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.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its