An international resort developer who plans to build a resort featuring a casino on Matsu said he looks forward to seeing Taiwan pass gaming laws soon to facilitate the launch of his project.
Weidner Resorts chairman and CEO William Weidner made the remarks while attending the opening of Solaire Resort and Casino in Manila Bay in the Philippines on Saturday as one of the US$1 billion casino resort’s investors.
Weidner said he has a deep affinity with Matsu, which lies closer to China than to Taiwan proper.
In an interview, Weidner said he had visited all of the five islets that form the Matsu island chain to meet with their residents.
Weidner said he understands Matsu residents’ urgent need for a well-devised airport, bridges connecting the islands and a university.
If his company wins the bid to build a casino resort in Matsu, Weidner said the firm would keep its promise to allocate US$2.5 billion to develop infrastructure in the area.
Weidner said he hopes that anti-gambling activists will not reject dialogue and will listen to the opinions of Matsu residents.
Weidner said that Taiwanese made 3.6 million visits to overseas casinos last year, of which 1.2 million trips were to Macau and 500,000 to South Korea.
If the Matsu casino resort project is realized, Weidner said it would create 70,000 jobs and make Matsu as prosperous as Macau.
He urged the government to send draft gaming bills to the Legislative Yuan to be reviewed and approved as soon as possible to pave the way for the project.
Earlier this year, Vice Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), who was then minister of transportation and communications, said the ministry had drafted a package of statutes to regulate casinos and govern their operations.
If enacted, the draft bills would pave the way for casinos to operate in tourist resorts under strict regulations that would require casinos to offer benefits to the community and not negatively affect public order or the environment, Mao said.
The package comprises two bills: one to regulate the management and operations of casinos and the other to lay the foundation for the establishment of an agency to regulate and administer casinos, the former minister said.
Once the two bills clear the legislature, an affiliated bill drafted by the Tourism Bureau on qualifications for setting up international casino resorts would then be referred to the Legislative Yuan for approval, Mao said.
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