TEHRAN, Jan. 19--Iran’s Volleyball Federation has invited the Serbian volleyball team to Tehran to play preparatory matches for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The president of Iran’s Volleyball Federation, Mohammad Reza Davarzani, invited the Serbian team last week to hold a training camp and play friendly matches against Iran, Presstv reported.
The Iranian volleyball team will have to compete against seven Asian and European teams in Japan in February to secure a berth in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Serbia’s Volleyball Federation is reportedly considering the proposal.

LIMASSOL, Cyprus, Jan. 19--Iranian footballer Fereidoun Zandi has signed a six-month contract with the Cypriot soccer club Olympiakos Nicosia.
According to Olympiakos Nicosia’s website, Zandi will play with the team until the end of the season and might stay on for the next if both the management and player are satisfied.
Olympiakos, a top division team, is currently ranked 13th out of the 14 teams in the Cypriot league.
Zandi signed the agreement with the club’s officials on Thursday.

VIENNA, Austria, Jan. 19--The US has refused visa to Iran’s National Cycling Team who had planned to participate in the World Cup competitions held in Los Angeles.
According to Presstv, the Iranian cycling team, which includes Hassan Ali Varposhti, Farshid Farsinejadian and Mahmoud Parash, was slated to fly to the US after their international competitions in Vienna, but the US refused to issue visas.
The cyclists were to attend the Los Angeles World Cup as a preliminary qualifier for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
World Cup cycling competitions, which began on January 18, will end on the 20th.

SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan. 19-- Dana Stubblefield, the first National Football League player charged in the Balco doping scandal, pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to a US agent regarding steroid use.
According to Reuters, Stubblefield, 37, admitted he lied to an Internal Revenue Service agent involved in the Balco probe in 2003 when he denied taking a steroid known as “the clear,“ the San Francisco office of US Attorney’s Office said in a statement. The drug was provided by Victor Conte, the owner and operator of Balco Laboratories in Burlingame, California, it said.
The Balco investigation has ensnared many well-known professional athletes, including Barry Bonds, baseball’s home-run king. He has been charged with lying to a federal grand jury about never taking steroids and awaits trial.
Former Sen. George Mitchell told a US congressional committee on Tuesday that everyone in Major League Baseball must crack down on steroid use to remove the “cloud“ that performance-enhancing drugs had created over the sport.
Tapped by Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to report on doping problems in baseball, Mitchell released a report last month blaming players, their union and team owners for the prevalence of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. The report contained allegations against some of baseball’s top players.
Stubblefield’s guilty plea comes a week after five-time US Olympic sprint medalist Marion Jones was sentenced to six months in prison, also for falsely denying to prosecutors that she had taken “the clear“, which is the substance tetrahydrogestrinone.

MADRID, Spain, Jan. 19--Nearly two years after ending his career, Zinedine Zidane has plenty to keep him busy, as he travels around the world for charity and his sponsors.
The retired maestro does miss the excitement of the beautiful game, though.
“It would be great to come back in football. But how, in which wayÉ I don’t know“, Zidane told L’Equipe magazine in a rare interview this week.
What’s for sure is that he won’t delight crowds again with his inventive dribbling and wonderful passing. He says he has turned down offers from Major League clubs in Chicago and Los Angeles and his playing days are over for good. So what could he do to get back involved?
It’s hard to imagine him becoming a coach. Among the 1998 world champions, only captain Didier Deschamps and defense boss Laurent Blanc successfully moved from the pitch to coaching positions.
It’s doubtful Zidane had the right profile anyway. He was a brilliant playmaker but he
was never one to galvanize his teammates with words. And, don’t forget, he was a bundle of nerves. He demonstrated that one last time with the famous head butt into Marco Materazzi’s chest in the final game of his illustrious career, France’s defeat by Italy in the 2006 World Cup final.
Could he run a club, then? Doubtful again. Zidane is not a businessman and has consistently avoided conflicts, at least in public. A man of few words, he is happiest out of the spotlight and wants to lead a quiet life as a family man.

HOUSTON, USA, Jan. 19--Former Pittsburgh Steeler Ernie Holmes, who played on two Super Bowl-winning teams in the 1970s, was killed on Thursday when his car went off a Texas highway and rolled over several times, police said on Friday.
Holmes, 59, was not wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the vehicle, told Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange to Reuters. He was driving alone.
She said he was pronounced dead at the scene about 20 miles (32-km) north of Beaumont in southeastern Texas.
Holmes played for the Steelers from 1972-77 and was a lineman in the ’Steel Curtain’ defense that led Pittsburgh to Super Bowl victories in 1975 and 1976.
He also played with New England in 1978.
Holmes, who attended Texas Southern University in Houston, was an ordained minister living on a ranch near Wiergate, Texas at the time of his death.
“Ernie was one of the toughest players to ever wear a Steelers uniform,“ club chairman Dan Rooney said in a statement. “He will be missed by the entire Steelers family.“

MANCHESTER, England, Jan. 19-- Manchester United’s pursuit of global domination will see a squad including Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney land in Saudi Arabia on Sunday for a visit that will see the premiership champions play in a testimonial game for Saudi legend Sami Al-Jaber.
According to AFP, Sir Alex Ferguson’s team were due to leave for the oil-rich state immediately after their Premiership clash with Reading at the Madejski Stadium on saturday, with Ferguson vowing to take a full-strength squad for the game against Al Hilal at Riyadh’s King Fahd Stadium on Monday.
Jaber, who enjoyed a brief spell in English football with Wolves during the 2000-01 season, collected a staggering 158 caps for Saudi Arabia during his international career and the game against United is set to mark his official retirement, the player having announced his decision to quit last November.
Ferguson’s decision to accept the invitation from Saudi Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz al-Saud to play against Al Hilal has raised eyebrows in England, with the fixture coming in the middle of a busy fixture period.
United are understood have to received in the region of one million pounds to play in Monday’s match and Ferguson’s squad are due to spend a further five days at a training camp ahead of the FA Cup fourth tie against Tottenham at Old Trafford on January 27.

Switzerland's Roger Federer hits a shot to Serbia's Janko Tipsarevic at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on Saturday.

MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan. 19--World number one Roger Federer survived one of the biggest tests of his career to beat Janko Tipsarevic in round three of the Australian Open.
According to BBC, defending champion Federer needed four hours, 27 minutes to win 6-7 (5-7) 7-6 (7-1) 5-7 6-1 10-8 and set up a last-16 tie with Tomas Berdych.
Federer’s bid for a fourth Australian title was under huge threat as the final set progressed.
But the Swiss remained solid on serve and got the vital break in game 17.
“I don’t often get to play five-setters unless they’re against Nadal at Wimbledon,“ said Federer. “It was good to be part of something like this.“
It cannot have felt too good for Federer as he missed 16 of 21 break-point opportunities, while his dogged opponent converted all three of his.
With history beckoning every time Federer steps on the court, there were few who could have predicted he would have been taken to the limit by world number 49 Tipsarevic.
The Swiss star has a third straight Australian title and fourth overall in his sights, as well as a potential 13th Grand Slam title as he closes in on Pete Sampras’s record of 14.

Bobby Fischer

REYKJAVIK, Iceland, Jan. 19--Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.
As reported by AP, Fisher died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said Friday. Icelandic media reported that he died of kidney failure after a long illness.
Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph.
Garry Kasparov, the former Russian chess champion, said Fischer’s ascent in the chess world in the 1960s and his promotion of chess worldwide was “a revolutionary breakthrough“ for the game. But Fischer’s reputation as a genius of chess was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.
“The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess,“ Kasparov said.
He lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments, although his mother was Jewish.
Spassky said in a brief phone call from his home in France that he was “very sorry“ to hear of the death of his friend and rival.

DUBAI, UAE, Jan. 19--Haile Gebrselassie narrowly failed to break his own world record as he won the Dubai Marathon.
But the 34-year-old Ethiopian still set the second fastest time in history, finishing in two hours, four minutes and 53 seconds on Friday, BBC said.
Running on one of the world’s flattest courses, Gebrselassie was inside world record pace until the final 7km.
But he finally crossed 27 seconds slower than his current mark which he set in Berlin last September.
The victory earned Gebrselassie £127,000 from Dubai’s world record prize pool of £508,000.