The head of the Ministry of National Defense's political warfare department, General Hu Chen-pu (
The 12 P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, he said, would also be included in the regular defense budget, which would leave the eight diesel-electric submarines, worth NT$299 billion (US$9.0 billion) as the only item in the special budget.
This was the best the ministry could offer the legislature, Hu said.
He said that to have all three systems added to the regular defense budget was not feasible.
Hu's offer came as the pan-blue alliance prepared to send the weapons bill from the legislative floor back to the Procedure Committee for further screening.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tseng Yung-chuan (
Before the Dec. 3 elections, the pan-blue coalition of the KMT, the People First Party (PFP) and blue-friendly independents held 115 seats, while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), held 100.
After the Dec. 3 polls, which saw four KMT legislators win local posts that will result in them vacating their seats, the pan-blue camp will only retain a majority of 111 out of the 220 seats, with independent lawmakers retaining nine seats.
PFP caucus whip Hwang Yih-jiau (黃義交) criticized the pan-green camp for staging a "surprise attack" during Tuesday's committee meeting in order to push through all bills listed on the committee agenda, including the arms procurement package. The bills passed the committee because of a smaller attendance by the committee's pan-blue members.
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In related news, DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (
While the pan-blue camp will continue to dominate the Procedure Committee, Chai said that the only way to show the nation's resolve to defend itself is to put the arms procurement package to a popular vote and let the people have the final say on the matter.
Chai also pledged to put the party asset bill to a national ballot, as well as the abolition of township chief and village warden elections.
The party asset bill is designed to compel the KMT to return its stolen party assets.
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