Warner Bros and a local company that took promotional photographs for the US horror movie Annabelle: Creation have apologized for using Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp’s (THSRC) facilities without permission, the corporation said yesterday.
The local company did not follow a request by Warner Bros that it obtain permission from THSRC before taking photographs at any THSRC facility, the operator said.
The firm subsequently allowed Warner Bros to post some of the photographs on Facebook on Aug.12.
Warner Bros took down the photographs after a request by THSRC on Aug. 15, the corporation said.
“Warner Bros and the company in charge of taking the promotional photographs apologized for the trouble caused by the incident. Warner Bros demanded that its contractor apologize to THSRC and promised to assist and coordinate with the the contractor with regard to any compensation required for the unauthorized use of images of the high-speed rail system,” THSRC added.
“We are again asking all media outlets that have photoshoot requests for the purpose of conducting interviews, covering stories, producing advertisements or filming TV dramas to file an application first. The permission to do so would only be granted after their applications are approved,” THSRC said in a statement, adding that media should respect high-speed rail passengers and its authority to review photography requests.
THSRC did not disclose the amount of compensation from Warner Bros and its contractor, saying that it was part of a settlement to keep the amount of the compensation confidential.
The settlement was reached after two-and-a-half months of negotiations, because Warner Bros initially insisted that only its contractor needed to apologize for the mistake, a source privy to the settlement said.
In separate news, the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) yesterday said that it would launch a trial program tomorrow offering 31 percent discount to university students traveling to Hualien on the Tzuchiang Express train departing from Shulin (樹林) at 6:40pm on Thursday and returning at 9pm on Monday.
The discount applies to university students whether local or foreign, the TRA said, adding that students must present their university IDs to buy the discounted tickets.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater