Activists are today calling for support in an overnight protest against the Tamhai New Town (淡海新市鎮) project to be held in front of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) building in Taipei.
An alliance against land expropriation for the project called on the public via Facebook to join them at 7pm today to protest against the proposed second-phase land expropriation, which they say will benefit large corporations through real-estate speculation.
The alliance said the first phase of the project, which began construction 20 years ago, still has a vacancy rate of more than 50 percent, proving that the development model was faulty.
The group said that the Construction and Planning Administration should therefore not need land expropriation for the project’s second phase.
As part of a stricter second-phase review process, due to what the project team acknowledges are the possibly controversial aspects and effects on residents and the environment, another environmental impact assessment meeting is to be held tomorrow.
The alliance said that under EPA procedures, related government agencies, residents, specialists and civic groups must discuss the items being evaluated, the methods used, as well as feasible alternatives.
The group said the land required for the first section of the second phase is 655 hectares and would require the demolition of a total of 1,592 houses and the rehousing of about 4,800 people.
The alliance said today’s overnight protest was scheduled to start with lectures and music performances, followed by a documentary about Tamhai New Town and a discussion forum at midnight.
The protest is scheduled to continue tomorrow and run until the meeting ends in the afternoon.
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