HONG KONG –If you aren’t a fan of rugby yet, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge has a message for you: It’s coming, and in a format which might finally engage an elusive American audience.

Bobby Yip / Reuters

New Zealand’s Tim Mikkelson falls to the ground after failing to tackle Samoa’s Mikaele Pesamino on his way to score during the final of the Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament on Sunday. Samoa beat New Zealand to win the championship.

In the six months since rugby “sevens” – a variation of rugby where the standard 15 players on a team is slashed down to 7 – was voted into the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rogge has been making the rounds selling the merits of the game to audiences all over the world.

It should come as no surprise then that Rogge was in Hong Kong last weekend to attend the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, Asia’s oldest sevens tournament and what many rugby players have long considered the unofficial Olympic games for rugby sevens.

Though the decision to include rugby in the Summer Games has been cheered by fans and players alike in Hong Kong, many have been quick to condemn the IOC’s vision of an Olympic Sevens tournament that would be less inclusive than the extremely popular Hong Kong template. 

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TEL AVIV — Ahmed Khatib was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank town of Jenin in 2005, when they mistook his toy gun for a real weapon. Practically the whole town of Jenin attended Ahmed’s funeral and the incident was major news in Israel.
But his father was determined to make sure something positive came out of the tragic loss of his son’s life, so he donated Ahmed’s organs to dying Israeli children. A Druze girl in Northern Israel received his heart, a Bedouin…(read more)

KABUL — President Obama came to Kabul to deliver a stern message to Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, and, according to one close Karzai observer, it landed.

Haroun Mir, head of the Center for Research Policy Studies in Kabul, told NBC News that when Obama and Karzai spoke to reporters at the Presidential Palace Sunday night it appeared “from the tone of [Karzai's] voice, one could understand that he certainly received a very tough message. And he was not very comfortable.”

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