ASTRONOMY
Bright comet on Saturday
Comet C/2023 A3, the brightest this year, is anticipated to reach its peak luminosity on Saturday, as it reaches its closest point to Earth, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The window of time to view the comet — discovered in January last year by the Tsuchinshan Observatory in China — is to last until the end of this month, it said. Stargazers should look out to the western horizon after sunset if they want to catch a glimpse, it said. While the comet is visible to the naked eye, using binoculars or a small telescope can improve a person’s viewing experience, it said. The comet could post an apparent magnitude of minus-2, equivalent to Mercury, it said. Since the comet has an orbital period of several tens of thousands of years, its upcoming appearance makes it a once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity, the museum said, citing data from NASA. Astronomical buffs can also look forward to the year’s largest full moon on Thursday next week, the museum said. The supermoon would be at its fullest at 7:26pm, when it would be about 357,000km from Earth, it said.
FOOD
One more dies of poisoning
A food poisoning incident in Taitung County has left one more person dead, bringing the death toll to four, the Taitung Mackay Memorial Hospital confirmed on Saturday. The victim was a 59-year-old woman surnamed Yang (楊), who fell into a coma on Sept. 18, the hospital said. Before her death, she had been treated with tracheal intubation to keep her alive. However, Yang’s family had a meeting with doctors on Friday and decided to take her off life support as she had not shown signs of improvement, the hospital said. The food poisoning incident was traced back to the death of an 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾), who died on Sept. 17 after eating glutinous millet dumplings that she had made. That evening, several relatives and friends, including Yang, who came to her wake, and ate leftover dumplings and other items in Tseng’s kitchen later exhibited symptoms such as vomiting and convulsions. Three more people subsequently died, while nearly a dozen people were hospitalized for treatment. The dumplings were later discovered to contain a high level of terbufos — a hazardous chemical compound found in some pesticides. Only Yang’s younger sister, 53, remains hospitalized for treatment, the hospital said. Taitung prosecutors on Saturday said they were still investigating the case, without disclosing any further details.
ENTERTAINMENT
Ariel Lin wins in Busan
Taiwanese actress Ariel Lin (林依晨) on Sunday won best actress in a leading role at this year’s Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards in Busan, South Korea. Lin won the award for her performance in the Taiwanese television drama Imperfect Us (不夠善良的我們). Lin gave a teary speech in Korean, saying the award was “a great motivation for both me and the work.” She added in English that: “I truly believe that a good script can let people feel understood, it can be very inspirational, and it can show people what truly important things” are. The theme song for the series, Learn to Live Again (善良的我們), composed by Singaporean singer Tanya Chua (蔡健雅), won best original song. Having won the award with her first composition for a drama series, Chua said the award “means so much to me.” Imperfect Us had been nominated for five awards — the most for this year’s event, including best Asian contents, best male supporting actor and best writer. The awards, now in its sixth year, is organized by the Busan International Film Festival and South Korea’s National IT Industry Promotion Agency, according to its official Web site. The event aims to “increase audience engagement and showcase a diverse range of audiovisual content,” it says.
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
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