National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Chiou I-jen's (
Chiou told a news conference on Thursday that the nation's first NSSR, scheduled to be published in full today, should be regarded as the Cabinet's policy guidelines and should be carried out despite a recent Cabinet reshuffle.
The news conference was held following a National Security Council meeting chaired by President Chen Shui-bian (
"Chiou's remarks would only make the nation's regime degenerate into a state of chaos," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Pan Wei-kang (
"If the NSC can give policy instructions to the Cabinet, the presidential office will have power without responsibility, while the Cabinet will have responsibility without power," she said.
People First Party caucus whip Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said he was concerned that the NSC would become the "father of the emperor," or the nation's supreme ruler.
Chiou said on Thursday that the report was "legally-binding" in line with the National Security Council Organization Law.
Responding to Chiou, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Cho-shui (
"Since the role of the NSC is to be the president's advisory organ, the report it sponsored shouldn't be a legally enforceable report, but rather only exist for the president's reference," Lin said.
He added that "in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, only bills passed by the legislature, constitutional interpretations issued by grand justices, and emergency measures declared by the president," must be followed by the Cabinet.
Premier Su Tsang-chang (
"The presidential office and the Cabinet have been acting in harmony in dealing with the nation's policies," he said.
"The presidential office produces plans and guidelines, while the Cabinet frames the measures to enable them come into effect," Su said while addressing an anti-drug event held by the Ministry of Justice yesterday.
Meanwhile, the NSC issued a statement yesterday to clarify Chiou's remarks. The statement said Chiou made a verbal slip in saying that "the report is legally enforceable," because in fact the report does not have the same status as 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