Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that he would grant Taipei Dome contractor Farglory Group’s request to ask the Construction and Planning Agency’s Taiwan Architecture and Building Center to perform four safety reviews of the Taipei Dome complex.
Ko made the remark in an interview with reporters at Taipei Municipal Nanhu High School, where he was inspecting the progress of a policy banning recyclable utensils made with potentially pathogenic melamine resin.
He first criticized Farglory’s accusation that the city had set up a “torture chamber” targeting Farglory through the introduction of seven safety standards for the complex.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
“However, for the sake of solving problems, I would agree to having the central government step in for the reviews, and I will respect the final results,” he said.
Ko said that he would seek the central government’s opinion on whether it would take over four reviews regarding the complex’s readiness for disasters and contingencies, which have been the city’s responsibility since the central government declined to perform them last year.
He said that he would not rule out meeting with Farglory chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄), as Chao has suggested, if it helps resolve the Taipei Dome impasse.
Commenting on the ban on utensils made of melamine resin and recyclables, which took effect this week at all public schools managed by the Taipei City Government, Ko said that the concepts of environmental friendliness, including tree protection and the promotion of “green” energy, are progressive values Taipei should adopt.
Under the policy, students must pay a NT$100 deposit every time they use utensils available at schools, Ko said.
The mayor said that even though this would cause inconvenience for students and faculty, as they now have to clean utensils brought from home after lunch, he hopes that students and teachers will see the greater good for the environment in the long run.
Ko said that reducing kitchen refuse would be the city’s next policy objective to achieve waste reduction, adding that the reduction of kitchen refuse would be included as a grading criterion in the Taipei Department of Education’s evaluation of food companies.
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