With temperatures in the 70s, over 150 participants, including Ambassador Robert Patterson, toed the starting line of the U.S. Embassy Ashgabat Turkmenistan Dick's Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Marathon First Wave run on Sunday, March 17, 2013.

If deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez polarised the nation with his policies and political rhetoric, his love of sport helped bring people together, even if "baseball diplomacy" couldn't fix relations with the US. In a country famous for beer, beauty pageants and baseball, the game transcends a Saturday afternoon pastime, reaching its way into diplomacy and politics.

The Australian government should put more money into football diplomacy as Australia prepares for the 2015 Asian Cup and use the Asian Cup to strengthen Australia's ties with Asia, an Australian think tank said in a latest report on Friday.

The football tournament, which will be hosted by Australia for the first time, is expected to attract 45,000 visitors and have a potential television reach of 2.5 billion viewers. The Lowy Institute for International Policy, in a paper released on Friday, says the tournament will present a big opportunity for Australian businesses to network with Asian investors and consumers.

Could Rodman's visit achieve the same galvanizing effect? This seems implausible, given the record of the North Korean regime, with its continued testing of missiles and nuclear weapons. The most conceivable outcome is that Rodman will suffer be stigmatized even more than other anti-diplomats; after all, he applauded a regime that runs gulags amid widespread mass hunger, calling its leader "awesome".

Former basketball star Yao Ming has called for Chinese sports to get back to basics and not be viewed solely as a way of advancing national honour. The 2.26-metre-tall former Houston Rockets centre, who played in the United States' elite NBA competition for eight seasons and spearheaded a basketball boom in China, said he was feeling some pressure in his new role as a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

For more celebrity CPPCC members, CCTV News correspondent Fei Ye sat down with former basketball player Yao Ming, a first time CPPCC member discussing Chinese politics and public diplomacy.

Not too long ago, Brand India was riding high. Now, it is fast losing some of its sheen. The country has been beset with a series of scams and governance issues; foreign investors are plagued by uncertainties in taxation; and recently, the Central Statistical Office has pegged the country’s GDP growth for the current fiscal 2012-2013 at 5% — the lowest since 2002-2003. In fact, last year, credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P) released a study titled, “Will India be the first BRIC fallen angel?”