Taipei 101 will stage a New Year fireworks show to celebrate the arrival of 2013 that will be different from the extravaganzas it has staged over the past nine years, Taipei 101 officials said yesterday.
To give the public a “graceful show different from the past,” Taipei 101 has invited France’s Groupe F to design the display, Taipei 101 spokesman Michael Liu (劉家豪) said.
Taipei 101 has been selected by CNN as one of the top 10 destinations in the world for welcoming the new year.
This year, 22,000 fireworks will be let off over 188 seconds, along with specially tailored music — an adaptation of The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky — under the theme of “Swing for the Future,” Liu said at a press briefing to unveil a 30-second animated demonstration.
Using advanced technology such as Wi-Fi and global positioning systems, fireworks will be detonated from different angles that have never been attempted in the past, he added.
The fireworks will feature saturated colors and little smoke, Liu said.
With the pyrotechnics this year expected to produce 4,500kg of carbon emissions — 66 percent less than the amount generated in past years — Taipei 101 will turn off some of its lights for six days, which will save 7,600 kilowatts per hour of electricity in total, Liu said.
Firework lovers will also get a chance to see the display up close from the Taipei 101 Observatory.
Groupe F has been involved in several world events in the past, such as the opening fireworks show of the Asian Cup in Doha, Qatar, last year, the 120th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 2009 and the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004.
The French company is also in charge of the New Year’s Eve fireworks display at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world.
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
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