Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday attributed the multitude of trees felled by Typhoon Soudelor to the tiny planting pits used to plant road trees, which he said was due to the design of the city’s bicycle lanes, which have edged out the trees.
Ko told a news conference that he found out about the problem while inspecting trees uprooted by the typhoon.
He said he would arrange an interdepartmental meeting to achieve a balance as to how much space should be reserved for pedestrians, cyclists and trees, and come up with a solution in a month.
Meanwhile, city officials said they hope to clear away all road trees felled by Typhoon Soudelor by the end of this month.
City Park and Streets Lights Office Director Chang Yu-huei (張郁慧) said that, as of yesterday, the agency had finished removing felled trees and broken tree branches obstructing traffic on 81 busy roads citywide.
She said that employees at all agencies under the city’s Public Works Department had been working around the clock to bring the city’s traffic up to speed, adding that the office had prioritized 200 major road sections where tree removal work was to be carried out.
The city has been fraught with felled trees after Typhoon Soudelor, with the number of collapsed and slanted trees totaling more than 6,000, Chang said.
Saying that her office is “grossly understaffed,” she encouraged Taipei residents to help remove fallen trees in parks and green spaces in their neighborhoods, saying these areas are part of their daily life.
The office plans to clear all roadways of trees by the end of this month, she said.
Office of Horticultural Engineering Deputy Director Chen Chun-cheng (陳俊成) said efforts would be focused on sawing fallen trees into smaller pieces, as the majority of trees felled by the typhoon were large, making work to remove them time-consuming.
“The top priority is to ensure that traffic is uninterrupted,” he said.
He said that sawn trees would be temporarily laid on curbs and traffic circles, adding that they would be removed in time.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods