■ Football
NFL coach Sam Mills dies
Sam Mills, an undersized linebacker who became a Pro Bowl player with New Orleans and Carolina and was later an assistant coach for the Panthers, died in Charlotte, North Carolina on Monday after fighting cancer for nearly two years, the Panthers said. He was 45. Mills, who was diagnosed with cancer of the small intestine in August 2003 but continued to coach Carolina's linebackers between chemotherapy treatments, died at his home. "Sam was one of the finest people you will ever meet. You would never know that he was a player who made Pro Bowls and had all this attention because he treated everybody the same no matter who they were," Carolina general manager Marty Hurney said. "He never had a bad thing to say about anybody and had a great ability to laugh at himself. "He was the type of guy you want your kids to grow up to be." A five-time Pro Bowl selection, Mills spent the final three seasons of his 12-year NFL career with the Panthers, beginning with their inaugural season in 1995.
■ Hockey
NHL, players union meet
National Hockey League and players' union officials returned to the bargaining table in New York on Tuesday and met for six hours, hoping to build momentum off talks that began two weeks earlier in an attempt to end the impasse that caused this past season to be cancelled. Negotiations centered around a new, hybrid concept -- which addresses the relationship between player salaries and league revenues -- that was first discussed during the last round of talks in Toronto on April 4. The idea contains an upper and lower salary cap that would float among the 30 teams depending on revenues. "While we continued to discuss various issues relating to the concept that was introduced at our April 4 meeting, no substantive progress toward a new agreement was made," NHL chief legal officer Bill Daly said in a statement.
■ Olympics
Beijing may move event
The IOC postponed a decision on Beijing's proposal to move the equestrian events at the 2008 Olympics to Hong Kong -- more than 1,900km from the host city. The IOC said more time was needed to study the issue. Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC coordination commission for the Beijing Games, would confer with all sides to try to reach an agreement. Beijing organizers cited the risk of equine diseases and quarantine problems in the Chinese capital. The International Equestrian Federation opposed the switch, saying it would have "very grave" repercussions for the sport. Wang Wei, secretary general of the Beijing committee, made the formal proposal to the International Olympic Committee executive board.
■ Doping
Defamation trial stayed
Marion Jones' defamation trial in San Francisco against Victor Conte was stayed Tuesday until after the criminal case against the BALCO founder is completed. US District Judge Susan Illston granted a defense motion and ruled that Conte's Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination would be damaged if the civil case proceeded before the criminal case is resolved. Illston is also presiding over the BALCO steroids scandal case in which Conte and three others were indicted in February 2004 for allegedly distributing steroids to prominent athletes such as Jones and San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier