WEATHER
Tropical storm forms
Tropical Storm Malakas formed at 8am yesterday, becoming the first tropical cyclone in the northwest Pacific this year, the Central Weather Bureau said, adding that the chance of the storm directly impacting Taiwan is low. The center of the storm was situated at sea off the southern coast of Guam at 8am, about 2,000km east of Taiwan. It was moving north-northwest at 4kph, the bureau said. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 18m per second, with gusts of up to 25m per second, the bureau said, adding that the storm would most likely move toward the south of Japan.
POLITICS
Eric Chu to visit the US
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said that KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) is to visit the US at the end of next month, and would speak about the party’s policies on the US, China and cross-strait relations. Chu is to hold discussions on those issues with US government officials, academics and experts in Washington, New York, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles, KMT Department of International Affairs director Alexander Huang (黃介正) said. While in Washington, Chu would unveil a plaque to mark the reopening of the KMT’s liaison office in the US after a hiatus of more than 13 years, said Huang, who is to head the office. Chu’s visit is not for publicity purposes, but rather is aimed at rebranding the party’s liaison office in Washington, which was closed in 2008 after the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was elected president, Huang said. While in the US, Chu plans to give public speeches on the KMT’s policies regarding China, the US, and cross-strait and international affairs, he said.
SEARCH AND RESCUE
Two bodies recovered
Taiwan has recovered two bodies after a ship carrying six South Koreans went missing in the Taiwan Strait, and search and rescue operations were continuing, Taipei and Seoul said yesterday. Taiwanese authorities said they received distress signals from the Kyoto No. 1 at about 9:50am on Thursday about 29km west of Taiwan, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, adding that all six people aboard were South Korean nationals. The Sierra Leone-flagged ship was on its way to Indonesia’s Batam from Busan and it was towing the Kyoto No. 2, which has been found in the area. The National Rescue Command Center in Taiwan said that the ship had sent a distress signal in waters near Penghu, and it had sent ships and aircraft to look for it. Fishers discovered the two bodies, whose identities have yet to be confirmed, and efforts are continuing to find the other four people, it said.
CULTURE
Exhibition opens in NY
An exhibition marking the completion of the Taipei Music Center opened in New York on Wednesday, drawing on the relationship between its American architectural origins and its adoption into Taiwanese culture. “Lyrical Urbanism: The Taipei Music Center” at Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture features mural-sized photographs, architectural models, drawings and audiovisual media that explore the decade-long design process, the center said. The center, which houses a concert hall that can hold up to 5,000 people, a cultural cube presenting the history of popular music in Taiwan and a creative hub, was developed by New York-based Reiser+Umemoto, RUR Architecture. The exhibition runs until April 29.
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
A sharp rise in compensation to be paid by air force officers who leave before completing their required service could indicate an increase in pilots leaving the military early, an analyst said on Friday, warning that the trend could worsen a shortage of experienced personnel. Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Association for Strategic Foresight, issued the warning even though the number of volunteer military personnel is expected to increase next year. The planned headcount for volunteer military personnel, covering officers, noncommissioned officers (NCO) and enlisted soldiers, is 158,223 for next year, up 4,258 from 153,965 this year, Chieh said. The increase
Potential improvements to munitions used by China’s long-range rocket-artillery units could extend their range to cover the entire Miyako Strait, which might give the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the ability to secure the strategic waterway, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in a report. The PLA’s long-range rocket-artillery units deployed along the Taiwan Strait are concentrated along the coast of Fujian Province, including Changle, Pingtan and Shishi, the quarterly report on China said. The artillery brigades of the PLA’s 71st, 72nd and 73rd group armies have been deployed, with preparations for potential battlefield operations under way since August 2022, the report
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