Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday confirmed that the city government has set up a Taipei Dome coordination committee to assist in the project’s negotiations, but added that the city would not let the project continue without completing legal procedures.
The Taipei Dome project was halted by the Taipei Department of Urban Development in May 2015, after Ko took office, as contractor Farglory Group was accused of violating safety standards and making unauthorized changes.
Taipei mayoral candidates campaigning for November’s elections have criticized Ko as being incapable of solving the suspended project.
Farglory suddenly withdrew from an April 3 design review meeting a few days before it was due to be held, and local Chinese-language media on Sunday evening reported that the company had requested the Taipei Department of Sports to set up a coordination committee to clear up doubts on regulations.
“We will not make it hard for them [Farglory], but we cannot let them easily pass requirements and issue a construction permit just because the election is getting closer,” Ko told reporters before attending a talk at the Global Startup Talents at Taipei event yesterday morning.
If Farglory needs administrative assistance or the clarification of regulations, then those things must be addressed, he said, adding that he has told officials to do what must be done in accordance with the law.
Asked if he is worried that the project, having been suspended three years, will affect his chances for re-election this year, Ko said he has considered whether he should explain all the conditions involved in the case, but decided that complaining was useless.
Asked if coordination between all parties involved has failed and needs arbitration, Ko said: “Usually coordination comes before arbitration and is followed by judicial procedures, so we will conform to the contract and try to negotiate as much as we can.”
Democratic Progressive Party mayoral nominee Pasuya Yao (姚文智) yesterday said Ko is just trying to stall the project until the end of his term, but the only way to solve the case is by “replacing Farglory and the mayor.”
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