week4-‘The Imitation Game': The White House’s Oscar Favorite

James RaineySenior Film ReporterRaineyTime

FEBRUARY 18, 2015 | 05:43PM PT

ased on cryptic responses from inside the White House, President Obama and the first family’s viewing plans on Oscar night must be a closely guarded secret.

SEE MORE: Awards: The Contenders

What can be safely assumed, though, is that executive branchers will be pulling hard Sunday for one nominee they can (almost) call one of their own — “The Imitation Game” scribe Graham Moore.

An Academy Award nominee for adapted screenplay, Moore becomes the Obama Administration’s de facto inside man because his mother, Susan Sher, served as First Lady Michelle Obama’s initial chief of staff and “confidant-in-chief” in the first years after the Obamas’ move from Chicago to Washington.

Michelle Obama lauded “The Imitation Game” and other films and TV shows last month for helping to break stereotypes about gay people. The film depicts Alan Turing’s heroic efforts to break a crucial Nazi code during World War II, even as he was ostracized for his homosexuality.

“You have the power to shape our understanding of the world around us,” the First Lady told a group of writers and creatives in a Jan. 30 speech. “You challenge our most strongly held beliefs.”

David Axelrod, previously President Obama’s top political strategist, also has praised screenwriter Moore’s biopic as “brilliantly written and acted,” adding, via Twitter, that the “riveting” film was ”Oscarworthy.”

Though they aren’t in the habit of choosing sides (and thus opponents) in most cultural and sporting contests, the Obamas have told Sher how proud they know she must be of her oldest son. Now an administrator at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Sher called all the attention “very sweet.”

Sher laughs that she does not need much prompting to kvell about her son, 33, and his early flights of both left- and right-brain fancy — thriving in science camp, playing in a band, then skimming through jobs as a bike messenger and a sound engineer in a nightclub.

Moore and his mother like to joke how, in early 2009, they both turned into couch-surfers. As an old Michelle Obama friend from Chicago, Sher had signed on in the White House but did not yet have a D.C. home. She crashed on a friend’s sofa. Graham did the same when he first arrived in L.A. to try his hand at scripting.

“We took turns telling each other, ‘You know, if this doesn’t work out, you can always come home,'” Moore recalled.

But Moore, who studied religious history at Columbia University, showed uncommon discipline. After toying with a few part-time jobs, he had already completed a novel, “The Sherlockian.” (The story follows a Sherlock Holmes buff who solves the murder of an Arthur Conan Doyle scholar. Jill Biden, wife of the Vice President Joe Biden, threw a book party in the couple’s official residence. It became a bestseller.)

To assure his professional dedication did not waver, Moore thought it best not to become a pajama-clad laptop jockey. So, early on, he developed a practice of dressing each day in jacket and tie. Then he would sit down in his tiny apartment to write.

“The coat and tie became a habit, and I still wear them every day,” Moore said. In Hollywood, that means he is often mistaken for an agent.

He spent years helping to bring Turing’s story — based on Andrew Hodges’ biography “Alan Turing: The Enigma” — to the screen. His screenplay hit the top of the Black List in 2011. Then there was revising. And more revising.

Moore called “The Imitation Game” “quietly insouciant in its politics,” suggesting people in his mother’s orbit might appreciate that. “We didn’t want to make a film that preached loudly to the converted,” he said, “but rather, we wanted to make a film that brought Alan Turing’s story to an audience that might not otherwise have been exposed to it.”

“The Imitation Game” was released in the U.S. last year on Christmas Day by the Weinstein Co. and has grossed $81 million so far.

Despite the awards season whirlwind — Moore has already won the adapted screenplay prize from the Writers Guild of America — he has managed to keep working on revisions to his second novel. It’s a legal thriller set in New York in the 1880s. That’s about all he’ll say for now.

Moore said he is looking forward to hosting his mother, brother and stepsister on Hollywood’s night of nights. And his mother — who once told him, “You better have a Plan B if this writing thing doesn’t work out” — is bursting. Said Sher: “We are all tremendously excited.”

FILED UNDER: Graham MooreMichelle ObamaPresident ObamaThe Imitation Game

Keyword:

Tremendously (a.) 可怕的，驚人的

Stepsister (n.) 異父[母]姊妹

Dedication (n.) 奉獻 忘我精神

Scholar (n.) 學者；古典學者

Religious (a.) 宗教(上)的

Prompt (a.) 敏捷的，迅速的

Administrator (n.) 管理人；理事

Homosexuality (n.) 同性戀

Laud (v.) 讚美，稱讚

Structure of the Lead：

   WHO- Morten Tyldum

   WHEN-February 18, 2015

   WHAT-won the adapted screenplay prize from the Writers Guild of America

   WHY-helping to break stereotypes about gay people.

   WHERE-Hollywood

   HOW- no given

week 2 -'I can't breathe': young Twitter poet gives new voice to Eric Garner

Martin Pengelly in New York @MartinPengellySaturday 6 December 2014 19.41 GMT

The last words of Eric Garner, the 43-year-old man who died after being placed in an chokehold by New York police officers in Staten Island in July, have found a new audience on social media, thanks to a teenage poet from Minnesota.

Jason Fotso, 17, from Maple Grove near Minneapolis and now a freshman at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, constructed a poem, Last Words, out of the letters that make up the words said by Garner as he struggled with police in an arrest that was filmed by a passerby.

Fotso’s poem begins:

I – I – I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t be.

You see me.

You see thug.

You see sin.

I see the letters of “hate” alive in your “heart”.

Can’t I breathe? Can’t I breathe? Can’t I be?

Fotso told the Guardian he had been writing poetry that “aims to speak out against injustices” since high school. But he has only been tweeting his poems, as @voice, for a little over a month – a period that has seen widespread protest and unrest over the deaths of a number of unarmed black men at the hands of (often) white police officers.

By Saturday afternoon more than 8,500 people were following Fotso on Twitter. His original tweet containing the poem Last Words had been retweeted more than 19,000 times and favourited nearly 20,000 times.

Grand jury decisions not to indict police officers involved in the deaths of Garner and Michael Brown, another unarmed black man who was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in August, have contributed – with a number of similar cases – to protests across the US that have often featured the use of slogans based on the dead men’s last words.

Protests over Brown’s death have used the phrase “Hands up, don’t shoot”, based on witness statements which said he was in the act of surrendering to officer Darren Wilson when he was shot. The death of Garner, which was captured on video, has prompted protesters to make use of the phrase “I can’t breathe”.

“I originally re-posted my ‘Ferguson’ poem as my response to the no indictment decision in the Eric Garner case, stating that it was simply a ‘different day, new name, same story,’” Fotso told the Guardian by email. “Upon coming across pictures of Eric Garner’s tragic last words, I was moved to write the ‘Last Words’ poem by rearranging the exact same letters in the entirety of his painful words.”

The full poem appeared on Twitter.

“I participated in a vigil for Michael Brown,” Fotso added, “which was hosted by Duke students at the university’s monumental chapel, where I read my Ferguson poem.

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“I have been writing poems that aim to speak out against injustices since my junior year of high school, but it was not until my former classmates at Maple Grove Senior High, a community which I am genuinely thankful for, were supportive of my Ferguson poem when I tweeted it out on a personal account, that I conceived the idea of starting @voice and sharing my poems there.

“I would like my poetry to capture and captivate the voice of young America, as well as inspire others my age to share their written and artistic work.”

Fotso said he would describe the thematic spread of his poetry as “nightmare, nostalgia. Nightmare, referring to any injustices that I wish to speak out against in my writing, and nostalgia, referring to my poems that cover topics such as love, loss, memories, and ultimately, youth.”

His favorite poem, he said, is We Real Cool by the Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/06/i-cant-breathe-young-twitter-poet-gives-new-voice-to-eric-garner

Key word:

• Supportive (a.) 支援的，支援的
• Injustice (n.)不公正，非正義
• Monumental (a.) 紀念碑的；紀念的
• Indictment (v.) 控告，起訴
• Unarm (v.) 解除…的武裝
• Construct (v.) 構成，建造

Structure of the Lead：

•    WHO- Eric Garner
•    WHEN- 6 December 2014 19
•    WHAT-Which he said before arrested that was filmed by a passerby
•    WHY- racism
•    WHERE- New York
•    HOW- No given

week 3-What the Strongest U.S. Dollar in a Decade Means for Your Wallet

by Shobhana Chandra 12:00 PM CST  March 11, 2015

David Sutton is looking for the worst possible news about Uber Technologies. An accident in San Francisco, an assault in Boston: Such bad tidings for Uber are ammunition for Sutton, a 48-year-old publicist. “Uber is a creep magnet,” Sutton says in a news release sent to U.S. local and national media outlets in February.
Sutton is a hired gun in the dirty war that’s broken out between old-line taxi companies and Uber, the ride-share phenom. His client, a powerful trade association, represents 1,000 taxi and limousine firms worldwide. These firms want to kill the young juggernaut—or at least buy themselves enough time to develop rival car-hailing apps.
Probably no amount of media spin will win this one for Big Taxi. Uber is a textbook example of what happens when an aggressive newcomer enters a business that’s gone unchallenged for decades. But compared with the hubbub about Uber—its tactics, its safety, its pricing, itslegality, and, most of all, its $40 billion valuation—Big Taxi has been operating in stealth mode. Publicly, its campaign has been led by the Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association, or TLPA. The group has retained Sutton’s Bethesda (Md.) -based public-relations firm, Melwood Global, to create a media campaign called “Who’s Driving You?” The goal is to bring attention to what taxi companies say are Uber’s unsafe and illegal business practices. Uber’s response: The taxi industry is basically a cartel, and the cartel wants to protect its turf.

Behind the scenes, one of the world’s largest private transportation companies—a firm few people have probably ever heard of—is exerting pressure through operators like Sutton. The company, Transdev, is Uber’s single biggest competitor. It has 10,000 vehicles in more than 100 cities worldwide, including Denver, London, and Paris, as well as shuttle services to 50 airports in North America. Transdev is co-owned by two French companies—Veolia Environnement, a public utility company, and Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, a state-owned bank. And it’s lobbying hard to contain the disruption to the $11 billion global taxi market.
“We survived two world wars and the Great Depression; we will survive Uber,” says Mark Joseph, the chief executive officer of Transdev North America, who has been president of the TLPA eight times. Joseph says Transdev subsidiaries have prompted investigations into Uber by sending letters to regulators in core markets like Colorado, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Transdev was also among the companies that took the battle to a commercial court in Paris, which last year resulted in a 100,000-euro ($107,000) fine for Uber’s UberPop ride-sharing service, Europe’s equivalent of UberX. “They have been lobbying to be self-regulated on the grounds that they are a technology company, but then they market themselves as cheaper than taxis,” Joseph says of Uber.

New York, where Uber generates the most revenue, was the first market where Uber complied from day one with the law, hiring drivers with commercial licenses also for its UberX ride-sharing service, whose drivers elsewhere are mostly commuters driving their own cars. New York has the most modern regulation, which allows companies to charge less than limousines as long as you have a commercial license, says Corey Owens, Uber head of global public policy. Las Vegas and Kansas City, Mo., where Transdev has a strong presence, are the toughest, he says. “The way that they protect their business is by trying to use laws to keep out competitors, rather than improving the rider and driver experiences,” says Owens.
Elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad—where most transportation regulations dictate things like minimum pricing and advance booking times—Uber’s strategy has been to launch services regardless of the rules and then leverage its popularity to force regulators to adapt. So far, that approach has succeeded in about 30 markets in North America, including Colorado, Illinois, and California, where new laws on licensing and safety have been created for so-called transportation network companies like Uber, or are in the process of being approved.
Pennsylvania is experimenting with similar rules, pending formal legislation, while a Transdev subsidiary, Yellow Transportation, is fighting such regulation in Maryland. “If the government protects the public, providing a level playing field, competition should increase, and maybe these companies will last 100 years—or they can become the next Webvan,” says Joseph, referring to the online delivery company that went public in 1999 and filed for bankruptcy in 2001, becoming one of the symbols of that tech bubble.

Amid all the bickering, taxi companies confront an obvious dilemma: They say Uber is a taxi company, rather than a technology company, but they wouldn’t mind being technology companies themselves. Many in the taxi industry praise Uber’s app-driven business, and some, including Transdev, want to replicate it. “The app system is the future, absolutely. There’s no going back,” says Mike Fogarty, the TLPA president and head of Tristar Worldwide, a global limousine company with operations stretching from London to Boston and Hong Kong. “Users love Uber’s technology.”
For now, at least, Uber’s business model has been validated by investors, as well as by brand-name companies that have adopted the young company as a business partner. Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, for instance, is giving extra points to preferred guests who link their accounts to Uber’s, while American Express credit card holders can spend points on Uber rides. Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have adopted Uber for Business as their corporate black car service.
Nonetheless, Transdev’s Joseph criticizes Uber’s app for only serving people with smartphones and credit cards. He also takes issue with its so-called surge pricing algorithm, which drives up fares during busy times. Joseph expects Transdev to partner with a technology company to improve its own mobile reach. Its taxis are already connected by the TaxiMagic app, recently renamed Curb. In California, Transdev has launched ZTrip, a ride-sharing app. “Uber's technology can be easily replicated,” Joseph says. “This is an early chapter in the battle.”

Keyword:

• Corporate (a.) 共同的，全體的
• Surge (n.) (人群、感情等的)洶湧
• Investor (n.) 投資者
• Delivery (n.) 運送；投遞
• Bankruptcy破產
• Commercial (a.) 營業性的
• Limousine (n.) 轎車；大型高級轎車
• Toughest(a.) 強韌的，彎折不斷的

Structure of the Lead：

•    WHO- Uber Company
•    WHEN-No given
•    WHAT-New way of taxi
•    WHY- No given
•    WHERE-America 
•    HOW- No given

week 7- Hong Kong protests: What changed at Mong Kok?

Hong Kong protests: What changed at Mong Kok?

3 December 2014 Last updated at 09:13

Clashes have erupted again in Hong Kong after the authorities moved in to clear protest camps. For two months pro-democracy activists have occupied various parts of the territory, and protests have occasionally turned violent.

Why are the authorities cracking down now?

Since the street occupations began in September in three key spots - Mong Kok, Admiralty and Causeway Bay - the authorities have largely tolerated protesters.

But the High Court began granting injunctions to businesses and industry groups to clear roads in November, triggering a round of clearances by bailiffs and the police.

The first clearance in Admiralty on 18 November passed off peacefully.

But clashes erupted the following week when the authorities demolished the entire Mong Kok camp.

Student protesters accused the police of violence, and tried to shut down government offices in Admiralty on 1 December, prompting a strong response from the police.

Another injunction has been granted to clear a section of Connaught and Harcourt Roads - the major stronghold of protesters.

The students have insisted that public opinion is still on their side, but the numbers at protest sites and polls indicate that the public has grown increasingly weary of the disruption and unrest.

At its peak, the pro-democracy movement saw tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents from all walks of life take to the streets. Two months on, just a few hundred remain camped out in tent cities, most of whom are students and young workers.

Meanwhile, a mid-November poll done by the University of Hong Kong's public opinion programme found that a majority of respondents did not support the protests.

A majority also backed the Hong Kong government's clearance of the sites, though some believed that it could allocate other areas for protesters.

Student leaders have also found it difficult to make headway. Earlier talks with city officials proved fruitless, an attempt to travel to Beijing was blocked by Hong Kong authorities, and two leaders - Joshua Wong and Lester Shum - were arrested for obstructing police in Mong Kok and are now out on bail.

On 2 December, three of the co-founders of the Occupy Central movement called for protesters to retreat. The three turned themselves in to a police station the next day, though the authorities have not charged them with any offence.

China's central government has continuously condemned the ongoing street occupations, and state-controlled mainland media outlets have accused pro-democracy activists of "intensifying" the crisis with the latest clash.

One of the Hong Kong business groups that has taken out an injunction to clear the protest sites is a joint-venture controlled by Chinese state-owned Citic Group.

Though it remains unclear whether Beijing had a direct hand in the applications, many in the business sector - which is increasingly reliant on China - have opposed the protests since day one, on the grounds that it would hurt the economy and anger Beijing.

Keywords：

pro-democracy 民主派

genuine 真正的

universal suffrage 普選

civil 公民的

campaign 運動

direct 直接的

condemn 責備 譴責

WHO- people in Hong Kong

WHEN-September, 2014

WHAT-occupation of Mong Kok

WHY- the pro-democracy are fighting for selecting their own leader

WHERE- Mong Kok

HOW- occupy

week6-Taiwan actor Ko Chen-tung cut from blockbuster after drug arrest with Jaycee Chan

Taiwan actor Ko Chen-tung cut from blockbuster after drug arrest with Jaycee Chan

James GriffithsPUBLISHED : Thursday, 20 November, 2014, 2:01pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 20 November, 2014, 6:08pm

The fourth instalment of the Chinese blockbuster franchise Tiny Times will not feature Taiwanese actor Ko Chen-tung, after he was arrested for drug use in Beijing in July, state media reported.

The 23-year-old actor, also known as Kai Ko, served 14 days in detention in Beijing for drug offences after he was detained along with Jaycee Fong Cho-ming, son of Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan.

China’s media watchdog has warned mainland production companies not to use stars involved in prostitution, gambling or drug abuse. China Radio International reports that Ko’s scenes in Tiny Times 4, due for release in February, are being reshot.

The Tiny Times franchise, which has been called China’s ‘Gossip Girl’, has been hugely successful. On its release in July, the third film knocked Transformers 4 off the top of the Chinese box office, taking more than 306 million yuan in its first four days and setting a record for a 2D film.

Writer-director Guo Jinming said earlier this year he might have to cut Ko from the fourth film, though he later denied he was in talks with an actor to replace him.

“The movie has to be submitted for censorship and it’s beyond my ability,” Guo told the Beijing News in September.

Ko, who made a tearful confession of drug use on state TV in August, has already lost a number of high-profile endorsement deals, including with Canon, KFC, and Quaker Oats.

The actor will also reportedly be cut from ‘Monster Hunt’, the live-action debut of Chinese director Raman Hui, who previously co-directed ‘Shrek the Third’.

Jaycee Chan was formally arrested in September on suspicion of “accommodating drug users” and potentially faces as much as three years in prison.

Jackie Chan, who was named a Chinese anti-drug ambassador in 2009, has publicly apologised for his son’s behaviour and blamed his failings as a parent.

“I am always a father. I used to be an unqualified father. Now, after this event, I want to be a qualified father,” Chan told reporters last month.

Ko and Chan were detained as part of an ongoing anti-drug campaign. This week Chinese police announced that more than 100,000 drug users had been "investigated" and 12 tonnes of narcotics seized in the past 50 days alone.

Keyword：

Tones (n.) 姓氏

Ambassador (n.) 大使

Suspicion (n.) 疑心

Endorsement (n.) 背書 保證

Censorship (n.) 視察員 監察制度

Submitted (v.) 使服從 提交

Blockbuster (n.) 巨型炸彈

Installment (n.) 分期付款中的應付款

Structure of the Lead：

WHO- Jaycee Chan ＆ Ko Chen-tung

WHEN- Thursday, 20 November, 2014

WHAT- Arrested for drug use in Beijing in July

WHY- drug use in Beijing

WHERE- Beijing

HOW-no given

week5-Nigerian girls would be freed

CNN journalist: 'We wanted to believe' Nigerian girls would be freed

By Ashley Fantz, CNN
November 6, 2014 -- Updated 2359 GMT (0759 HKT)

For weeks, Nigerian officials said that more than 200 Nigerian school girls would finally be freed. When it fell apart, there was nothing but devastation.

Over and over, sources told CNN's Isha Sesay that negotiations between the government and Boko Haram, the group that snatched the girls in April, were getting somewhere. The journalist was assured that the Islamist terror group had agreed to a cease-fire, and as part of that deal, the girls would be able to return to their families.

For once, Sesay allowed herself to feel optimistic.

A native of Sierra Leone, the journalist was personally drawn to the tragedy that inspired the global campaign "Bring Back Our Girls."

"Those girls were poor, from a remote part of Nigeria," in Chibok in Borno State, Sesay said.

 Photos: Nigerians protest over kidnapped girls Photos: Nigerians protest over kidnapped girls

 Boko Haram: Nigeria\'s crisis Boko Haram: Nigeria's crisis

The area has been long ignored, and the people there have gotten by on very little, she said.

The girls were kidnapped while they were at school.

"They were just trying to get an education," Sesay said. "But for the grace of God, I come from an educated family and my life has been different. It's the power of education that has allowed me to become a CNN anchor. These girls were in school to change their circumstances."

Sesay got on a plane to Nigeria days ago as sources told her that the girls' freedom was imminent.

When she landed she started to hear more from journalists who have extensively covered Boko Haram, and from those who knew how the terror group operated.

They were suspicious, and doubted that the government was really in talks with the terrorists.

There were other red flags. No one from Boko said anything about the supposed cease-fire. In fact, members remained active in northeastern Nigeria, and actually carried out more attacks and child abductions.

Sesay and her CNN crew kept hoping. Maybe it was simple banditry in the north, she reasoned. It was hard to bear the idea that the girls wouldn't be freed.

"We wanted to believe," she said. "We gave (Nigerian officials) the benefit of the doubt, I suppose."

A crushing video

On November 1, a video appeared of Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau saying no cease-fire been reached. The girls were not going to be released, he said, laughing.

They had converted to Islam and were married off.

"They are," he said, "in the marital homes."

It was a crushing blow.

"It was like he was saying, 'This is done,' " Sesay recalled.

 A man who never gave up hope A man who never gave up hope

 Bring Back Our Girls Bring Back Our Girls

After the video was released, Nigeria's government asserted that negotiations had happened, and Shekau had gone back on promises he'd made during those talks.

"We've heard about the video, and we can say the road to peace is bumpy -- and you cannot expect otherwise," a spokesman said. "Nigeria has been fighting a war, and wars don't end overnight."

In late October, Human Rights Watch released a report on Boko Haram violence against women and girls in Nigeria. The group interviewed kidnap victims including a dozen of the Chibok girls who escaped. The girls had been imprisoned in eight Boko Haram camps in the Sambisa Forest Reserve, the report said.

The women and girls who refused to convert to Islam were physically and sexually assaulted, HRW said, and some were forced to marry their captors.

Men and boys who were abducted, the report says, were given the choice of joining the group or being murdered.

What gives Boko Haram its strength?

'How could they do this?'

Before she left Nigeria, Sesay called Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former Nigerian government official and one of the leaders of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign.

"She sounded sick with grief when she answered the phone," Sesay recalled. "I said ... 'Are you OK?' which is ... so stupid. She was just -- her voice was hoarse with pain. She said, 'How could they do this?' "

Ezekwesili said she wasn't sure if the parents of the girls would recover.

Sesay said she is committed to continue to tell the girls' stories. Each is a person. Each deserves to live out their unique passions and paths.

"We have to keep asking questions," she said. "We have set expectations low in terms of getting meaningful answers. That can't continue."

Boko Haram -- the essence of terror

Structure of the Lead：

WHO-The girl who was imprisoned

WHEN-2014 11 06

WHAT-She finally be freed

WHY-no given

WHERE-no given

HOW-no given

Keywords：

Grief (n.) 哀傷

Imprisoned (v.) 關押 監禁

Abductions (n.) 誘拐

Journalists (n.) 新聞工作者

Kidnapped (v.) 誘拐 綁架

Remote (a.) 遙遠的 遠距離的

Snatched (v.) 搶 抓去

Negotiations (n.) 協商 談判

week4-TransAsia Airways plane crash

Taiwan: 48 dead in TransAsia Airways plane crash

Tania Branigan in Beijing and agencies The Guardian, Thursday 24 July 2014

Forty-eight people are dead and 10 injured after their plane crashed while trying to land at a Taiwanese airport on Wednesday evening, hours after typhoon Matmo battered the region.

The transport minister Yeh Kuang-shih said TransAsia Airways flight GE222 had been attempting an emergency landing, which the airline said was necessary because of bad weather. The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said conditions on Penghu, an island between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, had been suitable for incoming flights.

The crash left wreckage tangled in the remains of a badly damaged building. The flight had taken off from Kaohsiung, in the south of Taiwan, bound for Penghu's Magong airport.

Two people aboard the plane were French citizens and the rest Taiwanese, said the transport minister, Yeh Kuang-shih. The plane had been carrying 58 passengers and crew.

The Taiwanese president, Ma Ying-jeou, said via a spokesman that it was "a very sad day in the history of Taiwanese aviation".

Jean Shen, director general of the CAA, said Magong air traffic controllers had lost contact with the flight during its go-around, when it was around 300 feet above the ground. She added that two flights had arrived safely just before GE222.

Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) reported that the pilot had been asked to wait until 7.06pm before being allowed to make his first attempt at landing. It is not clear what caused the delay or why his initial attempt failed.

The twin engine turboprop ATR-72 was due to take off at 4pm and arrive at Magong at 4.35pm, but did not leave Kaohsiung until 5.45pm, according to CNA. It was another hour and 20 minutes before it made its initial landing attempt.

The country's Aviation Safety Council called an emergency meeting to look into the cause of the accident. Its head, Wang Hsing-chung, told CNA it was unclear whether bad weather or human error was to blame.

In its statement TransAsia Airways said it was providing assistance to passengers and their families. It had also begun assisting the CAA and ASC investigation.

It added that the plane had been in use for 13 years. It was in the hands of pilot Lee Yi-liang, who had 22 years of experience and almost 23,000 flying hours on his record, and co-pilot Chiang Kuan-hsing, who had two and a half years of flying experience and just under 2,400 hours. The flight had 54 passengers and four crew on board.

According to the Flightradar24 website TransAsia Airways had cancelled almost all of its flights on Wednesday, presumably because of the bad weather.

The defence department dispatched 200 troops to the scene to assist, Taiwan's Now News reported.

Kaohsiung municipal government told Now News it had been in touch with TransAsia and requested the detailed list of passengers and crew members. A team from the CAA, aviation experts and relatives of the victims are due to fly to Magong on Thursday.

Taiwan's weather agency said typhoon Matmo had brought gusts of up to 67mph (108km/h) as it blew through on Wednesday, knocking out power to more than 30,000 homes, before moving towards south-east China. Forecasters had warned heavy rains would continue into the evening.

On the mainland, Fujian province officials said they had evacuated 300,000 people, but the typhoon weakened to a tropical storm as it reached the area.

In 2000, 83 of the 179 on board a Singapore Airlines flight died when it attempted to take off from the wrong runway at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek international airport as a typhoon approached.

In 1998, a China Airlines jet a China Airlines jet from Bali failed in a first attempt to land at Taipei because of rain and fog, then stalled during the go-round and crashed into houses. All 196 on board and seven people on the ground died.

In 2002 all 225 people on board a China Airlines flight died when it crashed en route from Taipei to Hong Kong in good weather. The wreckage was found 45km off Penghu and investigators said the plane had broken up in mid-air.

WHO- Forty-eight people

WHEN-23 July, Wednesday

WHAT- Forty-eight people are dead

WHY-no given

WHERE- Taiwanese airport

HOW- no given

Key Word：

Region (n.) 地區；行政區，管轄區

Transport minister (n.) 交通部長

Emergency (n.) 突然事件；緊急情況

Tangled(v,) (使)纏結，弄亂

Crew (n.) (全體)乘務員