■ BASEBALL
Panama stay alive in series
Luis Bazan struck out nine and Chitre, Panama, took advantage of sloppy fielding by Vancouver, British Columbia, to win 4-2 and stay alive at the Little League World Series in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. After an opening-day loss to Canada, Panama won the rematch and advanced to play Taiwan on Wednesday. With the score 1-1, Panama took the lead in the third when Abel Gallardo scored on an error. Two more runs scored in the fourth after a bad throw off Alberto Quintero’s grounder to third sailed into right field. Two runners scored, making it 4-1. Canada added a run in the sixth when Lucas Soper tripled and scored on a passed ball. Bazan struck out the game’s final two batters. Zach Chaba also homered for Canada. Toms River, New Jersey blanked Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 10-0 in a consolation game. Kevin Blum homered, tripled twice and struck out eight, and Russell Petranto, Patrick Marinaccio and Joey Rose also homered for New Jersey. Blum was sharp on the mound against the Saudi Arabia squad comprised mainly of children of Americans living abroad.
■ BASKETBALL
NBA players to star in China
NBA stars Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard will star in a basketball film with an award-winning Chinese director titled Amazing. The NBA and Shanghai Film Group announced the joint production effort on Tuesday, calling it “the first NBA-themed motion picture outside of North America.” The filming will take place in New York, Beijing and Shanghai through November and feature top actors from Asia. The movie is scheduled to open next summer. Amazing is directed by Hu Xuehua, a winner of the Kennedy Center Honors. The NBA will play its fifth set of pre-season games in China when the Houston Rockets and New Jersey Nets play in Beijing and Guangzhou in October.
■ FOOTBALL
Jets get highest-paid center
Center Nick Mangold signed a seven-year contract with the New York Jets on Tuesday that will make him the NFL’s highest paid player at the position. The two-time Pro Bowler could earn US$55 million over the length of the deal, which includes a guaranteed US$22.5 million, local media reported. The contract surpasses the five-year US$37.5 million deal signed by the St Louis Rams’ Jason Brown last year. “Fantastic,” Mangold said on the team’s Web site. “I could not be more excited to have that done, to be here as long as I can imagine. “To be able to say, ‘the highest-paid center’ is very nice,” added Mangold, who was selected in the first round of the 2006 draft by the Jets with the 29th overall pick.
■ FOOTBALL
Bengals fine twitterer
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco was fined US$25,000 by the NFL for using an electronic device to post messages on Twitter during a pre-season game, the Bengals said on their Web site on Tuesday. Players are banned from possessing electronic devices during games and from using social media 90 minutes before kickoff until the end of post-game media obligations. Ochocinco fell foul of the rule during an exhibition game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Aug. 20. The colorful wide receiver has been fined a number of times during his nine years in the NFL, including regular charges for excessive touchdown celebrations.
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