ASTRONOMY
Perseids to peak Aug. 12, 13
The annual Perseid meteor shower is to peak between Aug. 12 and 13, with about 110 shooting stars per hour predicted, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday. The best time to observe the Perseids is between 10pm and sunrise, the museum said. The meteor shower should be particularly outstanding this year, because the peak is at the beginning of a lunar month, when there is no interference from moonlight, it said. Meanwhile, Venus will reach its brightest on Aug. 18 and will be highly visible all month as it moves into a position away from the sun that affords excellent visibility from Earth, the museum said. The planet’s apparent magnitude could reach -4.5, meaning that it could cast shadows and reflect on water, the museum said. The magnitude measures the brightness of a celestial body as seen on Earth and falls in value the brighter an object becomes.
HEALTH
Valsartan tablets recalled
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday ordered a recall of 24.21 million tablets of valsartan, a heart medicine supplied by China’s Zhuhai Rundu Pharmaceutical Co. The recall was launched after it was discovered that the valsartan supplied by the company contained N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a potential carcinogen. The four types of medicines affected are the 160mg Valsart FC Tab, the 80mg Valsart FC Tab, the 5/80mg Asartan FC Tab and the 80/12.5mg Valsart-H FC Tab, produced by Taiwan’s Standard Chem & Pharm Co Ltd. The recall follows another last month, when more than 10 million tablets of six types of valsartan medicine supplied by another Chinese company, Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals, were also tainted with NDMA.
SOCIETY
Teen 101 climbers fined
Two Taiwanese-Americans who on Tuesday tried to scale Taipei 101 have each been fined NT$1,500 for disturbing social order, Taipei police said yesterday. The two men, surnamed Huang (黃) and Li (李), tried to reach the 90th floor from the 91st floor by scaling the fence surrounding the 91st floor’s outdoor observatory and sliding down a pole along the building’s exterior, police said. After the two 19-year-olds entered the outdoor observatory at about 9pm, Huang was stopped by a security guard as he tried to climb over the fence. Li, who made it down to the 90th floor, was later found hiding in the northwestern corner by the same security guard after the guard checked a closed-circuit television feed, police said. Huang and Li said that they wanted to “shoot some night photos.”
CRIME
Man guilty of gun smuggling
A Taiwanese man has been sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for attempting to smuggle guns and ammunition from the US to Taiwan, Arizona authorities said on Wednesday. Yang Fu-sheng, 39, was found in possession of 10,000 rounds of ammunition and 40 gun frames when he was stopped by Arizona police on June 22 last year for speeding, the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Arizona said in a statement. Yang, who had two days before legally entered the US, had also attempted to purchase 100 firearms with the intention of smuggling them back to Taiwan, the statement said. Yang pleaded guilty in court and on Monday was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, the office said.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
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