SOCIETY
Sinkhole appears in Taipei
A sinkhole about 1.5 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1.5 meters deep has appeared overnight in the middle of Nanjing W Road, near its intersection with Guide Street in Taipei. The city government said it dispatched personnel to the site after receiving reports about it, adding that workers finished filling the sinkhole with concrete at 8am, which was covered with asphalt after it dried. The road reopened to traffic yesterday afternoon. An initial excavation of the site did not yield any immediate answers as to what caused the sinkhole, but the Taiwan Water Corp confirmed it found no leaks in its underground pipes, and officials from Taipei’s civil engineers union assessed there was no danger to the buildings on either side of the road, the city government said. After the repairs, city officials are to use ground-penetrating radar and other means to determine the sinkhole’s causes, and the risk of other sinkholes forming in the area, it said.
EARTHQUAKES
Quakes strike near Orchid
Five earthquakes ranging from 4.3 to 5.3 in magnitude struck near Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) early yesterday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said. The epicenter of the first and largest of the quakes was about 85km south-southwest of Taitung County Hall, at a depth of 12.8km, the bureau’s Seismology Center said. The magnitude 5.3 temblor occurred at 3:47am, followed by two quakes of magnitude 4.7 and 4.6 at 3:49am, a magnitude 4.3 quake at 4:26am, and a magnitude 5.2 quake at 5:22am, all within 35km of the first earthquake. On Taiwan proper, the first quake also registered an intensity of 2 in parts of Taitung and Pingtung counties. Damage or injuries were not reported.
TRANSPORTATION
Sanying MRT progressing
The Sanying MRT line, which will connect Dingpu (頂埔) with Yingge (鶯歌) via Tucheng (土城) and Sansia (三峽) districts in New Taipei City, was 70 percent complete as of the end of last month, the city’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems said last week. The first of the 29 two-car train sets is slated to be delivered to Taiwan from Japan next month. The rest are scheduled date of to be manufactured by the end of next year, it said. Each train set for the 14.29km medium-capacity metro line, which consists of 12 elevated stations, has 50 seats and can accommodate 200 passengers, it added. According to the city department, the Sanying Line is expected to open in 2025, instead of late this year as originally scheduled, after its construction work, which started in 2016, was significantly pushed back.
RELIGION
Restored Koran on display
A 500-year-old, handwritten version of the Koran that was gifted to a Taiwanese Buddhist charity is on display at the National Taiwan Library from 9am to 5pm from Tuesday to Sunday, until July 28, following nearly three years’ work to restore the badly damaged ancient text. the New Taipei City-based national library said. The Koran was repaired last month after experts from the library’s Book Hospital spent 35 months ridding the holy book of dust, blood stains, bugs and seeds, prying apart pages that had been stuck together, the library said. The copy was gifted to Cheng Yen (證嚴), founder of the Buddhist Tzu Chi Charity Foundation, by Faisal Hu (胡光中), a Tzu Chi volunteer and Muslim based in Turkey, who had bought it several years ago from a second-hand bookstore in Turkey.
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
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
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
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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