K aohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said Wednesday the city government will consider blocking the roads to the 16th and 17th piers at the Kaohsiung Harbor in southern Taiwan if the central government vetoes its plan to turn the area into a pop music center.
Chen made the remarks as she joined city government department heads, staff and activists from environmental and cultural groups in the southern port city in staging a sit-in as a protest against a notice from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) demanding the city government continue consulting with other government agencies and wharf facilities users before putting its pop music center project into force.
Chen said she didn’t accept the proposal as the former Democratic Progressive Party administration had already approved the project and promised to assist the city government in completing necessary administrative procedures, including some law revisions, to facilitate realization of the project.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Supermodel Naomi Campbell was ordered Friday to do 200 hours of unpaid community service after admitting kicking and spitting at police officers as she “went berserk” when her luggage went missing during the Heathrow airport Terminal 5 baggage fiasco.
Following chaotic scenes outside Uxbridge magistrates court in west London — during which Sky News presenter Kay Burley allegedly grabbed a female photographer by the throat after being hit in the face with a camera — Campbell was ordered to pay US$395 compensation to each of the police officers and US$296 to the plane’s captain.
The court heard the supermodel flew into a violent rage after a case holding an Yves Saint Laurent outfit she had been contracted to wear on a US chat show disappeared as she was due to fly to Los Angeles.
PHOTO: AP
After Campbell was told the news as she sat in the first class cabin of the British Airways flight she screamed obscenities, threw objects, thrashed her arms around, accused the plane’s captain and police who attended of being racists, and wedged herself in her seat to try to stop officers removing her, the court was told.
The only other first class passenger took sanctuary in the aircraft’s kitchen area.
Campbell, 38, who was wearing “formidable” stiletto-heeled platform boots at the time, only stopped kicking when a police officer radioed a colleague asking for leg restraints. She later told them: “You can’t arrest me; it’s just because I’m black and famous.”
Campbell pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting a police officer, one count of disorderly conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress and using threatening, abusive words or behavior to cabin crew.
Campbell, immaculate in a black Alexander McQueen suit and stilettos, sat quietly through the hearing after confirming her name and guilty plea.
In addition to the compensation she was ordered to pay fines totaling US$5,440.
Outside the court Burley, one of Sky News’s highest-profile presenters, was hit in the face with a camera, leaving her with a bruised cheekbone. Witnesses said Burley was struck as photographers raced to get a picture of Campbell arriving at the court. According to witnesses, Burley grabbed Kirsty Wigglesworth, a photographer for the Associated Press news agency, by the throat.
Burley was absent from her usual presenting slot on Sky News yesterday afternoon and was twice seen by medical staff at the court. Asked about the incident, she said: “As far as I am aware I did not put my hands around her neck. I was hit in the face with a camera. You can still see the injury on my forehead and like anyone else would do I just put my hands up. If I did anything else, then I apologize.”
US rapper 50 Cent was ordered to surrender any guns he might have after a judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order requested by the rapper’s ex-girlfriend, lawyers said. A lawyer for the rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, said he would contest the order and that 50 Cent did not have guns or access to guns. “To my knowledge, he has no guns,” said lawyer Brett Kimmel.
Celebrity homemaker Martha Stewart has been denied entry to Britain because of her 2004 US conviction for lying about a stock sale. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc, the company founded by Stewart, said the 66-year-old businesswoman had been planning to travel to Britain for business meetings.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would