Former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) specially appointed deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) resigned for “family reasons,” and the council’s deputy minister, Lin Chu-chia (林祖嘉) was appointed to Chang’s position, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday.
Chang also resigned as vice chairman and secretary-general of the Straits Exchange Foundation, a position he held concurrently since February when the semi-official agency’s deputy head Kao Koong-lain (高孔廉) left the job.
A meeting of the foundation’s boards and supervisors is to be convened to approve appointments for vice chairman and secretary-general, with Lin and another vice chairman of the foundation, Ma Shaw-chang (馬紹章), speculated to be possible candidates.
Lin, who has a degree from the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, was previously a professor of economics at National Chengchi University. He was in charge of issues related to cross-strait trade and economic and regional economic integration since he was appointed the council’s deputy minister in November 2012.
Since then, he was involved in negotiations with China leading to the signing of the cross-strait service trade agreement in June last year.
The Chinese-language United Daily Evening News reported yesterday that Chang decided to quit to look after his aged mother in his hometown in Greater Taichung.
Foundation Deputy Secretary-General Shih Hui-fen (施惠芬) was appointed to fill the position left vacant by Lin, the Executive Yuan said in a statement, which included other reshuffles to the Ministry of Education and the Council of Hakka Affairs.
Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages president Lucia Lin (林思伶) is to succeed Chen Der-hwa (陳德華) as deputy minister of education, and Council of Hakka Affairs Department of Culture and Education Director Fan Tso-ming (范佐銘) was promoted to deputy minister of the council, the statement said.
The position of labor minister was not yet filled after Pan Shi-wei (潘世偉) resigned over allegations of an extramarital affair three weeks ago, the statement added.
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