With the World Games fast approaching, funding for the event is still NT$250 million (US$7.7 million) short, the Kaohsiung Organizing Committee said yesterday.
The committee said in a press release that it had received about NT$599.5 million in funds from the Sports Affairs Council with the help of Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲).
The funds were received as three separate payments, including NT$251 million for sports events and NT$163.5 million to broadcast the Games, the committee said.
However, a gap of NT$250 million remains between the committee’s request for NT$845 million, which was approved by the Legislative Yuan, and the funds granted by the sports council, the committee said. It said it had been trying for seven months to get the full budget from the council.
The Kaohsiung City Government has accused the council of withdrawing its support for the sports event after the council froze most of the committee’s budget in late February.
“Kaohsiung City feels saddened that it has been unable to receive full support from the central government in holding this international event,” the committee said.
“The central government has already slashed the city’s budget for management of the event, maintenance of the sports fields, the opening and closing ceremonies, reception of important guests and promotion of cultural tours [during the Games]. This seriously hampered the progress of the Kaohsiung Organizing Committee’s preparations,” the committee said.
It said it would attempt to secure the needed funds through sponsorship from the private sector.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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