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 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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