The international joint congress in sport history and sport sociology that takes place in Copenhagen, 31 July – 5 August 2007 is issuing its second call for papers.

The small country of Panama currently has not only one but two different Olympic Committees. Which committee is the right one is difficult to say as an attempt to resolve the situation in December failed completely despite intervention from the IOC.

Multinational cooperation between police and football authorities will be a must if European football wants to counter criminal money laundering activities through football. So says Henri Roemer, a special advisor to UEFA’s Executive Committee and an expert on what makes football vulnerable to organised crime.

Somali government forces and their Ethiopian allies have overpowered the Islamist group that controlled much of southern Somalia for the past six months. This is good news for female athletes who are now returning to the capital’s sports fields after they were banished from sport by the Islamists.

Knowledge bank: Sport and exercise professionals generally have a deep, even romantic attachment to sport. While the field of sport, exercise and physical education has much to commend it, it is important that professionals in this division of the ‘body industry’ have a complete and unsentimental grasp of it.

High level support is pouring in to Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the two American sports journalists who are facing jail for up to 18 months because they refuse to say who leaked them confidential grand jury testimonies from athletes questioned in the Balco doping case.

At a recent meeting no less than 600 people cheered for FIFA vice president Julio Grondona and encouraged him to run for the eighth consecutive reelection as president of the Argentinian Football Association (AFA). The rally went on despite the terrible mess that was the last AFA tournament - clearly the most controversial in the football history of Argentina.

The International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) wants to clean up its reputation as a corrupt and controversial organisation. As one of his first acts in office, the newly elected president Ching-Kuo Wu has set up a reform committee and appointed IOC executive board member Gerhard Heiberg as its chairman.