ASTRONOMY
Meteor shower tomorrow
The Eta Aquarid meteor shower, one of the biggest celestial events of the spring, is to peak tomorrow with a maximum rate of 50 shooting stars per hour, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. As many as 50 Eta Aquarids per hour could flash through the radiant in the northern sky, with the frequency increasing the closer it gets to dawn, the museum said. The radiant is the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to originate. Although the phenomenon could be seen with the naked eye, the museum said it would set up video cameras on high mountains to provide a streaming service on YouTube starting at 10pm that day. The Eta Aquarids, known for their brightness and speed, occur annually when Earth encounters dusty debris left by Halley’s Comet. The debris burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, creating the meteor shower. Other cosmic wonders this month include a brighter-than-usual Mercury on May 10, when the planet reaches its greatest elongation — as far as it ever gets from the sun as seen from Earth. Mercury, which is often difficult to spot because it is closest to the sun, would be positioned 26° apart from the star, making it easy to spot with the naked eye right before sunrise, the museum said.
SOCIETY
Invoice lottery changing
The number of cloud-based receipts that would be eligible for a NT$500 prize in the invoice lottery is to increase from 1.65 million to 1.95 million per draw until December, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said on Tuesday. The uniform invoice lottery is drawn every two months, with the cloud-based lottery winners drawn directly from receipts stored digitally. Each draw also includes 30 cloud-based receipts eligible for the NT$1 million prize, 16,000 that win NT$2,000 and 100,000 eligible for NT$800. The additional NT$500 prizes aim to encourage consumers to ask for a cloud-based receipt instead of a paper receipt, with the ultimate goal of having a paperless lottery system, the ministry’s Taxation Administration said. Consumers can store their cloud-based receipts on the MOF’s integrated platform or carrier APPs, as well as assigned bank accounts for their prize money to be transferred, making the whole procedure automatic and eco-friendly, the administration said. The uniform invoice lottery was created to encourage consumers to ask for a receipt when making a purchase to avoid businesses engaging in tax evasion.
BUSINESS
Chunghwa Post goes green
Chunghwa Post aims to have about 8,000 motorcycles used to deliver mail be replaced by electric scooters by 2039, the state-run postal service said in a report to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. In 2017, to comply with the government’s “Air Pollution Prevention Action Plan,” the company began to acquire electric motorcycles, moving toward the goal of having a “green fleet.” Chunghwa Post said that 3,241 electric motorcycles were in use by the end of 2022, accounting for about 41 percent of the total number of two-wheeled motorcycles. The proportion of electric motorcycles is estimated to reach 50 percent in 2029, the company said. The fleet of delivery vehicles would be 100 percent electrified by 2039, it added. The company estimated the annual carbon emissions of gasoline-powered postal delivery scooters to be about 1.34 tonnes. If all are replaced with electric scooters, the nation’s carbon emissions can be reduced by about 4,342 tonnes per year, which is equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide adsorbed by trees in 11.24 Daan Forest Parks, it said.
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
The first two F-16V Block 70 jets Taiwan purchased from the US were spotted unexpectedly turning back after departing from Hawaii yesterday, potentially further delaying delivery of the aircraft. Taiwan has purchased 66 of the F-16 C/D Block 70 jets to be deployed at Chihhang Air Base (志航基地) in Taitung County and operated by the air force's 7th Tactical Fighter Wing to defend Taiwan’s eastern region. Two single-seat jets, bearing serial No. 6727 and 6728, were spotted taking off from Hickam Field in Hawaii yesterday, observers said. Based on the precedent set during the delivery of Taiwan's older F-16 Block 20s, the new
A sharp rise in compensation to be paid by air force officers who leave before completing their required service could indicate an increase in pilots leaving the military early, an analyst said on Friday, warning that the trend could worsen a shortage of experienced personnel. Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Association for Strategic Foresight, issued the warning even though the number of volunteer military personnel is expected to increase next year. The planned headcount for volunteer military personnel, covering officers, noncommissioned officers (NCO) and enlisted soldiers, is 158,223 for next year, up 4,258 from 153,965 this year, Chieh said. The increase
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