Milan  - Marcello Lippi hasn't said much about it but he certainly won't be pulling any punches when he takes his world champion squad to the Confederations Cup that Italy play for the first time next June.

The event organized by football's ruling body FIFA has gradually evolved into a prestigious warm-up tournament taking place one year before the World Cup in the country that will host it.

From June 14 to 28 in 2009, South Africa will thus test its stadiums and infrastructure in a tournament reserved for eight teams from six continents.

Tokyo  - Suzuki Motors Corp bought back its 3.02-per-cent stake from the US auto giant General Motors Crop (GM), the Japanese automaker said Tuesday.

The purchase of all the 16,413,000 shares came to about 22.37 billion yen (230.7 million dollars), Suzuki said.

Suzuki now owns about 20 per cent of its own outstanding shares, while GM lost its ownership in Suzuki, ending a 27-year investment.

The two automakers would continue joint projects such as development of hybrid cars, fuel cells and power trains.

Karachi, Nov 18: PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt has reportedly said that if Team India is not able to tour Pakistan for “Security reasons” early next year, his country’s side might shift the series, including Tests, ODIs and one Twenty20, to India.

He said the PCB had suffered a lot because of the cancellation of a few series in the recent past, after foreign cricket teams, including Australia, England, South Africa, and New Zealand refused to visit the country in the aftermath of suicide blasts and rampant violence killing hundreds of people.

Buenos Aires/Rio de Janeiro - Brazil are in far from their best form, and a divorce is evident between fans in the football- crazy South American country and the low-performance side led by coach Carlos Dunga.

However, the same team won the 2007 Copa America to earn the chance to defend their title at the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa.

Brazil have long failed to display the kind of fantasy game that made their football famous and turned "jogo bonito" into a global trademark.

San Francisco  - Jerry Yang, who helped kick start the internet revolution in 1995 as co-founder of web portal Yahoo, is stepping down as the company's chief executive.

The announcement by the ailing internet giant came after months of falling revenue, fierce proxy battles and a series of botched negotiations that scuttled what now seems to have been an exceedingly generous buyout offer from Microsoft.

Yang's alternative plan - an ad alliance with Google - was scuttled last week after strenuous objections from antitrust regulators.

Hong Kong - Two undercover policewomen posed as potential prostitutes to help crack an international sex syndicate that was sending women to work in overseas bars, a Hong Hong court report said Tuesday.

The two officers arranged a meeting with a man called Ho after answering an advertisement in a Chinese-language newspaper offering "quick money overseas by being public relationship officers in Japan, Taiwan and the United Kingdom" between December 2006 and June 2007.

At the meeting the women were told they could earn tens of thousands of dollars a month entertaining and having sex with customers in a bar in Chiba-Ken in Japan.