New Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairman Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) vowed to maintain the independence and administrative neutrality of the agency in accordance with the law as he officially assumed the post on Monday.
Lee was nominated in February to fill the vacancy left by former commission chairman Chen In-chin (陳英鈐), who resigned one day after the local elections on Nov. 24 last year amid criticisms of his handling of the polls and a slow vote-counting process.
Speaking at a changeover ceremony on Monday, Lee said that when Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) nominated him in February, the only task he was entrusted with was to address the problems arising from the local elections.
However, out of consideration that his nomination might be criticized, Su asked him to resign his Democratic Progressive Party membership, Lee said.
He said that he immediately resigned from the party upon his nomination to demonstrate his commitment to remaining neutral in the discharge of his duties.
Lee said he would address the problems in the electoral system to avoid a repeat of last year’s chaos.
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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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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