ASTRONOMY
Meteor shower approaches
Stargazers will have an opportunity to see the Eta Aquarid meteor shower when it peaks on Saturday, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. Astronomy buffs can expect to see up to 50 shooting stars per hour during the peak period from Friday to Saturday, it said. Sky watchers in mountainous and suburban areas where there are no bright lights or air pollution will be able to see the shooting stars with the naked eye, it added. In central Taiwan, Hehuanshan (合歡山) or Alishan (阿里山) will be ideal viewing spots, while in northern Taiwan, Yangmingshan (陽明山) will be the best, the museum said, advising astronomy enthusiasts to watch the sky to the southeast to see the shooting stars.
SOCIETY
Facebook top choice: poll
More than 80 percent of Taiwanese have Facebook accounts, a survey on social network use by people over the age of 12 showed yesterday. Taiwanese on average have four social media accounts, with Facebook taking the lead with 90.9 percent, followed by Line at 87.1 percent, the poll by Innovative DigiTech-Enabled Applications and Services Institute showed. Line use among all age groups topped 80 percent — except for those aged 55 or above, where the percentage fell to 60 percent. Most users of social networking sites, especially YouTube and Professional Technology Temple, are male, the survey found. Only on three social networking sites — Sina Weibo, Pinterest and Snapchat — did female users outnumber males.
ENTERTAINMENT
Four films win in Houston
Four Taiwanese films on Sunday received awards at the 50th WorldFest-Houston International Film and Video Festival, an independent international festival that is one of the oldest and largest film and video competitions in the world. Lokah Laqi (只要我長大), by director Laha Mebow, won a special jury award for feature drama. The film depicts the story of three children growing up in a secluded Aboriginal village in Taiwan. The three other Taiwanese gold-award recipients were Sea Pig (海豬仔), a feature film by Huang Chun-hua (黃駿樺); Packages from Daddy (心靈時鐘), a feature film by Tsai Yin-chuan (蔡銀娟); and Barkley (小貓巴克里), an animation by Chiu Li-wei (邱立偉). The festival, which honors independent films and filmmakers, is one of the three original international film festivals in North America, the other two being in San Francisco and New York. This year’s event featured about 60 feature films and ran from April 21 to Sunday.
DIPLOMACY
Nova Scotia inks deal
Taiwan has reached a reciprocal driver’s license agreement with the Province of Nova Scotia, Canada, the ninth Candian province to sign such an arrangement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The agreement, which came into effect on Tuesday last week, allows licensed drivers from Taiwan and Nova Scotia to apply for a license in each other’s territory without having to take road or written test, the ministry said. Nova Scotia is one of Canada’s four Atlantic provinces and the second smallest. Taiwan also has reciprocal driver’s license agreements with Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Saskatchewan. It has similar agreements with more than 20 US states, including Maryland, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas.
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,