PARIS - Spanish and German heavyweights will go into the Champions League quarter-final, second legs this week aiming to ensure that no surprise package makes it into the final four.Real Madrid and Bayern Munich both recorded convincing victories in last week's first legs while Barcelona and ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Baseball saw pitching perfection aplenty and a title in San Francisco for the first time, but retirement, death and doping haunted the American pastime in 2010. The San Francisco Giants, who had not won the World Series since 1954 when they were based in New York, defeated the ...

PARIS (AFP) Marseille ended their long, 17-year wait for a major title by beating rivals Bordeaux 3-1 in a fiercely contested League Cup final at the Stade de France on Saturday. All the goals came in the second half, with Souleymane Diawara - who left Bordeaux last summer - putting Marseille in ...

PARIS (AFP) Three years ago France beat Portugal in the World Cup semi-final - on Wednesday both could fail to even reach the 2010 finals as they take narrow leads into their play-off second leg clashes. France, champions in 1998, hold a 1-0 lead over the Republic of Ireland while Portugal hold ...

THE wealth of most of Britains top music millionaires has fallen by at least 10%, according to the Sunday Times annual rich list. Singer Sir Elton John, for example, has seen his wealth drop 26%, from 235m in 2008 to 175m in 2009. Sir Paul McCartney is worth 440m, down from 500m, while pop mogul ...

PARIS (AFP) - Former European champions AC Milan and Aston Villa tumbled out of the UEFA Cup on Thursday as the lure of next season's mind-boggling Champions League riches proved a fatal distraction. Villa suffered a heavy price for downgrading Europe's second-tier competition when their ...

LONDON (AFP) - Asian economic giants Japan and India on Friday revealed fresh damage from the global financial crisis, as Russia moved again to hike interest rates to halt the outflow of capital from the country. Japan slipped deeper into recession with factory output tumbling 3.1 percent and ...