ART
Yo-yo Ma to visit Kaohsiung
World-renowned Grammy-winning cellist Yo-yo Ma (馬友友) next month is to give a concert at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts with his longtime collaborator, pianist Kathryn Stott, the concert’s promoter Management of New Arts said in a statement on Wednesday. The duo is to perform classics including the Cello Sonata in D minor, Op. 40 by Dmitri Shostakovich and the Cello Sonata in A major by Cesar Franck, it said. These classics are important to Ma as vehicles of dialogue and a way to communicate emotions, the promoter said. The concert is to take place on Nov. 4, it said.
SOCIETY
Plant closed after deaths
The Taoyuan Department of Labor has ordered work to be suspended at a US chemical plant that closed down recently, after two workers died on Thursday while dismantling equipment. The case is being investigated for possible contravention of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (職業安全衛生法), the department said. The incident happened at about 9am when three men identified by their last names Chen (陳), Liang (梁) and Liu (劉) were working to tear down an industrial furnace at Chemours, which closed its plant in Guanyin District (觀音) on Aug. 1 after laying off 259 workers. Chen and Liang were inside the furnace when debris from its inner walls fell, hitting them on the head, the department said. At the time, Liu was standing on top of a ladder and removing the insulation bricks on top of the furnace. Chen, 57, and Liang, 58, were later pronounced dead at a hospital, local authorities said. The three men were working for a local company which was contracted by Chemours to dismantle the furnace’s inner insulation.
ENVIRONMENT
Birds arrive in Tainan
The annual black-faced spoonbill season is to start on Oct. 28, as the bird species start migrating to Taiwan for the winter, the Tainan Ecological Conservation Institute said on Wednesday. A series of events would be held in Tainan’s Cigu District (七股) in the hope of raising awareness about habitat conservation, institute director Chiu Jen-wu (邱仁武) said. The migratory birds fly to Taiwan every year around September for winter and stay until April or May the following year, before they head back to their breeding areas in Northeast Asia. The first black-faced spoonbills this year arrived in Taiwan early last month at the Cigu Black-faced Spoonbill Conservation Area, and as the weather has become cooler since the Mid-Autumn Festival, the number of birds in Tainan and Chiayi has since increased rapidly, Chiu said. As of Wednesday, 235 of the endangered species had arrived in Tainan, with 147 spotted in the reserve, he added.
TRANSPORTATION
Kinmen taxi fares to rise
Taxi fares in Kinmen County are to increase from January for the first time since 2011, the local government announced on Thursday. The Kinmen County Government said it approved the increase proposed by the association of local taxi drivers due to the ballooning cost of running business. The new fee charging system would go into effect on Jan. 1 and see fares rise faster than before in two ways. Each journey is to charge an additional NT$5 for every 200m after the first kilometer and for every accumulated two minutes during which the taxi travels slower than 5kph.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its