North America

Vancouver Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley has been offered $5million a year for 20 years to move the NBA franchise from Vancouver to Louisville.

The NBA?s Vancouver Grizzlies have met with city and state officials in Louisville, over a possible move to a planned $200m downtown arena.

South Korean soccer fans have applied for more than one million tickets for the 2002 World Cup finals, four times the number of seats offered in the first round of sales, organisers said on Thursday.

Australia's world champion Wallabies are planning an extensive end-of-season tour of Canada and Europe to prepare their defence of the World Cup in 2003.

Toronto claimed a perfect 10 from a visiting team of inspectors from the International Olympic Committee, but said the city's rivals to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games might match that score.

Basketball will be played at the Commonwealth Games for the first time in Melbourne in 2006 but cricket is likely to be ruled out, state officials have said.

IOC delegates have heaped praise on Toronto's plans to stage the 2008 Olympics, saying they were impressed with the city's athlete-oriented focus and dismissed detractors who sought to cast a pall on Toronto's squeaky-clean reputation.

Canadian athletes should expect better funding from the government to ensure a good showing if Toronto hosts the 2008 Summer Olympic games, a former Canadian Olympian has said.

While Beijing sprayed its grass green to impress Olympic Games inspectors, Toronto is about to greet the officials with a thick blanket of new snow as it makes its pitch to host the 2008 Summer Games.

US press reports indicate that St Louis is out of the running to get the NBA?s Vancouver Grizzlies, leaving Anaheim and Louisville as possible new homes for the financially troubled club.

France's world-beating soccer team will come out on Tuesday in support of Paris's bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

A cabinet minister and kimono-clad young women turned out to greet Olympics inspectors when they arrived on Sunday in Japan's western metropolis Osaka to evaluate its bid to stage the 2008 Summer Games.

China bid farewell to Olympic Games inspectors on Sunday, brushing off human rights concerns and vowing to make Beijing the clean, green and modern city it promised in its bid to host the 2008 Games.

China has sentenced an activist to two years in a labour camp for urging the International Olympic Committee to use Beijing's bid for the 2008 Games to press Chinese authorities to free jailed democracy activists.

China's banned Zhong Gong meditation group issued an appeal on Monday to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to press Beijing to release its jailed leaders, a Hong Kong`-based human rights group said.

China urged International Olympic Committee (IOC) delegates arriving on Monday to assess Beijing's bid for the 2008 Games to focus on its credentials as a "sports superpower of 1.2 billion people", not its human rights record.