World Baseball Softball Confederation President Riccardo Fraccari announced that Taipei City and Taichung are the latest cities to join -- alongside Tokyo, Japan -- as hosts for the 2015 WBSC Premier 12 World Baseball Championship that will debut Nov. 8-21. The new flagship quadrennial event will feature the men’s professional national teams from the Top 12 nations (the “Premier 12”) in the world and will award millions in prize money, in addition to distributing the highest amount of world ranking points of any int'l baseball event. The additions of Taipei City and Taichung to the lineup of host cities for the inaugural Premier 12 follows a landmark agreement between WBSC and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball that will see the semifinals and finals of the Premier 12 be staged at the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome (Int'l Baseball Federation). ... Organizers of the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon "will push for all of Hennessy Road to be opened for next year's event, but the ceiling of 73,000 entries is unlikely to be raised." Runners "spoke overwhelmingly in favour of the slight change to this year's finish, a more spectator-friendly route along Hennessy Road and Yee Wo Street in Causeway Bay" (SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 1/26). ... The FA will stage the 2018 UEFA European U17 Championship after England was awarded hosting rights for the finals. The tournament for Europe’s 16 elite nations will be played at venues across the Midlands with St. George’s Park at its heart (FA). ... An IOC conference on sports medicine "will be held in Korea in 2017 for the first time in Asia." The Korean Society of Sports Medicine said that "it has won the right to host the 5th IOC World Conference on Prevention of Illness and Injury in Sports." The three-day conference is scheduled to kick off on June 1, 2017 and "is expected to be attended by some 1,500 physicians, 120 speakers and 40 IOC members and domestic officials" (KOREA TIMES, 1/26).