Iran has three representatives in the Rotax Max World Championships that will be held in UAE on Nov. 27- Dec. 1.

TEHRAN, Nov. 24--Iran’s National Karting Team has traveled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Saturday to participate in the Rotax Max World Championships to be held in Al Ain Stadium in UAE.
The karting championship will be held in two categories of junior and senior on Nov. 27-Dec. 1, IRNA reported.
Rasa Amiri will attend the event in Junior class while Farhad Mousavi will take part in the senior 125cc class and Behnam Fatehi in senior 125 RM1.
An Australian trainer will accompany Iranian team.
Iran ranked 17th in the previous championships that were held in Portugal. This is the second time that the Iranian National Karting Team attends the world championship.
A total of 216 of the best drivers from 55 countries will compete in the event.

TEHRAN, Nov. 24--The Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) has deprived Iran from hosting the 2008 Asian Junior Championship. Sri Lanka will now host the games.
The decision is said to be in line with helping improve volleyball in underdeveloped countries.
Following the AVC’s decision, the Asian Junior Championship will be held in Colombo Oct. 14-20, 2008, Mehr News Agency reported.
Three top junior teams and two youth teams will attend the world championship. The confederation also introduced Pakistan as host for the Asian Youth Championship and the 2008 World Cup Qualification, but if the country is not able to host the event, the championship will be held in Iran.
Kazakhstan also replaced Saudi Arabia after the Saudis declined to host the Asian Clubs Championship that will be held July 12-25, 2008.
All Asian countries except the host can have one representative in the event. Iran’s volleyball champion club will attend the competitions.

MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov. 24--Olympic champion Sarah Ulmer announced her retirement on Saturday after battling a nerve injury in her leg that had dogged her for nearly two years.
According to Reuters, the 31-year-old New Zealander won her country’s first Olympic cycling gold when she smashed the world record in the 3,000 meters pursuit final at the 2004 Athens Games. She had also won the world championship title earlier in the year.
“I’ve been toying with retirement for longer than I actually expected,“ Ulmer told New Zealand’s TV3. “It’s been a pretty frustrating year from the cycling side of things. I’ve been in and out of doctors and medical specialist and MRI machines.
“The crunch with the actual decision was a trip to a surgeon in Christchurch who didn’t give me a greater than 50 percent chance that he could improve me.“
Ulmer, who switched to the road after her success in Athens, has been battling the injury since before the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

Javad Nekounam

PAMPLONA, Spain, Nov. 24--Javad Nekounam, the Iranian midfielder of Osasuna, has returned to the Spanish city of Pamplona on Saturday after he underwent knee surgery in Germany.
It is Nekounam’s first visit to Pamplona since he had a knee operation. The 27-year-old athlete has been in Germany since last August where he was receiving physiotherapy, Osasuna website reported.
He was awarded in cash by the club’s officials for being Osasuna’s best player of the 2006-2007 season.
Nekounam will also meet club officials due to extension of his contract. Negotiations between the two parties led to an overall agreement.
Nekounam wants to maintain the five million Euro minimum fee clause on his contract while the Basque club wants to decrease it.
Nekounam’s current contract obliges him to play for the Pamplona side until the end of the 2007-2008 season and rumors are going on that his contract will be extended until 2011.
Javad Nekounam took La Liga by storm in his first season in Spain, showing himself as one of the best defensive midfielders of the league before being sidelined by a knee injury in the training sessions.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov. 24--The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has announced the final shortlists for the prestigious awards to be held in Sydney on November 28.
Iraqi players Nashat Akram and Younis Mahmoud and Saudi Arabian striker Yasser Al Qahtani, are three players in contention for the AFC Player of the Year award, PressTV wrote.
But Iran’s Javad Nekounam, who plays midfield for the Spanish Osasuna, failed to make the final shortlist, as did Sepahan player Seyyed Mehdi Seyyed-Salehi.
Sepahan is facing stiff competition from the United Arab Emirates team, Al Wahda, Seongnam and AFC Champions League winners the Urawa Reds of Japan, for the Club of the Year award.
Iraq, Saudi Arabia and South Korea have been nominated for the AFC National Team of the Year award.
Meanwhile, Iran’s former national team coach, Amir Qalenoei, Uzbekistan’s Rauf Inileev, and Kim Hak-bum, coach of South Korean club, Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma, are competing for the AFC Coach of the Year award.
The awards will be presented at the AFC’s annual awards ceremony, on November 28, in Sydney.

ST. PETERSBURG, USA, Nov. 24--Major League Baseball pitcher Joe Kennedy died suddenly of unexplained causes on Friday in Tampa, Florida, at age 28.
Kennedy was in Tampa to attend a wedding when he collapsed and died, according to Reuters.
“We are shocked and terribly saddened by the passing of Joe Kennedy,“ Paul Godfrey, president and chief executive of the Toronto Blue Jays, said in a statement issued by the team.
“I offer my deepest condolences and prayers to his wife Jami, and son Steffen.“
Kennedy, a native of La Mesa, California, was drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1998. He pitched for the Rays from 2001-2003 with an 18-31 record.
He was traded to the Colorado Rockies in 2003 and to the Oakland A’s in 2005. He pitched briefly for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2007 and ended the season with the Toronto Blue Jays before becoming a free agent.
Kennedy’s major league career record was 43-61.

In this file photo Marion Jones cries as she speaks to the media after leaving the US Federal Courthouse in White Plains, New York October 5, 2007.

MONACO, Nov. 24--Marion Jones was formally disqualified on Friday from all competitions since Sept 1. 2000, including the Sydney Olympics where she won five medals, after admitting last month to taking banned drugs.
The International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) governing council ruled that Jones’s results be annulled after she confessed to taking the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone before the 2000 Games, Reuters wrote.
Jones, 32, won gold medals in the 100, 200 and 4x400 meters relay and bronze in the long jump and 4x100 relay at the 2000 Games.
IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said the Council would ask the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to disqualify the U.S. women’s 4x100 and 4x400 meter relay teams from the Sydney Games.
But the governing body stopped short of recommending that controversial Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou, who was the silver medalist in the 100 behind Jones, be awarded the gold medal.
“The IOC will be sent any information on Thanou that we might have,“ Davies said.
Thanou was given a two-year suspension for missing three dope tests, the last on the eve of the 2004 Games in Athens.
“We can’t decide not to give her the medal,“ Davies said. “We will inform them of the decision but it’s really up to the IOC. They will decide what to do.“

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 24--Pete Sampras rolled back the years with a fine 7-6 (8-6) 6-4 win against Roger Federer in the third and final match of their Asian exhibition series.
According to BBC, Sampras, who retired in 2002, won both his break points against the world number one to seal victory in Macau. “It’s one for the old guy,“ said the 36-year old American afterwards.
Swiss star Federer, 26, had won the previous two matches earlier this week, beating Sampras 6-4 6-3 in Seoul and 7-6 (8-6) 7-6 (7-5) in Kuala Lumpur.
He was quick to praise Sampras, saying: “We delivered a great level of play. The surface was really quick and Pete was playing really well and hardly making any mistakes.“
Sampras added: “The quick conditions helped my service games. I got going a little bit today, but it could have gone either way in the first set.“
Federer won his 12th Grand Slam title at the US Open in September and is closing in on Sampras’s record of 14.
The two met only once on the ATP Tour, in the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2001, when Federer beat Sampras in five sets.

LONDON, Nov 24-- Fabio Capello became the bookmakers’ frontrunner to take over as England manager after Aston Villa coach Martin O’Neill ruled himself out of the running.
With a rapidly expanding list of managers distancing themselves from the position left vacant by Steve McClaren’s dismissal on Thursday, Capello sounded a rare note of eagerness, Reuters wrote.
“I am ready to discuss becoming the England national coach,“ Capello told Italian media.
“It would be a very interesting challenge and to me difficult challenges have always been fascinating,“ added the 61-year-old former Real Madrid, AC Milan and Juventus coach.
Portugal’s former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho was the second favourite, despite British newspaper reports suggesting the ’special one’ was more likely to move to a top European club.
“I was convinced that Mourinho would have accepted it... clearly, he has other targets. But I am a different age to him,“ said Capello, who was sacked by Real in June for his defensive style despite winning the Spanish title.
Italy’s former World Cup winning coach Marcello Lippi refused to rule out the possibility of a move to England but doubted he would get a call. “If it comes, we will see,“ he said.

DURBAN, South Africa, Nov. 24--FIFA will give 120,000 free tickets to South African residents for matches at the 2010 World Cup finals, FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke announced on Saturday.
According to Reuters, the organizing committee of the first World Cup to be held in Africa also decided that, to make the finals as affordable as possible for home fans, the cheapest tickets for first round matches, apart from the opening game, would cost $20.
The committee also confirmed the seedings for Sunday’s preliminary round draw for the qualifying competitions in Asia, CONCACAF, Europe and Africa. The South American and Oceania competitions are already underway.
England, who fell out of the top group of European seeds after losing to Croatia in their Euro 2008 qualifier this week, joined the second group as expected.
The top European seeds will be world champions Italy, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Croatia and European champions Greece.
The match schedule was also confirmed with the finals starting on June 11 and ending on July 11.
Three kickoff times were announced as 1pm local time (1100 GMT), 4pm and 8pm, with the World Cup kicking off at the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg. Opening day matches will also be played in Cape Town, Rustenburg and Port Elizabeth.
It was announced on Friday that South African residents would be able to purchase specially-priced cheap tickets for the finals.
The most expensive first round tickets, apart from the opening match, which will cost $450, will be $160. The cheapest second round tickets will cost $50, while the cheapest for the semi-finals will be $100.
The most expensive ticket for the final will be priced at $900 and the cheapest category four ticket will be $150.

Raphael Jacquelin (r) and Gregory Havret of France celebrate on the ninth hole during the third day of the World Cup golf tournament in Dongguan, China November 24, 2007.

SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 24--Raphael Jacquelin wants to gift-wrap a first French World Cup triumph as a birthday present for partner Gregory Havret after they blasted their way into contention with the best third round on Saturday.
According to Reuters, the 33-year-old from Lyon, playing in his seventh World Cup, gathered five birdies while debutant Havret snared three more and an eagle for a 10-under-par 62 and a share of second place going into the final round of fourballs.
“The plan at the beginning of the week was to stay in contention and just give us a chance to win the trophy and that’s what we’ve done,“ Jacquelin told reporters.
“If we win on Sunday, it’s going to be great especially for Greg because it’s his birthday, so I’m certainly going to do my best.“
Jacquelin has played some of his best golf of the year in China, leading for the first two rounds of April’s China Open and winning his second European title at the Asian Open in Shanghai the following week.
“I don’t know what’s happening with China,“ added Jacquelin. “But I’ve had a good feeling here, I don’t know why. I’m getting used to playing the grainy greens, maybe, so I’m doing pretty well.“
The pair also came together to great effect when they represented Continental Europe against Britain and Ireland in the Seve Trophy this year, winning three of their four matches together.
“It was a very good experience playing the Seve Trophy and we knew we would also be the same team for the World Cup,“ said Havret, who will be 31 on Sunday.