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Taiwanese-Canadian model-actor Godfrey Gao dies on set

HONG KONG (AP) — Taiwanese-Canadian model-actor Godfrey Gao has died after suffering an apparent heart attack while on set in China.

Gao was filming a sports reality show in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo on Wednesday when he died. His agency, JetStar Entertainment, confirmed his death on its official Facebook page.

The 35-year-old was filming “Chase Me,” a Chinese variety series, when he reportedly fell while running. He was rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to his agency.

The Taiwan-born Gao initially rose to fame by becoming the first Asian male model for the luxury brand Louis Vuitton. He acted in numerous television dramas and movies, including a role in the Hollywood film “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.”

His body will be transported Wednesday to Taipei, Taiwan’s capital.

Analysis: The world Washington built is fraying. What comes next?

The United States is confronting a global security environment that increasingly resembles the outcome its Cold War adversaries once hoped to produce: a divided West, weakened alliances, economic exhaustion, multiple simultaneous wars and declining confidence in American leadership. That does not mean today’s crises were orchestrated according to some surviving Soviet master plan. The Soviet Union is gone, and the threats facing Washington now come from several different states with different interests. But the strategic effect is strikingly familiar. Early NATO assessments of Soviet intentions warned that Moscow sought to weaken the democratic powers, deny the West a secure European base and ultimately exhaust North America economically. Now, NATO says Russia is again trying to reconfigure the Euro-Atlantic security order through military force, sabotage, cyberattacks, coercion and disinformation. The difference is that much of the pressure now confronting the West is occurring simultaneously — and some of the damage to alliance cohesion is self-inflicted.
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