Taiwan unveiled the prototype of its largest ever military drone on Wednesday as it seeks to boost its defense forces in the face of a perceived threat from China.

The sleek, white unmanned aircraft is designed for intelligence gathering and surveillance missions, according to the National Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST), an arm of the Ministry of National Defense that is developing the drone. 

Typhoon Soudelor moved towards China on Saturday, weaker but still packing a punch, after killing at least five people and leaving a trail of destruction in Taiwan.

The typhoon ripped up trees and triggered landslides in Taiwan, and knocked out power to 1.5 million homes. Rivers broke their banks under torrential rain and towering waves pounded the island's coastline.

An eight-year-old girl and her mother died after being swept out to sea off Taiwan as Typhoon Soudelor bore down on the island, forcing thousands to flee, officials said Friday.

Troops evacuated villagers from remote mountain regions in the east of the island and helped secure their homes as rains and surging waves battered the coast.

The strongest typhoon of the year was bearing down on Taiwan's east coast Thursday, forcing the evacuation of more than 2,000 from outlying islands popular with tourists.

Typhoon Soudelor, packing maximum wind gusts of up to 209 kilometers (129.9 miles) per hour, was 790 kilometers southeast of Hualien county as of 5:30 pm local time (0930 GMT).

Nearly a thousand people rallied outside Taiwan's education ministry Sunday, demanding the minister's resignation and the scrapping of what they describe as a "China-centric" high school curriculum.

The protesters, whom police estimated at around 800, ripped up the new versions of textbooks printed under the new curriculum guidelines.

Police arrested 30 protesters in Taiwan early Friday, most of them students, after they broke into the education ministry in the capital Taipei overnight to oppose "China-centric" changes to the school curriculum.

Increasing fears in Taiwan over Beijing's influence sparked a three-week occupation of parliament last year by student-led protesters opposing a trade pact with China.

More than 500 people were injured, almost 200 of them seriously, when a ball of fire ripped through a crowd at a water park outside Taiwan's capital Taipei, authorities said Sunday.

The number of those injured in the blast, which came as coloured powder being sprayed on the partygoers ignited late Saturday, more than doubled as authorities began to track down victims who had taken themselves to hospital or been ferried there by others.

More than 200 people were injured, over 80 of them seriously, in an explosion at a water park outside Taiwan's capital Taipei Saturday after colored powder being sprayed onto a crowd ignited, officials said.

"Our initial understanding is this explosion and fire... was caused by the powder spray. It could have been due to the heat of the lights on the stage," said a spokesman for the New Taipei City fire department, adding that 205 had been hospitalized including 81 who are seriously injured.

Japan and the Philippines flew patrol planes near disputed South China Sea waters for a second straight day on Wednesday, despite Chinese criticism of this week's air and sea exercises.

A Japanese P-3C Orion and a Philippine navy Islander conducted a search and rescue drill 50 nautical miles (93 kilometers) northwest of the Philippine island of Palawan, officials said.

Taiwan's embattled ruling party said Wednesday it would nominate deputy parliamentary speaker Hung Hsiu-chu, a "one China" advocate, to run in the 2016 presidential race, after struggling to find a candidate following humiliating local elections.

Hung's nomination, which still needs to be approved at a party congress on July 19, generally viewed as a formality, will see two women vie to become the island's next president -- potentially paving the way for its first female leader -- after the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) named chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen as its candidate in April.