Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設) is to be responsible for any damage that occurs as a result of a Taipei City Government-ordered halt to the construction of the Taipei Dome, Taipei City Department of Legal Affairs Commissioner Yang Fang-ling (楊芳玲) said yesterday.
“Their construction method is the source of all of the danger, so of course they need to justify and improve their methods, and take ultimate and complete responsibility,” she said.
When reports that ground movement caused by Dome construction had affected a nearby historic site and MRT line first emerged, the city allowed construction to continue on the grounds that the Dome would be unstable until its foundations were completed.
Yang said that given Farglory’s inaction over addressing the dangers and damage caused by its construction methods, the city was obligated to order a halt to construction until the firm made improvements.
Yang’s comments were echoed by the Taipei Construction Management Office, which cited provisions of the Building Act (建築法) in its assertion that the firm had a responsibility to maintain safety on its construction site.
While the city government has demanded that Farglory spell out plans to address construction dangers before resuming work at the site, the city’s current legal basis for ordering a halt is the construction’s divergence from city-approved plans, Department of Urban Development Commissioner Lin Jou-min (林洲民) said.
While Farglory has applied for a third round of design changes, the changes have yet to be vetted by the city government, he said, making unapproved construction in 81 sections of the Dome adequate grounds for ordering a halt to construction under the Building Act.
In response to questions on whether the city would force Farglory to present construction safety design plan changes on its current legal basis, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that the city had “a pile” of executive measures up its sleeve.
Deputy Mayor Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) said meetings of the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission and Environmental Review Commission would review Farglory’s process in addressing the damage to the Songshan Factory.
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
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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