Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday defended the appointment of the former commissioner of Taipei City’s Department of Public Works, Shannon Lee (李咸亨), as chairman of a city-run urban renewal promotion center, dismissing concerns about Lee’s capabilities in crisis handling in the wake of previous typhoons.
Lee stepped down in June over an operational oversight at the Wanfang pumping station amid torrential rains. He had refused to discuss his resignation with the press, sparking speculation that the resignation was forced by Hau to take the blame for the city government’s poor handling of disasters caused by typhoons.
The mayor yesterday said Lee tendered the resignation in June to take responsibility for the operational oversight, but the city government continued to recognize his capabilities and expertise in related fields.
“Mr Lee was a board member in the center, and was elected by the board. The appointment was not made as a political favor,” Hau said at the Taipei City Hall.
The Taipei City Urban Renewal Promotion Center will be formally established next month to serve as a negotiation platform for the growing number of urban renewal projects in the city.
The city government also hopes that the center would increase the public’s confidence on urban renewal and boost their willingness to take part in urban renewal projects, as the Hau team seeks to improve the city’s landscape via urban renewal.
In related news, Hau announced two personnel reshuffles in his team, with the appointment of Liu Chia-chun (劉家均), director of Taipei City’s Office of Commerce, to be the commissioner of Taipei Hakka Affairs Commission, and former producer of the Taipei Flora Expo’s Pavilion of Dreams Yuan Nai-juan (袁乃娟) to be head of the city’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission.
Liu Chia-chun will replace Liu Chi-hsiung (劉智雄) following his retirement next month. Commissioner of Taipei City’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission Wei Kuo-yen (魏國彥), on the other hand, will return to his teaching position at National Taiwan University.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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