A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral hopeful yesterday called a press conference to defend his “Central Park” proposal in what appeared to be a last dash to the primary’s finishing line tonight.
A public opinion survey is to be conducted tonight to conclude the DPP’s primary.
DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) had proposed turning Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) into a 400-hectare grand park area to serve as the “green lungs” of the city.
Yao took the criticism of former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) about the airport closure project — his campaign’s “flagship program” — to heart, inviting architects who endorse the proposal to the press conference and urging Lu to “study the proposal before criticizing.”
Lu said that closing the airport would not be possible because of its proximity to the Heng Shan Military Command Center and the Yuan Shan Military Command Center, which are designed to withstand conventional bombing and nuclear attack.
She added that the Ministry of National Defense is also scheduled to move into a new compound in the area.
However, Yao said that having an airport close to the military compound could pose serious concerns to national security in the event of a terrorist attack.
He proposed closing the airport and transforming into a part that could revitalize the city’s old and dilapidated west side.
The 48-year-old is competing against fellow lawmaker Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) and lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄) in the poll tonight, which pits each candidate against Chinese Nationalist Party candidate and former Taipei EasyCard Corp chairman Sean Lien (連勝文).
The winner of the poll is to enter the second stage of the primary, which is to include independent hopefuls, National Taiwan University Hospital physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and screenwriter Neil Peng (馮光遠). A final candidate will then be decided by another public opinion poll.
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