Lawmakers yesterday agreed to extend the current legislative session by two weeks to complete the review of an additional budget request of NT$11 billion (US$380.62 million) for a 3 percent pay raise for civil servants.
The decision would ensure that the pay raise proposal takes effect on July 1, as scheduled by the government, should the legislature approve the budget request before the legislature recesses on June 14.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) has called a meeting for party caucus whips to decide on items to be reviewed before the legislature goes into summer recess.
Lawmakers decided to extend the session to complete reviews of the pay raise budget, a budget request of NT$4.8 billion for monthly pensions to be distributed to more low-income households, NT$2.9 billion for tuition subsidies for children under the age of five and vocational high-school students from economically disadvantaged families, and a budget request for state-owned and non-government enterprises.
They also decided to schedule a confirmation vote on President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) four grand justice nominees — Chen Be-yue (陳碧玉), Huang Hsi-chun (黃璽君), Lo Chang-fa (羅昌發) and Tang Te-tsung (湯德宗) — before the recess begins.
The terms of four of the 15 incumbents on the Council of Grand Justices will end on Sept. 30.
New justices are to take the bench on Oct. 1 as required by law.
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday called for greater cooperation between Taiwan, Lithuania and the EU to counter threats to information security, including attacks on undersea cables and other critical infrastructure. In a speech at Vilnius University in the Lithuanian capital, Tsai highlighted recent incidents in which vital undersea cables — essential for cross-border data transmission — were severed in the Taiwan Strait and the Baltic Sea over the past year. Taiwanese authorities suspect Chinese sabotage in the incidents near Taiwan’s waters, while EU leaders have said Russia is the likely culprit behind similar breaches in the Baltic. “Taiwan and our European
The Taipei District Court sentenced babysitters Liu Tsai-hsuan (劉彩萱) and Liu Jou-lin (劉若琳) to life and 18 years in prison respectively today for causing the death of a one-year-old boy in December 2023. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said that Liu Tsai-hsuan was entrusted with the care of a one-year-old boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), in August 2023 by the Child Welfare League Foundation. From Sept. 1 to Dec. 23 that year, she and her sister Liu Jou-lin allegedly committed acts of abuse against the boy, who was rushed to the hospital with severe injuries on Dec. 24, 2023, but did not
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