ENTERTAINMENT
Film to be shown in park
An event inspired by the crying scene in Vive L’Amour (愛情萬歲), a film by Taiwan-based Malaysian director Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮), is to be held at Daan Park in Taipei on New Year’s Eve to mark the 30th anniversary of the award-winning movie. Tsai’s two-hour drama ends with the main actress, Yang Kuei-mei (楊貴媚), walking to Daan Park, which was then still under construction, and bursting into tears in the early hours of New Year’s Day after a series of unfortunate events. The scene, which lasts nearly seven minutes, has become an iconic moment for many film enthusiasts. Tsai also won the Gold Lion — the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in Italy — for the film in 1994. The event would begin with a screening of the movie at the park’s outdoor stage at 9:45pm on Dec. 31, followed by a countdown to next year with Tsai, Yang and actor Lee Kang-sheng (李康生), the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) said. It would be free of charge and the movie would have Chinese and English subtitles.
CHIAYI
One dead in site collapse
One person died and four were injured when a 3m-high walkway to a scenic platform collapsed in Chiayi County on Wednesday. They fell when the wooden sightseeing platform they were standing on gave way near Fumei Suspension Bridge in Alishan, the Chiayi County Fire Bureau said. A 76-year-old woman, surnamed Liao (廖), died due to a head injury, while the others are in a stable condition following treatment at hospitals, the fire bureau said. The five people were part of a larger 44-person tour group from Miaoli County, a tour group member said. They had been admiring the picturesque surroundings while standing on the walkway when it “suddenly fractured and collapsed,” the witness said. Authorities are investigating the cause of the incident. The tourist site is managed and maintained by Alishan Township.
SOCIETY
Woman dies in detention
Prosecutors are investigating the cause of death of an Indonesian woman at the National Immigration Agency’s (NIA) detention center in Yilan County on Monday. Her roommate found her in bed without vital signs and alerted the detention center’s personnel to seek medical assistance, the NIA said, adding that the woman was rushed to a hospital, but efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful. Detainees at the center are primarily migrant workers who have overstayed their visa or people who have lost contact with their employers or other connections. The woman entered the detention center on Oct. 21 and began displaying symptoms such as coughing on Thursday last week. She was taken to see a doctor on the same day, and the center had continued monitoring her condition until Monday.
FOOD
Pizza prices to rise
Pizza Hut on Thursday said that the price of eight of its pizzas are to increase by between NT$5 and NT$40, or an average of 2.5 percent, effective immediately. Global inflation has led to fluctuations in the cost of raw materials, food ingredients, human resources and electricity, it said. Therefore, prices have been adjusted to ensure the high quality of its products and services, it added. Meanwhile, prices for three small pizzas are to decrease by NT$30, or 7.5 percent.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
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