SOCIETY
Yunlin runs music festival
Yunlin County is to hold its first music festival along its coastline today to celebrate summer and the area’s love of the ocean. The festival, which will feature a family running event, concerts, art performances and a lucky draw, is also aimed at raising environmental awareness, organizers said. Sharing the spotlight at the festival will be a new museum near the venue that opened early this year, Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) said yestereday. She touted the museum as the Taiwanese version of the remote moorland farmhouse named “Wuthering Heights” that serves as the backdrop of the novel of the same name by British writer Emily Bronte. As isolated as Wuthering Heights, the Taiwan Taisi Haikou Life Museum rises up on the seashore in a beautiful panoramic setting, Su said. The museum offers an authentic glimpse of the lifestyles of people living along the coastal area and introduces aquaculture, one of the economic backbones of Yunlin County, she said.
SOCIETY
New Party founder dies
Senior politician Chen Kwei-miew (陳癸淼), who helped found the pro-China New Party in 1993, has died at the age of 81. Chen was surrounded by his family at Cheng Hsin General Hospital when he died. The New Party has extended its condolences to his family members, with party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) commending Chen as a respectable politician. Chen had suffered from kidney and liver disease in his later years. A former lawmaker and acting mayor of what was then Tainan City in the 1990s, Chen helped found the New Party, which broke away from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in opposition to the leadership style of then-KMT chairman and then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
SOCIETY
Tang winner reveals plans
Chinese-American historian Yu Ying-shih (余英時), the first Tang Prize winner in Sinology, promised on Friday to visit Taiwan for the first time in six years in September and attend the Tang Prize award ceremony and related events in person. Yu, a Princeton University professor emeritus, is regarded by many of his peers as the greatest Chinese intellectual historian of his generation. The 84-year-old said he plans to arrive in Taipei on Sept. 13 and will attend the award ceremony on Sept. 18, deliver a speech the following day, and then participate in a forum on Sept. 20. In addition to his academic pursuits, Yu is an outspoken supporter of the democracy movement in China.
ENTERTAINMENT
Carey concert sought
The cancelation of Celine Dion’s Taipei concert in October could reopen the possibility of a performance in the city by Mariah Carey, who was vying for the same venue earlier this month. Amy Ko, a promoter at Yu Kuang Music, said they informed Carey’s team immediately once they found out that Taipei Arena was available again, adding that they have not had any response yet. “If we get a positive response from the pop diva, the most likely date for the concert would be Oct. 30,” Ko said. Carey and Dion had been competing to book Taipei Arena from Oct. 27 to Oct. 30, with the Canadian singer winning the time slot. After losing out in Taipei, Carey’s team planned a concert in Manila on Oct. 28. However, on Aug. 13, Dion announced that she had canceled her Asian tour to look after her 72-year-old husband Rene Angelil, who is battling throat cancer.
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
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