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.
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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