National Women’s League chairwoman Cecilia Koo (辜嚴倬雲) would be removed from her post should the league fail to decide whether to sign an administrative contract today with the Ministry of the Interior and the Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, the ministry said.
The league, the committee and the ministry have been in negotiations since July 24 to transform the league into a democratic organization, to have it donate its assets to national coffers and to submit to public oversight.
Minister of the Interior Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) said over the course of the trilateral meetings that the ministry had done its best to clear any doubts the league had regarding the contract, but added that the league has become more closed off and conservative.
The ministry is willing to work with the league regarding the signing of the contract because it concerns public interests, Yeh said, but added: “Our patience is not infinite.”
Department of Civil Affairs officials on Wednesday last week informed the league that it had one week to make its decision on whether to sign the contract, Yeh said
The league must stop delaying and coming to the meetings with no decision, Yeh said, adding that unless the league demonstrates that it is able to shoulder public responsibility and “make a conclusive and quick decision as of today regarding the signing of the contract,” the ministry would have to order a change of the organization’s management.
The league’s sudden change of attitude shows that its policymaking capabilities are unstable, and the wavering of its standing affairs committee members shows its reluctance to submit to public oversight, Yeh said.
Regardless of internal opinions, the league must make a decision today, he added.
The committee also yesterday said that if the trilateral meeting yields no conclusive results prior to the committee meeting on Tuesday next week, it would move to pass a motion that the league is an affiliate organization of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), as per the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例).
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,