Lawmakers from the two major parties have locked horns over a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposal to abolish the legislature’s “state affairs forum” (國是論壇) — a suggestion that wasn’t well-received by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, who believe the forum provides the opposition valuable opportunity to make its voices heard.
The one-hour forum takes place before each legislative sitting, with lawmakers drawing lots to decide who can speak. Each is then accorded three minutes to speak about any topic.
However, some legislators say that speakers have a tendency to use the occasion to make sensational remarks to attract media attention, while officials are forced to listen to their diatribe.
KMT Legislator Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進) recently proposed to the KMT caucus that it abolish the forum, complaining that colleagues from both the ruling and opposition camps were acting like clowns and making fools of themselves.
Acting KMT caucus whip Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) said the forum had lost its original function and had become a stage for blue-green confrontation.
However, KMT lawmakers have not yet reached a consensus on the issue, he said.
Meanwhile, DPP caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) said the legislature should keep the channel open as it allows lawmakers to freely express themselves, especially at a time when the total number of DPP legislative seats has dropped from 88 to 27.
DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) agreed, saying that the pan-blue camp should not use its legislative majority to bully the pan-green camp. Still, he admitted that the function of the forum had become distorted, saying a review was necessary.
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