Nearly three years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, New York was scheduled to begin construction yesterday of a tower that will be the centerpiece of the new World Trade Center.
A 18-tonne granite slab that arrived at New York City's "ground zero" on Thursday will be the cornerstone of the rebuilt center.
Laying the cornerstone of the Freedom Tower will mark the start of construction expected to cost about US$1.5 billion.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
The tower will reach 541m when it is completed in 2009.
The slab was scheduled to be put in place yesterday at a ceremony presided over by New York Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Freedom Tower, the centerpiece of the new World Trade Center, is expected to top Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers at 452m and Taipei's 101 Tower at 508m.
The reconstruction will include a permanent memorial to the more than 2,700 people who died at the site.
But no one -- not the governor, the mayor, the developer, the bureaucrats, the planners, and certainly not the reporters -- can say for certain how much of the current vision for the new center will be realized.
Pataki has gone to great lengths to identify himself personally with the rebuilding of the trade center, while Bloomberg's administration has kept itself at some distance.
LarrySilverstein of Silverstein Properties controls the development rights to all the office buildings on the site. But after losing several rounds in a legal battle with his insurers, he lacks the insurance proceeds to pay for much more than the construction of the Freedom Tower.
The Taipei MRT is open all night tonight following New Year’s Eve festivities, and is offering free rides from nearby Green Line stations. Taipei’s 2025 New Year’s Eve celebrations kick off at Taipei City Hall Square tonight, with performances from the boy band Energy, the South Korean girl group Apink, and singers Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Faith Yang (楊乃文). Taipei 101’s annual New Year’s firework display follows at midnight, themed around Taiwan’s Premier12 baseball championship. Estimates say there will be about 200,000 people in attendance, which is more than usual as this year’s celebrations overlap with A-mei’s (張惠妹) concert at Taipei Dome. There are
LOOKING FOR WHEELS: The military is seeking 8x8 single-chassis vehicles to test the new missile and potentially replace the nation’s existing launch vehicles, the source said Taiwan is developing a hypersonic missile based on the Ching Tien (擎天) supersonic cruise missile, and a Czech-made truck has been tentatively selected as its launch vehicle, a source said yesterday. The Ching Tien, formerly known as Yun Feng (雲峰, “Cloud Peak”), is a domestically developed missile with a range of 1,200km to 2,000km being deployed in casemate-type positions as of last month, an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The hypersonic missile to be derived from the Ching Tien would feature improved range and a mobile launch platform, while the latter would most likely be a 12x12 single chassis
UP AND DOWN: The route would include a 16.4km underground section from Zuoying to Fongshan and a 9.5km elevated part from Fongshan to Pingtung Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday confirmed a project to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Pingtung County through Kaohsiung. Cho made the announcement at a ceremony commemorating the completion of a dome at Kaohsiung Main Station. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications approved the HSR expansion in 2019 using a route that branches off a line from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District (左營). The project was ultimately delayed due to a lack of support for the route. The Zuoying route would have trains stop at the Zuoying Station and return to a junction before traveling southward to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝).
Parts of the nation, including in the south, could experience temperatures as low as 7°C early tomorrow morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. A strong continental cold air mass coupled with the effect of radiative cooling would bring cold weather to several northern cities and counties, and could even affect areas as far south as Tainan early tomorrow, the CWA said. Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan, and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties would experience temperatures below 10°C until this evening, according to cold surge advisories issued by the weather agency. The weather across the nation is forecast to remain
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