ENTERTAINMENT
X-men in Taipei
Australian actor Hugh Jackman, known for his role as Wolverine in the X-Men movies, arrived in Taiwan yesterday to promote Logan, which is expected to be the final time he plays the character on the big screen. Patrick Stewart, who plays Professor X in the film, is accompanying Jackman on the movie’s promotional tour, 20th Century Fox said. To celebrate Jackman’s beloved character that made its debut in 2000, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan and the film studio hosted a photographic exhibition of the characters and story lines featured in the Wolverine series of films. The exhibition runs until March 17 in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義). The movie opens in theaters on Feb. 28.
POLICE
Vietnamese workers arrested
Tainan police on Saturday arrested 11 Vietnamese at a karaoke parlor party that was organized by a migrant worker who had left his job, Tainan police said yesterday. Acting on a tip, police raided the establishment and caught the suspects, including an alleged illicit drug supplier, a man surnamed Wu (吳). Police said they found Wu in possession of six “coffee packs” weighing 52.2g containing a mixture of Category 2 and Category 3 drugs. Drug dealers have been packaging drugs in instant coffee bags to disguise their contents, police said. Urine tests showed that seven of those arrested had used illicit drugs, police said, adding that they have been referred to the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office on suspicion of violating the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例).
ENTERTAINMENT
Local film comes in second
The Taiwanese film Way Back Home (回家的路), directed by graduate student Cheng Tang-jung (程堂榮), has won second place for Best Short Fiction at the Fourth Chennai International Short Film Festival in India. Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in Chennai director-general Charles Li Chao-cheng (李朝成) accepted the award on Saturday. Way Back Home, produced by Wu Hsiu-ching (吳秀菁) and Chiu Ding-hao (邱丁豪), was one of 140 entries from 14 countries. It tells the story of two children going home from school on their own after their mother forgets to pick them up, and they do not want to contact their remarried father to collect them. It explores romantic, family, parent-child and marital relationships in modern society, the office said. The festival, which was first held in 2014, holds competitions in the short fiction, short documentary and short animation categories.
MARATHON
Taiwanese join Tokyo race
About 1,300 Taiwanese participated in the Tokyo Marathon yesterday, the largest group of runners from any foreign country at the event that attracted about 36,000 people from around the world. The marathon started at 9am at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and ended at Tokyo Station. Sixteen members of the Chinese Taipei Road Running Association, including a 72-year-old, participated in the race. Some Taiwanese runners wore the Republic of China flag on their clothing or painted on their face, while some wrote “Taiwan” on their chests in English. Kenyan runners dominated the marathon, taking first place in both the men’s and women’s divisions. Yesterday’s race was a qualifier for Japanese men for the 2017 World Championships in Athletics to be held in London in August. Hiroto Inoue had the best time among Japanese men, finishing in eighth place overall.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: