Marion Jones’s legal team has gone on a public relations offensive, poking holes in the evidence United States doping officials are using to investigate the star sprinter and possibly ban her from the Olympics. Jones’s lawyers believe there is no compelling evidence that Jones used steroids.
Leeds United, relegated from the English Premiership last season, made Kevin Blackwell their new manager on Wednesday. Blackwell (45) became Leeds’s fifth manager in two years. He has been offered a two-year deal. He was number two to Peter Reid and then Eddie Gray at Leeds last season.
Sri Lanka’s cricket captain Marvan Atapattu on Wednesday warned international teams visiting Zimbabwe to expect the worst, saying his team’s recent visit to the troubled African nation was ”fairly chaotic”. ”The facilities and organisation were probably the worst I have experienced in my playing career,” he said.
Veteran South African Wayne Ferreira went into the record books on Tuesday as he played his 54th successive Grand Slam tournament but the day ended in misery as he crashed out of the first round of the French Open. The 32-year-old lost to Austria’s Jurgen Melzer 6-7 (4/7), 6-2, 6-4, 6-3.
China brought the Spar South African women’s hockey team down to earth on Tuesday, beating them 1-0 in their final round-robin match in the Shinco Cup in Wujin, China. The winning goal came 15 minutes into the second half, after an injury to South Africa’s star striker Pietie Coetzee.
Argentina’s Guillermo Coria, the hottest player on clay this year, confirmed his position as French Open favourite by moving into the third round on Wednesday with a 7-5, 6-1, 6-3 win over countryman Juan Monaco. The 22-year-old Coria has been beaten only once in his past 34 clay-court matches.
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The man dubbed by federal agents as the ”Last Don”, Joseph ”Big Joey” Massino, has gone on trial in New York, with prosecutors hoping for a conviction that could deal a knockout blow to organised crime in the city. Massino, the alleged boss of the Bonanno crime family, is charged with seven murders and a host of racketeering charges.
Three of the four Massachusetts communities that married same-sex couples from outside the state have stopped issuing licenses to non-residents after receiving a warning from the state attorney general, who cited a 1913 law that bars them from marrying gay couples from other states.
Plans to have prisoners convicted by a United Nations tribunal of genocide serve their sentences in Rwanda, where they committed their crimes in 1994, prompted outrage on Tuesday from defence lawyers. Jailing convicts in Rwanda would ”place them under the control of people accused of war crimes”, they said.