Fubon Financial Holding Co yesterday rejected rumors that it had expressed an interest in taking over the Taipei Dome project, while the Taipei City Government said that it would start seeking a third party after the contract it has with Farglory Group is legally dissolved.
The company said in a statement that it had never considered taking over the build-operate-transfer project, nor does it intend to become involved in any such projects.
Chinese-language Next Magazine reported that the city is planning to offset the expenditure of dissolving the contract with Farglory by revising its policies concerning the project, thereby avoiding any compensation it might need to pay to Farglory if the contract is dissolved.
The report was the latest in a series about potential third-parties that could take over the Dome. CTBC Financial Holding Co, Formosa Plastics Group and Ruentex Group have all been rumored as possible contractors.
Taipei City Government spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said that the city’s primary goal is to enter into negotiations and discussions with Farglory over the terms of its contract, which means it would not be proper to comment on what private firms’ stances are on the Dome.
Taipei Department of Finance Deputy Commissioner Chen Chih-ming (陳志銘) said that the city government would be able to generate income by framing new policies if the contract is dissolved — for example, issuing another call for operate-transfer or build-operate-transfer bids.
Asked exactly how much it would cost to dissolve the contract, Chen said that the city had not discussed the issue with Farglory.
He called on Farglory to explain how it arrived at the NT$37 billion (US$1.15 billion) it said the city would have to pay in compensation, saying that the city estimated the figure based on its balance sheets and obtained a very different result.
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