■ WEATHER
Cold air mass coming
Temperatures may drop to as low as 12ºC on Wednesday as a cold air mass from the north is expected to move south this week, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The bureau said that temperatures started falling yesterday as seasonal winds from the northeast became stronger, with highs in the north and east dropping to 26ºC to 27ºC. It also rained in northern and eastern Taiwan, as well as on Matsu. For today, the bureau has forecast that highs in the north and the east may drop 3ºC more to between 23ºC to 24ºC. Lows will be around 20ºC, it said. Temperatures are expected to drop nationwide tomorrow, with the highs in the north down to 15ºC. Residents in the north and central Taiwan may see the temperature fall to 12ºC.
■ EVENTS
Hotel welcomes blind guests
The Grand Hotel hosted a party yesterday to welcome 35 visually-impaired Japanese tourists and their family members, as well as 30 guide dogs that came with them as special guests in their deluxe rooms. The tourists, who arrived over the weekend, learned about the tour through the All Japan Guide Dog User Association. The tour is part of the bureau’s marketing strategy to target Japanese tourists. It was inspired by the Japanese movie Quill (再見了,可魯), which was adapted from a true story of a Labrador that was trained to become a guide dog and changed many blind people’s lives in Japan. Last year, the Tourism Bureau invited the association’s representatives to come and inspect Taiwan on behalf of the blind tourists. The association then arranged the tour. Members of the group are from all over Japan and will return on Wednesday. They will be visiting tourist attractions in northern Taiwan that include Taipei Baoan Temple (保安宮), Yehliu Geo-Park (野柳地質公園) and Jiufen (九份).
■ CULTURE
Dancer to open Games
An 83-year-old Taiwanese dancer, cherished as a national treasure, has been invited to perform at the opening ceremony of the 2009 World Games next July in Kaohsiung City, officials said yesterday. Lee Tsai-er (李彩娥), a renowned dancer and dance instructor in southern Taiwan, and her students will be part of the program to entertain the 4,600 athletes from some 100 countries when the Games opens on July 16 for 11 days of competition in various athletic events. Born in 1926, Lee was Taiwan’s first dancer to pursue further training in the theory and skills of classical ballet and creative dance in Japan. She returned to Taiwan at 19 and began to combine ballet skills with Taiwanese folk dancing and modern dance. Although Lee is now a great-grandmother, she still views dance as her life and has never talked about retirement. She still spends at least two hours each day practicing various dance skills and training her dance class students.
■ ATHLETICS
Run sees record turnout
The annual Taichung running event was held yesterday in the city, with Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) on hand to cheer on the record number of runners who participated. Taichung Deputy Mayor Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家旗) led the 23,000 runners from a city park early yesterday morning in the 27th year of the run. Following the run, a wide range of activities were staged in the park where the run began. The city government, which organized the event, announced that next year’s run will be organized as a marathon.
A total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Lantern Festival on March 3 would be Taiwan’s most notable celestial event this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said, urging skywatchers not to miss it. There would be four eclipses worldwide this year — two solar eclipses and two lunar eclipses — the museum’s Web site says. Taiwan would be able to observe one of the lunar eclipses in its entirety on March 3. The eclipse would be visible as the moon rises at 5:50pm, already partly shaded by the Earth’s shadow, the museum said. It would peak at about 7:30pm, when the moon would
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday held a ceremony marking the delivery of its 11th Anping-class offshore patrol vessel Lanyu (蘭嶼艦), saying it would boost Taiwan’s ability to respond to Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. Ocean Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Chung-Lung (張忠龍) presided over the CGA event in the Port of Kaoshiung. Representatives of the National Security Council also attended the event. Designed for long-range and protracted patrol operations at sea, the Lanyu is a 65.4m-long and 14.8m-wide ship with a top speed of 44 knots (81.5kph) and a cruising range of 2,000 nautical miles (3704km). The vessel is equipped with a
DEFENSE: The US should cancel the US visas or green cards of relatives of KMT and TPP lawmakers who have been blocking the budget, Grant Newsham said A retired US Marine Corps officer has suggested canceling the US green cards and visas of relatives of opposition Taiwanese lawmakers who have been stalling the review of a proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget. The Executive Yuan has proposed the budget for major weapons purchases over eight years, from this year to 2033. However, opposition lawmakers have refused to review the proposal, demanding that President William Lai (賴清德) first appear before the Legislative Yuan to answer questions about the proposed budget. On Thursday last week, 37 bipartisan US lawmakers sent a letter to Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the heads
Two siblings in their 70s were injured yesterday when they opened a parcel and it exploded, police in Yilan said, adding the brother and sister were both in stable condition. The two siblings, surnamed Hung (洪), had received the parcel two days earlier but did not open it until yesterday, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday in Taiwan, police said. Chen Chin-cheng (陳金城), head of the Yilan County Government Police Bureau, said the package bore no postmark or names and was labeled only with the siblings’ address. Citing the findings of a
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