The Taiwan High Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal filed by Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) in a defamation case against a Taiwanese magazine, saying that the magazine had cited another publication in its story.
It was the second time that the court upheld a ruling of the Shilin District Court on the matter, which arose from a Next Magazine story in 2012 that said several Chinese officials had paid to have sex with Zhang.
Later that year, Zhang filed a defamation lawsuit against two reporters and an editor at Next Magazine, seeking NT$1.65 million (US$53,007 at the current exchange rate) in damages and a public apology from the magazine.
However, in April 2015, the Shilin District Court ruled against Zhang, saying that the Next Magazine story had cited a report on Boxun News, an overseas Chinese community Web site.
The district court also said Next Magazine reporters had tried unsuccessfully to contact Zhang before publishing the story and that the magazine had since issued an apology to her.
In December 2015, Zhang filed an appeal with the High Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling.
The High Court’s rejection of her second appeal is not the final recourse for Zhang, as she can still appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
The actress, who is best known for her lead role in Ang Lee’s (李安) hit film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍), in December 2013 reached a confidential settlement in a defamation suit against Boxun News after the Web site alleged that she had received NT$3.2 billion in payments over a 10-year period to have sex with former Chinese minister of commerce Bo Xilai (薄熙來) and several other Chinese officials.
The Web site also retracted that story, saying the “false reports about Zhang Ziyi should never have been published.”
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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