The main venue for the 21st Summer Deaflympics, the Taipei Track and Field Stadium, was formally launched yesterday as Taipei prepares to welcome an estimated 4,000 athletes from more than 80 countries in September.
The stadium on Dunhua N Road used to be known as Taipei City Gymnastics Stadium. The city government spent NT$3 billion (US$91 million) to transform the 50-year-old center into the main venue for the international sports event.
It is the second class-one track-and-field ground certified by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) besides the main stadium for the 8th World Games in Kaohsiung City.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) presided over yesterday’s inauguration and said the venue had nurtured many outstanding athletes, such as Olympics medallist Chi Cheng (紀政) and Yang Chuan-kuang (楊傳廣), known as the “Iron Man of Asia,” and he expected the renovated stadium to cultivate more athletes.
“The stadium is equipped with certified facilities and will serve as a crucial base for many more international sports events besides the Deaflympics,” Hau said.
The city will host an international track and field meet today and tomorrow at the stadium with about 250 athletes from 12 nations.
The Deaflympics will be held between Sept. 5 and Sept. 15, with most events being held in Taipei City and Taipei County, while swimming events will be held in Hsinchu County and shooting events in Taoyuan County.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods