The Legislative Yuan’s budget center condemned the Cabinet yesterday for failing to follow the regulations of the Budget Law (預算法) when listing its extra budget, while challenging its plan to improve the economy by expanding domestic demand.
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) is scheduled to present the Cabinet’s proposal for an extra budget of NT$120 billion (US$3.9 billion) to the legislature for approval today, seeking to fund economic policies with additional budget.
In its assessment report on the extra budget, the budget center said NT$24.8 billion in the proposed extra budget was listed illegally. Such an act would go against President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pledge that his administration abide by laws and regulations after assuming office, the report said.
Budget items including NT$200 million to be used to map out the so-called “i-Taiwan 12 construction projects” proposed by Ma during his presidential campaign, NT$4.2 billion used to subsidize taxi and public transportation, NT$200 million used to improve local governments’ finance and NT$38 million for epidemic prevention control were proposed without following the Budget Law, the center said.
The Budget Law states that any extra budget should be presented when the amount allocated for a certain budget item needs to be increased. Items such as subsidizing transportation, however, were new items, the center said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the