A North Korean-led taekwondo organization will participate in a world taekwondo championship in South Korea opening Saturday, amid the Moon Jae-in administration seeking “sports diplomacy” to repair its relationship with North Korea. 

Blind football represents hope and belonging for Egypt's one million visually impaired. [...] Globally, blind football's star is rising rapidly. Since the 1980s, when the first five-a-side national championships took place in Brazil and Spain, the sport has spread to dozens of countries. In 1997, Europe and North America held the first continental championships, followed by the first blind football world championship a year later. In 2004, it became a summer Paralympic sport.

The use of sport as an instrument of foreign policy is nothing new for the U.S. government. [...] The Sports Diplomacy Division of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs employs only five staffers and spends only .0001 percent of the Department budget. And yet, it has still managed to recruit some of the country's most celebrated athletes to the cause, and its programs have reached thousands of people in more than 100 countries over the past 15 years.

The Worm has returned. On Tuesday, former NBA great Dennis Rodman flew back to North Korea during a time of heightened tensions with Washington, after the rogue state's 16 missile tests so far this year, and its arrest of two more U.S. citizens, bringing the total number of Americans held by the regime to four. It's at least the fourth trip to North Korea for Rodman, who was previously hosted in 2013 and 2014 by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, a known basketball fanatic.

With the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set to have chosen Paris over Los Angeles as the site for the 2024 Olympics, it is timely to ask: Is hosting the Olympics good for a nation’s brand, and do they provide a good financial return on investment? [...] He also noted that the concept of nation-branding pervaded China’s handling of the 2008 Beijing games. “In China their goal was broad recognition as a leader on the global stage.” He said that China was largely successful, but that in terms of political reputation, the country was thrown into a negative light.

Now that Qatar is embroiled in controversy with nearly the entire Sunni Islamic world, led by Saudi Arabia, the 2022 FIFA World Cup is suddenly at risk. The Qatar World Cup has been dogged by controversy since the day it was announced in 2012. But even years of international and humanitarian moral outrage could not do to Qatar what Saudi Arabia proved able to do almost instantly: isolate Qatar’s ruling emir and take away his biggest soft-power achievement.