ASTRONOMY
Moon may outshine Perseids
Sky watchers awaiting the Perseid meteor shower in the early hours tomorrow are likely to be disappointed by another astronomical phenomenon: a full moon lighting up the night sky. One of the year’s most anticipated sky events, the Perseid meteor shower has a rate of about 100 meteors per hour from a radiant near the North Star, where the Perseid meteoroids strike the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. Running from July 17 to Aug. 24, the meteor shower will hit its peak early tomorrow morning, but visibility will be limited because of the light of the full moon. The full moon might wash out the fainter meteors and dim the brightness of the visible ones, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday, adding that as a result, stargazers can expect to see only about a dozen meteors per hour. To get the best look at the meteor shower, the museum suggested amateur astronomers go to southern Taiwan because there is less air pollution there than in other parts of the nation.
POLITICS
Lee to visit Japan
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) is to travel to Japan next month for a six-day visit, his office said yesterday. The Sept. 19 to Sept. 25 trip is being organized at the invitation of the Friends of Lee Teng-hui Association in Japan and will take Lee to Osaka, Tokyo and Hokkaido, the office said. Lee will give public speeches in Osaka and Tokyo, and is also planning to visit Japan’s renewable energy, agriculture and cattle industries, the office said. Lee, 91, last visited Japan in 2009. The Japanese group has repeatedly invited him to visit again over the past several years, but he was unable to do so because of health issues or other problems.
MUSIC
Mr Big coming in November
US rock group Mr Big is to perform in Taipei in late November, the fourth time the band has played here since it was formed in 1988, its local concert promoter said. The band, who shot to fame with the song To Be With You, is scheduled to perform on Nov. 23 at the Taipei International Convention Center, Yu Kuang Music said in a statement. The song charted in more than 20 countries and made No. 1 in many of them. Fans packed Mr Big concerts in Taiwan in 1994, 1996 and 2011, with tickets to the last one selling out “in a very short time,” the promoter said, adding that the 25-year-old group has a huge following in Taiwan. “Their fourth visit is expected to electrify local fans again,” the organizer said. Formed in Los Angeles, the quartet composed of Eric Martin (lead vocals), Paul Gilbert (guitar), Billy Sheehan (bass guitar) and Pat Torpey (drums) is expected to release its seventh album, The Stories We Could Tell, next month.
SOCIETY
Anti-suicide cycling planned
Taiwan Suicide Prevention Center yesterday invited the public to join the local leg of a worldwide simultaneous cycling event next month. The Cycle Around the Globe campaign, initiated by the International Association for Suicide Prevention, is calling for participants to join the event to help prevent suicide. The campaign aims to set people cycling on every continent on Sept. 10 — World Suicide Prevention Day — to collectively travel the about 40,075km circumference of the globe, the association said on its Web site. Founded in 1960, the association is a non-governmental organization that cooperates with the WHO on suicide prevention.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,