Songkran Festival to be held on Sunday
The annual Songkran Festival, better known as the Water-Splashing Holiday, will be held at Taoyuan County Stadium on Sunday. Thousands of migrant workers from all over Taiwan are expected to take part in the event celebrating the beginning of the Thai New Year. It is also a day observed by many Southeast Asian cultures.
The Thailand Trade and Economic Office said that as the county has the largest population of Thai workers in Taiwan, the office had worked with the county government to host the festival. Everybody is invited to attend and sample Thai culture.
Aside from the traditional water-splashing, the event will also feature live music and dances performed by troupes from Thailand.
Documentary on Catholic nun premieres
A documentary of the life of Marjorie Ingeleiv Bly will premiere tomorrow in Penghu to commemorate the first anniversary of her passing and show her lifelong dedication to helping lepers in Taiwan. The American Catholic nun came to Taiwan in the 1950s during the peak of leprosy in the country. As a young woman, Bly chose to settle in Penghu, which at the time lacked medical care. The film, shot by Good TV, took one year to make and chronicles Bly’s life both growing up in the US and her work in Taiwan.
Tomorrow’s event is co-sponsored by the Penghu County Government, the Taiwan Lutheran Church and the United Association of Christian Groups in Penghu. For tickets, contact secretary-general of the association Lin Pei-chun (林姵君) at (06) 972-0414.
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Residents have called on the Taipei City Government to reconsider its plan to demolish a four-decades-old pedestrian overpass near Daan Forest Park. The 42-year-old concrete and steel structure that serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads is to be closed on Tuesday in preparation for demolition slated for completion by the end of the month. However, in recent days some local residents have been protesting the planned destruction of the intersection overpass that is rendered more poetically as “sky bridge” in Chinese. “This bridge carries the community’s collective memory,” said a man surnamed Chuang
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm earlier today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, in this year's Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am, the CWA said. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) with a 100km radius, it said. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA meteorologist Huang En-hung (黃恩宏) said. However, a more accurate forecast would be made on Wednesday, when Yinxing is
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