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MANCHESTER: Anderson's second-half equaliser ensured Manchester United will avoid their main rivals in the last 16 of the Champions League after a hard-fought 1-1 draw with Valencia at Old Trafford on Wednesday. United needed to avoid defeat to seal top spot in Group C but were left shocked when Pablo Hernandez fired the visitors from La Liga into a 32nd minute lead robbing the hosts of a record six successive Champions League clean sheets.
Sir Alex Ferguson's side were guilty of

ADELAIDE: A downcast Ricky Ponting says he faces one of his greatest challenges as captain and batsman to get beleaguered Australia back into the Ashes series against England.
Among a myriad of Australian concerns is Ponting's poor batting return with a first-ball duck and nine runs in this Test after 10 and 51 not out in Brisbane.
"It's certainly a great challenge for me," Ponting said. "Don't worry about winning the games. I've got to make some runs, it's as simple as

BELGRADE: Novak Djokovic ranked Serbia's historic Davis Cup win above his Australian Open crown, and $20 million earnings, as defeated France left Belgrade damning sections of the crowd as "imbeciles". World number three Djokovic and the unheralded Viktor Troicki swept Serbia to a first Davis Cup title on Sunday, overturning an overnight deficit to beat nine-time winners France 3-2.
"Number one," said 23-year-old Djokovic, when asked where the title stands amongst his

ADELAIDE - Kevin Pietersen relished the big stage of an Ashes Test to bat England into an impregnable position with a imperious double-century at the Adelaide Oval on Sunday.
The third day belonged solely to the man they call the "walking ego" as he dominated a beleaguered Australian bowling attack to remain unconquered on 213 when rain called a halt to play after tea. Pietersen brought up his 17th Test hundred and his third against Australia in his 14th Ashes Test to bring the

YANGON: Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi met a senior UN official in Yangon on Saturday but said further talks were needed to help the organisation in its Myanmar operations.
After speaking with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, at her home Suu Kyi told reporters that the discussions had been enlightening.
"It was a pleasure to meet Mr Nambiar but I don't think one meeting is enough," she said. "I hope this is the first of many meetings because

LAHORE: Healthcare is the top most concern of the government, which has already spent billions of rupees on different healthcare projects, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Saturday.
He expressed these views during the inaugurating ceremony of the country's first kidney transplantation project at the Sheikh Zayed Hospital. The PM also announced a grant of Rs 100 million for the operational cost of the project and expressed hope that the funds be utilised "diligently

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leadership is in a state of shock over the appointment of the party's MNA Hamid Yar Hiraj as Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) chairman after Hiraj allegedly told Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain supported his appointment as the ERRA head.
A source close to the PML-Q president told Pakistan Today that Shujaat was neither consulted nor informed. "It came to us as a

GUANGZHOU: Defending champions South Korea and Pakistan recorded emphatic wins on Sunday to set up a semi-final clash in the Asian Games men's field hockey.
India, who topped group B with four straight wins after a 3-2 success over Japan, will clash with Malaysia in Tuesday's other semi-final. Malaysia, needing a draw against China to join South Korea from group A, fought off a determined challenge from the hosts before securing a 4-2 victory.
Pakistan bounced back from

MADRID: Argentine Lionel Messi made it a century of league goals for Barcelona with a hat-trick as the champions crushed Almeria 8-0 on Saturday in the perfect warm-up for their first Clasico showdown with title rivals Real Madrid at Camp Nou in nine days time.
Barca were 5-0 up at half-time as they maintained their perfect away record with a fifth win to go two points ahead of next league opponents Real who can reclaim top spot with a home win over Athletic Bilbao in Saturday's

NAGPUR: Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar were building up India's strong reply with unbeaten half-centuries in the series-deciding third and final Test against New Zealand on Sunday.
The veteran batsmen took the innings on following the dismissal of openers Gautam Gambhir (78) and Virender Sehwag (74) to bring India to 292-2 at stumps on the second day of the match at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium.
India were ahead by 99 runs with eight wickets in hand, having

PARIS: Roger Federer arrived Monday on the back of two successive tournament titles, with the world number two eager to bid for a hat-trick as top seed at the Paris Masters.
The Swiss legend has a first round bye and will play France's world ranked number 28 Richard Gasquet, who edged compatriot Nicolas Mahut in 3 sets, 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (9/7) Monday evening.
Before travelling from his hometown of Basel, Federer admitted that he needs to recover energy before taking to the

DOHA: Caroline Wozniacki secured the year-end number one spot in the world ranking Thursday, becoming the first ever Dane to do so, but only after suffering an early fright at the WTA Tour Championships here.
For an hour, the 20-year-old top seed seemed in danger of going out of the event, until she worked out the clever tactical patterns of Francesca Schiavone, the French Open champion from Italy, and triumphed 3-6, 6-1, 6-1.
Not until midway through the second set did

MOSCOW
Top seed tennis player Jelena Jankovic crashed out of the Kremlin Cup at the first hurdle in a 6-1 6-2 thrashing by Kazakh teenager Zarina Diyas on Thursday.
Serbia's former world number one, who had a bye in the first round, looked out of sorts from the start, committing numerous errors and winning only 43 percent of her first serves. The 268th-ranked Diyas beat her in less than an hour.
Diyas, who had not won a tour match this year before this week, now takes

ISLAMABAD: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday submitted in the Supreme Court a list of top 50 people and companies whose loans worth Rs 62.66 billion were written-off by public and private banks in the last two years.
A three-member Supreme Court bench consisting of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Ghulam Rabbani and Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday was hearing a suo motu case on waiving off of bank loans worth Rs 256 billion during the period from 1971

PARIS: Manchester City may have grander ambitions than the Europa League, but the big-spending Premier League club can take a big step towards the knockout phase with a win over Lech Poznan on Thursday.
The Polish side are the surprise leaders of Group A after two matches, heading City on goal difference, while Italian aristocrats Juventus are third, two points adrift.
City supporters of a certain vintage will be heartened by the opposition being Polish as their last

MADRID: The two most decorated teams in European football Real Madrid and AC Milan, face off at the Santiago Bernabeu on Tuesday with both teams looking to seize the upper hand in Champions League Group G.
At present record nine-time winners Real are two points ahead of seven-time champions AC Milan having won all three of their matches without conceding a goal and victory would virtually put them in the knockout stage.
The other Group G teams Auxerre and Ajax have just one

LAHORE: Pakistan's tennis ace, Aisam ul Haq Qurieshi, has broken into the top 20 of the world doubles rankings for the first time in his career.
The tennis star, who recently started to play specialist doubles events, has found great form in the later part of his career. Despite turning professional in 1998, Aisam won his first ATP title this season when he managed to reach a grand slam final during the US Open 2010.
Aisam's ascent began after he found a permanent tennis