Europe

'Black Betsy', the favorite bat of banned baseball legend "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, was sold for $577,610 (?654,145) in an internet auction on eBay.

A British parliamentary watchdog has urged the UK government to reverse its decision to rebuild Wembley into a showpiece soccer stadium with no athletics track.

UK sport radio station talkSPORT has won the ball-by-ball rights to the next England/Australia Ashes series Down Under.

New technology which allows soccer highlights to be beamed directly on to fans? mobile phones could be made available to the public in the UK as early as the 2001/2 Premier League season.

Sydney Olympics organisers are set to receive a funding boost worth more than A$50 million (US$32 million).

The BBC says it would consider pitching a rival bid against Rupert Murdoch?s Sky for the rights to heavyweight boxing?s greatest prize ? live coverage of Mike Tyson against Lennox Lewis.

Norwegian alpine skier, Lasse Kjuus has been fined 10,000 kroner ($1,140) by the Norwegian Ski Association for breaching Norway's rules against mixing sports and alcohol for commercial purposes.

The ATP Tour and International Tennis Federation have formally announced their new marketing strategy for 2000 and beyond.

A Congressional commission investigating Brazilian soccer spread to Portugal on Wednesday as two of its members arrived in Lisbon in their search for the so-called mafia of fake passports.

Australia's oldest living Olympic athlete, who competed in the 1928 Amsterdam Games, opened the village for the Sydney Olympics as the first of an eventual 10,000 competitors moved in on Saturday.

The Azerbaijan Soccer Federation (ASF) has received its latest warning from world governing body FIFA to end its internal squabbles or face severe consequences, an ASF official said this week.

Fifteen days after its official launch, the new sports information channel, Eurosportnews, has reached a distribution agreement with two leading CATV operators, Kosmos TV in Moscow, Russia and Alma TV in Kazakhstan.

The 1999 Tour of Britain will be the fourth richest cycling race in the world - as well as two days shorter and tougher than its inaugural year in 1998 - organisers have revealed.

The International Hockey Federation has appointed its media officer for the Sydney Olympics.

The European Commission has backed the idea of a world sports anti-doping agency but wants guarantees about how it would operate.

Sukom Ninety Eight Berhad has appointed the DRB-Hicom Group as the official sponsor of cars and motorcycles for the 19th Commonwealth Games.