New commissioners for Taipei’s transportation, finance and Mass
Rapid Transit (MRT) system were inaugurated yesterday, with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) saying that he hopes the new officials would help “inject new life” into his administration.
Ko during a Taipei City Government policy meeting yesterday introduced new agency heads appointed in the wake of recent mass resignations from the municipal government.
Department of Transportation Commissioner Chang Jer-yang (張哲揚), who filled the vacancy left by Chung Hui-yu (鍾慧諭), is to lead the city’s public transportation in the direction of digitization, eco-friendliness and shared transportation systems, Ko said.
Ko said he hopes Department of Finance Commissioner Chen Chih-ming (陳志銘), who filled the vacancy left by Chiu Da-chang (邱大展), would help Taipei devise a fair tax system that generates tax revenue without imposing too much financial pressure on people, especially in terms of property and land value taxes.
Saying that protracted construction and steep costs were two problems associated with Taipei’s MRT construction, Ko encouraged newly inaugurated Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) Commissioner Chang Ze-hsiung (張澤雄) to facilitate communication at the planning stages for future MRT facilities to boost the efficiency of the projects.
Ko added that his newly appointed Department of Sports commissioner, University of Taipei deputy president Cheng Fang-fan (鄭芳梵), is to take office next week.
Meanwhile, commenting on the outcome of an arbitration hearing on Monday on the MeHAS City (美河市) project, which allowed the city government to claim NT$3.5 billion (US$108.63 million) from the real-estate developer Radium Life Tech Co (日勝生) over undervalued land, Ko said the result was a “pyrrhic victory” for both parties.
The arbitration has cost the city heavily in legal counseling fees and occupied much of DORTS officials’ time, he said.
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