■ Roy Keane retires again
Roy Keane announced his retirement from international football on Friday, two days after Ireland failed to qualify for next year's World Cup. "Like all football supporters in the country, I was disappointed that the Republic of Ireland failed to qualify for Germany," Keane, 34, said in a statement to Irish state broadcaster RTE. Keane's broken foot sidelined him from Ireland's final two qualifiers -- a 1-0 win at Cyprus and a 0-0 home draw against Switzerland. If Ireland had won it would have finished second in Group 4 and earned a playoff spot. "Much as I would like to continue playing for my country, I feel the time has come to retire from international football and concentrate on domestic football for whatever is the remainder of my career," Keane said.
■ Baseball
A's rehire Ken Macha
The Oakland Athletics rehired Ken Macha as manager on Friday, just over a week after the club said the two had failed to reach terms to renew his contract and were parting ways. The A's announced that the club reached a three-year agreement that will keep Macha under contract through the 2008 Major League Baseball season. Macha led the A's to the American League West Division title in his first year as manager in 2003, the club's fourth straight playoff berth. But Oakland failed to qualify for the playopffs the past two years despite a 91-win season in 2004 and 88 victories this year. Macha, 55, called it one of several "massive disappointments" in his seven years with the team when the sides couldn't reach a deal Oct. 5.
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