Blatter warded but not critical
GENEVA • Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter has been taken to hospital, a Swiss newspaper said on Thursday, but it stressed that the disgraced official's life was not in danger.
Blick quoted his daughter Corinne Blatter Andenmatten as saying that the 84-year-old is "getting better every day but needs time and rest" and that he was in a serious but non-life-threatening state. He contracted Covid-19 last November and was previously hospitalised in 2015 and 2016.
Blatter was suspended from football for six years over a two million Swiss franc payment to then Uefa boss Michel Platini in 2011. The duo are now being investigated for alleged "fraud" and "breach of trust" in Switzerland.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Club World Cup to test out head-injury sub
ZURICH • Fifa will trial concussion substitutes at the Feb 1-11 Club World Cup in Qatar, football's world governing body said yesterday.
The decision comes after the game's rule-making body Ifab gave the go-ahead to additional trials last month. The trial will allow one permanent concussion replacement in cases of head injury, regardless of the number of substitutions a team has made.
REUTERS
Trump gives award to trio of golf greats
WASHINGTON • Golf greats Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from United States President Donald Trump in a closed-door ceremony on Thursday, a day after a mob of his supporters invaded the US Capitol building.
He also bestowed the award, America's highest civilian honour, posthumously on Olympic athletics double gold medallist and women's golf pioneer Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
No change to fan limit for Japan rugby final
TOKYO • Japan's university rugby championship final will go ahead in Tokyo on Monday with 17,000 supporters, despite new restrictions limiting crowds at major sporting events to 5,000 or 50 per cent capacity, the Japanese Rugby Football Union said yesterday.
The Japanese capital and three neighbouring prefectures are under a state of emergency, declared on Thursday in response to a surge in Covid-19 infections. However, the government has made an exception for events for which tickets were already sold.
REUTERS
