On Friday the Popular Committees of the World Cup published a list of their 8 demands for the federal and state governments in Brazil. This is attracting a good amount of interest in Brazil and has been shared on the blogs of some of the most popular sports journalists in Brazil. So far, I haven’t seen an English language version of these demands so I’ve translated them below.

He can still dunk like a butterfly, but in the personally tragic case of former basketball pro Dennis Rodman in North Korea, the embrace of Kim Jong Un and his policies sting like a bee. Rodman is the most recent example of sports diplomacy gone awry. With the Sochi Olympics starting, a new cadre of unpredictable athlete diplomats will likely take the stage.

Known as football (or fútbol) around the world, soccer has been considered a legendary sport for years and years, lauded for its style, grace, speed, and extremely dedicated fans. "Fútbol: The Beautiful Game," presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, explores the significance and impact of soccer around the world, presenting a visual history of the game through paintings, photography, sculpture, and video works from 30 international artists.

In Maputo, the “Garden for Sculptors” behind the Museu Nacional de Arte on Avenida Ho Chi Minh has become a kind of prison yard for Mozambique’s various Ozymandiases, a semi-public dumping ground where colonial monuments now crumble quietly away. A marble European baroness reclines in thick robes, the grasses growing up around her base.

In its first issue of 2014, Monocle dedicated a slice of the magazine to its Soft Power Survey, a run-down of countries and their ability to create and sustain influence in positive ways. For the first time in its four year history, Monocle accorded sport its own category in the metrics of the survey. Football took centre stage as perhaps the most pervasive and global of all sports.

I was born in Brazil and lived there until I was 13 years old. If you have never been to Brazil during World Cup time, it will be hard for you to envision what it’s like. The collective mind of a nation stops dead on its track, and 200 million fans (we say the national squad has 200 million coaches) put on their yellow jerseys and pray our squad will bring us glory.

Jessica Lopez, a four-year old with a shy smile, has suffered severe chronic asthma attacks since she was born. Her condition always worsened in the fall, when dust rose up from the abandoned fields that bordered her family’s modest one-room house.

The 2014 Winter Olympic games begin in a little less than a month at the time of writing this article. They will be located in Sochi, Russia, which is a tiny Russian resort town on the Black Sea. Also this year, the 2014 World Cup kicks off this June. It will take place across Brazil in a multitude of cities across the country. Both of these events are significant because they are two of the largest (if not the largest) worldwide sport events.