Mandatory local referendums would be crucial in protecting people’s lives, which is the No. 1 priority in discussing the dispute over construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City (新北市), the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said yesterday.
“This is why the TSU would propose to amend the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Control Act (核子反應器設施管制法) by authorizing a mandatory local referendum to be held in a 50km radius evacuation zone from any installation of nuclear reactors, fuel rods and nuclear power plant operations,” TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) told a press conference.
As political parties have engaged in heated debates over the high threshold of the current Referendum Act (公民投票法), Huang said, the amendment would help the policy debate move forward.
If the regulation was amended, a local referendum in Taipei City, New Taipei City, Keelung City and Yilan County — the four administrative zones that face a direct impact if a nuclear disaster occurred — would be held with the outcome of the referendum determined by simple plurality, Huang said.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) proposal to lower the unusually high threshold stated in the referendum act would be time-consuming and likely be vetoed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the legislature, he added.
Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) founder and former chairman Shih Hsin-min (施信民) said people who live within a 50km radius of a nuclear power plant are those most entitled to have a say about the plant, and this was a common practice in other countries.
If people who live on the outlying islands could vote in local referendums to determine whether a casino resort would be built and whether they would accept the storage of nuclear waste, the people in northern Taiwan should also be able to have their voices heard on the issue of a nuclear power plant, Shih said.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
TRUMP ERA: The change has sparked speculation on whether it was related to the new US president’s plan to dismiss more than 1,000 Joe Biden-era appointees The US government has declined to comment on a post that indicated the departure of Laura Rosenberger as chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Neither the US Department of State nor the AIT has responded to the Central News Agency’s questions on the matter, after Rosenberger was listed as a former chair on the AIT’s official Web site, with her tenure marked as 2023 to this year. US officials have said previously that they usually do not comment on personnel changes within the government. Rosenberger was appointed head of the AIT in 2023, during the administration of former US president Joe