Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥), who was sworn into office yesterday, refused to give definitive comments about whether the ministry would lift an unofficial suspension on carrying out death sentences.
Tsai said he has been in office for less than a day and needs to thoroughly consider the facts and weigh public opinion carefully before making a decision.
Tsai said his experience as Investigation Bureau director-general gives him a greater understanding of the proper integration of criminal investigation and prosecution.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
He is the first person to move from the bureau position to minister of justice.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Tsai said he hopes members of the ministry will be motivated in their work by idealism, a sense of mission and passion.
The five subordinate services of prosecutors, investigators, anti-corruption officers, administrative enforcement agents and corrections officers must coordinate their actions and resources in the war on crime, drugs, telecom fraud and electoral fraud, he said.
Separately yesterday, Minister of the Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said his appointment to the post is not related to the nine-in-one elections in November.
The Ministry of the Interior is to focus on the tasks of urban renewal and social housing, as well as narcotics enforcement and public safety, to ensure an orderly and safe society, Hsu said.
“I come to the ministry on my own because I feel total confidence in the people of this ministry and have no need to bring staff,” he said.
Elsewhere, Agriculture and Food Agency Director-General Hu Zhong-yi (胡忠一) vowed to balance the production and sale of domestic crops and increase collaboration with farmers’ groups.
As the agency has been plagued by plunging prices due to oversupply, balancing crop production and supply is expected to be a challenge.
At the handover ceremony at the agency’s main office in Nantou County’s Jhongsing New Village (中興新村), Hu said he would promote new agriculture models and turn domestic agriculture into “a technological, secure, profitable and sustainable industry.”
Hu presented eight plans to boost the competitiveness of domestic agriculture, including improving information systems for crop supply and demand; reviewing the nation’s tariff quotas for crops; seeking diverse ways to process crops; and setting up more cooling and logistics systems to reduce the loss of crops during delivery.
Also, he plans to help farmers replace less competitive crops or ones in oversupply with others; encourage more farmers to adopt organic and eco-friendly farming and join the council’s traceability agricultural product system; establish a strategic alliance among the agency, local farmers’ groups and other marketing channels; and adjust the market structure of agricultural products.
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