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■ BASEBALL

Tickets sold out in Japan

Tickets for Major League Baseball's season-opening series between the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics in Japan have been sold out, organizers said yesterday. Tickets for the March 25 and March 26 games at the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome went on sale on Feb. 9 and sold out in less than two weeks. Organizers said some tickets remain for the preseason games the Red Sox and Athletics will play against the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers on March 22 and March 23. Boston and Oakland will be the third set of teams to open the regular season at the Tokyo Dome, following the New York Mets and Chicago Cubs (2000), and the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay (2004). A scheduled 2003 series between Oakland and Seattle at the Tokyo Dome was canceled because of the threat of war in Iraq.



■ ATHLETICS

Isinbayeva loses meet

Pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva lost at an indoor track meet in Bydgoszcz, Poland, on Wednesday, only four days after setting her 21st world record. The Russian cleared 4.61m at the Pedro's Cup meet to finish in a tie for second. Former record holder Svetlana Feofanova won the event with a vault of 4.71m. On Saturday, Isinbayeva cleared 4.95m at the Pole Vault Stars meet in Donetsk, Ukraine, to set her 10th indoor world record. After her most successful season in 2005, when she set four indoor and five outdoor world records, Isinbayeva switched to a new coach. She made 14 attempts last season to improve her 5.01m world outdoor record set at the world championships in Helsinki, Finland, in 2005. But despite the record drought, Isinbayeva still shared the US$1 million jackpot with 400m runner Sanya Richards by winning every Golden League meet last year.



■ HANDBALL

Hearing set for next month

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) plans to hold a hearing next month in Lausanne, Switzerland, to resolve the Asian Olympic handball qualifying dispute. CAS said on Wednesday that the Asian Handball Federation and the national associations of Kazakhstan and Kuwait filed a request for arbitration against the International Handball Federation (IHF) and asked for the case to be heard the week of March 10. The Asian federation has challenged a decision by the IHF, the sport's governing body, to order replays of Asian Olympic qualifying matches following questionable referee decisions. The qualifiers for the Beijing Olympics were initially held in September, when referees from Jordan and Iran were brought in at the last minute by the Asian federation to replace German referees.



■ SOCCER

Police detain former star

Former England midfielder Paul Gascoigne was being treated for mental health problems yesterday, a day after being detained by police. Northumbria Police said it received a report of concern for a 40-year-old man staying at the Hilton Hotel in Gateshead on Wednesday night. "The man has been detained under the Mental Health Act," Northumbria Police said in a statement. The individual was not named but all major British news organizations reported the man was Gascoigne. Under the Mental Health Act, police can take a person from a public place to a "place of safety" -- a police station or hospital -- if they are "suffering from mental disorder" and "in immediate need of care or control.
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