Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative leaders yesterday expressed hope that Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Administrator Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) would withdraw his resignation, saying they could find common ground on the referendum issue.
"A referendum should complement the work of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) with regard to settling controversies over environmental protection," DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (
"We hope that the EPA administrator will agree to stay in the Cabinet while the country maps out referendum legislation, including defining citizens' power in participating in the discussion of environmental issues," Tsai said.
DPP Legislator Chen Chi-mai (
"The Executive Yuan is working on overcoming the dilemma and, therefore, Hau should stay with the team and make a professional contribution since his performance at the EPA earned public recognition," Chen said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative whip Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進) said Premier Yu Shyi-kun would be questioned about the resignation at the legislature today.
"The premier will get a tough time at the legislature for allowing a well-respected Cabinet member such as Hau to quit while permitting an unqualified official like Interior Minister Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) to stay in the Cabinet," Lee said.
He said having a flunky in the Cabinet brings shame to the DPP administration and "sadness to the people of this country."
The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus, meanwhile, suggested that the EPA chief should engage in the debate over upholding citizenship and professionalism.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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