Screen legend Sir Sean Connery will not take part in the human-chain rally next week, Connery's public relations agent said yesterday.
"Sean Connery is not now nor was he ever planning a trip to Taiwan or Japan," Nancy Seltzer, head of California-based Nancy Seltzer and Associates, told the Taipei Times in an e-mailed statement.
Seltzer said that the James Bond star and Scottish independence activist was booked to appear at the Oscars the day after the human-chain rally took place and will be in the US prior to the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
"We have no idea where this rumor got started, it is a complete mystery," Seltzer said in the statement.
On Thursday a main organizer of the human-chain rally said that Connery was considering taking part in the event -- which will protest China's missile threat against Taiwan -- and would announce his decision at a press conference in Tokyo on Thursday.
Peter Wang (王獻極), deputy executive director of the Hand-in-Hand Rally, said that the star was approached by Presidential Office officials after meeting President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) at Panama's centenary celebrations last November.
Seltzer's office, however, contradicted Wang, saying that while Chen and Connery did meet in Panama, at no time was the human-chain rally mentioned.
The office said that Connery was contacted after the Panama event by the Taiwan consulate, which extended an invitation from Chen to visit Taiwan as the president's guest. Connery's schedule could not permit a visit, said the office, which also represents singer Whitney Houston and Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman.
A member of the rally organizing team said that she was unaware that Connery was not coming to Taiwan.
"One thing for sure that we know, he hasn't made a decision to come here yet," Wang Ching-wen (王靖雯) said. "That's what we know and what everybody knows."
In response to Seltzer's comments that Connery will not come to Taiwan to attend the rally, Peter Wang said he was "surprised" by Connery's decision when first contacted by the Taipei Times by telephone earlier yesterday.
However, when asked by the reporter again later yesterday about Connery's visit to Taiwan, Wang said "everything is OK and runs smoothly so far."
additional reporting by Chang Yun-ping
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
RSS