Alireza Nikbakht Vahedi

LONDON, Jan. 11--Alireza Nikbakht Vahedi, who plays his club football with Iranian league leaders Perspolis, is to have a trial with the English Championship Club, Sheffield United, according to the Daily Star.
According to Daily Star, representatives of the Perspolis star have suggested Nikbakht, who is valued at around £700,000, is to be invited to a trial at United’s Shirecliffe training ground before the transfer window closes.
Nikbakht has had a successful season with Perspolis, although he is reported to have had a bust-up with Perspolis coach, Afshin Ghotbi, recently.
Nikbakht is currently with Iran squad in Qatar, and is expected to play a part in Iran’s friendly against Qatar on Thursday.
The South Yorkshire club is currently 16th in the English Championship, with 32 points from 26 games,Êonly 7 points behind Ipswich who are inÊone of the playoff positions.

Edmund Hillary

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Jan. 11--New Zealand’s Sir Edmund Hillary, the first climber to reach the peak of Mount Everest along with Nepal’s Tenzing Norgay, has died.
“The legendary mountaineer, adventurer, and philanthropist is the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived,“ New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Friday in announcing Hillary’s death.
According to AFP, Hillary conquered the world’s highest mountain in 1953 to complete the failed efforts of countless climbers and win renown as one of the 20th century’s greatest adventurers.
Hillary was 88 and the cause of his death was not announced, but he had been ill for some time and local media reported he had been suffering pneumonia. Hillary was New Zealand’s best known son and his picture adorns the country’s five dollar note.

LONDON, Jan. 11--Manchester United have moved to the top of the UK’s football financial league after reporting record turnover for 2006/07 of $481 million, a 27 percent rise.
According to BBC, that puts them ahead of the £200.8 million reported by Arsenal for last season, but behind Real Madrid of Spain, whose turnover was £263 million for the same period.
The club, which says it has 333 million fans worldwide, also reached the FA Cup final and Champions League semi-final. Those cup runs, during the second year of the Glazer family’s ownership, helped to boost media revenues by 35 percent to £61.5 million.
Last May the annual interest payment was £62 million, and in the autumn a club spokesman said debts continued “to be comfortably serviced by the business“.
Chief executive David Gill said full houses at Old Trafford, plus the increases in media and sponsorship revenues “combined with team success to produce a substantial financial improvement“.
“I am confident that the uplift in the Premier League television deal, together with our new sponsorship sales structure will enable the club to continue to increase its revenues and profitability to provide support to the team’s quest for further on-field success,“ Gill added.
Details of the new sponsorship structure, driven by the recently appointed commercial director Richard Arnold, have not been revealed. But a spokesman said the club was looking forward to improved financial figures next year--when the results of an improved TV deal will come into effect--on the proviso that there is continued success on the playing field.
Meanwhile, David Beckham said he would be honored to help England’s 2018 World Cup bid, should he be asked by the Football Association.
The 32-year-old is yet to be confirmed as a bid ambassador but would like to play a role similar to the one which helped London win the 2012 Olympics.
Speaking as he showed Prime Minister Gordon Brown his football academy in London he said: “To bring the World Cup to England would be something special. And I would be honored to be involved in that.“

Forward Jerry Stackhouse (r) of the Dallas Mavericks moves the ball against Jason Maxiell (l) of the Detroit Pistons, in Dallas, Thursday.

SAN ANTONIO, USA, Jan. 11--Rasheed Wallace scored 23 points and grabbed 15 rebounds to spark the Detroit Pistons past reigning National Basketball Association champion San Antonio 90-80 here Thursday.
In a matchup of the teams with the second-best records in each conference and former NBA Finals rivals, the Pistons snapped a two-game losing streak by grabbing an early lead and holding off the Spurs.
“We weren’t going to hang our heads or mope around. That’s not us,“ Wallace told AFP. “We want to win too much. Everyone in here is a winner.“
Richard Hamilton added 18 points while Tayshaun Prince had 17 and Chauncey Billups contributed 13 for the Pistons, whose losses came to NBA wins leader Boston and last season’s NBA wins leader, Dallas. But it was Wallace whose efforts made the major difference.
The Spurs led 15-14 but were outscored 16-0 over the last 4:15 of the first quarter. The Pistons led 54-39 at half-time, continuing a stretch of slow starts that worries Spurs star Tim Duncan.
The Pistons shot only 26 percent in the third quarter and San Antonio rallied, Duncan scoring 10 points in the period and the Spurs trimmed the deficit to seven points but came no closer.
French guard Tony Parker scored 12 points on 4-of-12 shooting with five turnovers for the Spurs. Duncan led the Spurs with 24 points, 15 rebounds and five assists while Jacque Vaughn added 10 points off the bench.

Former US skating champion Christopher Bowman died Thursday of a possible drug overdose.

LOS ANGELES, USA, Jan. 11--Christopher Bowman, the former US figure skating champion dubbed “Bowman the Showman“ for his flair on the ice, died Thursday of a possible drug overdose, authorities said. He was 40, AP wrote.
Bowman was pronounced dead at 12:06 p.m., said Coroner’s Lt. Joe Bale, who wasn’t immediately able to provide more details about the possible drug overdose. Bowman’s body was found at a motel in the North Hills section of Los Angeles, and an autopsy was planned for this weekend, Bale said.
“He just passed away in his sleep,“ Bowman’s mother, Joyce, told the Detroit Free Press, which first reported details of his death. “His friend told me that he was fine. He just went to bed and didn’t wake up.“
Bowman, a former child actor, was one of figure skating’s bigger personalities in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Immensely talented, with a gift for performance that few others could match, he won the US men’s figure skating titles in 1989 and 1992, and was runner-up in 1987 and 1991.
He also won a silver medal at the 1989 world championships, and a bronze the next year. He skated in the 1988 and 1992 Winter Olympics, finishing seventh in 1988 and fourth in 1992.
But as talented as he was on the ice, Bowman could be just as big a challenge off it. He bounced from coach to coach long before it became fashionable and freely admitted that practice was something that just didn’t interest him much.
He battled drug problems, and underwent treatment at least twice--once before the 1988 Olympics and then again after the Albertville Games in 1992.

DOHA, Qatar, Jan. 11--Iran draws 0-0 in a friendly match against Qatar in preparation for the preliminaries of the 2010 World Cup to be held in South Africa.
This was the second preparatory game for the Iranian soccer squad before the World Cup preliminaries. Iran lost the first game to Hansa Rostock in a lukewarm performance, Presstv wrote.
The game was scheduled to be held in Tehran but poor weather conditions forced the match to take place at the Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Stadium at the Al Sadd Club.
In continuation of its preparation the Iranian side will play against Mali on January 13 on Kish island.

Washington Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin

WASHINGTON,
Jan. 11--Alexander the Great has a contract worthy of his nickname-- the first $100 million deal in NHL history.
Alex Ovechkin signed a $124 million, 13-year contract extension Thursday with the Washington Capitals, a handsome reward for the 22-year-old charismatic Russian who has been a nonstop goal-scorer since coming to the NHL in 2005.
“I’m happy I stay here,“ Ovechkin told AP. “It’s my second home. I like the fans. I like the team. I like everything here.“
It’s not the longest deal in NHL history and it didn’t break the record for largest average salary, but it is the league’s first contract to guarantee nine digits of income.
“I’m a risk-taker,“ said owner Ted Leonsis, who has made Ovechkin the cornerstone of a rebuilding plan to restore the Capitals as a perennial playoff team. “And if you’re going to make a long-term investment, who else would you do it with? This takes away any of the issues of how committed we are to winning a Cup, how committed we are to keeping a team together.“
The contract will pay Ovechkin $9 million per year for the first six years and $10 million per year for the following seven. A limited movement clause kicks in after several years that will allow Ovechkin to select a handful of teams at the beginning of each season to which he cannot be traded.
And he won’t have to pay an agent a dime. Ovechkin worked out the details himself in negotiations with Leonsis and general manager George McPhee. His parents, Tatiana and Mikhail, were also in town for the final round of talks for a deal that runs through the 2020-21 season.

World number one tennis player Roger Federer

MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan. 11--World number one Roger Federer will begin the defense of his Australian Open title against Argentine Diego Hartfield after the draw was made at Melbourne Park on Friday.
According to Reuters, the Swiss, bidding for his 13th grand-slam title, was handed a kind draw in the early stages, though he could face a quarter-final against seventh seed Fernando Gonzalez of Chile, whom he beat in the final 12 months ago.
Federer had to pull out of the warm-up event at Kooyong because of a virus but is expected to be fully fit to play. Third seed Novak Djokovic is his projected semi-final opponent, though Argentine David Nalbandian, who beat Federer twice at the end of last year, is lurking in the same half.
Second seed Rafael Nadal, number six Andy Roddick, eighth seed Richard Gasquet and number nine Andy Murray are all in the opposite half. Nadal and Roddick will both play qualifiers in the first round, while Murray has a tough opening match against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the world number 38 from France.
Women’s top seed Justine Henin of Belgium takes on Aiko Nakimura of Japan in the first round. The Belgian, who won the French Open and U.S. Open in 2007, has a seemingly clear path through to the quarter-finals, where she is scheduled to play fifth seed Maria Sharapova.
However, the Russian is likely to face a tough second-round match against former champion Lindsay Davenport. Davenport, who is unseeded this year, has won three titles in her four events since returning to the tour in September, having had a year off, during which she had her first child.
Serena Williams will begin the defense of her title against Jarmila Gajdosova, a Slovakia-born wildcard now playing for Australia. The seventh seed, who won her eighth grand-slam title 12 months ago, is scheduled to play third seed Jelena Jankovic of Serbia in the quarter-finals, while Henin would be her likely semi-final opponent.
American Venus Williams, seeded eighth, is in the opposite half and could play Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli, whom she beat to win the Wimbledon title last year, in the fourth round.
Williams would then be likely to play fourth seed Ana Ivanovic of Serbia in the quarter-finals. World number 12 Tommy Haas, a former semi-finalist at Melbourne Park, pulled out on the eve of the draw because of injury.

NEW DELHI, India, Jan. 11--Force India Formula One team have announced that Giancarlo Fisichella will drive for them in the 2008 season.
According to Reuters, Italian Fisichella has been without a drive since his contract with Renault expired at the end of last year. But the 34-year-old impressed while testing in Spain for the renamed Spyker team and completes their driver line-up alongside Adrian Sutil.
“With new owners and a competitive budget, I really think we can shake things up,“ Fisichella said. “I feel motivated and ready to help Force India get points on a regular basis.“
Fisichella has competed in 194 Grands Prix, winning three times, and will bring much-needed experience as well as technical feedback to the Ferrari-powered team in what is likely to be his swansong at the highest level of the sport.