Facility Notes: Curitiba World Cup Stadium To Stage First Test Event On March 26

Brazil's "troubled" Arena da Baixada Stadium in Curitiba will stage its first World Cup test event March 26. The venue will not be "officially ready until April 30, just six weeks before football's showpiece event." Officials also said that the stadium's redevelopment budget has risen to 330M reais ($140.4M), up from an original of 184M reais ($78.3M) (IANS, 2/25). ... The groundbreaking ceremony for Tripoli, Libya's National Stadium in the new sports park, which was designed by German architects GMP, took place Wednesday. Libya, which will host the African Cup of Nations in '17, is the second African country in which GMP is carrying out a project. Two venues are planned for the Libyan capital. In addition to the refurbished track-and-field stadium, a new sports complex with a football stadium for 71,000 spectators will be built at the western edge of the city (GMP).