Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief as the city managed to preserve its right to host the 2009 World Games by completing an indoor arena for the international sports event prior to the Aug. 28 deadline.
Chen said she could relax after learning that the Kaohsiung Arena, the site of the World Games scheduled for July next year, had acquired its usage permit.
With the arena having obtained the necessary permits, the city is now ready to hold warm-up contests for the Games as scheduled next month, she said.
Work on the arena began on Aug. 13, 2004, and was expected to be completed within two years. But serious delays in the construction raised the ire of the International World Games Association, the body responsible for the World Games.
The association threatened to take away Kaohsiung’s right to host the Games if the arena could not be completed in time for the warm-up competitions.
On a visit to the new arena, Chen expressed her gratitude to the engineers and workers who completed the facility ahead of the deadline.
The Kaohsiung Arena, which was built as a BOT (build-operate-transfer) project by China Steel affiliate Kaohsiung Arena Development Corp at a cost of NT$6.7 billion (US$210 million), is a 15,000-seat multi-functional facility.
The city government provided subsidies of NT$1.5 billion for the construction of the facility, which will be operated by Kaohsiung Arena Development Corp for the next 50 years.
Also yesterday, the city invited the public to attend an international regatta at the Port of Kaohsiung at the weekend and to cheer for the competitors, a local official said Friday.
An official from the city government’s Marine Bureau, which organized the event, said the inshore race would be held at the port’s Honorary Pier (光榮碼頭) and at Sizihwan (西子灣).
A total of 81 local and foreign competitors will sail 11 keel boats registered in Hong Kong, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, the official said.
The two-day regatta will include sailing, canoeing and surf-boarding competitions, the official said, adding that a lottery would be held on the opening day.
Additional information is available on the Kaohsiung City Government Web site.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS