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 Seoul High Court in South Korea has turned down an appeal in the case of IOCmemberPark Yong-sung who was convicted of embezzling the Doosan Group earlier this year. The IOC has already suspended Park Yong-sung but must now decide whether he should be expelled permanently.

Guy Drut, a French IOC member, seriously tarnished the reputation of the Olympic Movement when he was convicted in a corruption case in his home country, says IOC’s Ethics Commission. Nevertheless, after intervention by French president Jacques Chirac, Guy Drut can now continue his work on the Olympic Committee.

Only a week after the IOC Ethic’s Commission reprimanded the French IOC member Guy Drut for tarnishing the reputation of the Olympic Movement, the president of the French National Olympic Committee has also appeared in court on charges of corruption.

One month after his conviction for fraud, the IOC Executive Committee has finally decided to provisionally deprive Yong-sung Park from South Korea of all rights as an IOC member. The provision stays in place until the IOC Ethics Committee has completed its inquiry into the case and until the judicial authorities in South Korea have rendered a final judgement.

It is very difficult for autonomous regions to become independent members of the IOC. Nevertheless, the two Danish autonomous regions, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, have now been given an unusual opportunity to present their arguments for independent membership directly to the IOC.

During the Olympic Winter Games in Turin, the IOC got a taste of the political dilemmas the organisation mayface in the run-up to the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 as a Buddhist monk and two young Tibetans went on hunger strike in Turin demanding that the IOC should live up to its own promise of monitoring the human rights situation in China in the run-up to Beijing 2008.

President of the International Judo Federation and member of the IOC, Yong-sung Park, has been convicted of embezzlement and fraud by a court in South Korea.