A dozen environmental and agricultural civic groups yesterday protested in front of the Executive Yuan in Taipei, urging the government to suspend construction of a fourth-phase expansion project at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP) and to re-evaluate a transition plan for the project.
Holding signs that read: “Fourth-phase of the CTSP — a money-losing project” and “A -mosquito-breeding [empty] park,” the protesters said National Science Council Minister Cyrus Chu (朱敬一) had told the Cabinet on March 8 that the project should be re-evaluated, but the Cabinet has yet to respond.
Changhua Environmental Protection Union secretary-general Shih Yueh-ying (施月英) said that while the science park initially planned for AU Optronics Corp to occupy about 56 percent of the area, the company has since reconsidered and will not establish a plant in the park.
The supply of science park development projects has already surpassed their demand, Shih said, adding that the government should stop wasting money in this type of “bottomless money pit.”
Anti-CTSP Youth Association member Lee Wei-huang (李威寰) said the total cost of developing the fourth-phase expansion project was NT$48.96 billion (US$1.55 billion), of which NT$10.31 billion had already been spent.
“Assuming construction work takes another five years, accounting for 954 more days until completion, it means an average of NT$40.51 million will have been spent on construction each day,” Lee said. “With all this money, we could be providing a NT$35 school lunch to about 1.16 million children.”
Shih said the decision on the location of the project was bad from the beginning, because Changhua County experiences droughts, adding that land subsidence problems in the area led the risk of leading to cracks in buildings or burst pipelines.
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:
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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