ASTRONOMY
Quadrantids to peak
Astronomy buffs may have a chance to spot shooting stars this weekend as the Quadrantid meteor shower reaches its peak, but they will need some luck, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday. As the Quadrantids are expected to peak at 10am tomorrow, the best time to see them is before dawn that day, the museum said. The museum cautioned that while 120 meteors per hour could flash through the sky from a radiant in the north, the near-full moon would make observation conditions less than ideal. Observers will be lucky to spot a few dozen shooting stars per hour this time, it said. The Quadrantid meteor shower was discovered in 1825 by Italian astronomers. By 1938, it was confirmed to be one of the three strongest annual meteor showers, the other two being the Perseids and the Geminids. The origin of the Quadrantids remains unclear, but the museum said the meteor shower is most likely debris from small body 2003 EH1.
AVIATION
Airline wins US award
China Airlines, the nation’s biggest carrier, won the International Trophy at the 126th Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, on New Year’s Day with a float titled “Inspiring Grace of Cloud Gate.” The float, a tribute to Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, featured four dancers performing on the moving vehicle decorated with different flowers and sculptures. Lin Hsin-jen (林信任), director of the Tourism Bureau’s Los Angeles office, said the float was designed to highlight some of the nation’s main tourism draws, such as butterflies, flowers and cultural performances, to help attract foreign visitors. The victory marked the 24th year and the 11th consecutive year in which China Airlines has won the award since it began participating in the parade in 1987.
TRAVEL
Freeway use at record high
A total of 2.76 million vehicles traveled on the nation’s three major freeways on Thursday, which was a New Year’s Day record, the National Freeway Bureau said yesterday. The previous record was set on Jan. 1, 2013, when 2.3 million vehicles took to the three freeways, the bureau’s statistics showed. On Thursday, the volume of traffic on Freeway No. 5 was the highest ever recorded on that route for a single day, as 51,400 vehicles traveled between Taipei and Yilan, the bureau said. It said traffic on the three major freeways dropped by about 30 percent yesterday from the previous day, but is expected to spike again today and tomorrow as people prepare to return to work after the four-day holiday. However, this weekend’s traffic is not expected to reach Thursday’s volume, the bureau said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Austria orchestra in Taiwan
The timeless music of the New Year’s Concert in Vienna can be heard live in Taiwan over the next week, as a renowned Austrian orchestra launches its Asian tour with a series of concerts in Taipei, Greater Kaohsiung and Hsinchu. The Strauss Festival Orchestra Vienna will begin the Taiwan leg of its tour today with a performance at the National Concert Hall in Taipei, then move to the Kaohsiung Chihde Hall tomorrow and the Hsinchu Performing Arts Center on Tuesday. Conductor Peter Guth said he hopes young people in particular will attend the concerts to learn more about the beauty of classical music. The 38-year-old orchestra has performed twice before in Taiwan, in 1990 and 2001.
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
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,
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