Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) confirmed yesterday that he is mulling running in the New Taipei City (新北市) mayoral election next year and said he hopes that a public opinion poll on TSU and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) aspirant mayoral candidates will be held to determine who will be the best candidate for the pan-green camp.
A TSU meeting on the seven-in-one elections next year accepted Lin’s proposal and asked TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) to meet with DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) to discuss the matter.
However, DPP spokesperson Wang Min-sheng (王閔生) said the party has its own primary regulations and mechanisms and would not comment on the TSU’s proposal.
The DPP currently has two aspirant candidates — former premier Yu Shyi-kun and former lawmaker Chuang Shuo-han (莊碩漢) — in the party primary after New Taipei Chapter Director Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) pulled out of the race on Tuesday.
Lin said he is scheduled to announce his intention to run in the election tomorrow and hopes that he will be included in the DPP’s scheduled public opinion poll to determine its candidate in New Taipei City on Dec. 2.
If Lin fails to finish first in the survey, he will drop out of the race and do his best to garner support for the winner so that the pro-Taiwan alliance will have its best shot at winning the constituency of 3 million voters, according to Huang.
Responding to a media inquiry yesterday, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) voiced his support for Lin, saying that Lin will be “a good young candidate who deserves an opportunity [to run in the election].”
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
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