Other friends are planning their summer trips to London to attend the 2012 Olympics. The sports pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times are filled with stories about the training regimens and back stories of potential medal winners.

The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, on Sunday criticized the German Football Association after only three members of the national team visited the Auschwitz death camp on Friday in the run up to the Euro 2012 soccer championship...

Politics and sports are often an incendiary mix, as the controversy now swirling around the Euro 2012 football championship, to be co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland, demonstrates... European Union leaders have said that they will boycott matches held in Ukraine...

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ SportsUnited Division will bring 13 Iraqi taekwondo athletes, eleven youth and two coaches, to the United States, June 5- 15th, to participate in a U.S. Government sports visitor program. This will be SportsUnited’s second-ever taekwondo sports visitor program and the fourth sports exchange with Iraq.

In this respect, MTN Rwanda has supported and promoted the development of sports. This year alone the company sponsored the '2012 Peace Cup' soccer tournament was at the tune of Frw 51.4 million. It also supported local musicians through its involvement in the annual 'Salax Music Awards.

Sports diplomacy builds on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of “smart power,” embracing the full range of diplomatic tools, including sports, to bring individuals together to foster greater understanding.

By investing in a sporting event the magnitude of the FIFA World Cup as part of its public and cultural diplomacy exercise, South Africa was able to promote the country’s passion for an international game and to portray South Africa as a hospitable nation and host to the world.

Sports boycotts, as part of sports diplomacy or the use of sports for political or diplomatic means, have occurred on a number of occassions in the past. The most notorious examples are the Olympic Games of 1980 in Moscow and 1984 in Los Angeles, both heavily influenced by Cold War politics. But also in 2008 only 9 leaders of EU Member States attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.