The Cabinet is scheduled to make a special request of NT$36.5 billion (US$1.08 billion) for the first year of the NT$500 billion infrastructure projects package.
These funds will go toward the construction of the mass rapid transit (MRT) systems in Taipei and Kaohsiung and the third wave of freeways across the island.
The legislature passed a bill authorizing the 10 New Major Construction Projects on the last day of the legislative session, which ended on June 11.
The bill allows the Cabinet to circumvent the nation's public debt ceiling and to make a special budget of up to NT$500 billion for the projects over the next five years.
The Cabinet is prevented, however, from earmarking spending for the 10 projects that is in excess of 50 percent of the annual budget of other major public construction programs being carried out in the same year.
Seeking to amend that article of the statute, the Cabinet is scheduled to approve draft amendments to the special law during today's weekly Cabinet meeting and later to send the amendments to the extraordinary legislative session for further review. The session may begin on Aug. 12.
Also yesterday, the Cabinet approved increasing the compensation for families affected by Tropical Storm Mindulle, which killed 29 people and left 12 others missing.
The families of those who died or are missing since the storm will get a total of NT$500,000 in compensation per storm victim, with NT$300,000 from the Cabinet and the remaining NT$200,000 from their local government.
The families of those suffering serious injuries from the storm will receive a total of NT$200,000 per victim, with NT$100,000 each from the central and the local governments.
Families requiring relocation will receive compensation of up to NT$200,000 per family, plus NT$20,000 per person for up to five persons per family.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift