Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), whose popularity rose after the city staged the 2009 World Games, has emerged as one of the favored campaigners among Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) hopefuls ahead of the year-end city and county chief elections.
Chen has been invited to campaign for DPP county commissioner candidates Chang Hwa-kuan (張花冠) in Chiayi, Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) in Taoyuan and Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻) in Pingtung, as well as mayoral candidate Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) in Chiayi City.
She visited Yilan County yesterday for an election rally for county commissioner candidate Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢).
PHOTO: YANG YI-MIN, TAIPEI TIMES
DPP candidates have in the past tended to seek public support from senior party members like former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and former premiers Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), but Chen Chu has emerged from their shadows to become a popular campaign draw.
The Kaohsiung mayor said she hoped to offer warm support for party comrades during a low period for the DPP and regain voters’ confidence in the party.
A survey of Kaohsiung City residents published by the city’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission on Sept. 24 found that 82 percent of respondents said they felt proud to be a resident of Kaohsiung. Chen Chu’s mayorship had a 78 percent approval rating.
The commission attributed her rising approval rate, which was 10 percent higher than a year ago, to the World Games in July.
The “three-in-one” elections for mayors and magistrates, city and county councilors, and city and township heads will be held on Dec. 5.
As six cities and counties — Taipei County, Taitung City and County, Tainan City and County and Kaohsiung County — will be upgraded or merged into municipalities that will not elect new chiefs until late next year, this year’s elections will be held in only 17 cities and counties.
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,