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.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
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