A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilor yesterday slammed the city government for extending the AIT's lease on the site of its Taipei office, urging it to cancel the contract and reclaim the land as soon as possible.
The AIT office on Xinyi Road has long been a subject of dispute between the city council and the mayor's office.
In 1994 the council pressured then Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian (
The city government found a new location for the AIT's offices in Neihu in 2004 under the administration of mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
DPP Taipei City Councilor Lee Ching-feng (
"Such an unfair contract has a huge impact on municipal development ... It's unacceptable that the US has occupied Taipei City land in such a brash manner," Lee said yesterday at the Taipei City Council.
Lee blasted the AIT for refusing to move to its new location and instead applying with the city government for an extension of the lease.
He urged the city government to resolve the issue.
Chief Secretary of Taipei City's Education Department Tang Te-chih (唐德智) said the city government still had the right to cancel the contract and reclaim the land for municipal development purposes if the AIT ever violated the contract.
While arguing that the city government and the AIT both wanted to move to the new location, Tang said the city government had no urgent construction plans for the land, and so agreed to extend the lease.
"In order to maintain the nation's friendship with the US, we agreed to extend the contract until [the AIT] moves to the new location," Tang said.
In response to Lee's criticism that the AIT has tried to delay the move by failing to start construction at the new location, Huang Tsui-peng (
Huang added that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had said that the US government had not yet passed the budget for the AIT to build new offices.
Tang said the department would continue to discuss the issue with other departments and the central government and help facilitate AIT's move to the new location.
Lee also accused the city government of renting out the land at an unreasonably low price of NT$550 (US$16) per square meter, urging it to review the contract to protect the public interest.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching