The police will maintain standard security procedures for the Double Ten National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Office, with no extra police force to be deployed, despite several civic groups’ plans to hold protests in the area, the event’s preparatory committee said yesterday.
The ceremony to celebrate the nation’s birthday will start at 9:24am in front of the Presidential Office. At least three civil groups have applied with the police to hold protests and rallies against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in the area.
Taipei City’s Police Department will deploy more than 3,000 police to maintain security during the ceremony this year.
Deputy Minister of the Interior Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家淇), who also is the preparatory committee’s secretary-general, said the number of police officers to be dispatched to the venue is about the same as the number last year. The police will not expand the traffic control area, either.
“We expect the rallies on Oct. 10 to proceed peacefully, and the police will not strengthen its security operations,” he said yesterday.
While Hsiao stressed that the scope of police security will remain the same, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) has instructed the National Police Agency to take extra precautions in planning its security operations during the ceremony amid civic groups’ plans for various rallies and protests.
Some rally organizers called on participants to wear white T-shirts when attending anti-Ma rallies on the Double Ten Day and Hsiao said the police will not intervene with protestors based on their outfit because the rallies will be held outside the restricted area.
Traffic control measures will be put in place from 7am to 1pm around the Presidential Office including Henyang Road, Gongyuan Road, Chungqin S Road, Aiguo W Road, Chunghua Road and Boai Road in Taipei.
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