Sports World: Leipzig pegged back and remain third

BERLIN • RB Leipzig missed a chance to cement a Champions League spot for next season when they threw away a two-goal lead in a 2-2 home draw against Fortuna Dusseldorf in the Bundesliga on Wednesday.

Goals by Kevin Kampl and Timo Werner were cancelled out by late strikes from Steven Skrzybski and Andre Hoffmann as Leipzig stayed third on 63 points, four ahead of fifth-placed Borussia Monchengladbach.

The German top-flight football season still has two rounds of matches to be played.

REUTERS

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AFC calls off annual awards owing to virus

KUALA LUMPUR • Asian Football Confederation (AFC) chiefs have cancelled their annual awards ceremony, which was scheduled to take place in Qatar in December, because they say it would be inappropriate in the wake of the deaths caused by the Covid-19 outbreak.

The prestigious ceremony includes the award for the Asian Player of the Year and would have coincided with the staging of the Club World Cup in Qatar. Professional football in Asia is slowly returning after the shutdown and the AFC has scheduled the resumption of the 2022 World Cup qualifying campaign for early October.

REUTERS

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McLaren may hive off stake in F1 team

LONDON • McLaren are considering selling a minority stake in their once-dominant Formula One team to raise funds to help the company weather the Covid-19 crisis, Sky News reported on Wednesday.

It said the proposal was at a "conceptual stage" alongside other options, including raising capital from existing bondholders. There was no immediate comment from McLaren. Bahrain's Mumtalakat holding company is the majority shareholder in McLaren Group, with a 56 per cent stake, followed by the TAG Group led by Saudi-born businessman Mansour Ojjeh with 14 per cent.

REUTERS

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Fog may have confused Kobe's pilot

LOS ANGELES • The pilot of a helicopter that crashed outside Los Angeles in January, killing basketball great Kobe Bryant, his daughter and all seven others on board, likely became disoriented in the fog, federal investigators said on Wednesday.

Pilot Ara Zobayan told air traffic controllers that his chopper was climbing out of heavy clouds when in fact it was descending immediately before slamming into a hillside, the National Transportation Safety Board wrote in newly released findings. It said pilots can become confused about an aircraft's altitude and acceleration when they cannot see the sky or landscape around them, causing "spatial disorientation".

REUTERS