A retired National Taiwan University (NTU) French language and literature lecturer fell to his death from the top floor of a 10-story building in Taipei on Sunday, police said.
Police were informed about the incident in Wenshan District (文山) on Sunday afternoon and later identified the body as that of 67-year-old Jacques Picoux.
After a preliminary investigation, police said Picoux fell from his rented 10th-floor apartment and died instantly.
No signs of fighting or struggle were found in the apartment or on the building’s rooftop, police said, adding that they have ruled out foul play.
The investigation would continue to determine the circumstances behind Picoux’s death, police said.
Picoux’s 68th birthday was less than one month away.
The news of his death shocked the people who knew the French teacher, who was also a translator for Malaysian-Chinese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮).
Describing Picoux as an excellent painter, Tsai said he was saddened to hear of his death.
Picoux, who held a master’s degree from Universite Paris Diderot, had been living in Taipei since 1979, when he and Francoise Zylberberg came to Taiwan for a two-year exchange program held between Diderot and NTU.
After the program, Picoux decided to stay and continue teaching at NTU until his retirement in 2004.
Apart from teaching, Picoux specialized in collage painting.
Also a fan of film, he worked as a translator for Chinese-speaking filmmakers, including Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), Wong Kar-wai (王家衛) and Zhang Yimou (張藝謀).
He played the character “Kong Kong” in last year’s martial-arts film The Assassin (刺客聶隱娘), and helped promote the film in Europe.
Picoux’s partner, with whom he lived for 35 years, died of cancer in October last year.
Picoux was in despair after losing his partner, his friend Lee Yen-jong (李晏榕) wrote last year on Facebook.
Lee, who was a candidate from the Green Social Democratic Party in the legislative elections on Jan. 16, said that Picoux felt powerless after seeing his partner suffer at a hospital during an emergency resuscitation procedure authorized by his partner’s relatives.
She described the two as “strangers” under the law, despite being close to each other.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
RSS