The Cabinet yesterday said that only people with a remarkable reputation, who are senior and professional law-enforcement officers and who have a reputation for moral excellence will be considered for the new post of state public prosecutor-general.
"The president and the premier are still working on the final decision at this moment, so what you read in the newspaper may not necessarily be true," said Government Information Office Minister Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦), who is also the Cabinet spokesman after being assigned to the post by Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) on Jan. 25.
Cheng responded to speculation in local Chinese-language media that Supreme Court Chief Prosecutor Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫), Prosecutor Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) and Taiwan High Court Prosecutor-General Hsieh Wen-ding (謝文定) are the hottest candidates for the state public prosecutor-general's position.
The state prosecutor-general's post has been vacant since Wu Ying-chao (
The president must nominate a public prosecutor-general to the legislature, which makes the final decision before the candidate is confirmed for a four-year term.
The Republic of China Prosecutors' Association, which has 459 members, compiled a questionnaire that was circulated among prosecutors to determine their favorite candidates for the post a few weeks ago. Tseng, Huang and Hsieh came out on top.
Cheng said that the political orientation of the new state public prosecutor-general would not be a concern, because they are looking for a professional law-enforcement officer, rather than a government official.
"We need to make sure whether the new candidate is capable of handling the heavy work load and continuing the judicial reform process," Cheng said.
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,