The Legislative Yuan will not consider whether it should build its own premises until it reconvenes after the Jan. 14 elections, the body’s top administrator said yesterday.
“The issue [of the new facility] depends on a consensus among lawmakers of the ruling and opposition parties after a new legislature is formed,” Legislative Yuan Secretary-General Lin Hsi-shan (林錫山) said while answering questions at a legislative committee meeting.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) stressed the need for a dedicated facility because the legislature pays NT$53 million (US$1.76 million) a year in rent alone for its current home in downtown Taipei.
“As a result, more than NT$1 billion has been spent since the idea of constructing a new building was first discussed more than 20 years ago,” Huang said.
Echoing Huang’s desire for a new premises, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said the existing legislative complex, which was formerly used as a school, projected a poor image because of its somewhat untidy appearance.
Another problem, Lin said, is that maintenance costs place a heavy financial burden on the body, adding that the building is currently undergoing a three-year overhaul at a cost of more than NT$100 million.
Lin said the legislature passed a budget proposal for a new building in 1999, but implementing the proposal has been stalled ever since because of a lack of consensus among lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties.
The approved budget was nullified in 2005 according to relevant laws.
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