MUSIC
Houli to host sax players
The 2011 Houli Instruments Carnival will take place next Friday and Saturday in Greater Taichung, with more than 1,000 saxophone players attempting to break a Guinness World record. The festival will include saxophone-centered musical performances, booths showcasing instruments and interactive musical activities. It will be held in Houli District (后里), the largest center for saxophone production in the nation, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said. More than 1,000 musicians are expected to team up to perform the national anthem and Taiwanese folk songs in an attempt to break the record for the most saxophone players performing together. The current world record was set in May in Australia by 1,000 saxophonists. Houli is known to saxophone players around the world as “the home of the horn,” thanks to its many instrument producers, mostly family-owned operations, that provide saxophones for some of the world’s biggest names.
CINEMA
Film to show in Venice
Taiwanese film Seediq Bale (賽德克巴萊), one of the country’s most-anticipated features this year and the most costly production ever for the Taiwanese film industry, has been selected to show at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. “I am actually more nervous than touched,” director Wei Te-sheng (魏德勝) said yesterday. “When I learned we were nominated, I was really happy and was like: ‘Is it true?’ Later it’s like: ‘What should I do then?’ And I began to get nervous about how to deal with what’s coming next.” The film, which took 12 years to complete, is set against the backdrop of the Wushe Incident — a large-scale uprising by the Seediq tribe against Japanese colonial rule in the 1930s.
GEOGRAPHY
Taiwan third at 10th NGWC
A three student team came third at the 10th National Geographic World Championship (NGWC) on Wednesday, the nation’s best performance since first entering the biennial competition in 2005. The final round, held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, saw Russia, Canada and Taiwan competing for the title. Russia eventually took gold while Canada grabbed silver. Taiwan’s Cheng Chen-luo (鄭承珞), 15, Chu Po-chen (朱博琛), 14 and Hsu Tong-hong (徐東宏), 14, defeated 14 other teams to reach the final. The 14 other teams were from Australia, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Singapore, Slovakia, the UK and the US. The National Geographic World Championship is a biennial geography competition for teams of students 16 years of age and under.
CULTURE
City official visits Shanghai
The head of Greater Kaohsiung’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs Shih Che (史哲) headed for Shanghai yesterday for a visit aimed at learning about the Chinese commercial capital’s development of cultural and creative industry. Shih said prior to departure that the trip was a response to calls by a number of city councilors who said the city should step up its development of cultural and creative industry and that Shanghai could serve as a guide in this respect. Asked about her view on Shih’s trip, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the Democratic Progressive Party said she was pleased to see normal engagement across the Taiwan Strait. Kaohsiung has always sought to maintain regular and close contacts with foreign and Chinese cities, Chen said, adding that she would travel to Southeast Asia next month to promote city-to-city diplomacy.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the