The nation is to host three international championship games for physically challenged athletes this month and next month, which will be viewable on YouTube, the Sports Administration said yesterday.
The nation is to host the Asia Para Table Tennis Championships in Taichung’s Providence University from July 23 to July 27, it said.
This is the first time that the nation would be hosting Asia’s highest-level table tennis championship games for disabled athletes, it said.
The contest is a 50-point race recognized by the International Table Tennis Federation and is a qualifier game for next year’s Tokyo Paralympics, Chinese Taipei Paralympic Committee executive director Wu Lung-Hsien (吳倫閑) said.
More than 250 table tennis players from 19 nations are to compete in the championships, she said.
The game would be joined by top-rated table tennis players from China, Japan and South Korea, she said.
Of the 40 Chinese table tennis players scheduled to compete, 20 have made it into the top five in past Paralympics Games, Wu said.
Taiwan would have 24 tennis players competing in the championships.
A number of them have a high chance of qualifying for the Tokyo Paralympics, including world No. 3 Cheng Ming-chih (程銘志) and Hsiao Shu-chin (蕭淑卿), she said.
Two refugees in Kuwait are to join the competition, Wu added.
Meanwhile, the 5th World Deaf Badminton Championships and 2nd World Deaf Youth Badminton Championships are to be held from Friday next week to July 22 at the Taipei Gymnasium, with more than 150 players from 25 countries competing, the agency said.
The World Deaf Bowling Championships are to be held in Taoyuan from Aug. 3 to Aug. 12, with nearly 200 athletes from 25 countries scheduled to attend, it said.
In the past three championships, Taiwan won 18 golds, 12 silvers and 15 bronzes, ranking No. 1 worldwide in terms of medal count, the agency said.
The Chinese Taipei Deaf Sports Federation has trained 27 sign language interpreters to help out during the competition, it said.
People can watch the games at //bit.ly/CTSADYoutube and www.youtube.com/user/hopegolfweekly/videos.
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