China

The San Francisco Giants are preparing a proposal for a 20,000-seat sports and entertainment arena across China Basin from Pacific Bell Park, team officials say.

While Beijing sprayed its grass green to impress Olympic Games inspectors, Toronto is about to greet the officials with a thick blanket of new snow as it makes its pitch to host the 2008 Summer Games.

Beijing declared itself ready for inspection for its bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, but urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) not to let politics influence its judgement.

The 2003 world badminton championships will be staged in Birmingham, English officials said after outbidding China, Hong Kong and the Netherlands.

BMCMedia has been appointed by the Walt Disney Internet Group to represent football web site Soccernet, in all major markets in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Peoples Republic of China, India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and New Zealand.

SINA.com, an online media and services company for Chinese communities worldwide, has launched China's official Olympics web site, http://aoyun.sina.com.cn.

A new 24-hour soccer channel will be launched this year for the Asian market with the content initially available to audiences in Greater China, Hong Kong and Bejing.

Meddling councils and tourist bodies in Sydney are creating a bureaucratic nightmare for overseas television stations hoping to film in the Olympic city during the run-up to this year's Games, reports the South China Morning Post.

The IOC has confirmed that ten cities have submitted preliminary bids for the 2008 Summer Games.

Japan has thrown its hat into the ring to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, officially entering Osaka as its candidate and vowing a "clean" campaign to win the right to hold the games.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it would send an envoy to North Korea to initiate friendly sports exchanges between arch enemies North and South Korea.

Asian soccer chiefs will decide on Tuesday whether to heed a call to boycott the 2002 World Cup in emergency talks on the region's representation in the finals.

Confusion over scheduling, disputes over judges' decisions, rumours of food poisoning and an upside down flag are some of the problems faced by organisers of this week's Asian Winter Games in South Korea.

The 20th Southeast Asian games begin on Saturday with attention focused as much on the tiny sultanate of Brunei as the actual competition itself.

The Japanese unit of global communications company Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW) is to form a joint venture with Japan's largest entertainment television content firm Yoshimoto Kogyo Co Ltd. to develop sports and entertainment content.

A squad of top NBA players will visit China and Taiwan in September for two exhibition games, the National Basketball Association has announced.