Members of a political society in Taichung yesterday called for proponents of a campaign to depose President Chen Shui-bian (
Members of the Taichung-based Central Taiwan Society told legislators from the pan-blue alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party that the society would support the campaign as soon as the opposition lawmakers pass 10 draft bills into law that have greater significance and urgency than unseating Chen.
Members of the society, including medical professionals, academics and owners of small and medium-size enterprises in central Taiwan, called for pan-blue legislators to first pass a bill calling for Taiwan to bid to join the UN under the name of Taiwan before throwing their support behind an unprecedented round-the-clock sit-in being led by former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Shih Ming-teh (
They said that the opposition lawmakers should also direct their energy and time away from the campaign and focus on other important issues, including the KMT's controversial assets, the appointment of Control Yuan members, the amendment to the national health insurance program, the long-stalled arms procurement bill, the name change for Taiwan's offices overseas and the engineering of a new Constitution that will better reflect Taiwan's current realities and better meet the needs of Taiwan.
They said that they would play an instrumental role in pushing for Chen to step down when the 10 important draft bills are passed into law and when Taiwan moves toward becoming a "normal country."
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
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