Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund has confirmed President REINHARD RAUBALL will maintain his position for another three-year term at its annual general meeting. The 66-year-old "has been the club's president since '04" (SID, 11/24). ... Barcelona President SANDRO ROSELL has received a Special Olympics Prize of Honor from the Spanish state of Catalonia "for his support of sports for people with intellectual disabilities, above all providing the deserved social and institutional recognition" (MUNDO DEPORTIVO, 11/24). ... Former NBA player DENNIS RODMAN is preparing to go to North Korean for "an exhibition basketball tour there late next month." Though he "ducked questions" in an interview about whether his Christmas-time visit "would be used for propaganda purposes" by KIM JONG UN, Rodman said that he will "be accompanied on the trip by a dozen or so former NBA players." But he "refused to name names." Rodman: "I have seven people right now. I talked to a couple of guys last week. Lot of guys are saying, ‘OK, great. I’ll go. We’ll go'" (AP, 11/23). ... Field hockey player RAMANDEEP SINGH became the highest paid Indian in the Hockey India League (HIL) on Friday when he was snapped up for "a whopping" $81,000 in the players’ closed bid. With a base price of only $2,600, Ramandeep, who only recently broke into the Indian squad and is still part of the junior national side, got $3,000 more than "skipper and marquee player" SARDAR SINGH. Sardar was bought by the Delhi franchise last year for $78,000 (THE HINDU, 11/22). ... Korea Professional Baseball club Samsung Lions pitcher OH SEUNG-HWAN "decided to move to Japan’s Hanshin Tigers on a record-breaking, first-term contract, his agency said." The 31-year-old signed on for two years with the Nippon Professional Baseball team for 300M Japanese yen ($2.9M) a year with a signing bonus of 200M yen ($1.9M). With 50M yen ($490,000) in annual incentives, Oh can receive up to 900M yen ($8.8M) from the Hanshin Tigers. The amount "is the highest among his three predecessors" including LEE SEUNG-YEOP in '04, KIM TAE-KYUN in '09 and LEE DAE-HO in '11 (KOREA HERALD, 11/24). ... FIFA President SEPP BLATTER was granted a private meeting with POPE FRANCIS at the Vatican. The Pope asked FIFA to use football to promote peace in the world and to help the poor. "The Holy Father personally asked me to emphasize the role that football can play in educating young people, and also in promoting world peace. We both love football, and of course we talked about football too" (FIFA). The pair "discussed the favela situation in Rio de Janeiro as well as football in general." Pope Francis "had appealed to Blatter earlier after visiting may of Rio’s favelas ahead of World Youth Day in July." Blatter told the pope he will "do what we can," ahead of the World Cup (WORLD FOOTBALL INSIDER, 11/22).
