The World Friendship Games, originally scheduled for September 2024, have been postponed to 2025. Inside The Games was told that the Organising Committee will soon announce new dates for the event, which has received applications from nearly 2,500 athletes from 127 countries to compete in 36 sports at 21 venues, 17 in Moscow and four in Yekaterinburg.

Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old British girl in 2016, has qualified for the Paris Olympics. Van de Velde served one year of a four-year sentence and has since resumed his career, competing in international tournaments since 2018.

Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) has won a resounding and unprecedented victory in the first round of France's legislative elections, with 33.15% of the vote alongside her conservative allies, according to the Interior Ministry, which published provisional results on Monday.

This Sunday, polling stations opened in metropolitan France for the first round of early parliamentary elections. These elections could see the far right come to power for the first time through the democratic process. More than 49.5 million voters are called upon to elect the 577 members of the National Assembly. The second round will take place next Sunday, 7 July.

The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and the Minister for Sport and Ageing, Anika Wells, have announced a €176 million investment in high performance sport over the next two years.

The Paris 2024 Organising Committee has reached the symbolic milestone of allocating or selling one million tickets for the Paralympic Games to be held in the French capital from 28 August to 8 September.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has dismissed the appeals filed by World Athletics and the World Anti-Doping Agency against the decision of the World Athletics Disciplinary Tribunal (WADT) of 17 August 2023 regarding Nigerian hurdler Tobi Amusan, who was found not to have committed an anti-doping violation and will be able to participate in the Paris Olympic Games.

Russia will not be sending any competitors to the Paris Olympics after only four of its seventeen judokas were given permission to compete by the International Olympic Committee.

Afghanistan will send a gender-balanced team of three women and three men to the Paris Olympics in a largely symbolic move, while no Taliban officials will be allowed to attend the Games, the International Olympic Committee said. 

Baron Pierre de Coubertin, often referred to as the "Father of Olympism", entered the Musée Grevin last Tuesday, just a few weeks before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The official schedule for the highly anticipated 3x3 Basketball Olympic Games is now available. 3x3 will return to the Games for the second time at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games from 30 July to 5 August 2024 at the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

World Sailing has launched its first Para Inclusive Strategy to guide the growth of the sport through to 2029 and facilitate its return to the Paralympic Games. The strategy emphasises the expansion of Para Sailing by working with Member National Authorities (MNAs), major events and the sport's global governing structure to create a more inclusive environment and increase international participation.

German police were forced to shoot a man who threatened to attack supporters with a pickaxe and a Molotov cocktail in Hamburg on Sunday 16 June. The incident took place on Silbersackstrasse in St. Pauli when a man tried to attack several fans and threatened police officers. Police shot the man up to four times, according to video footage of the incident.

France was the scene of massive demonstrations last Saturday organised by trade unions and left-wing parties to protest against the rise of the far-right, which opinion polls suggest is on the verge of taking power. Police reportedly estimated the number of demonstrators at 250,000 nationwide, with 75,000 concentrated in Paris.