In an attempt to mend fences, Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that he had called his political rival, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), on Thursday to apologize for "hasty words" from his staff that may have offended Wang.
Since Ma, a party vice chairman, announced his intent to run for the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) chairmanship when the post comes up for grabs in May, all eyes have been on his interaction with Wang, who has also been widely touted as a potential chairman candidate.
Although Wang has yet to declare his candidacy in the May race, several party members have already begun to take sides. With various legislators proclaiming support for either Wang or Ma, media has speculated that divisions within the party will be inevitable if both heavyweights end up running for the party's top seat.
While answering questions from reporters yesterday, Ma said he had called Wang the previous day, a claim that Wang confirmed.
"I called Wang yesterday to apologize for some of my staff, who may have spoken too hastily or harshly [in support of Ma], in case he had been offended," Ma said.
"When we talked, Wang was very polite. He told me that I was a precious resource for the KMT. I replied to him that, as legislative speaker, he is an important party and political resource," Ma said.
In light of the potential rifts that the Wang-Ma race might create, KMT Secretary-General Lin Feng-cheng (
"It would be unsuitable for party officials to participate in campaign activities [for candidates' chairmanship bids]. All professional party workers should be neutral in the chairmanship race, including myself," Lin said at the party's central headquarters yesterday.
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
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,
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