ASTRONOMY
Moon approaching Earth
The full moon will be at its largest this year on Dec. 3, when it passes nearest to the Earth, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The celestial event will take place at 11:47pm that day, when the moon will be about 350,000km from Earth, the museum said, adding that it will appear about 14 percent bigger than the smallest full moon this year on June 9, when it passed the apogee — the point in its orbit at which it is furthest from the Earth. The difference resembles that between the size of a NT$50 coin and a NT$10 coin, the museum said. The museum said it will set up a high-power telescope at the Tianmu Baseball Stadium between 7pm and 9pm and the public is invited to come observe the phenomenon.
CRIME
Smuggled fish intercepted
A big shipment of yellow croakers was on Wednesday seized in Tainan, in the first case of fish smuggling discovered in southern Taiwan in four years, the Coast Guard Administration said yesterday. During a security check onboard a Taiwanese fishing boat at the Port of Anping, coast guards noticed that the captain was very nervous and decided to conduct a search, which uncovered 7.8 tonnes of yellow croakers, the coast guard said in a statement. The fish was packed on ice in plastic boxes on the boat, which had just returned to port after two days at sea, carrying eight crew members and fishing equipment that appeared unused, the coast guard said. During the search, the boat captain confessed that he had smuggled the fish into Taiwan after making a deal at sea with Chinese fishermen, the coast guard said, adding that the fish was seized and the case was turned over to the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office for further investigation.
CRIME
Logging suspects rounded up
Alleged members of an illegal logging ring made up of Taiwanese and foreigners were arrested by law enforcement officers on suspicions that they were poaching red cypress in mountainous areas of Nantou County, the Nantou Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Local police arrested four Taiwanese men and four unaccounted for Vietnamese workers in Renai Township (仁愛) for their alleged involvement in illegal logging during a series of raids conducted between Monday and Thursday. Along with the eight suspects, two pieces of red cypress, weighing 166kg, logging equipment and a jeep were also seized, the office said. The Taiwanese men, surnamed Chen (陳), Kao (高), Tseng (曾) and Fan (范), hired the Vietnamese nationals, paying them NT$20,000 per trip to cut down trees, particularly red cypress, on the township’s Mapu Mountain and transport them, an initial investigation found. The Taiwanese suspects were each released on bail of NT$20,000, while the four Vietnamese were kept in custody because they are considered a flight risk, prosecutors said.
SOCIETY
Thai worker’s death probed
Prosecutors in Taoyuan are investigating the death of a Thai migrant worker who was found dead in his apartment on Wednesday morning with knife wounds on his neck. Accompanied by forensic experts, prosecutors went to the scene of the death in the city’s Gueishan District (龜山) on Wednesday afternoon. They found a fruit knife near the body of the 32-year-old man, the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office said. The initial investigation found no evidence of foul play, the office said, adding that prosecutors and police are not ruling out suicide.
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
RSS