Airports in Taoyuan and Taipei’s Songshan Distict (松山) received a total of nine e-mails or telephone calls threatening with explosive devices ahead of a visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Civil Aeronautics Administration said last night.
In addition to the first at 9:10am yesterday, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport received six similar messages via e-mails or phone calls, the administration said.
The Taipei International Airport’s (Songshan airport) information desk received two phone calls at 3:50pm and 5:18pm.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
One person said that they have planted bombs in trash cans, while the other said they would detonate explosives strapped to their bodies when they arrive at the airport.
A preliminary police investigation found that the telephone numbers and the IP addresses from which the e-mails were sent were registered overseas.
Taoyuan International Airport Corp said that it has reported the threats to the Aviation Police Bureau, the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Office of Homeland Security.
“We take any statement that threatens to compromise aviation safety seriously, so people should not think that they can be free from any legal consequences for making such statements,” Criminal Investigation Brigade Chief Chen Pei-shu (陳沛樹) told a news conference. “We also ask the public not to share such information online.”
The bureau’s security inspection brigade, and security and patrol brigade would work with the company to ensure the safety of the nation’s largest international airport, Chen said.
An ad hoc team has been formed comprising investigators from the bureau’s criminal investigation brigade and the Criminal Investigation Bureau’s Ninth Investigation Corps to investigate the matter, Chen said.
The corps specializes in crimes conducted over the Internet, he said.
“The Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office has ordered investigators to gather evidence to pursue the suspect,” Chen said.
In preparation for Pelosi’s visit, the Taipei City Police Department yesterday afternoon deployed hundreds of officers from its criminal investigation division, Songshan District (松山) precinct and Thunder Squad to guard the airport. They are to be in charge of her security detail during her stay.
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