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Taiwan Quick Take

■ Culture
Schools hold language event
Taipei City's public and private senior high schools held a joint exhibition of assignments and performances by students in different languages yesterday to showcase their achievements in language learning. Performances were staged at three municipal senior high schools, with students wearing the traditional costumes of different countries to present either plays or sing to the audience. At Taipei Municipal Songshan Senior High School, performances were given in German, Spanish and Korean. Performances in French and Latin were staged at Taipei Municipal Hsisung Senior High School, with more than 2,000 students from 27 schools enrolled in French courses. Taipei Municipal First Girl's High School is the only school in the city offering a Latin course, and its student's performed in the language. Performances in Japanese, the language being learned by the most students in Taipei, were held at Taipei Municipal Chunglun Senior High School.

■ Tourism
F4 boost tourism
Local pop group F4, named as representatives for the nation's tourist industry this year, has attracted nearly 5,000 fans from Japan and South Korea hoping to meet their idols today at National Taiwan University's sports center, a Tourism Bureau official said. The fans will create about NT$100 million (US$3 million) in sightseeing revenue for Taiwan, a bureau estimate said. F4 will perform and meet their fans, the official said, adding that the bureau has planned another meeting with F4 as a competition prize to attract even more tourists. Quoting bureau statistics, the official said Japanese tourists made 1.16 million visits to Taiwan and South Koreans made 196,260 visits. The bureau hopes to attract more visitors from these two countries using F4 as a draw. The meeting will be aired on the Internet at www.im.tv/myvlog/JVKVtaiwan.

■ Economics
Nobel winner to visit
Muhammad Yunus, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, has accepted an invitation to visit Taiwan, the chairman of the Taipei-based Cross-Strait Common Market Foundation said yesterday. Former premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) made the announcement at the opening ceremony of the 2007 Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), being held in the coastal town of Boao in China's Hainan Province. Siew is attending the regional economic event in his capacity as head of a group of Taiwanese entrepreneurs. During a brief meeting at the forum, Siew invited Yunus to visit Taiwan, he said. Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below."

■ Society
Watchdog to help victim
The Consumers' Foundation is intervening on behalf of a young woman in her bid for compensation from Chinatrust Commercial Bank for trauma she suffered as a result of a January mock bank robbery that she believed was real at the time. Foundation chairman Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said the woman was in the bank's Chungshan branch when the bank staged the anti-robbery drill without giving any prior notice to customers. Caught unaware by the exercise, in which a "robber" wielding a gun stood right next to her, the woman nearly collapsed and had difficulty breathing following the exercise, Cheng said. The woman was hospitalized for 10 days. She is still receiving outpatient treatment and is unable to work.

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