Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) New Taipei City mayoral candidate Yu Shyi-kun yesterday called on citizens to join a class-action suit against Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團) for its role in the recent tainted oil scandal, reflecting the prominent place the former premier has given to consumers’ rights to food safety in his campaign platform.
While canvassing for votes in the municipality’s Yonghe District (永和), Yu also accused New Taipei Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of negligence, saying he is doing nothing to help residents seek compensation for consuming substandard Ting Hsin food products.
He also questioned the process by which the New Taipei City Government in 2011 approved Ting Hsin’s request to use a plot of land in Sanchong District (三重) originally designated for industrial zoning purposes to build a mixed office and residential complex instead. The change raised the land’s value to NT$40 billion (US$1.29 billion) from NT$10 billion in 2010.
Photo: CNA
Yu and the DPP have alleged that Chu is too cozy with several big business owners, questioning a move by the city government’s urban planning agencies to expedite the Ting Hsin land deal just 30 days into Chu’s tenure as mayor.
Chu has denied the former premier’s charges.
Meanwhile, Yu yesterday joined DPP lawmakers in condemning Chu’s administration of “political interference” for refusing to grant the DPP a permit to hold an election eve rally on Friday at the plaza in front of Banciao (板橋) Railway Station under the excuse that holding a large crowd gathering there would disrupt traffic flow.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching