Upset with the decision by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus to delay deliberation on a bill he favored, Legislator Chu Hsing-yu (朱星羽) yesterday announced his withdrawal from the party.
"I proclaim my withdrawal from the DPP now," Chu said yesterday after Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
PHOTO: LO PEI-TEH, TAIPEI TIMES
Chu, the main advocate for the proposed amendments, declared that "this is the saddest day of my 23-year political life. I need to apologize to President Chen Shui-bian (
"But the decision was based upon my conscience," he said.
The proposed revisions had won endorsement from 163 ruling and opposition lawmakers, Chu said. He said the DPP caucus wanted to block it in order to win votes from the nation's 15,000 tax inspectors.
Chu believes the annual reward system for tax inspectors who have caught tax evaders needs to be revised because the inspectors's excessive checks have interfered with people's lives.
But officials from the Ministry of Finance say the reward system has been institutionalized as part of tax officials' stipends. They said deliberation would be needed to any proposed alterations to the system.
Leaders of the DPP caucus upheld the ministry's view and demanded the revisions be delayed.
Chu's announcement was praised by pan-blue lawmakers, but DPP legislative leaders vowed to hold further discussions with Chu.
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