Austin: Lance Armstrong stepped down as chairman of his Livestrong cancer-fighting charity on Wednesday and Nike severed ties with him as fallout from the doping scandal swirling around the cyclist escalated. Armstrong announced his move at the charity in an early-morning statement. Within minutes, Nike said that it would end its relationship with him "due to the seemingly insurmountable evidence that Lance Armstrong participated in doping and misled Nike for...
06:57 PM, Oct 17, 2012
Berlin: Lance Armstrong should come clean with a full doping confession, while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will look into ways of taking away the former Tour de France champion's 2000 Games medal, IOC vice president Thomas Bach said on Tuesday. American Armstrong, who won the Tour a record seven times from 1999 to 2005, is set to lose his titles after the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) accused him...
07:51 PM, Oct 16, 2012
Madrid: France will field 11 warriors intent on proving Spain are not unbeatable when they play the world and European champions in a World Cup qualifier in Madrid on Tuesday, according to striker Karim Benzema. Benzema, who plays with Spanish internationals including Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos and Xabi Alonso at Real Madrid, said he believed the Iberian nation were the best side in the world but insisted France had the...
09:44 AM, Oct 16, 2012
Paris: Hit by injuries and reeling from a surprise 1-0 loss to Japan, with their strikers struggling to score and a patched-up defense looking far from secure, France have enough to worry about without even thinking about Spain's quality ahead of their World Cup qualifier on Tuesday. Both teams won their opening two qualifiers to share the lead in Group I. But while Spain cruised into top gear with a...
07:11 PM, Oct 15, 2012
Paris: Zinedine Zidane is taking the first steps towards possibly managing the French national team in the future by joining coaching programme at the French Football National Institute (INF). "I will pass my coaching diplomas (at INF)," 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 winner Zidane said. Asked if he would be interested in coaching France one day, he said: "Why not, one day, coach this team..." ...
07:56 PM, Oct 14, 2012
Paris: Lance Armstrong may take a lie detector test to clear his name from doping allegations, his lawyer said on Sunday, even though he did not expect the result would change the public's opinion of the American cyclist. Armstrong is set to lose his record seven Tour de France titles after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) published a 1,000 page report on Wednesday that said the retired American took part...
04:53 PM, Oct 14, 2012
Paris: Lance Armstrong's success pushed Jan Ullrich to resume doping at the start of the last decade to give the German any chance of competing against his American rival, the 1997 Tour de France winner's mentor said on Friday. Under Rudy Pevenage's guidance, Ullrich won the race 15 years ago but finished second to Armstrong three times between 2000-03. The American won the race seven times in a row from...
05:07 PM, Oct 12, 2012
Paris: France football coach Didier Deschamps has finalised the squad for the World Cup qualifier against Spain. In the 23-man squad he announced Sunday, injured Lassana Diarra was replaced by uncapped Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Clement Chantome, Xinhua reported. Diarra injured his back in Anzhi Makhachkala's 2-0 win at Dynamo Moscow in the Russian Premier League Sunday and was unable to finish the match. Squad: Goalkeepers: Hugo Lloris (Tottenham Hotspur), Steve...
11:41 AM, Oct 08, 2012
London: A suspected Muslim terrorist in France has been shot dead by police in front of his pregnant wife and child, a media report said on Sunday. Jeremy Sidney, 33, was gunned down as armed officers swarmed into his house in Strasbourg, France. He was a French national who spent time in prison for drug-taking and had only recently converted to Islam, the Sunday Express reported. Seven others, including another...
07:51 PM, Oct 07, 2012
Lille: France's public prosecution service said on Tuesday it was shelving an investigation into allegations that disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a man once tipped to become president of France, had engaged in group rape. The prosecution service said in a statement it had taken the decision after a young woman retracted an allegation against the 63-year-old, who is also fighting wider accusations of sexual misdemeanour in France and...
02:52 AM, Oct 03, 2012
New Delhi: The French government has bestowed the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters on Indian theatre personality Ebrahim Alkazi for his contribution to modern theatre and making it accessible to a wider audience. The 87-year-old was given the honour, the French embassy said in a statement. Alkazi has been supporting the visual arts through the Alkazi Foundation of the Arts. Alkazi, as head of the National School...
11:03 AM, Oct 01, 2012
Paris: In its boldest development in a generation, the Louvre Museum has a new wing dedicated to Islamic art, a nearly 100 million ($130 million) project that comes at a tense time between the West and the Muslim world. Louvre curators tout their new Islamic Art department, which took 11 years to build and opens to the public on Saturday, as a way to help bridge cultural divides. They say...
03:16 PM, Sep 27, 2012
Paris: A French magazine ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday by portraying him naked in cartoons, threatening to fuel the anger of Muslims around the world who are already incensed by a film depiction of him as a lecherous fool. The drawings in satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo risked exacerbating a crisis that has seen the storming of US and other Western embassies, the killing of the US ambassador to Libya...
09:08 PM, Sep 19, 2012
London: Prince William's office says its lawyers will go to court in France on Monday in a bid to stop further publication in that country of topless photos of William's wife Kate. St. James's Palace says lawyers will seek an injunction against Italian media group Mondadori, which publishes France's Closer and Italy's Chi gossip magazines. The palace also will seek damages from the publisher. Last week Closer published paparazzi snaps...
06:10 PM, Sep 16, 2012
London: A French magazine has reportedly published topless images of Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, who was holidaying with her husband Prince Williams in France. BBC reported that the images were blurry, but were clearly of the couple. Buckingham Palace has threatened legal action. The images come as an embarrassment to the Royal family after Prince Harry's nude images were leaked from a party in Las Vegas a few weeks...
05:25 PM, Sep 14, 2012
Saint-Denis: Franck Ribery scored a well-taken goal and helped create the other two as France beat Belarus 3-1 in a World Cup qualifier on Tuesday. Midfielder Etienne Capoue and right back Christophe Jallet earned their first international goals as France followed up Friday's 1-0 win in Finland with an encouraging performance ahead of next month's crucial match away to European and World Cup champion Spain. After Anton Putilo pulled a...
01:51 AM, Sep 12, 2012
London: Italy were held to a disappointing 2-2 draw by Bulgaria as the rest of Europe's leading sides made winning starts in their first matches in qualifying for the 2014 World Cup on Friday. Showing little of the form that took the team to the European Championship final, the Italians were denied victory in their Group B opener when Georgi Milanov equalized for Bulgaria " ranked 89th in the world...
08:39 AM, Sep 08, 2012
Paris: A 46-year-old diplomatic bag, found on Mont Blanc in the French Alps last month, was handed over to India by France but the contents were not immediately known. The jute bag, stamped "Diplomatic mail" and "Ministry of External Affairs", was recovered by a mountain rescue worker on August 21 on Mont Blanc close to where an Air India plane flying from Mumbai to New York crashed in January 1966...
11:43 PM, Sep 03, 2012
Paris: French prosecutors opened a murder inquiry into the death of Yasser Arafat on Tuesday, his widow's lawyer said, after she and a TV investigation raised new questions about whether the Palestinian leader was poisoned. There have long been rumors in the Arab world that Arafat was poisoned, and a Swiss lab's recent finding of elevated levels of polonium-210, a rare and highly lethal radioactive substance, on Arafat's clothing has...
09:27 AM, Aug 29, 2012
