The chances for the NT$610.8 billion arms deal with the US passing the legislature before the current session ends have decreased, with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) showing little enthusiasm.
Before last weekend's election, the pan-blue camp said it objected to passing the entire figure of NT$610.8 billion, although at one point there seemed to be hope that the statute covering the deal could be sent to legislative committees for review.
But neither the statute nor the budget was sent in the end, and now that the pan-blue camp has retained its legislative majority, pan-blue lawmakers are showing no signs of softening on the weapons deal.
With the fifth legislature set to finish mid-next month, the Ministry of National Defense pushed for a deal again as Vice Minister of National Defense Lei Kuang-shu (
But when Wang was asked about how he would handle the statute and the budget after the meeting, he was elusive and said it depended on the attitude of lawmakers.
"We will see what happens and decide whether to convene inter-party negotiations on the statute," Wang said.
Wang also denied suggestions by reporters that the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) had contacted him about the matter after the election.
At the same time, Wang pointed out that although the ministry had originally agreed to redraft the budget plan, the ministry had not done anything so far.
For his part, Lin said that he went to see Wang not to discuss the arms package, but rather to thank him for helping out with his election campaign.
But Lin also expressed doubt over whether the deal could be passed before the end of the final legislative session.
"The atmosphere now is not conducive for passing the bill, and it looks like that we will not be able to handle it during the rest of this legislative session," he 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
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
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