South Korea and North Korea are holding their first high-level talks in nearly a year in a bid to defuse mounting tensions that have led to the brink of a military confrontation.

In the next few weeks, you’ll be hearing a lot more about him, the European Olympics and Baku.

Speculation about the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is mounting after his name was missing from a list of dignitaries celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party.

North Korean officials visiting the South in a surprise trip have agreed to a second round of high-level talks.

Kieran McGeeney can make men tick.

CLOCK THAT

Qatar's women's basketball team has withdrawn from the Asian Games after organisers refused to let players wear hijabs in competition.

North Korea has proposed talks on its plans to send athletes and cheerleaders to the Asian Games in South Korea.

China completed an unprecedented clean sweep of gold medals to end their controversial London 2012 tournament with an emphatic statement.

Ireland has an excellent chance of having a women’s sevens rugby team at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio after a spectacular and dramatic debut by a new squad at the European championships which ended in Moscow at the weekend.

WHEN Michael Cusack and his band of pioneers founded the GAA in Hayes’s Hotel 127 years ago, they would never have believed how big that organisation would grow.

KATIE TAYLOR sparred with world champion Guillermo Rigondeaux when he visited Limerick a few weeks ago and now she has been added to the undercard at the CityWest Convention Centre on Saturday night when the double Olympic champion defends his WBA super bantamweight title against Willie “Big Bang” Casey.

China’s Ding Junhui was victorious in the first all-Asian major snooker final as he brushed aside Hong Kong potter Marco Fu to win the Ladbrokes Mobile Masters at Wembley Arena.

China's Ding Junhui and Marco Fu of Hong Kong made history at Wembley today as they set up the first all-Asian final in the history of snooker's marquee tournaments.

MOVE aside Diego Maradona, Rafa Benitez and Raymond Domenech, the tattooed bad boy of Chinese soccer, Wang Dalei, is gunning to be crowned the greatest ranter of 2010.

GALWAYMAN Neil Carney may not be an athlete but he is about to get in training for the marathon of his life.

Advertising giant WPP today reported a 47% drop in profits and predicted 2010’s big events such as the FIFA World Cup and US Congressional elections will fail to lift performance.

IT is probably inevitable that we will be told that the Chinese are exploiting the Olympic Games for their own political purposes, as if the Americans, the Germans, the Russians, the British, or all the others had not done so already.

Former champion Ding Junhui wasted little time in booking his place in the second round of this year’s Maplin UK Championship in Telford today.

THE Show Jumping Association of Ireland (SJAI) has set the bar high with its new Premier Grand Prix League, but it is confident the strict criteria it has laid down for it “can only ensure excellence”.

Alan Pardew intends to leave no stone unturned as his search for new Charlton players goes “worldwide” this month.

Charlton have signed China captain Zheng Zhi on loan from Shandong Luneng with a view to a permanent deal.

AN ASIAN Games silver medallist has failed a sex test and will be stripped of her medal.

Peter Ebdon broke the resolve of title-holder Ding Junhui tonight to secure a Maplin UK Championship semi-final against John Higgins.

Ding Junhui will get no respite in his hectic schedule as he aims to become only the third man to successfully defend the Maplin UK Championship title.

PROVISIONAL world number one Ken Doherty became the highest-ranked player to bow out of the Maplin UK Championship when he lost 9-6 to Joe Perry in York last night.

Irishman Ken Doherty became the highest-ranked player to bow out of this year’s Maplin UK Championship when he lost 9-6 to Joe Perry in York tonight.

Ken Doherty does not want his career to end with him being labelled a one-hit wonder in snooker’s top three events.

Title-holder Ding Junhui came through a tense battle with Ryan Day to reach the last 16 of the Maplin UK Championship in York today.

Ken Doherty has gone 7-1 up against Mike Dunne at the midway point of the second round of the UK championship.

SOUTH KOREAN Olympic chiefs have demanded a full inquiry into the death of Asian Games equestrian rider Kim Hyung Chil to discover whether or not the competition, held in pouring rain, was mismanaged.

IT may have taken almost a year, but the Show Jumping Association of Ireland (SJAI) has got its man.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Britain and the United States of widening divisions between Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, saying Washington was “the cause of the problem” in the war-torn country.

Former Portsmouth target Lee Chun-Soo has been given the green light by his South Korean club to return to Europe when the transfer window opens in January.

Iran will be allowed to defend their Asian Games title after world governing body FIFA provisionally lifted a ban on their participation in international competition.

A new charity to introduce disabled and underprivileged children to snooker has been established by Lindsey Hunter, the wife of Paul Hunter who lost his battle with cancer last month.

TWENTY-ONE members of North Korean cheering squads who travelled to South Korea for international sports events are reportedly being held in a prison camp for talking about what they saw in the South.

AS usual, swimming took pride of place during the first week of the Olympics and one of the features has been Germany’s failure to win a gold medal. As of yesterday they were reduced to just one bronze.

Snooker hailed a new star at Wembley today as Chinese teenager Ding Junhui made a stunning debut in the British Masters.

THE support of the Irish community in Hong Kong was a huge encouragement to their Special Olympics officials to fight the Sars ban which threatened their involvement in the World Games in the opinion of the senior officers of their delegation.

ANDRE AGASSI drew on his big match temperament to carry him into the last 16 of the Australian Open yesterday as Venus Williams led a clutch of top seeds into the fourth round.

SOLDIERS and anti-disaster officials in South Korea yesterday began clearing up after the most powerful typhoon to hit the country in 40 years left at least 47 people dead and 33 missing in flash floods and landslides.