Deputy Secretary-General to the President Joseph Wu (
Wu, who said he has been a KMT member since he was young, said he would join the DPP next month, when the party is set to hold a ceremony to present the political appointees that it has recruited.
The party has been trying to increase its talent base by recruiting senior members of the government.
Several have already agreed to join, including Council for Cultural Affairs Vice Chairman Wu Mi-cha (吳密察), Council of Labor Affairs Vice Chairman Kuo Chi-jen (郭吉仁), Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Chen Ming-tong (陳明通), Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Ling-san (林陵三) and Public Construction Commission Chairwoman Kuo Yao-chi (郭瑤琪).
Wu was a guest at a dinner organized by Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Shih-meng (
Also on the guest list were Lin, Kuo, Wu Mi-cha, Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien (
Asked whether she would join the party, Kuo said she was a political appointee designated by the ruling party, thus "joining the party is in line with the spirit of party politics."
When asked by reporters about the recruitment drive, President Chen Shui-bian (
However, Chen Shih-meng (
"Their decisions will not affect the performance of their duties," he said.
The foreign minster yesterday ruled out the DPP's invitation to join the party, saying that diplomatic affairs have unique characteristics.
"Keeping my political affiliation independent will benefit those affairs to a certain degree," Chien said.
Chien was a KMT member until January last year, when he let his membership lapse.
Vice Premier Lin Hsin-yi (林信義) and Lin Chuan (林全), head of the Directorate General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, have also decided not to join the DPP.
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