The Taipei Department of Information and Tourism yesterday said that it is planning a short-term travel subsidy program to boost tourism in the city, which is expected to be run from late next month to the end of the Taipei Lantern Festival in March.
The plan was revealed at a question-and-answer session at the Taipei City Council after Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Chiang Chih-ming (江志銘) asked Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) whether he would attend a labor demonstration, as local media had reported that he would.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Oct. 28 announced that it would attend the Autumn Struggle (秋鬥) — an annual protest march by labor groups — to promote its calls rejecting the government’s plan to allow imports of US pork containing ractopamine.
The Taiwan People’s Party, of which Ko is the chairman, on Wednesday also announced that it would attend the rally.
Ko said he has not made plans to attend the rally.
Chiang said that Ko, as mayor, would help the city’s workers more by boosting Taipei’s industrial development, and securing their jobs and paychecks, than by attending the rally.
The Ambassador Hotel Taipei (台北國賓飯店) has applied for permission to renovate its unsafe and old building, and is considering whether to continue operating the hotel, he said, adding that many workers would lose their jobs if the hotel closed.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has led to tightened border controls, Ko should think about how to boost the city’s tourism industry, Chiang added.
As more than 610,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported globally on Sunday, Taiwan’s border control measures must be tighter, Ko said.
Because the pandemic has seriously affected the hotels that mainly relied on international visitors, they must try to transform, such as by trying to attract domestic visitors or using their facilities for other purposes, he added.
Department Commissioner Liu Yi-ting (劉奕霆) said the department has planned travel subsidy programs for tour groups and independent travelers, and if the plans are approved, it would officially announce them next month.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Tsai Ping-kun (蔡炳坤) said the city government has also planned six major events between Christmas and the lantern festival in a bid to connect the shopping areas in the city and boost tourism.
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