Dubai, Feb 26 : Pakistan skipper Younus Khan has jumped six places to overtake S. Chanderpaul at the top of the ICC Test Player Rankings.

A triple-century from Pakistan's new captain Younus Khan has earned him six places and put him on top of the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for Test batsmen for the first time in his career.

Industrial cranes, a ubiquitous sight on the UAE and dubbed its national bird, have stopped flying. A third of the crane population, working non-stop on high-rise buildings, have been grounded - their wings clipped by the global meltdown. A decade's construction boom having suddenly gone bust, over one lakh people, mostly expatriates, have lost their jobs.

Dubai, UAE - Croatian seeds split the difference on Monday's opening day at the Barclays Championships, with Marin Cilic fighting back as Ivo Karlovic crashed out to a qualifier.

Cilic, seeded fifth, met up with Serbian Janko Tipsarevic and handed his familiar rival a third defeat over seven weeks in their series, 2-6, 7-6 (7-3), 6-4.

Swiss qualifier Marco Chiudinelli began putting in a bid for a place on next week's Swiss Davis Cup team to face the US.

Dubai, Feb. 23 : The ICC today confirmed that Emirates Elite Panel umpire Steve Bucknor had announced his retirement from officiating, effective at the end of his upcoming Test and ODI assignments in South Africa.

Bucknor's last assignment as an elite panelist will be the third and final Test between South Africa and Australia to be played in Cape Town from March 19 to 23, while his final match commitment as an international umpire will be in Bridgetown, Barbados, on March 29 when he will stand as a local appointee with elite panel umpire Aleem Dar in the fourth ODI between the West Indies and England.

Dubai, Feb. 22 : Saudi Arabia's prominent scholar Sheikh Mohamed Al-Najim has said those who use alcohol-based bio-fuels in their cars could be committing a `sin'.

Najimi is a member of the Islamic Fiqh Academy that studies Islamic jurisprudence for the Organization of the Islamic Conference. OIC is an international group with a permanent delegation to the United Nations.

Najim directed his warning to Saudi youths studying abroad, but his warning was not an official fatwa or religious edict, just his personal opinion, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Dubai, UAE - Shahar Peer is set for the biggest pay day of her career after the WTA fined Dubai tournament organizers a record 300,000 dollars over failure to secure a visa into the UAE for the Israeli ranked 45.

The women's governing body put the boot in by also ordering the Gulf event to post a 2-million-dollar bond if it hopes to hold an event next year.

Under the sanctions, Peer will benefit by around 45,000 dollars plus a massive 130 ranking points and will be allowed free entry into any 2010 edition in Dubai notwithstanding her ranking.