The nation’s soccer community voiced its opposition yesterday to a plan by the Taipei City Government to convert the country’s only dedicated soccer stadium into a permanent exhibition hall after the conclusion of the Taipei International Flora Exposition.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Wu Su-yao (吳思瑤) and representatives of local soccer groups said the city government should keep its promise to restore the stadium to its original use after the Flora Expo, to be held from Nov. 6 to April 25.
They said Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) promised two years ago that the stadium would be closed only “temporarily” to serve as a venue for an indoor floral design competitions and special exhibits during the Flora Expo.
PHOTO: CNA
However, the city government and the Ministry of Economic Affairs now plan to permanently convert the stadium and the surrounding area into a display center for top quality products from Taiwan, Wu said.
“It is really sad for soccer fans that the Zhongshan Soccer Stadium will no longer function as a sports facility because of the Flora Expo,” said Chang Yao-ming (張耀明), a former soccer player who now coaches a soccer team for the Shilin Sports Federation.
Kuo Cheng-deng (郭正典), founder of the Taipei Veterans General Hospital Football Association, also stressed that Zhongshan Soccer Stadium is the only stadium in the country designed specifically for soccer and approved by FIFA for international matches.
“If it is demolished, soccer matches will have to be held at non-soccer stadiums, such as the Kaohsiung Stadium or Taipei Stadium,” Kuo said at a press conference hosted by Wu. “Soccer will therefore have to share limited space with other sports.”
The city government said that it has planned supplementary measures to deal with the issue.
Wang San-chung (王三中), chief secretary of the city government’s Department of Economic Development, said that more soccer fields will be built for the city’s schools with soccer teams.
He also suggested that Yin Feng Sports Park, Bailing Sports Park and Taipei Stadium could all be used for soccer matches.
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
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,
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