Veterans Affairs Council Minister Lee Hsiang-jow (李翔宙) yesterday tendered his resignation, but Premier William Lai (賴清德) rejected it, Cabinet spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said.
Following a heated debate at a legislative hearing yesterday between Lee and several KMT lawmakers over his political affiliation, Lee called a news conference to announce his resignation.
KMT Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) asked Lee about his party affiliation, and the minister said that he had been a KMT member from 1969 until last year, but was now an independent.
In response to a follow-up question by Chiang, Lee said that he had given up his KMT membership to take up the Veterans Affairs Council post in President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
KMT Legislator Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀) later asked the minister if he had given up his KMT membership because the party’s ideology conflicted with the expected administrative neutrality of a Cabinet post.
Lee Hsiang-jow said he thought party affiliation would affect the performance of his duties as a minister.
Lee Yen-hsiu then told him that she could not respect him if he had abandoned his political ideas for the sake of a government post.
Her comment appeared to upset Lee Yen-hsiu, who said the comment was an insult to him and his family.
He told the news conference that he had worked as a public servant for 50 years, had benefited greatly from the nation and wanted only to give back by offering his expertise and experience.
Presidential Office spokesperson Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said the government hoped to continue to recruit and retain capable people to serve the nation and that they, as well as political appointees, should be given the respect they deserve.
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
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
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