The military yesterday dispatched four fighter jets to welcome a group of Olympians back to Taiwan to thank the nation’s athletes competing in this year’s record-breaking Tokyo Games.
Taiwan this year has posted its best-ever Olympic result with 11 total medals thus far — two golds, four silvers and five bronzes — more than doubling its previous record of five medals in 2000 and 2004.
To celebrate the achievement, the Ministry of National Defense said it was instructed by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to dispatch four Mirage 2000 jets to escort the athletes flying home on a China Airlines charter flight.
Photo: Military News Agency via CNA
On the new Airbus A350 plane were gold medal winners Lee Yang (李洋) and Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟), who on Saturday bested China in the men’s doubles badminton final, and Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎), who on Sunday took silver in the women’s badminton singles.
Also on the flight were fellow badminton players world No. 4 Chou Tien-chen (周天成) and world No. 11 Wang Tzu-wei (王子維), as well as coaches and support staff.
The four Mirage jets took off from Hsinchu Air Base to meet the athletes’ flight in the air before it touched down at 5:11pm.
Photo: CNA
The jets also set off a series of flares on either side of the plane for the athletes to enjoy, which were captured by Wang Chi-lin, Wang Tzu-wei and Tai in their Instagram stories.
“It is our great honor to welcome back these national heroes,” the ministry said, adding that the gesture was intended to thank all the athletes representing Taiwan at the Games, as well as show government and public support for sports.
The ministry made a similar gesture in 2018, when F-16 jets were dispatched to escort and set off flares for Taiwan’s athletes returning from the Jakarta Palembang Asian Games.
It also follows a wish voiced by the president as early as 2019 to welcome the nation’s athletes back from the Tokyo Olympics with an F-16 escort.
Representatives from the Sports Administration and Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee, as well as China Airlines and EVA Airways staff, also lined up to welcome the badminton team at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport with banners and cheers.
Additional reporting by Chen Hsin-yu and CNA
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,