EARTHQUAKE
Temblor near Okinawa felt
A strong magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck in waters off Okinawa at 10:59am yesterday. The quake occurred in the East China Sea, 218km west of Okinawa’s capital, Naha, and nearly 500km northeast of Taiwan. The quake’s depth was 222km. Central Weather Bureau seismologists said the temblor shook most parts of Taiwan, but its extreme depth limited the extent to which it was felt on the ground. The earthquake had an intensity of 2 in Hualien City and Orchid Island (蘭嶼) off Taitung County, and an intensity of 1 in most cities and counties from Taipei, Keelung and Yilan to Kaohsiung and Pingtung, the bureau said. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage on Okinawa or Taiwan
CULTURE
Concerts to be aired live
Taipei City Government will broadcast the Berliner Philharmoniker concerts at the National Concert Hall on Nov. 18 and Nov. 19 live at Taipei Arena, and 20,000 free tickets to the arena viewing will be given out this weekend. The live broadcasts of the concerts will be available in Taipei City, Greater Taichung, Hsinchu and Hualien County. In Taipei, the city government will broadcast the concerts on a 16m-long and 9m-wide LED screen in the arena. The Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said the city would give out 10,000 tickets for each concert, and tickets would be available from 9am to 5pm on Saturday at Exit 5 of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall MRT Station and at the service desk of Taipei Arena. Any remaining tickets will distributed the following day, at the same time and same place, TRTC general manager Tan Gwa-guang (譚國光) said. Tickets will be limited to two per person.
DEFENSE
Two E-2Ts leave for retrofit
Two airborne early-warning aircraft that the US sold to the air force in the 1990s left Greater Kaohsiung for the US yesterday for upgrades, by sea. The two E-2T aircraft were flown from an airbase in Pingtung County to Kaohsiung International Airport before being towed to Kaohsiung Harbor. Military sources said the two E-2Ts will be the third and fourth to undergo retrofits in the US under an arms sale agreed to by the US in October 2008, which included an upgrade of four E-2Ts to the Hawkeye 2000 configuration at a cost of US$250 million. The first and second E-2Ts were sent to the US in June last year and are expected to return home at the end of this year. The aircraft will be refitted with more efficient eight-blade propellers and have their radar and surveillance systems upgraded.
FISHERIES
Hijacked boat back at work
The Taiwanese trawler Ching Yi Wen is once again fishing in the Indian Ocean after a brush with armed Somali pirates last weekend, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The 28 crewmembers, none of whom were Taiwanese, were able to overpower the pirates that hijacked the boat on Friday southeast of the Seychelles and regain control of the ship. Two Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations-authorized anti-piracy vessels escorted the Ching Yi Wen to the Seychelles so the three crewmembers who were injured in the clash could receive medical treatment, ministry spokesman James Chang (章計平) said. The boat’s owner decided to have the Kaohsiung-registered fishing boat resume operations a few hundred kilometers away from where it was hijacked, Chang said. The ministry reminded Taiwanese fishing boats to stay away from waters where hijackings have taken place.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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