The Sports Administration and government officials yesterday came under criticism for hijacking elite athletes to promote their own political agendas and only focusing medal tallies.
“If we do not change our basic notions and outmoded concepts, then no amount of government restructuring can help improve the level and scope of sporting competition and the sports industry in Taiwan,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) said at a public hearing in Taipei to discuss separating the Sports Administration from the Ministry of Education.
Lawmakers were joined at the event by experts, sports reform advocates and sports industry executives.
Instead of making a separate entity, we should review the existing government structure and pool resources to promote the sports industry and better support athletes,” she said.
Yu said there was a need to clarify jurisdictions and sporting fields, since traditional notions of sports are changing.
There are many emerging activities that people argue should be included as sports, such as outdoor leisure and fitness activities, online computer games and street dance competitions, she said.
“The Sports Administration is in need of reform, because it is focused only on elite athletes and is always seeking glory to serve its political agenda by demanding that those representing the nation bring back a certain number of gold medals from international competitions,” Taiwan Sports Industry Development Association executive Chiao Chia-hung (焦佳弘) said.
Sports Administration Director-General Lin Te-fu (林德福) has set a target of at least 10 golds and 51 medals for this year’s Asian Games in Jakarta.
Government sports officials should instead promote participation in sports by encouraging all citizens, including local communities and clubs, Chiao said.
“If we created a Sports Ministry, but officials still only focus on elite athletes so that they can boast about how many gold medals Taiwan has won, then there is no need for this new ministry,” Chiao said.
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