The book is based on the true story of the 1971 Table Tennis World Championships in Japan, where the unlikely friendship between American player Glenn Cowan and top China player Zhuang Zedong set the media ablaze and drove both administrations scrambling at the highest levels. 

Though the peace process is in garbage time, Obama’s top aides take time out from dealing with ISIS to join kids on the White House court.

North Korea sent its highest level delegation to South Korea on Saturday and the two sides agreed to reopen dialogue amid a flurry of diplomatic activity which has raised hopes for improved ties between the arch rivals.

Brazilians are starting to pay attention to a different type of football the one played with the hands. American football, once the sport nobody could understand, is quickly gaining space in the land of soccer, attracting a growing number of fans and participants. Brazil already has two well-established semi-professional leagues in place, and television ratings for the NFL are increasing rapidly.

Given the troubled history between South and North Korea, it's difficult to imagine that the sides marched under the same flag at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. The unified marches, also held at the Sydney and Athens Games, fell in line with a reconciliatory mood on the peninsula as well as the idea that, in the words of the late Nelson Mandela, sport "has the power to change the world."

For the next two weeks, organizers of the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon are hoping the event will keep plenty of people in the port city, if not draw them from the capital. Incheon, about 25 kilometers west of Seoul and home to three million people, is ready to step out of the shadow of its giant neighbor and make a name for itself by hosting Asia’s biggest sporting event starting Friday.

Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Iranian and American people have been isolated from one another due to long-standing disputes between their governments. Routine interactions, like sporting events between national clubs, and other cultural exchanges have been few and far between. However, recently thousands of fans across Southern California were able to witness a rarity: the U.S. and Iranian national volleyball teams squaring off in friendly exhibition matches as part of a goodwill exchange between the two estranged nations.

Six years ago tomorrow, the Hrazdan Stadium in the Armenian capital of Yerevan erupted into a wall of noise as two unlikely opponents lined out in the first World Cup meeting of Armenia and Turkey -- a match which became the first round of the so-called 'football diplomacy' between the two troubled neighbors.