The Keelung District Court yesterday ruled that the detention of Keelung City Council Speaker Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰), who is running for mayor, is to be extended for another two months.
Huang, who decided to run as an independent after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) retracted his candidacy, has been held incommunicado since Sept. 5 on suspicion of violating the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) by accepting bribes and withdrawing public funds without authorization and with an intent to profit.
The Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office on Monday requested an extension to Huang’s detention and the motion was approved by the court yesterday.
More than 100 supporters gathered outside the court to call for Huang’s release, accusing the judiciary of carrying out unjust rulings.
The KMT withdrew its support for Huang’s mayoral bid on July 9, after he came under investigation for corruption, and nominated former National Immigration Agency director-general Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) to represent it in the election instead.
Meanwhile, the Executive Yuan yesterday said that an extension of the planned Taipei Mass Rapid Transist (MRT) system’s Minsheng-Xizhi line to Keelung is a more feasible option than extending the Nangang line.
The possible extension was mentioned in an announcement the Executive Yuan made in which it stated its wish to “accelerate the MRT Minsheng-Xizhi line project,” which had its feasibility evaluation research ratified by the executive branch in 2011.
In the statement, the Executive Yuan cited Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) as saying that while Keelung residents wish to have their city connected to Taipei by the MRT system, “there are objective difficulties to extending the Nangang line eastward to Keelung.”
“However, there is room for evaluating if the link can be made through the extension of the Minsheng-Xizhi line,” Jiang said.
The announcement drew speculation that it had been fashioned as a support-boosting move for Hsieh’s election bid, because the KMT candidate has been advocating extending the Minsheng-Xizhi line to Keelung, while Democratic Progressive Party candidate Lin You-chang (林右昌) has been calling for the extending the Nangang line.
According to a report by the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), at an Oct. 1 KMT meeting, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) asked Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時), who is a member of the KMT standing committee, to “wolf down [meaning to take responsibility for]” Hsieh’s transportation policy, which includes initiating construction on the MRT extension to Keelung within the next four years.
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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