The Council of Grand Justices yesterday ruled that parts of the Urban Renewal Act (都市更新條例) were unconstitutional and demanded that the relevant agencies rectify mistakes in those parts within a year or the act will be abolished.
However, the verdicts in four related controversial cases, including one concerning the forced demolition of houses in the Wenlin Yuan (文林苑) area of Taipei’s Shilin District (士林), will not be affected, as the grand justices did not order an immediate termination of the controversial articles that they deemed unconstitutional.
According to Constitutional Interpretation No. 709, handed down yesterday, Article 10, Section 1 of the act did not set up a proper body to review cases. It also did not guarantee that individuals involved in cases had access to relevant information and had the opportunity to voice their opinions.
The grand justices singled out Article 13, Section 3 of the act and said that it did not demand the authorities deliver all relevant information to all legal property owners involved in cases, or demand that a public hearing be held where all parties involved can state their opinions.
The grand justices said that Section 3 also did not require relevant authorities to send a finalized version of all the pros and cons for urban renewal projects to all legal owners of land and buildings.
The grand justices ruled that all the sections under the two articles did not comply with the constitutional requirement of legally sanctioned administrative procedure.
Meanwhile, the grand justices denied a request to review the legality of the Taipei City Government’s forced demolition of the Wang (王) family house in the Wenlin Yuan area, saying that because the case was still being heard at the Taipei High Administrative Court, they could not accede to the request.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching