Saying “I will attend the Deaflympics in Taipei” using sign language, tens of thousands of athletes, students and guests, including President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and actor Jackie Chan (成龍), gathered yesterday in Taipei to start the countdown to next year’s Deaflympics in Taipei.
The 21st Summer Deaflympics will be held from Sept. 5 to Sept. 15 in Taipei and Hsinchu. They will be the first major international sports event the city has organized.
About 3,600 athletes from more than 80 countries will participate, the Taipei City Deaflympics preparatory committee said. Spectators will be allowed to wave the Republic of China’s (ROC) national flag at the auditorium in support of the athletes, the committee said.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, AP
Joining tens of thousands of people for the theme song “sign-along” in front of Taipei City Hall, Ma said he expected the event to increase the city’s international visibility.
“The central government will increase the subsidy to Taipei City and we will definitely support the event. Hopefully the world will know more about Taipei thanks to the games,” Ma said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) vowed to make the event a success and called on all Taipei residents to support the event and let the world learn about the city’s passion, friendliness and its care for minorities.
Actress Lin Ching-hsia (林青霞), pop singer A-mei (張惠妹) and weightlifters Chen Wei-ling (陳葦綾) and Lu Ying-chi (盧映錡) — who both won bronze medals at the Beijing Olympics — also attended the launch ceremony.
Hau said he had invited former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to speak at next year’s event, and that more guests would be invited.
The Deaflympics, formerly known as the Deaf World Games, were first held in Paris in 1924.
Taipei won the bid to host next year’s event in 2003. Over 11 days, athletes will compete in 18 sports, including track and field, badminton, basketball and bowling, the committee said.
Taiwanese won nine gold metals, four silver medals and three bronze medals in the 2005 Deaflympics in Melbourne, Australia.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,