■ Boxing
Ex-champ's slayer convicted
A Dominican air force sergeant was convicted in the slaying of former boxing champion Agapito Sanchez, the Santo Domingo prosecutor's office said on Thursday. Sergeant Diogenes Nova Rosario shot Sanchez twice in the stomach on Nov. 15, last year during a fight at a Santo Domingo shop where the boxer had been playing dominoes, prosecutor Angel Tejeda Fabal said in a statement. The 35-year-old former junior featherweight champ died two days later from the gunshot wounds. Nova was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay court costs and a US$31,000 fine to the boxer's relatives.
■ Soccer
Real inject fresh blood
Real Madrid have boosted their squad with the signings of Argentines Gonzalo Higuain and Fernando Gago. Higuain received the club's white jersey on Thursday at his official presentation in the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. He completed his 13 million euro (US$17.1 million) move from River Plate on Wednesday and has signed a six-and-a-half-year contract. "I am going try and prove that those who showed confidence in me were not mistaken, I'm going to try and win everyone's respect through hard work," Higuain said. Real confirmed on Thursday the signing of Boca Juniors' Fernando Gago. Gago has agreed to a six-year contract and was due to be presented yesterday, Madrid said in a statement on its Web site. The club gave no details of the fee. On Wednesday, Boca said on its Web site that the Spanish club would pay US$27 million for the 20-year-old midfielder. Boca originally wanted to keep Gago until June next year, and wasn't willing to cede on its transfer fee demand. Boca president Mauricio Macri traveled to Spain earlier this week to hear Real Madrid's offer, but returned on Wednesday without news to announce. But Argentine media reported that the deadlock was ended late Wednesday after Gago renounced his 15 percent of the transfer fee.
■ Soccer
Irureta quits Real Betis
Real Betis coach Javier Irureta resigned on Thursday after just six months in charge. Irureta guided Betis to just three wins from its first 15 games of the season. "My contract has been rescinded by mutual agreement but I made the first move. We could have continued like this for much longer but it wasn't good," said Irureta, who added he took the decision before Betis' 1-0 win over Gimnastic Tarragona on Wednesday. "Betis has a lot of life left. In fact it's still in the Cup and as it has a game in hand in the league it can avoid relegation. But there is a lack of confidence for one reason or another and we have taken this decision," the coach was quoted as saying by the Web site of sports daily Marca.
■ Winter Sports
N Korea backs games bid
North Korea has officially backed South Korea's bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, organizers said yesterday. The announcement is welcome news for the Pyeongchang 2014 bid committee, which is promoting the resort's claim to the event partly on the grounds that it would foster reconciliation on the divided peninsula. Pyeongchang, located 150km east of the capital Seoul, is vying with Salzburg in Austria and Russia's Black Sea town of Sochi. Mun Jae-duck, president of the North Korean Olympic Committee, wrote to the bid committee on Wednesday to confirm his support, it said in a statement. It said the letter was also sent to Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee.
■ Basketball
Anthony won't appeal ruling
Carmelo Anthony won't appeal his 15-game suspension for his role in the New York Knicks brawl last weekend, according to USA Today and ESPN.com reports. "It is Melo's desire to focus on the issue at hand, not be a distraction to his team and focus on coming back as the best teammate he can be," Bill Duffy, CEO of BDA Sports, the agency that represents Anthony, told USA Today in Thursday's editions. "He's accepting full responsibility. That's a mature response." Duffy and Anthony's agent, Calvin Andrews, didn't return calls on Thursday.
■ Basketball
Injured Pierce to sit out
Boston Celtics captain Paul Pierce is expected to miss the next two or three weeks of the NBA season with an injured left foot, the club announced on Thursday. An MRI exam revealed the stress reaction, a swelling on bone and soft tissue. The 29-year-old forward suffered the injury last week against Denver but has been playing despite pain for the past five days. Pierce did not train on Thursday and was wearing a protective boot. In 24 games, the playmaker has averaged a team-high 26.6 points plus 7.4 rebounds and a team-best 4.3 assists a game.
■ Soccer
All Stars to play next year
An annual all-star game pitting South America's best against another continent's top players will take place in Los Angeles starting next year, South America's soccer organization announced on Wednesday. Conmebol, the South American soccer federation, said that the annual exhibition would run for at least nine years. The first match would likely be held in July or August, but details and dates were still being arranged. Conmebol president Nicolas Leoz said that the organization had reached agreement with Los Angeles for the annual event.
■ Hockey
Pens may look for new digs
The Pittsburgh Penguins are off the market and owner Mario Lemieux says the team will look at relocating while it attempts to reach a deal for a new arena. "It is time to take control of our own destiny," Hall of Famer Lemieux said in a statement issued by his team on Thursday. The Penguins are free to move when this season ends following a state panel's rejection on Wednesday of a casino company's offer to build the team a new arena for free.
■ Tennis
Williams verdicts rendered
The father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams is liable but won't have to pay damages in a lawsuit that claimed he reneged on a deal for his daughters to play in an exhibition match. A jury on Thursday cleared Venus Williams of all allegations, but said Serena Williams let her father act as an agent. Neither sister must pay damages. The dispute centered on whether Richard Williams had authority to commit his daughters to play in a 2001 match that didn't take place.
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Rangers on Wednesday bowed out of the UEFA Champions League playoffs with a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge which piles further pressure on head coach Russell Martin, while SL Benfica secured a place in the competition proper at the expense of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce. The Glasgow giants traveled to Belgium right up against it after losing 3-1 at home in last week’s first leg, when they conceded three times in the opening 20 minutes. They never looked like turning the tie around as Club Brugge took the lead inside five minutes at the Jan Breydelstadion through Nicolo Tresoldi
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on
Mitch Brown finally had enough as he watched unfolding coverage of yet another case of homophobic abuse in the Australian Football League (AFL), and decided it was time to change the narrative. Brown contacted the Daily Aus with a message that the online news site published yesterday: “I played in the AFL for 10 years for the West Coast Eagles, and I’m a bisexual man.” In almost 130 years of top-flight competition in Australia’s homegrown football code, no past or active male player had publicly identified as bisexual or gay. Aussie Rules was a long way behind other types of
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