President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday voiced his support for Taipei City Government's bid to host the 2015 Summer Universiade, saying it could help the development of sports in the country.
Ma said the government values sports development and the city has had a lot of experience hosting sports events.
“Taipei City is well prepared to host such an international sports event. We are ready in terms of sports facilities, talent and referees for the game,” Ma said at the Presidential Office during a meeting with Stefan Bergh, vice president of the International University Sports Federation (FISU), and other members.
Ma said he had promoted swimming and other types of sports during his term as Taipei mayor.
The city government constructed 80 swimming pools in municipal schools under his administration and made swimming a requisite for elementary school students, he said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), who met Bergh earlier at Taipei City Hall, said that the city government would work on upgrading infrastructure and improving services to transform Taipei into a more convenient and comfortable city as the host of the event.
The FISU circulated the call for bids last September. Gwangju of South Korea and Edmonton of Canada are also bidding to host the games.
If Taipei wins the right to host the Universiade, it would be the third major international event held in the city after the Deaflympics in September and the Taipei International Gardening and Horticulture Exposition next year.
Under the city government's proposal, the event would be held at Taipei Arena, National Taiwan Sports University and several other universities in the city.
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