The Legislative Yuan was to clear all legislation that has bipartisan consensus by midnight this morning after the last day of the current session yesterday.
The legislature spent most of yesterday clearing bills in its final meeting before the end of this plenary session.
A total of 82 items of legislation were scheduled to pass their second and third readings in the meeting, with reviews continuing late into the evening. Cross-party negotiation earlier this week scheduled the meeting to continue until midnight.
Items passed yesterday included the budget for the first phase of the central government’s flood-control project, amounting to about NT$12.65 billion (US$421.8 million), with NT$3.32 billion to be raised by taking out loans this year and the other NT$9.33 billion from loans next year.
Amendments to the Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法) and to the Criminal Code (刑法) were also passed.
The amendments to the Gender Equality in Employment Act are to raise fines and make public the personal and corporate identities of violators. The revisions are also intended to extend the law’s protection to interns and dispatch workers.
While the existing Criminal Code stipulates that a person who “kidnaps another to extort ransom shall be sentenced to death, life imprisonment or imprisonment for not less than seven years” and that “if aggravated injury results from the offense, the offender shall be sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment for not less than 10 years,” the amendments made yesterday scrapped the capital punishment from these two clauses.
The bill was proposed by the Executive Yuan, who referred in its proposal to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by Taiwan in 2009 and says that in countries that have not abolished the death penalty, “the sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
UNILATERAL MOVES: Officials have raised concerns that Beijing could try to exert economic control over Kinmen in a key development plan next year The Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) yesterday said that China has so far failed to provide any information about a new airport expected to open next year that is less than 10km from a Taiwanese airport, raising flight safety concerns. Xiamen Xiangan International Airport is only about 3km at its closest point from the islands in Kinmen County — the scene of on-off fighting during the Cold War — and construction work can be seen and heard clearly from the Taiwan side. In a written statement sent to Reuters, the CAA said that airports close to each other need detailed advanced
Tropical Storm Fung-Wong would likely strengthen into a typhoon later today as it continues moving westward across the Pacific before heading in Taiwan’s direction next week, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 8am, Fung-Wong was about 2,190km east-southeast of Cape Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, moving westward at 25kph and possibly accelerating to 31kph, CWA data showed. The tropical storm is currently over waters east of the Philippines and still far from Taiwan, CWA forecaster Tseng Chao-cheng (曾昭誠) said, adding that it could likely strengthen into a typhoon later in the day. It is forecast to reach the South China Sea
Almost a quarter of volunteer soldiers who signed up from 2021 to last year have sought early discharge, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report. The report said that 12,884 of 52,674 people who volunteered in the period had sought an early exit from the military, returning NT$895.96 million (US$28.86 million) to the government. In 2021, there was a 105.34 percent rise in the volunteer recruitment rate, but the number has steadily declined since then, missing recruitment targets, the Chinese-language United Daily News said, citing the report. In 2021, only 521 volunteers dropped out of the military, the report said, citing
RSS