As the legislative session is slated to go into recess on Saturday, the Cabinet yesterday called on the legislature to pass as many bills as possible, especially the five-year, NT$500 billion infrastructure package and the draft bill of the organic standard law of central government agencies (
While lawmakers across party lines are still negotiating over the five-year budget plan, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus has insisted on putting the organic standard law to a vote during the legislative sittings today and tomorrow.
The organic standard law is listed as the second and the five-year plan the ninth bill on the agenda. There are a total of 37 bills awaiting debates during the last two-day session.
Yeh Jiunn-rong (
The KMT caucus has proposed another version to require the legislature's approval for the establishment of Cabinet's independent institutions. The proposed bill also sets the number of independent institutions at five, ministries at 12 and commissions at three.
Yeh said that there are many ways to supervise the operation of independent institutions but the legislature's approval would make the independent institutions dependent on the lawmaking body.
Although the Cabinet can accept five independent institutions and three commissions established under the Cabinet, 12 ministries seem to be insufficient.
Yeh also pointed out that it would be more appropriate to take care of the number of government agencies in the Organic Law of the Executive Yuan (
According to the draft amendments to the Organic Law of the Executive Yuan, the Cabinet proposed the government be downsized from the current 35 administrative entities to 23, plus four independent institutions.
Regarding the five-year budget plan, opposition lawmakers have set down four limitations, which might cut the NT$500 billion special budget to about NT$182 billion.
Opposition lawmakers requested that projects with "regular expenses," such as salaries, accounting for more than one half of the "capital expenses," should not be included in the package. Other projects that should be excluded were continuous projects and transportation infrastructure projects.
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