Former World Player of the Year Luis Figo has announced that he will retire from football at the end of this season. The 36-year-old is hoping to go out on a high note after Inter Milan's match match of the Italian season at home to Atalanta on Sunday. Jose Mourinho's side have already wrapped up the Serie A title -- the fourth that former Portugal captain Figo has won with the club since joining from Real Madrid in 2005. "Tomorrow, ...

Fourth seed Elena Dementieva followed third-ranked Venus Williams in departing the French Open at the third-round stage after being upset by Samantha Stosur on Saturday. The 30th-seeded Australian won 6-3 4-6 6-1 to equal her best performance at a Grand Slam tournament. The 25-year-old Stosur will next face Virginie Razzano for a place in the quarterfinals, with the unseeded Frenchwoman later beating Italy's Tathiana Garbin 7-5 7-5. Stosur lost to Olympic champion Dementieva in the third round of the Australian ...

The United States will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday at an international conference. "We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in the region -- or on us," said Gates, speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore. "Our goal is complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and we will not accept North Korea as a ...

Bernie Madoff bankruptcy trustee, Irving H. Picard, may be the hardest working man in the collections business — and maybe one day the richest. Picard, the New York-based lawyer who could have easily doubled for actor Frederic March in film Inherit the Wind, is at the turbulent center of the post-Madoff world, a world that includes multi-billion dollar feeder fund lawsuits, multi-million dollar deals with international banks, and, less grand, the issuing of multi-hundred thousand dollar checks to the nearly 7,000 direct account holders caught ...

The Pakistani military says security forces have taken back the city of Mingora from the Taliban, calling it a significant victory in its offensive against the Taliban. Mingora is the largest city in Pakistan's Swat Valley where security forces have been fighting the Taliban in a month-long offensive. "It is a great accomplishment," said Pakistani Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. "This is the largest city in Swat and for all practical purposes, Mingora has been secured." Abbas said militants put up ...

Afghan and coalition forces detained three suspected al Qaeda operatives Saturday in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said.

It's an old parlor game: Can you name 10 famous Belgians? Belgium is a tiny nation, and often the butt of its neighbors' jokes, but it can claim two 20th-century artistic giants who would make it onto that list: Hergé — or at least his globetrotting comic strip character Tintin — and René Magritte, the subversive surrealist painter. Both created iconic images that are recognizable the world over. And now both, finally, have museums celebrating their contributions to art. ...

Singing sensation Susan Boyle had vowed to leave the television show, "Britain's Got Talent," after a hectic week, but has since recanted and will perform at the finale Saturday, a judge for the show said. The 48-year-old Scottish singer wowed audiences and judges during her audition in May when she belted out the classic, "I Dreamed a Dream," from the musical "Les Miserables." Her performance earned her a string of global television appearances. Her fame catapulted during the ...

Iranian authorities hanged three men convicted for their involvement in a bombing of a Shia mosque, Iran's IRNA news agency reported Saturday.

The technology behind 3-D entertainment has come a long way since those "land in your lap" sci-fi shockers of the 1950s, which could be viewed only by theater-goers willing to wear dorky cardboard spectacles with red and blue lenses. And we're not just talking about advances at the cineplex as evidenced by movies like Monsters vs. Aliens or Up. Today some of Asia's leading electronics companies are developing flat-panel displays and TVs they hope will soon add a new ...