The Control Yuan yesterday chastised the Miaoli County Government for failing to preserve a number of kilns in the county's Houlong Township (後龍).
The nation's top government watchdog said in a press release that the county government failed to conduct a thorough investigation of the locations of the three kilns and to seek to preserve them during the county's urban redevelopment of a special zone intended for a future high speed rail station.
Although the county government's Cultural Affairs Bureau received a petition from local advocates calling for the preservation of the kilns, the bureau failed to submit the petition to the county's Cultural Heritage Assessment Commission for consideration, the Control Yuan said.
The county government also hastily dismantled the kilns instead of waiting for the Executive Yuan's Council for Cultural Affairs to convene meetings to deliberate over the fate of the kilns, the Control Yuan said.
Control Yuan members Chou Yang-san (周陽山), Chen Yung-hsiang (陳永祥) and Ma Yi-kung (馬以工) launched the probe into how the county government handled the issue in March after local historians and activists protested against the county government's decision to tear down the kilns — the last witness to the county's once-prosperous pottery industry.
Aside from forming the Alliance to Rescue the Historic Kilns of Miaoli, more than 50 civic groups nationwide and about 600 individuals signed a petition calling on authorities to preserve the kilns.
In 2003, the county government unveiled a plan to build a station for the high speed rail nearby and drew up an urban development project to turn the surrounding area into a transportation hub and high-tech industrial zone.
After the plans were drawn up, the county's Cultural Heritage Assessment Commission said the three remaining old-style kilns were not of “enough historic value for preservation” and could be torn down.
The kilns were eventually razed by the county government on. Jan 11.
“[The county government] not only ignored the cultural value of the kilns, but also wrecked all the traditional kilns in the Houlong area of Miaoli County,” the Control Yuan said, adding that the county government's decision was “obviously flawed” and “sloppy.”
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
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
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