Protesters yesterday congregated in front of the Taipei City Government building to raise awareness of potential ecological damage due to a city government project to demolish the Fude Citizens’ Housing Complex in the city’s Xinyi District (信義) to create space for a 29-story affordable housing complex.
The empty housing complex, which is beside the Kuang Tzu Senior Citizens’ Home, was built by the city government from 1968 to 1970, and was part of Taipei’s first generation of affordable housing, with 504 units.
Protester Lin Yi-chun (林怡君) said that demolishing the Fude complex, which comprises six buildings, requires the relocation of about 300 trees interspersed among the structures.
She said that Department of Urban Development Commissioner Lin Jou-min (林洲民) should honor his promise that none of the trees would be relocated and that all of them would be preserved in their original habitat.
Another protester, Dai Yu-ming (戴又銘), said that there are a large number of empty houses in the nation — many of which are owned by rich people — and that the city government should ensure fairer distribution of land and property before it commits to building more affordable housing.
Citing records of Japanese house bat (Pipistrellus abramus) and lesser Asiatic yellow bat (Scotophilus kuhlii) sightings inside the buildings, Dai said tearing down the buildings would threaten the survival of the animals.
Department division head Lo Wen-ming (羅文明) said that the city government would compartmentalize the trees before it commences the demolition, adding that aside from a banyan protruding from the front of the building, the city government would endeavor to leave all the trees as they are.
The Bat Conservation Society of Taipei said none of the two bats mentioned by Dai are endangered, adding that the Japanese house bat is the most common bat species in Taiwan.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS