WEATHER
Rainy week forecast
The Central Weather Bureau said it expects a rainy week due to the influence of a weather system from the southwest. From yesterday to Thursday, central and southern Taiwan will be hit by heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms, the bureau forecast on Sunday, adding that other parts of the nation would also see showers or thundershowers, but on a smaller scale and for shorter periods. The wet weather would bring temperatures slightly down from a recent heat wave, during which the mercury routinely rose as high as 36°C. The bureau expects temperatures to range from 24°C to 33°C across the nation. Although the weather will cool down a little, people residing in central and southern Taiwan should take precautions against possible flooding caused by sudden downpours, the bureau, which expects the wet and cooler weather to continue until Sunday.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Women outnumber men
Women outnumber men in the nation’s six special municipalities, with the ratio the lowest in Taipei, where there are 92 men for every 100 women, the Ministry of the Interior said. In its latest report on the country’s population structure at the end of last month, the ministry identified the six cities with more women than men as Taipei, New Taipei City, Hsinchu, Taichung, Kaohsiung and Chiayi, which together accounted for about 55 percent of the nation’s total population. Men outnumbered women in the nation’s 16 other cities and counties, the ministry said. The nation’s total population was 23.46 million at the end of last month, up 0.12 percent from the end of last year, mainly because births exceeded deaths in the first six months of the year.
ENVIRONMENT
Heat wave killed fish
The recent searing summer heat could have killed thousands of fish, found yesterday along a section of the Keelung River close to the Taipei Grand Hotel, an environmental protection official said. Josh Arsenault, a Taipei resident, said he spotted thousands of “white dots” in the river while riding a bicycle in the Dajia Riverside Park in Zhongshan District (中山) yesterday afternoon and later found out they were dead fish. He said the dead fish were concentrated in a stretch at least 0.5km long. Yang Wei-hsiu (楊維修), a senior engineer at the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection, said the dead fish were flathead grey mullet, which require high oxygen content for survival. Yang said that the recent heat wave apparently drove down oxygen levels in the river and suffocated the fish. He said the city government had dispatched personnel to remove the fish bodies, which would be burned at an incinerator.
EDUCATION
Taiwan wins three golds
Taiwanese students won three gold medals and one silver at this year’s International Biology Olympiad, which concluded in Denmark on Sunday. Taiwan’s medal haul ranked fifth overall in the event, behind China, the US, Singapore and South Korea. It ranked first at last year’s Biology Olympiad with four gold medals. This year, the gold medal winners were Lin Po-han (林柏翰) from National Chiayi Senior High School and Wu Meng-hsin (吳孟忻) and Lee Po-sheng (李柏陞) from Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School. The silver medal winner was Hung Hsueh-yu (洪學宇) from National Tainan First Senior High School. Individually, Lin ranked eighth in the competition and Wu finished ninth. Because of their high finishes, the medal-winning students are to be eligible for university admission and awarded NT$200,000 and NT$100,000 in prize money for the gold and silver medals respectively, according to Ministry of Education rules.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
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