The campaign office of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) yesterday accused his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rival, Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), of falsifying information and demanded that he issue a retraction and a public apology.
Chen’s office spokesman Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said that the office held a news conference on Monday to announce that it would file charges against Han’s Facebook fan page manager and 20 netizens, who posted allegations that former Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) and Chen Chi-mai, a legislator, had arranged for favored companies to win bids for NT$30 billion (US$972.5 million) of city construction projects.
Early on Tuesday morning, Han’s Facebook fan page was shut down, prompting Han to say that he was “not a saint” and would retaliate if pressed too hard.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
His comment seems to imply that the DPP was responsible for the shutdown.
However, Facebook Co on Tuesday issued a statement saying it had not taken any administrative action against the fan page.
Han’s campaign office then issued a statement through KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) southern Taiwan office saying that it had shut down the fan page, Chao said.
The fan page had undergone multiple name changes, but had always claimed to have received the approval of Han’s campaign office, Chao said.
The entire incident is a farce conducted by Han’s team, Chao said, adding that not only should Han retract his former statements, but he should also issue a public apology for setting the worst possible example in a democratic election.
Han’s campaign office’s statement was no doubt a slap in the face of KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順), whose official Facebook page on Tuesday morning claimed that the incident was a “reinstatement of the Martial Law era.”
Chen Chi-mai urged Han to rein in his team on distributing false information.
The Presidential Office on Tuesday said that Secretary-General Chen Chu would also be bringing charges against Han’s Facebook fan page manager and other netizens connected to the incident.
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
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,
‘GROWING UP TOGETHER’: Jensen Huang celebrated the nation’s role in the formation of the tech firm at a Silicon Valley gathering, saying ‘Taiwan saved Nvidia’ Taiwan is in the center of the new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) told a gathering with Taiwanese on Thursday in Silicon Valley’s largest city, San Jose. Tainan-born Huang said it must be celebrated that “Taiwan is right in the middle” of a new industrial revolution in which “something new is being made, and made in a new way.” Huang recalled the manufacturing process of the RIVA 128 graphics processing unit, Nvidia’s first commercial success, describing it as the “most complicated chip at the time.” As Nvidia did not have the budget, he wrote a letter to Taiwan