President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) special allowance fund was the hot topic at a legislative committee meeting yesterday, with the Presidential Office saying that Chen must produce receipts in order to be reimbursed by the fund.
Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), who delivered a special report on the fund to the Organic Laws and Statutes Committee yesterday morning, said that it was inappropriate to seek reimbursement from the fund without receipts.
"We changed the internal rule governing the allocation of the president's special allowance fund last month so the use of the fund is more transparent and systematic," Cho said. "Starting last month, the president must produce receipts in order to use his special allowance fund."
Any money distributed to individuals involved in sensitive tasks such as diplomacy, military affairs or cross-strait issues will be handled in accordance with the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Cho said.
Previously the president's special allowance fund was divided -- one part covered confidential tasks for which reimbursement could be sought without receipts, and the other was non-confidential and required receipts.
Before Cho delivered the report, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Chi-fang (蔡啟芳) got into a verbal clash with fashion designer Ligi Lee (李慧芬), a key figure in the probe of the special allowance fund.
Lee wanted to attend the committee meeting as a petitioner, but Tsai said she was not welcome, called her "shameless" and told her to go back to "her country." Lee has been residing in Australia.
Lee called Tsai "vulgar" and said her country is Taiwan.
DPP Legislator Chen Chin-de (陳金德) also opposed a motion by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Shao-ping (徐少萍) to let Lee attend the committee meeting, saying that it was not a public hearing.
During the committee hearing, DPP Legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) proposed requesting constitutional interpretation from the Council of Grand Justices on how the special allowance funds given to the president and heads of local governments should be used and how they should be administered.
The grand justices are the final arbiters of the Constitution.
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