Concerns about a possible pan-blue split over the Taipei mayoral election mounted again yesterday as the People First Party (PFP) urged Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
In an effort to prevent a repeat of the 1994 Taipei mayoral election, when two pan-blue candidates split the ticket and gave Chen Shui-bian (
Ma yesterday declined to confirm the allegation, but said that the pan-blue camp should only have one mayoral candidate.
"The Democratic Progressive Party is losing its credibility, and pan-blue supporters would be very disappointed if we lost the election," Ma said yesterday at Taipei City Hall.
Ma said that KMT Secretary-General Chan Chuen-pao (
Legislator Lee Hung-chun (
"If Chairman Ma wants to dissuade Chairman Soong from running, he should talk to him in person," he said yesterday.
Lee said that the PFP had always made way for the KMT in previous elections after KMT-PFP negotiations, and called on the KMT not to cause a pan-blue split by spreading rumors.
Soong is believed to be likely to enter the Taipei mayoral election, joining the KMT's candidate Hau Lung-bin (
"What should be discouraged are irrelevant regulations and those who never want to find solutions to problems," he said yesterday while addressing Taipei City's problems in what he called an "inspection tour" that would address issues in the city's 12 districts.
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
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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