SCIENCE
Shooting stars set to impress
The Leonid meteor shower — a much anticipated event which greatly impressed many in 2001 — is expected to peak this week with ideal observation conditions, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The Leonid meteors, which will peak at 5.30pm on Saturday, are expected to fall at a rate of 20 shooting stars per hour, while a new moon is not likely to interfere with the viewing, museum officials said. Visibility of the meteors will increase around midnight, when the moon will begin to descend, the museum said. The shooting stars — debris from the parent comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle — were made famous by the spectacular light show they provided in 2001 when people gathered along mountaintops to witness thousands of meteors falling each hour. The next Leonid meteor show with such a large number of meteor will occur in about 2032, the museum said.
WEATHER
Rainfall likely in mid-week
Daily highs are likely to remain slightly above 20oC in northern and northeastern Taiwan until tomorrow, due to seasonal winds from the northeast, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Chances of rain will also increase in those areas, where clear to cloudy skies with daily high temperatures of 30oC recorded over several days last week, the bureau said. According to forecasts, temperatures are set to remain between 21oC and 29oC until Tuesday next week. Beginning on Wednesday, warmer temperatures are expected across the nation with the approach of another cold front on Friday.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Conference to analyze China
Taiwan will host an international conference today and tomorrow to analyze the ongoing power transition in China — looking in particular at how it might affect policy-making in Beijing. At the conference — co-hosted by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and the Institute for National Policy Research — experts from Taiwan and other countries such as the US, Australia, Singapore and Thailand are to examine the decisions made at the ongoing Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 18th Party Congress and what they mean. The conference will also discuss the characteristics of China’s new leadership and possible directions in Taipei-Beijing relations, the organizers said. At the one-week congress in China that opened on Thursday last week, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) is expected to hand over leadership of the CCP to Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平).
CHARITY
Charity calls for Sandy gifts
The Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation — one of the largest charities in the nation — has launched a fund-raising drive across the US to help victims of superstorm Sandy, which recently ravaged parts of the US East Coast. The charity’s US branch called for donations via phone, Internet or in person at its stations at supermarkets across the country. It also set up disaster relief centers in New York and New Jersey, two of the hardest-hit areas, to coordinate relief efforts such as the distribution of blankets, food and daily necessities. As part of Tzu Chi’s relief efforts, members of the organization in areas of New York with large Chinese populations have offered cooked meals to affected residents, it said, adding that in New Jersey, Tzu Chi members traveled around the state, visiting residents and distributing relief supplies to about 4,000 households in the four most heavily affected areas of Keansburg, Little Ferry, South Toms River and Atlantic City.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: