A controversial draft bill that would enhance the powers of the National Security Bureau’s Special Service Center (SSC) appears unlikely to clear the legislature before it goes into recess on Wednesday.
The recess date would also informally mark the end of the seventh legislature, with the statutory end date set for Dec. 31, because the legislature will only convene after lawmakers for the eighth term are elected in the Jan. 14 polls.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday called an inter-party negotiation to determine the agenda for the last plenary session from Monday through Wednesday. The security bill was not on the agenda.
Since the Democratic Progressive Party and Non-Partisan Solidarity Union’s caucus whips have said they would not endorse the bill, the proposal would have to be put to a vote for it to proceed to its second and third reading on the floor.
If passed, the bill — initiated and supported by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus — would grant the SSC the power to direct the military and civilian police and the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau in judicial investigations.
The Taiwan Association for Human Rights has opposed the bill, which it says violates civil rights and would represent a step in the wrong direction for human rights.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
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