Lawmakers’ attentiveness toward monitoring the government’s budget has reached a “new low,” watchdog Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) said yesterday, a day before the legislature’s current session comes to an end.
As of yesterday morning, legislators had slashed a total of NT$1.9 billion (US$60.17 million) from government budget proposals since the current legislative session began in September last year — the lowest amount in the past three years.
Given that budget proposals that went under review during the current session add up to more than NT$1.9 trillion, less than 0.1 percent of the proposed budget was rejected, CCW chairman Shih Hsin-min (施信民) said.
In anticipation of their next semi-annual report on individual legislators’ performance, which is to be published in March, the group yesterday released attendance records of the legislators over the past legislative session.
According to statistics compiled by the group, three legislators showed up for less than half of the meetings they were required to attend, including the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Weng Chung-chun (翁重鈞) and Lin Tsang-min (林滄敏), as well as the Democratic Progressive Party’s Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻).
They also released a list of legislators who failed to engage in inquiry sessions with government officials as required, including six legislators who were found to fulfill less than 10 percent of their inquiry duties — the KMT’s Lin Tsang-min, Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠), Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒), Weng Chung-chun, Alex Tsai (蔡正元) and Non-Partisan Solidarity Union legislator May Chin (高金素梅).
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS