BMW Taiwan yesterday became the latest sponsor of the Taipei Summer Universiade, with the company pledging to provide the Taipei Universiade Organizing Committee with 200 vehicles in its 7 Series line.
The fleet of BMWs will be tasked with transporting international sports delegation leaders and International University Sports Federation officials to and from sports venues, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) told a news conference.
BMW Taiwan has not only offered to loan the vehicles, but it will also pay for the license fees, fuel taxes, compulsory liability insurance and highway tolls, bringing the total amount of sponsorship to NT$170 million (US$5.6 million), Ko said.
Photo provided by the Taipei City Government
The mayor arrived at the news conference in one of the German maker’s vehicles.
Asked about his impressions of the car, Ko said: “I felt an electro-static shock when closing the car door, which probably means I am not meant to ride in such a car.”
He added that he could not afford a car of such quality.
The committee had planned to recruit volunteer drivers, but considering the price of the cars, it decided to contract the job out to professional chauffeurs, Ko said.
BMW Taiwan vice president Wu Han-ming (吳漢明) said counterterrorism is a widely discussed issue worldwide and BMW’s 7-series are well fitted for the purpose.
The vehicles can continue driving for 150km even if their tires were ruptured by sharp objects, and their built-in GPS systems allow them to be quickly located in the event of a hijack, Wu added.
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
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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