In the last day of its extra session, the Legislature yesterday passed this year's NT$36.5 billion special budget for the ten key infrastructure projects, and the amendment to the Copyright Law (
The budget plan passed amid disputes and chaos. This year's plan concentrated only on two continuous projects, the "third-generation" highway and the mass rapid transit (MRT) systems in northern, central, and southern Taiwan. The lawmakers from areas that are not due to receive funds made strong objections and had said they would boycott the budget plan.
But the plan passed because no caucus wanted to be deemed an obstacle to economic progress.
The legislature also passed with the budget plan a resolution concerning the numerous difficulties during construction of the Kaohsiung MRT. In the resolution, the Legislative Yuan demanded that the task force monitoring the Kaohsiung MRT project must, within a month, complete another geographical investigation of the construction sites and strengthen safety systems. The task force also must report to the Legislative Yuan once per month.
The amendment to the Copyright Law was passed to help crack down on piracy and beef up punishment measures. Although the Legislative Yuan amended the law last June, piracy has still been rampant in the country, drawing complaints from US businesspeople and others. The Legislative Yuan amended the law again in an attempt to better tackle the problem.
The new amendment stipulates that the controls adopted for copyrighted work can only be circumvented in special circumstances, with specific legal authorization.
Those who break the law can be punished with a one-year sentence and a fine of at least NT$20,000 and up to NT$250,000. Lawbreakers are also liable for civil compensation.
When customs officials find imported or exported goods that seem to violate copyrights, they can now seize the goods and demand that owners provide the proper authorization documents.
The amendment also changes the law's previous leniency for those who violate copyright but do not profit from it. Now both non-profit and profitable violation of copyright will be punishable by law.
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