As extra legislative sessions loom, so do disagreements on how many sittings and when. However, the caucuses have agreed to let Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) host interparty negotiations to schedule the extra sittings.
The Executive Yuan met the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus two days ago and decided to seek an extra sitting late next month to handle the proposed constitutional amendment on legislative downsizing, the budget plan for the 10 key infrastructure projects and other important bills.
But the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus proposed yesterday to hold two extra sittings to handle the constitutional amendment bill next month and drafts related to the March 19 assassination attempt in August.
"The constitutional amendment bill will finish its four-month negotiation period on July 19, and we propose to hold a sitting then to deal with the bill," said the KMT caucus whip, Liao Feng-te (廖風德).
"Meanwhile, the draft for the March 19 shooting special committee and the statute for establishment of a document-reviewing committee on the initiation of the national security mechanism after the March 19 incident will be discussed at the sitting on August 12, and we will consider whether to demand an additional sitting then," Liao said.
"But as to when the extra sittings will be held and what will be discussed, we will wait for Wang Jin-pyng's return [from the US] and have him host interparty negotiations," Liao said.
The DPP caucus director-general, Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯), also agreed that the two caucuses should wait for Wang's return to schedule the special sessions.
"The DPP caucus does not insist on a particular format of the extra sittings.
"We just hope to hold extra sittings to pass bills needed by the public as soon as possible," Tsai said.
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