Talk or go to jail! A federal judge in California has issued a ruling which sends two investigative sports journalists, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, to prison for up to 18 months because they refuse to reveal who leaked them confidential grand jury testimonies from athletes investigated in connection with the Balco case.

FIFA vice president Jack Warner is expected to drop his threat of legal action against the authors of an auditing report and some FIFA officials, reports The Daily Telegraph. But when the story of Warner’s alleged illegal sale of 4,500 World Cup tickets broke earlier this month, he was all set to sue and claimed he had been the victim of a set-up.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) is lawyering up in an attempt to stamp out racism at cricket matches. The Chief Executives’ Committee has decided to ask a lawyer to draft legislation to deal with racist behaviour at matches and then ask its members to lobby their respective governments to get them to adopt the laws.

The environmental organisation Greenpeace has filed a suit with Russia’s Supreme Court to block the construction of sporting facilities and infrastructure around the city of Sochi that is bidding to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. Greenpeace wants to protect unique Alpine forest in the Western Caucasus which has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1999.

The president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE), Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, has plans to stand as president of the IOC in order to attract more attention to chess as a sport. And the ploy might work. Ilyumzhinov is an eccentric who is also president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia and claims he was once abducted by aliens.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has written to FIFA to demand that it lifts its intolerable ban on investigative reporter Andrew Jennings and allows him back in at FIFA press conferences. Jennings is the only reporter banned from FIFA but leaked minutes from FIFA’s Committee on Ethics and Fair Play show that at least one other reporter has also been in danger of exclusion.

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