The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said it would allow people to visit and see Apache helicopters at the nation’s military bases during open house days or through group applications after a Facebook petition by 270,000 netizens.
“The ministry has always allowed public visits to our military bases on open house days, and during these visits, we also showcase our weaponry,” ministry spokesman Major General David Lo (羅紹和) told a news conference yesterday afternoon.
“There will be a few camp visit events later this year, and we plan to showcase the Apache helicopters to those who might be interested,” he added.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
As for people who cannot make it on camp visit days, the ministry would allow visits organized by institutions and groups if they file applications for approval, he said.
However, the military bases would not accommodate individual requests, he said.
“If you are a commander of a military base, would you take individual visitors? Could you handle it if one visitor appears all of a sudden at 9am asking to visit, while another comes at 10am, or when one visitor arrives each minute?” Lo asked.
“If that is the case, it would be impossible to train the troops,” he said.
Lo was responding to reporters’ questions about a Facebook petition to visit the Apache helicopters, with more than 270,000 people signing up.
The petition follows Taoyuan prosecutors’ decision last week not to press charges against 15 military officers and civilians, including celebrity Janet Lee (李蒨蓉), who were given an unauthorized tour of a military base in Longtan District (龍潭), Taoyuan, by 601st Air Cavalry Brigade Lieutenant Colonel Lao Nai-cheng (勞乃成).
Prosecutors quoted the ministry as saying that the base is not designated as a fortress and therefore is not a restricted area as stipulated in the Vital Area Regulations (要塞堡壘地帶法).
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) earlier yesterday called on the ministry to respond to the online petition, while panning the ministry over its “double standards” in defining “restricted areas.”
“It is unacceptable for the public that army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘), an ordinary citizen performing compulsory military service, received severe punishment leading to his death for carrying a cellphone into [a military] camp,” DPP spokesperson Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) told a separate press conference.
“However, after high-ranking military officers gave tours on a military base and even allowed guests into the cockpit of an Apache helicopter, the ministry made an all-out effort to help them and even thanked the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office for not indicting them,” he said.
“The difference in treatment between an ordinary citizen and a high-ranking officer by the ministry is intolerable and seriously harms the image of the military, Huang said.
He said the ministry should explain its definition of a “fortress” and “restricted areas.”
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,