1)
A gas explosion in a residential high-rise building in suburban Taipei killed two people and injured 13 others.
On Friday an explosion occurred in a third-floor apartment in New Taipei City. The explosion caused a fire in the building with nearly 90 households. The four most seriously injured people in the explosion were a grandmother, a girl, her toddler younger brother, and a firefighter. The grandmother and the brother were pronounced dead in hospital.
Officials said an initial investigation found that the blast originated in the master bedroom of the family’s third-floor apartment. Residents of the building said they smelled natural gas Thursday afternoon and alerted the gas company. They also said when workers arrived for inspection, they did not take the problem seriously, saying that it was a natural “biogas” issue.
The gas company involved is Shin Shin Natural Gas Co. It cut off the supply of natural gas after the explosion occurred and began checking the pipeline for breaches on Saturday.
The explosion followed a series of underground gas explosions on July 31 in the southern city of Kaohsiung, which killed 30 people and injured more than 300.
2)
Taiwan and Belize have signed an agreement to cooperate in efforts to prevent human trafficking.
Belize is the ninth country to agree to cooperate with Taiwan in the fight against human trafficking. Taiwan has also signed similar agreements with Mongolia, Honduras, Indonesia, Vietnam, Paraguay, Gambia, the United States, and the Solomon Islands.
3)
The Cabinet on Thursday finalized a draft amendment that will ease rally restrictions.
According to the draft amendment to the Assembly and Parade Act passed on Thursday, outdoor rallies of an urgent or incidental nature will be exempt from requiring advance permission.
The change was proposed based on a ruling by the Constitutional Court in March. The court determined that the current requirement of advance permission from the authorities is in violation of the constitutionally protected freedom of assembly.
The draft amendment says that the organizers of urgent rallies will only need to notify the police of their plan in advance, while incidental cases, which are initiated spontaneously by the protestors and do not have a specific organizer, will not even need to do that.
The draft amendment will be submitted to the legislature for approval.