President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen made the remarks while receiving a 12-member delegation of Canada's big city mayors at the Presidential Office yesterday morning.
Chen said that he believed Lee would make a good successor to outgoing de facto ambassador to Canada Chen Tong-pi (
"Lee has exerted himself over the years to cement relations with the US government and his contribution deserves recognition," he said. "He is an outstanding diplomat and the best choice for the country's representative to Canada."
President Chen acknowledged Chen Tong-pi's contribution over the past six years, particularly his efforts to push for the passage of a "Taiwan Affairs Act." Although the bill was aborted when the Canadian parliament was dissolved, President Chen said he was appreciative of Canadian lawmakers' interest in Taiwanese affairs.
The bill was introduced by the Canadian House of Commons in April 2005 by a Conservative member from British Columbia. It copied several provisions from the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) signed by the US Congress in 1979, but deleted the defense clause that exists in the TRA.
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