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Taiwan's Prime Minister Jiang Yi-huah has resigned his post after the ruling Kuomintang party (KMT) experienced a crushing defeat at the polls in local elections.

Saturday's polls, widely seen as a referendum on President Ma Ying-jeou ahead of presidential elections two years from now, resulted in the KMT losing key districts across the island. The KMT has dominated Taiwanese politics since nationalist Chinese forces retreated there in the face of Communist advances on the mainland in the late 1940s.

This weekend marked the first election since "thousands of young people occupied parliament in March in an unprecedented demonstration against a planned trade pact calling for closer ties with Beijing," according to Reuters.

The news agency reports: "The worse-than-expected showing underlined the growing unpopularity of the government of [Ma], which has been trying to forge closer ties with China."

But the BBC notes that the election was about more than just Taiwan-China relations: "The defeat suffered by the KMT reflects voter dissatisfaction over the government's handling of food safety scandals, low wages and the widening wealth gap. It also reflects worries over its pro-China policy. Although trade deals with China have brought benefits to Taiwan, there is a sense that they have helped mostly companies, not ordinary people."

Kuomintang

taiwan

Taiwan's Prime Minister Jiang Yi-huah has resigned his post after the ruling Kuomintang party (KMT) experienced a crushing defeat at the polls in local elections.

Saturday's polls, widely seen as a referendum on President Ma Ying-jeou ahead of presidential elections two years from now, resulted in the KMT losing key districts across the island. The KMT has dominated Taiwanese politics since nationalist Chinese forces retreated there in the face of Communist advances on the mainland in the late 1940s.

This weekend marked the first election since "thousands of young people occupied parliament in March in an unprecedented demonstration against a planned trade pact calling for closer ties with Beijing," according to Reuters.

The news agency reports: "The worse-than-expected showing underlined the growing unpopularity of the government of [Ma], which has been trying to forge closer ties with China."

But the BBC notes that the election was about more than just Taiwan-China relations: "The defeat suffered by the KMT reflects voter dissatisfaction over the government's handling of food safety scandals, low wages and the widening wealth gap. It also reflects worries over its pro-China policy. Although trade deals with China have brought benefits to Taiwan, there is a sense that they have helped mostly companies, not ordinary people."

Kuomintang

taiwan

In the numbing cold, several thousand demonstrators marched in Moscow on Sunday, protesting plans to make drastic cuts in the city's health care system. It was the second protest in the past month over a pocketbook issue that affects most Russian consumers — especially as people feel the effects of a weakening economy.

Protesters waved flags and carried banners with slogans like "Save money on war, not on doctors." It was a relatively small demonstration, but it drew broad support. And it signaled that while Russian President Vladimir Putin has been facing growing international isolation for his foreign policy, he's also under pressure at home.

The demonstrators ranged from doctors and patients groups saying the medical system desperately needs reform to Communists who want to return to a Soviet-style system of free medical care.

They all say the government's reform plan is a heavy-handed scheme concocted by government bureaucrats who never consulted the medical community.

"They haven't explained anything to anybody," says Tatiana Korshunova, a blood technician on a heart-surgery team. "They haven't explained why they're cutting the number of hospitals or how they're going to do that. They haven't explained why they're cutting the number of doctors."

The government's plan would eliminate jobs for up to 10,000 doctors and close 28 of Moscow's hospitals and clinics by early next year. Korshunova says it is humiliating that medical workers weren't consulted on something that impacts so many of them.

The city administration says the closed hospitals will eventually be replaced by neighborhood outpatient clinics. Pavel, a 30-year-old cardiologist, says that's just doing things backwards.

"We do need reforms, but not the way they're doing it," he says. "They need to build up the clinics before they close hospitals and lay people off."

Pavel didn't want to give his last name because of fears of political repercussions for himself and his boss.

Many people at the protest said the problem is not just with medical care, but with a government that has grown deaf to social needs while it boosts spending on the military.

Russia is in a precarious financial situation, battered by low oil prices and Western sanctions.

Putin has doubled military spending in the past decade, and the latest budget calls for still more increases over the next two years. The same budget will cut spending on health care, education and pensions.

That doesn't go down well with protestor Ivan Nabrienko, who says there's a potential for a lot more people to get involved.

"The health care is one of those special social domains that touch everyone," Nabrienko says. He says that's why he is at the protest — because he might one day be a patient in that health care system.

If more Russians see the health care system as failing them, Putin's government could be facing a future of discontent.

Putin

Health Care

Moscow

All of us are familiar with the sound a smartphone makes when an e-mail or text has arrived. Our somewhat Pavlovian response is to pick up the device, see who the message is from and read it.

In Germany, a growing number of these emails come from the boss contacting employees after work. That's not healthy, say experts on work-related stress like psychologist Gerdamarie Schmitz in Berlin, who is feeling the technological encroachment herself.

"This horrible phone I have with me, and so I get emails," she says. "I check them because I can check them, and I get that What's App message from my clients. So of course there's also, after hours, a constant stress that has not been there before, absolutely."

And it also crosses a sacrosanct line in Germany between work and leisure, says Hanns Pauli, who is the health and safety expert for the Federation of German Trade Unions.

By law, every worker in Germany gets at least four weeks of vacation and works — on average — 35 hours a week, which proponents say actually improves productivity. But advances in technology and growing economic pressure are leading many German employers to ignore the cultural mandate for work-life balance.

"You sit there at the table with your computer all day long, you have very tight deadlines, you should contribute to the profit, and every day, every year, it's getting worse," he says.

Pauli says the resulting burnout — which leads to health problems and decreased productivity at work — has increased sharply in Germany over the past decade.

Psychological problems and pain linked to such stress were also cited by more than half of the German workers who applied for early retirement last year.

The worrying statistics have prompted German Labor Minister Andrea Nahles to call for an "anti-stress regulation" compelling companies to reduce stress in the workplace. It would also ban employers from contacting employees after hours just as they are already forbidden from being contacted on vacation under German law.

Some companies, like Volkswagen and BMW, already do just that.

But Nahles' boss — Chancellor Angela Merkel — has put the brakes on any quick enactment of a new law forcing other German companies to follow suit.

In a September podcast, she criticized the proposed anti-stress law.

Merkel says the government's focus instead should be on investment, balancing budgets and decreasing bureaucracy to ensure Germany's economic future.

In an email — sent during business hours — Labor Ministry spokesman Christian Westhoff said that from the ministry's viewpoint, "the current state of knowledge is not enough to come up with requirements for employers. On this important issue, thoroughness takes precedence over speed."

Germany