Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday demanded that President Chen Shui-bian's (
"Approving the nation's top prosecutor will help continue the anti-corruption campaign which has been prominent over the past year. We will scrutinize his credentials strictly," KMT Legislator Kao Su-po (高思博) told a press conference.
Kao, a co-chair of the legislature's Judiciary Committee, said that the committee, together with Home and Nations Committee and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, is scheduled to review the case on Wednesday, Thursday and Jan. 17, before confirmation hearings on the legislature's floor.
Chen Tsung-ming is currently the chief prosecutor of the Taiwan High Court's Kaohsiung branch.
He was nominated as state public prosecutor-general on May 26, after the president's previous nominee, Taiwan High Court Prosecutor-General Hsieh-Wen-ding (謝文定), failed to receive the endorsement of a majority of legislators.
In the questionnaire, the KMT wants the nominee to answer questions about recent "legal issues" surrounding the various scandals involving the first family.
In related news, People First Party (PFP) lawmakers said the party will not recommend Control Yuan members before this legislative session recess on Jan 19.
As there is no legal requirement for parties to recommend nominees, and the president invited all political parties to make recommendations as a courtesy, it is not clear how this could affect the nominee selection process.
"We will not do that [make recommendations], unless our desire to implement a system in which Control Yuan nominees can be recommended by political parties in proportion to each party's number of seats in the legislature is addressed," PFP Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (
The nation's small political parties, such as the PFP and Taiwan Solidarity Union, are struggling to maintain their relevance as the nation prepares to cut the number of legislative seats in half later this year.
The reduction of the size of the legislature and the adoption of single-member districts is likely to take a serious toll on, if not completely eliminate, the influence of the small parties.
Liu also said that the dispute over whether members of the National Communications Commission should be appointed proportionally should be cleared up as well.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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