon Etau roared over Japan's main island of Honshu yesterday, leaving at least eight people dead or missing and 71 others injured while snarling airline and rail traffic, officials said.
Four people have been confirmed dead and four others missing as the storm system continued moving northeast at a speed of 55kph slamming onto the smaller island of Shikoku from the Pacific late Friday.
The eye of the typhoon, with the maximum velocity of its winds down to 90kph, was located near the city of Yamagata, 300km northwest of Tokyo, at 6pm, the Meteorological Agency said.
Etau was projected to dwindle into a tropical depression and veer out to the Pacific off the northernmost island of Hokkaido early today, the agency said.
The National Police Agency (NPA) said 15 houses had been damaged and 815 others flooded. Torrential rains triggered 113 landslides and collapsed roads at 18 points.
An official at the NPA security division said that a 45-year-old truck driver was blown off a highway bridge by strong winds into the sea and drowned yesterday in Osaka. He was trying to adjust his cargo.
Elsewhere, a 63-year-old farmer drowned Friday after falling into a swollen river near his rice paddy in Okayama in the west of Honshu.
A woman in Mie, a prefecture on the Pacific side of Honshu, died after strong winds blew her off a terrace into a garden at her home and the body of a 71-year-old man was found Friday in a swollen river in Kochi on Shikoku.
On Shikoku, two construction workers were swept away while clearing a drainage channel and a 17-year-old boy was washed from a pier by a huge wave Friday, the police official said.
In Nagano, central Japan, a 54 year-old angler was lost in raging water yesterday.
Thousands of weekend travellers have been stranded at airports and train stations.
Airline officials said 464 domestic flights were cancelled.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
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