The Ministry of National Defense (MND) is planning to hold an exercise in Hengchun next month with its three branches conducting live-fire operations, ministry officials said yesterday.
The drill, named the “Lien Yung Exercises,” is held four to six times every year to evaluate the combat readiness of battalion and brigade-level ground forces at the end of their training, while the Air Force and Army helicopters provide fire support, the officials said.
The exercise would focus on live-fire performance by all military forces as well as training exercises for surface-to-air weapons, the official said.
The government was criticized earlier this year when it was decided that the Han Kuang annual exercises would not involve live-fire ammunition.
Sources said the Marines, the Army’s 584th Armored Division, the 200th Mechanized Infantry Division, the 601st Army Special Operations Division, the Air Force’s 401st Wing, 427th Wing, 443rd wing, and the third and fifth divisions of the Combined Logistics Command would participate in the exercises.
We have already reviewed exercise routes and after considering safety and the mobility of the forces involved, the ministry will allow the public and the media to watch on the sidelines for part of the exercise, the officials said
It is hoped such access will broaden public understanding about national defense, the officials added.
Asked whether “precision weapons,” including surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles, would follow the example set in January and be fired with legislators and the media in attendance, the officials said that while preparations had been made for such a contingency, the final decision had yet to be made.
All live-fire exercises this year, including artillery and the “Lien Hsin Exercise,” would allow media and the public participation, the official said.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,