Rio de Janeiro's chances of becoming the first South American city to host the Olympics received a boost when the IOC published its evaluation of the four contenders for the 2016 Games on Wednesday. Rio is competing with Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo for the right to stage the 2016 Summer Olympics, with the final decision being made in Copenhagen on October 2. The IOC report is an important indicator ahead of the vote, making a series of judgments on ...

Jorge Lorenzo kept the MotoGP title race alive with victory at the Indianapolis Grand Prix on Sunday as world champion Valentino Rossi crashed out. Rossi saw his lead halved to 25 points with five races remaining as the Italian failed to finish for the first time since 2007. He went down on lap nine of 28 when battling for the lead with Yamaha teammate Lorenzo, and was able to remount -- but then had to retire two laps later due ...

Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen claimed his fourth Belgian Formula One Grand Prix victory in five years at Spa to end an astonishing run of 26 races without a win for the 2007 world champion. Raikkonen was hounded all the way for the majority of the race by pole-sitter Giancarlo Fisichella, who gave Force India their first points in F1 after 30 races with a second-place finish. In a chaos-filled race, British duo Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton crashed out ...

The youngest person to sail solo around the world returned home Thursday from his 30,000-mile, 282-day ocean journey. Mike Perham, 17, sailed into Lizard Point in Cornwall, the southernmost point in Britain, at 9:47 a.m., his race team said. "It feels absolutely brilliant," Mike told CNN by phone hours before crossing the finish line. "I'm really, really excited to be going across the line at last. It doesn't feel like long since I crossed it first." Mike ...

Usain Bolt completed his hat-trick of sprint titles at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin as he helped the all-conquering Jamaican side power to victory in the men's 4x100m relay final. Bolt ran the third leg, handing off to individual bronze medallist Asafa Powell, as Olympic champions Jamaica took gold in a new championship record of 37.31 seconds. Jamaica had rested Bolt and Powell in the heats and were always red-hot favorites to win. "I wasn't really thinking about getting ...

World champion Lewis Hamilton claimed his first pole position of the season as McLaren locked out the front row of the grid for Sunday's European Formula One Grand Prix in Valencia. The Briton, fresh from winning his first race of the season last time out in Hungary, posted a time of one minute 38.498 seconds to beat team-mate Heikki Kovalainen to top spot by less than a tenth of a second. Brawn GP's Rubens Barrichello claimed third place ...

Making good on a threat of election day violence, the Taliban sliced off the index fingers of at least two people in Kandahar province, according to a vote monitoring group. After they cast their ballots, the fingers of Afghan voters are stained with ink to prevent them from voting multiple times. The fingers of the two women in Kandahar, a stronghold of the Taliban, were cut off because they voted, said Nader Naderi of the Free and Fair Election Foundation. ...

Record-holder Paula Radcliffe has decided against trying to win back her marathon title at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin on Sunday. The 35-year-old has pulled out of the British team despite her victory in last weekend's New York City half-marathon, which was supposed to test her fitness following her return from foot surgery. "I am devastated that I wasn't able to be ready in time to represent Britain here in Berlin, especially having got so close in such a ...

South African teenager Caster Semenya won the women's 800 meters gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, just hours after the sport's governing body asked for the 18-year-old's gender to be verified. Semenya crushed her rivals by streaking away to secure victory in a time of one minute 55.45 seconds -- the best time in the world this year. Defending champion Janeth Jepkosgei of Kenya took the silver with Briton Jennifer Meadows claiming bronze. However, the race was ...

There was a smile, a quick wave hello, a brief chat. Yet, despite the exchange of pleasantries, the simmering tensions between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and one of the nation's most powerful clerics became quickly evident at a major ceremony in Tehran on Monday. Ahmadinejad and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were attending the inauguration of Sadeq Larijani -- brother of Iran's prominent parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani -- who was tapped by Iran's supreme leader to be the new ...