The annual fireworks show at Dadaocheng (大稻埕) will continue to be held this year, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said on Tuesday, contradicting a statement made by former Taipei information and tourism commissioner Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏), who resigned in January.
Chien last year said that the department’s policy was not to hold fireworks at any future events to curb pollution and unnecessary expenditure.
However, Ko appeared to have walked back that statement when briefing the city council on Taipei’s tourism promotion events.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The city is to continue a project to establish an urban eco-museum and spotlight the Dadaocheng area for city tourism, including creating a pedestrian-only area on Dihua Street (迪化街) and organizing Lover’s Day festivities in the district, which might feature fireworks, Ko said.
However, Taipei Information and Tourism Commissioner Chen Su-yu (陳思宇) clarified Ko’s statement by saying that the city has not determined whether a fireworks display is to be held at the Sounds from the River event on Lovers’ Day, which falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.
Officials are still weighing their options, including replacing the fireworks with a water dance or a light show, reducing the amount of pyrotechnics or continuing with the display as usual, she said.
The department promised that the event would be as diverse and interesting as those in the past, whichever form it takes, she said.
Ko also said the city is to hold this year’s Nuit Blanche event at Jazz Square between Zhongshan and Shuanglian MRT stations, adding that he hoped the event would boost cultural tourism in the area.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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