Already, the forthcoming Olympic Games have become a media event without parallel, though probably not in the way the organisers had envisaged. Across the world, a discussion is now rolling on the relationship between sport and politics, between China and the West, and between gala ceremonies and human rights.

The Greenland Handball Federation has won its year-long dispute with the Pan-American Team Handball Federation over the continental handball federation’s decision to reduce Greenland’s membership status from full to associate.

The Indian Premier League, cricket’s new, all-action, TV-friendly tournament, is reshaping cricket. While cricket has been shaped by television more than most other sports, Twenty20, a new form of the game designed with television and stadium audiences in mind, looks set to determine the future of the game.

The Indian Hockey Federation has been suspended by the Indian Olympic Association after allegations surfaced that the federation’s general secretary, Kandaswamy Jothikumaran, accepted a bribe to select a certain player for the national team.

Sports journalists Muse Mohamed Osman and Shafici Mohyaddin Abokar, president and first vice president of the Somali Sports Press Association (SSPA) respectively, were detained by Mogadishu police officers last week and threatened with their lives.

Mark Davies, managing director of global betting giant Betfair, has called for a world anti-corruption agency for sport.

Bribery is part and parcel of winning media rights for sports events allege defendants in the criminal trial of six former employees of the ISL/ISMM media group, FIFA's former media partners.

On Monday 7 April, Play the Game lost a close friend and collaborator, while sport for all lost one of its most important eyewitnesses. After a long struggle with cancer, Danish press photographer Niels Nyholm died at the age of 62.

German Willi Lemke has been appointed as the new United Nations special adviser on sport. Lemke’s first act as adviser will be to visit Tibet, where violent confrontation between proponents and opponents of Tibetan autonomy has sparked fierce debate over a boycott of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

From 1989 to 2001, the world’s biggest marketing company ISL/ISSM paid personal commissions – or bribes – worth an unbelievable 138 million Swiss francs (87,5 million euros) to sports officials and other persons involved in the dealing of sports TV and marketing rights.

With less than six months to the start of the Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese government is failing in its pledge to allow free access to foreign journalists.