Bangkok: Germany, represented by Formula One world champions Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher, won the Race of Champions team crown for the sixth successive year in Bangkok on Saturday. The event, which pits winners from various motorsport series competing in identical cars and being held at the Thai capital's Rajamangala stadium for the first time, saw Germany comfortably beat the French pairing of F1 driver Romain Grosjean and rally driver...
08:56 AM, Dec 16, 2012
London: A teacher in France has been suspended after asking a class of teenagers to write suicide notes. The man, who has not been named, is a French teacher at the Antoine-Delafont school in Montmoreau-Saint-Cybard, near Angouleme, France, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. He told the 13 to 14-year-olds to imagine what they would say to themselves if they were about to end their lives out of "disgust" for...
01:58 AM, Dec 13, 2012
Paris: Lance Armstrong has been notified by the UCI that he has been stripped of all the titles he won after July 1998 and the American has three weeks to appeal, a spokesman for cycling's world governing body said on Monday. "Lance Armstrong's lawyer was notified on 6th December that all his results since 1st August 1998 were nullified. He has 21 days to appeal (from that date)," the International...
08:19 AM, Dec 11, 2012
Rome: Roma captain Francesco Totti scored twice and set up two more goals in a 4-2 win that ended Fiorentina's nine-match unbeaten run on Saturday. The result left both clubs tied for fourth in the Serie A and marked a forgettable return for Fiorentina manager Vincenzo Montella, who played with Roma alongside Totti for a decade then coached the Giallorossi briefly last year. Earlier, Atalanta beat Parma 2-1 to move...
08:06 AM, Dec 09, 2012
Lausannel: Lance Armstrong will hold on to his 2000 Sydney Olympic bronze medal a little longer after the International Olympic Committee said it would wait for the international cycling union to inform him before moving to strip him of it. The 41-year-old had his seven Tour de France victories nullified and was banned from cycling for life in October after the International Cycling Union (UCI) ratified the United States Anti-Doping...
02:49 AM, Dec 06, 2012
Jerusalem: Israel rejected concerted criticism from the United States and Europe on Monday over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to expand settlement building after the United Nations' de facto recognition of Palestinian statehood. Washington urged Israel to reconsider its plan to erect 3,000 more homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, saying the move hindered peace efforts with the Palestinians. Britain, France, Spain, Sweden and Denmark summoned the...
02:06 AM, Dec 04, 2012
Paris: French trade unions accused President Francois Hollande of betrayal on Saturday after his government backed away from a threat to nationalise ArcelorMittal's Florange steelworks. The Socialist government said on Friday it had won promises from ArcelorMittal to avoid forced redundancies and inject 180 million euros to develop the Florange plant, meaning it would no longer have to take over the site. Hollande came to office promising to create jobs...
10:29 AM, Dec 02, 2012
Paris: The French government backed away on Friday from a threat to nationalise a steelworks, saying it secured promises from the owner, ArcelorMittal, to invest and avoid any forced layoffs at the site where the company has idled two blast furnaces. Workers at the plant said the announcement fell well short of what they had hoped from a government that won power in May on promises to combat industrial decline...
08:53 AM, Dec 01, 2012
Paris: The French government has found an industrialist willing to invest 400 million euros to renovate ArcelorMittal's Florange steelworks in northeast France, a minister said on Wednesday. Raising pressure on the group to agree to a sale, Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg told lawmakers the interested party was a private steel industry investor who wanted to inject money into the site with financial backing from the state. Montebourg has been pushing...
11:33 AM, Nov 29, 2012
Paris: President Francois Hollande pressed the head of steelmaker ArcelorMittal on Tuesday to avert the closure of two blast furnaces in northeastern France, raising the possibility of a state takeover while waiting for a buyer. Hollande met Lakshmi Mittal at his office a day after a cabinet member said the Indian steel magnate was no longer welcome in France due to years of broken promises, forcing other officials to clarify...
09:12 AM, Nov 28, 2012
Paris: Many European countries with lagging economies are trying to draw in foreign investors. But in France, a Socialist minister says he wants to kick the world's biggest steel maker out of the country, accusing it of lying to the government. The invective from Industrial Recovery Minister Arnaud Montebourg has soured an already tense relationship between France's leftist leadership and steel powerhouse ArcelorMittal. In a dispute that has caught the...
03:35 PM, Nov 27, 2012
London: Disgraced cyclist Tyler Hamilton said he was "proud of writing it but not proud of what's in it" after his book "The Secret Race" won the prestigious William Hill sports book of the year award on Monday. Former Olympic gold medallist and seven-times Tour de France rider Hamilton and co-writer Daniel Coyle took the 24,000-pound prize for the book that revealed the murky dealings in the world of professional...
11:40 PM, Nov 26, 2012
Mumbai: Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has graced the cover of French weekly magazine Paris Match. The 47-year-old actor took to Twitter to announce the news and also posted a picture of the magazine cover. "If you know French... tell me what it says on cover... apart from my name. Thanks," Shah Rukh wrote in the cheeky post. In the photo, the actor is dressed in a black and grey...
10:45 AM, Nov 16, 2012
Parma: Italy head coach Cesare Prandelli insists his side did not deserve to lose 1-2 to France in a football friendly played here. Prandelli used a 4-3-3 format for the first time, with Stephan El Shaarawy, Mario Balotelli and Antonio Candreva up front, while Marco Verratti got his first senior start and Alessandro Florenzi his debut Wednesday, reports Xinhua. In-form AC Milan striker Stephan El Shaarawi gave the hosts a...
01:24 PM, Nov 15, 2012
Austin, Texas: The Lance Armstrong Foundation has formally dropped the name of the disgraced cyclist from its title, the organization said on Wednesday, marking the latest move by the cancer charity to distance itself following the biggest doping scandal in the sport's history. The foundation that has been informally known for years as Livestrong - the word adorning its well-known yellow wristbands - filed paperwork with the Texas Secretary of...
10:18 AM, Nov 15, 2012
London: Zlatan Ibrahimovic illuminated a low-key night of international friendlies on Wednesday, scoring an audacious overhead kick from 30 yards to cap his four-goal display in Sweden's 4-2 win over England. Ibrahimovic's one-man show in Stockholm - featuring what both his opponents and pundits hailed as one of the greatest goals seen in recent years - overshadowed two high-profile matches between fierce European rivals, with the Netherlands and Germany drawing...
08:50 AM, Nov 15, 2012
The NMC said that reporting on the Test series has been jeopardised as a result of the move by the BCCI. ...
05:05 PM, Nov 13, 2012
Paris: French President Francois Hollande's attempt to sign a note congratulating Barack Obama for getting re-elected wound up lost in translation - and all over Twitter. In the great Gallic tradition of murdering the English language, Hollande ended the letter to the US president in his own hand, writing: "Friendly, Francois Hollande." The mistake was a literal translation of the French "amicalement," instead of what probably should have been "kind...
07:09 PM, Nov 11, 2012
