Pop star Selina Jen (任家萱), who sustained severe burns when an explosion scene went awry on the set of a TV series being shot in China on Friday afternoon, was flown back to Taipei on a medical charter flight on Sunday night, her father said.
His daughter returned home to receive medical treatment for burns to her hips and thighs following the accident on the set of the drama I Have a Date with Spring during filming in Shanghai, Jen Ming-ting (任明廷) told reporters.
She was in stable condition, but would require skin graft surgery at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Linkou, he said.
File photo: CNA
The singer-actress, whose 29th birthday is on Sunday, is a member of Taiwan’s popular pop singing group S.H.E and has also appeared in a number of TV dramas.
Local Chinese-language media outlets said Jen had suffered third-degree burns on up to 40 percent of her body, while her Chinese co-star, actor-singer Yu Haoming (俞灝明), suffered equally seriously burns and remains hospitalized in the intensive care unit of Shanghai Ruijin Hospital.
During Friday’s shoot, a series of five explosions were supposed to be set off one after another to allow Jen and Yu enough time to escape from a burning house, but the explosions went off simultaneously, the media reports said.
The reports said Selina Jen’s legs were badly burned because she was wearing silk stockings at the time.
The Chinese-language United Daily News reported that thousands of fans had put their names on a Web site offering to pray for her.
S.H.E has released 12 albums since being formed in 2000.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s