ENTERTAINMENT
S.H.E. win big in Singapore
Taiwanese pop trio S.H.E. emerged as the biggest winner at the Singapore Hit Awards 2010 presented on Friday. The group took home a total of five awards: Most Popular Group/Band, Best Group, Asia Media Award (Group), Y.E.S. 93.3 FM Pick of the Pops: Song of the Year, and Y.E.S. 93.3 FM Pick of the Pops: Artiste with Most Chart Hits. The outstanding performance aside, the condition of S.H.E. member Selina Jen (任家萱), who sustained severe burns in a filming accident last week in Shanghai, remained the focus of media attention. According to Hebe Tian (田馥甄), the only S.H.E. member who attended the presentation ceremony, Selina is still receiving treatment in an isolation ward after being sent back to Taiwan and is still taking painkillers. A second major winner at this year’s event was Sodagreen, another band from Taiwan, which captured three awards: Best Composing Artiste, Best Band, and Asia Media Award (Band).
ENTERTAINMENT
Local celebrity to wed
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), better known as Big S (大S), has confirmed her engagement to the son of a wealthy Chinese businessman, ending days of rumors about the couple’s whirlwind romance. The older of the celebrity Hsu sisters described her happiness as she and partner Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲) made the announcement on Friday via a micro blog posting. The two, who met less than three weeks ago in Beijing, are to be married in February next year, according to Hsu’s father. Wang is reportedly worth NT$11.5 billion (US$376 million), through his involvement in a chain of restaurants owned by his father.
TOURISM
Search for tourists continues
A Chinese official urged Taiwan yesterday to continue its search for a group of Chinese tourists who went missing in eastern Taiwan during Typhoon Megi last week. “Even if there is only a shred of hope, we expect 100 percent effort to be given [to the rescue operation],” Deputy Secretary-General of Beijing’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Zhang Shenglin (張勝林) said as she left to return to China. A total of 19 Chinese tourists traveling on the Suhua Highway were reported missing after landslides caused a section of the highway to collapse on Oct. 21, because of heavy rain triggered by the typhoon. Zhang said she was thankful the Taiwanese authorities had sent additional manpower to join the search operation at the request of the families of the missing tourists.
EDUCATION
Ma touts education opening
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that the government’s policy to open Taiwanese universities to Chinese students would help cultivate long-term cross-strait relations. Under this policy, the first group of students enrolling in postgraduate programs are expected to arrive next spring and those on undergraduate programs in the fall, Ma said while addressing anniversary celebrations at National Taipei University. “Allowing young people from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait to become friends during the early stages of their lives will help them develop a cooperative and competitive relationship and allow them to think and learn how to resolve problems through peaceful means,” Ma said. The government is also encouraging local universities to recruit more overseas students in the hope that the ratio of international students will increase from 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent of all enrolled students over the next two years, he said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
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