The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) cited woodball inventor Weng Ming-hui (翁明輝) yesterday for promoting sports exchanges and increasing Taiwan's visibility in the world by means of the sport.
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Tzu-pao (
Yang lauded Weng for not only having invented woodball in 1990, but also for promoting it over the past 17 years to make it an internationally known sport.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Yang said the Olympic Council of Asia has decided to include woodball as an official competition in the First Asian Beach Games scheduled for Oct. 18 to 26 next year in Bali, Indonesia.
He said Weng has become a source of pride for Taiwan and has helped promote the nation's "sports diplomacy."
Weng said he has been promoting woodball around the world in a spirit similar to Taiwan's agricultural technology missions extending assistance to developing nations.
Weng said that thanks to modern communications technology, woodball would continue to make strides abroad over the next few years.
Woodball was invented in 1990 by Weng and Kuang-chu Young.
They tried to create a ball game in which the ball would stay on the ground while in play and that is neither expensive nor requires a large playing space so that they could invite friends to enjoy the game on their lawn.
Woodball, which looks like a cross between golf and croquet, consists of playing a ball from a starting area through a series of gates by a stroke or successive strokes. The competitor who plays the stipulated round or rounds in the fewest strokes is the winner. It is a portable lawn game with players using the same mallet for teeing off, fairway play and putting.
A woodball is larger and heavier than a golf ball. As a result, a woodball only rolls on the grass so the sport can be played in a yard or other small areas as well as on beaches.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS