Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday he would meet with Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) next week to discuss the gift of two pandas to Taipei City.
Hau refused to confirm the date of the meeting when asked whether he would accompany former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) on a visit to the ARATS leader.
The Chinese-language United Daily News reported that Lien would meet Chen on Thursday during a ceremony to formally announce that Beijing will send the two giant pandas it had promised to the Taipei City Zoo.
Lien would represent Taiwan in accepting the two pandas, the paper said.
The zoo would give Beijing Formosan sika deer and Formosan serow in return, the newspaper said.
Hau said the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and ARATS were arranging the meeting and Chen might visit the zoo.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors condemned Hau for pandering to China and Chen, and helping the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) by refusing to grant rally permits to the DPP in front of the Grand Hotel on Thursday and Friday.
Taipei City Police Department Commissioner Hung Sheng-kung (洪勝坤) said the department refused the DPP a rally permit to prevent clashes.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said that he would lead more than 100 supporters to protest against Chen by hiking to the rear of the hotel to light firecrackers as a protest.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
RSS