Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) received a death threat in a telephone call on Friday last week, Taipei City government spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said yesterday.
Media reports emerged on Wednesday night quoting Ko’s chief of staff Tsai Pi-ju (蔡壁如) as saying that a caller had criticized remarks made by Ko and warned him to “be careful,” because otherwise he would be “executed.”
She said that she had informed Ko’s security personnel, but had not reported the incident to the police to avoid creating unwanted publicity, which might encourage similar calls.
Tsai said that the mayor’s office receives a complaint call every two or three days, and the mayor’s schedule of public appearances would not change.
Lin called the incident an “individual case” which should not be “over-interpreted.”
Although the mayor’s security detail will not be increased as a result of the incident, the mayor has taken steps to reduce trips by himself in taxis or on the city’s MRT system, with an escort present whenever possible, he said.
Photographs of Ko riding the subway without an escort earlier this month drew both praise and concern from netizens, with some expressing worry over his safety.
“I have always taken the MRT or my bicycle, but now I do not,” Ko said in a media interview earlier this week.
He said supporters had warned him that he would be “knocked off” if he continued to go about without an escort, though he added that the loss of freedom left him feeling “imprisoned.”
Yesterday, in response, to questions from reporters, Ko said that he “was not concerned” about his safety and had not heard about the call.
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