PAUL J.RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Responding to a question from the Politico about why he hasn't played golf in recent years, U.S. President George W. Bush said:

"… playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Admittedly, it's probably a bigger sacrifice than most Americans have made so far, as suggests the recent FP article, "The War We Deserve."

(Note: A quick search of Getty Images seems to confirm Bush's sacrifice: The site doesn't appear to have any photos of Bush playing golf after Oct. 13, 2003. There are, however, many photos of him driving golf carts, such as the one here of Bush giving his wife Laura and Afghan President Hamid Karzai a ride at Camp David, Maryland, in August 2007.)

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

You may have been wondering what Rudy Giuliani has been up to since the ignominious end of his presidential campaign. It turns out that "America's mayor" is getting back into urban politics...in Ukraine.

Giuliani was in Kiev on Tuesday, speaking with former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko, who is running for mayor. Giuliani has signed on as an advisor to Klitschko's campaign. At yesterday's press conference he offered this advice:

"If Vitaly is elected mayor of Kiev, my first piece of advice for him would be to say ... no more corruption, corruption is over."

Klitschko is one of the front runners in a wild election that has drawn 79 candidates, but the ex-boxer known as Dr. Iron Fist has been mocked by his opponents for his perceived lack of intelligence and poor command of Ukrainian. (Like many Ukrainians, he grew up speaking Russian.) The former champ, who actually has a doctorate in physical education, seems to be longing for the simplicity of his sport:

"Sometimes I wish I could meet people inside the ring, where there are clear rules," said Klitschko, who has 34 career knockouts and literally towers over the political field at 6-foot-7 (2 meters). "But physical power decides nothing in politics."

Indeed, in addition to running for mayor Klitschko is training for a shot at retaking his title this summer, two goals that might seem contradictory.

But Giuliani seems confident in his new protege and sees parallels between Klitschko's rise and another slow-talking muscleman turned transformational leader, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Kiev's squeegee-men better watch out.

Apparently, Chinese President Hu Jintao totally dominates at the ping pong table and put on quite a show while visiting Japan last week.

Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

It's been almost 10 years since the Kosovo crisis, and 15 since the wars in Bosnia and Croatia -- long enough for the world to have "more or less turned its back" on the region, former FP managing editor and negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords Richard Holbrooke recently complained in the Washington Post.

The world may have moved on to bigger and bloodier conflicts, but one former NBA star is staying his ground. Serbia's Vlade Divac, a versatile center in L.A. and Sacramento before his retirement in 2005, has taken on the refugee crisis that continues to plague his home country. Under the banner of "You Can Too," Vlade and his wife have been raising awareness and money to improve the lives of Serbia's 6,748 refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The refugee problem today is a fraction of what it once was (almost 530,000 registered with Serbia at the end of the Kosovo war), but those who remain live in deplorable conditions. Tension between locals and refugees often ran high during my stay in Belgrade last year, with the refugees serving as a constant reminder of the Kosovo war and its messy aftermath. To make matters worse, refugees from Kosovo are still deemed IDPs, rendering them ineligible for the kind of international aid available to officially recognized refugees. They will remain IDPs until a U.N. resolution decides Kosovo's final status (read: never).

But the Divacs are not discouraged. Since launching their campaign last September, they have raised 1 million euros –- enough to provide new homes to 75 families, or about 400 people.

What about today's hot spot? Current stats show that Iraq has produced more than 2 million refugees and 2.7 million IDPs. With UNHCR efforts underfunded and with few displaced Iraqis planning to return home, perhaps the NBA should start ramping up its Middle East recruitment. After all, someone's got to clean things up when the dust settles.

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Tyler Cowen cites this story as evidence that "we shouldn't boycott the Olympics in any way":

A wheelchair-bound Chinese torch bearer has rocketed to national fame after fending off protesters in Paris, becoming a symbol of China's defiance of global demonstrations backing Tibet.

Jin Jing, a 27 year-old amputee and Paralympic fencer has been called the "angel in a wheelchair" and is being celebrated by television chat shows, newspapers and online musical videos after fiercely defending the Olympic torch during the Paris leg of the troubled international relay.

Protesters denouncing Chinese policy in Tibet threw themselves at Jin. Most were wrestled away by police but at least one reached her wheelchair and tried to wrench the torch away. Jin clung tenaciously to what has become a controversial icon of the Beijing Olympic Games until her attacker was pulled off. Her look of fierce determination as she shielded the torch, captured in snapshots of the scene, has now spread throughout China, inflaming simmering public anger at the protests. "I thought we had lost in France, but seeing the young disabled torch bearer Jin Jing's radiant smile of conviction, I know in France we did not lose, we won!" said one of tens of thousands of Internet postings about the incident.

Here's Jin receiving a hero's welcome at a Lenovo event in Beijing:

China Photos/Getty Images

Jin, who received scratches on her chin and shoulders during the Paris incident, cuts a pretty damn sympathetic figure. No wonder Chinese netizens are so angry with the French.

MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/Getty Images

Training for the Olympics is tough, but dodging sniper bullets usually isn't part of a day's workout for most athletes. Unless you're Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussein Abdul-Razzaq. She and three other Iraqis so far have qualified for this summer's Olympics, and they are doggedly determined to keep training despite the lack of resources and security. Abdul-Razzaq doesn't have proper running shoes, and she trains on a pockmarked track that she isn't officially allowed to use. She and her coach regularly get caught up in sniper fire on the way to and from training.

Meanwhile, archer Ali Adnan, who was attacked by militants linked to al Qaeda in 2006, practices mainly in his backyard; it's too difficult to travel in and out of his neighborhood. These Iraqi athletes, as well the Afghan athletes featured in FP's recent photo essay, "The Olympians of Afghanistan," have definitely got the Olympic spirit.

STR/AFP/Getty Images

Evo Morales, Bolivia's populist president, has signed up with a minor league soccer team in La Paz.

The 47-year-old will be a reserve player for the team Litoral, which hopes to earn a spot in Bolivia's top professional league next year. Morales was once a standout player for a local cocoa grower's team and as president, has been an outspoken critic of the worldwide ban against high-altitude soccer games.

Last week I wrote that the travails of the Cuban national soccer team might make a good Kevin Costner sports movie, but this one smacks more of Will Ferrell to me.

ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images

You had to see this one coming. Following Monday's embarrassing debacle in Ancient Olympia, the much touted 85,000-mile round the world relay of the Olympic torch -- dubbed the "Journey of Harmony" -- is reportedly being scaled back, most notably in San Francisco and Paris. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome confirmed yesterday that the planned events in the City by the Bay, the torch's only stop in North America, are already being altered.

Elsewhere, Chinese authorities are requesting that the "harmony" of the journey be imposed by force. They have requested, for instance, that the Australian military accompany the torch through Canberra next month. An Aussie government official characterized Beijing's level of anxiety over the possibility of protests at torch events this way: "They're absolutely wetting their pants...."

Australia denied China's request, according to reports, and doesn't plan to scale back events. San Francisco, Paris, and other major cities along the relay route should do the same. The concept of the Olympic torch relay was first conceived for the 1936 games held in Nazi Germany. It would be a sad irony if Beijing and the International Olympic Committee are allowed to continue their pathetic charade of denial. Where is Tom Lantos when we need him?

Are you a smarter college basketball fan than John McCain? If so, you can win campaign paraphernalia by matching your March Madness picks against his.

It's a clever marketing ploy by team McCain, but why stop there? Why not have the candidate take positions in predictions markets such as Intrade? Wouldn't we rather know how prescient Senator McCain is about the odds of bird flu striking the United States by the end of September, the chances Pervez Musharraf will step down as Pakistan's president anytime soon, or the likelihood of a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians by January 2009? Put your money where your mouth is, senator.

(Hat tip: Marc Ambinder)

Danwei, a Chinese media blog run by expats, says that Beijing's paranoia about pro-Tibet sentiments extends even to exhibition baseball. Here's an account of Saturday's game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres:

One especially excited group was Cub Scout Pack 3944, which is comprised mostly of Beijing-resident American kids under the age of 10. About fifty of them arrived at the game in blue uniforms bedecked with American flags and merit badges, accompanied by their den mothers and scout masters. The night before, they'd learned that the Dodgers had invited them onto the field after the game to meet the players.

But just before the game, the Haidian district police barred the scouts from the field. Why? Because thousands of kilometers away, in the Himalayas, monks and others in Tîbet had launched protests against Chinese rule. The government apparently feared that the young Americans would use their moment on the grassy infield to agitate for Tîbetan independence.

J. Meric/Getty Images

Cuba's under-23 soccer team was left with only 10 players on the field this week (for American readers: that's one less than normal) after seven defected during an Olympic qualifying tournament in Tampa, Florida. Five players initially made a run for it during a team meal on Tuesday night, telling a Spanish-language TV station that they hoped to play professional soccer in the United States. Then two more players defected before a game against Honduras yesterday, leaving Cuba with a team of 10 and no substitutes. While I'm certainly happy for the defectors and wish them luck, you've got to give the remaining team some credit for soldiering on shorthanded and holding Honduras scoreless for the first half before going down 2-0 in the second. They play again against Panama on Saturday. If Kevin Costner wanted to start a second career in communist propaganda films, he could find worse material.

(Hat tip: On Deadline)

Here's a tip for Olympic organizers in Beijing: Double-check which national anthem you play at each medal ceremony.

Last Sunday, Chinese track star Liu Xiang, whom FP listed as one of the "Four to Watch in 2008," won a gold medal in the 60-meter hurdles at the world indoor athletic championships in Valencia, Spain. At the medal ceremony, though, organizers accidentally played Chile's national anthem, not China's! (It's hard to tell apart those five-letter countries beginning with "Chi," isn't it?) Liu displayed good sportsmanship during the ceremony, however, and afterward told organizers about the mix-up. Ten minutes later, they redid the ceremony, this time with the correct song.

It reminds me of when a color guard from the U.S. Marines accidentally displayed the Canadian flag upside down before Game 2 of the 1992 World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and Atlanta Braves. So add another tip for Olympic organizers: Double-check flag orientation.

Asked about the highly anticipated opening ceremonies that he is planning for the Beijing Olympics, Chinese director Zhang Yimou had this to say:

All the actresses are good looking."

I'm glad we cleared that up.

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images

Major international events often impose enormous burdens on poor and minority communities. Roughly 1.5 million people, for instance, will be displaced by the Beijing Olympics. For the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea forcibly evicted 720,000 people while the homeless population was detained in the city's outskirts. The 1996 Atlanta Games uprooted about 30,000 poor residents, and Sydney, Athens, and other Olympic cities witnessed similar social dislocations. But New Delhi has taken its "preparations" for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, kind of a mini-Olympics involving current and former British colonies, a step further: by arresting and imprisoning beggars.

Delhi's Social Welfare Department is organizing "cleanup operations," the Christian Science Monitor reports:

Every morning, it dispatches nine vans from its Beggar Raid Team. Each carries three plainclothes men, who scan the crowded streets of bullock carts, cows, motorbikes, cycle rickshaws, newspaper hawkers, and stray dogs for ragged people pleading for money.

"Since the end of last year, we've been told to increase the numbers we arrest," says Anand Pandey, a civil servant known as a "raid officer" ...

Warrants are not necessary for arresting beggars. Once picked up, they are tried in the city's Beggars' Court. Those whom Mr. Pandey calls "first-time offenders" often go free with a warning. Others are incarcerated until friends or family scrape together the money to pay their bail of about 3,000 rupees (about $75). Many are locked up in "beggars' homes" – dedicated jails – for a minimum of one year and a maximum of 10, the latter being the same penalty given for violent robberies. If they are "blind, a cripple or otherwise incurably helpless," according to the law, beggars can be locked up for life.

The city is also creating a "beggar database" to hold the photographs and fingerprints of offending beggars, so that "habitual" panhandlers can be convicted more easily. Already, during the past year, 2,537 beggars have been arrested and 1,133 convicted. Many of the city's beggars are elderly, ill, or amputees, and have little chance of finding regular work.

Let's face it, the city is arresting and locking up these beggars for no reason other than that they are poor. "Many of these people have no option but to beg. To arrest them without even providing the infrastructure that guarantees them the most basic needs is appalling," Anand Kumar, a human rights lawyer in New Delhi, told the Monitor. With such cruel and regressive attitudes toward the poor, New Delhi's efforts to portray itself as a modern "world-class city" for the Commonwealth Games are doomed to fail -- at least in the eyes of human-rights campaigners around the world.

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently reached a shocking conclusion: Blogging is a "legitimate form of personal expression."

In the run-up to the Olympic Games, we've all heard about the Chinese government's restrictions on bloggers' freedom of expression, but not as many people seem to be aware of the blogging bans the IOC itself has imposed on Olympic athletes. In 2004, for the Athens games, athletes and coaches were not permitted to write firsthand accounts or maintain online diaries (a.k.a blogs). Posting personal videos and photos online was banned, too, unless permission was obtained first.

The IOC's brilliant rationale for gagging the athletes then: Protecting the interests of companies holding broadcasting rights comes first. (As if an athlete's blog is a direct competitor to an NBC sports commentator.)

This year, though, the IOC seems to have finally seen the light. Sort of. In Beijing, athletes can blog, as long as they follow some simple rules:

• No blogging about other competitors
• No videos, photos, or audio clips of sporting events and opening, closing, and medal ceremonies
• No ads or mention of sponsors (blogs can't be used for commercial gain)
• No domain names with words similar to "Olympics"
• No infringement of copyright agreements
• No information that could compromise security and staging of the events

My hunch is that as the Internet evolves and people become more tech savvy, some of these rules will prove tough to enforce. People will find ingenious ways to evade them; even at earlier Olympics, athletes are reported to have blogged "illegally." The IOC will learn sooner or later that trying to control people's online activities is a task of Olympic proportions.

Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

Chairman Yao goes down:

Houston center Yao Ming will miss the rest of the National Basketball Association season because of a stress fracture in his left foot, placing the Rockets' postseason chances and their 12-game winning streak in jeopardy.

It's too early to tell, but he could miss the Olympics as well.

TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images

China may not be willing to accept Kosovo as an independent state in diplomatic circles, but when the paddles come out, Kosovo's as equal a player as they come. In the first international appearance by a national Kosovo sports team since the breakaway province declared independence from Serbia last Sunday, Kosovo's ping-pong team took to the tables today for the opening rounds of the 2008 World Team Table Tennis Championship, in southern China

Although a full member of the International Table Tennis Federation, Kosovo is unlikely to be Olympic ready by August. In order to participate in Beijing, Kosovo would need full U.N. recognition as an independent state –- something Russia and China are unlikely to allow any time soon. Kosovar athletes will still be allowed to compete, but only under the Olympic flag, a concession actually made for Serbs back in 1992, when the then former Yugoslavia was under U.N. sanction.

John Gichigi/Getty Images

As anyone following the sport of running knows, a sizable chunk of the world's fastest runners hail from Kenya, a country rocked by violence after a disputed December 2007 election. Now a paragraph in a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) says elite runners there may be funding, training, and commanding militias.

Kenya's speediest runners are chiefly from the Kalenjin tribal group. Coaches say Kalenjins have snagged about 40 percent of top awards at world and Olympic events, from the 800m to the marathon, since 1980. These top athletes have invested their running-earned riches in farmland and other real estate.

The Kalenjins have a longstanding animosity with the Kikuyus, the tribal group of President Mwai Kibaki. ICG, based on interviews in the region, says Kalenjins reportedly want to run Kikuyus off their farms and property. Kalenjin athletes, many of whom have a military background, are allegedly funding, training, and even commanding Kalenjin militias to attack Kikuyus. Lucas Sang, a runner in the 1988 Olympics, may have been killed while leading a group of raiders, the report says.

Athetics officials vigorously deny that the pride of Kenya, its beloved runners, are fueling violence. They point out that runners there have been involved in local competitions to foster peace. Paul Tergat, the Kenyan who held the marathon world record until last September, told Reuters, "I am sure that no athlete would want to finance or promote violence."

But if they are, it's a sad day for amateur runners everywhere. It's hard to stomach the news that some of running's role models may be running campaigns of violence.

1st prize Sports Action Singles
Ivaylo Velev, Bulgaria, Bul X Vision Photography Agency
Freeride competitor Philippe Meier chased by an avalanche, Flaine, France, 15 March

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1st prize Sports Features Stories
Erik Refner, Denmark, Berlingske Tidende
Copenhagen Marathon finish line, 18 May

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