Hamburg - There were victories for most favourites in Thursday's UEFA Cup group games, with Serie A clubs AC Milan and Udinese being two of six club with two wins from two matches.

Former Champions League winners Milan needed a goal four minutes into injury time from substitute Ronaldinho to break down the Sporting Braga defence.

The other Group E game saw German Bundesliga club VfL Wolfsburg come from behind to beat Dutch club Heerenveen 5-1 in the so-called Group of Death.

Bonn, Germany - Germany's National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) will introduce from the start of 2009 strict new rules requiring the country's top athletes to make themselves available for at least one hour a day for random dope tests.

"During this hour, one would have to wait for a tester at a certain place," said NADA legal advisor Anja Berninger at a workshop in Bonn.

"This rule only applies to the country's top athletes. Anyway they can be creative and factor it into their training schedule."

Frankfurt - A record number of competing nations are expected at the alpine ski and Nordic ski world championships early next year, the international ski federation FIS said Thursday.

Athletes from 67 nations will be competing at the alpine ski world championships at the French resort of Val d'Isere between February 2 and 15.

The Nordic ski event at the Czech resort of Liberec between February 18 and March 1 has attracted competitors from 55 nations.

Monte Carlo - The IAAF, the governing body of world athletics, has imposed two-year doping bans on eight Russian athletes for testing positive for the banned blood-booster EPO.

It emerged Thursday that the athletes include Vladimir Kanaikin, the 20-kilometre walk world record holder, and Alexei Voyevodin,
50km walk bronze medalist at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Last month, seven Russian athletes were suspended for two years by the Russian Athletics Federation (ARAF) for tampering with doping samples.

The athletes named included Yelena Soboleva, who earlier this year set a world indoor record in the women's 1,500 metres and two-time world 1,500 champion Tatyana Tomashova.

London - Liverpool will be hoping to regain top spot from Chelsea, for 24 hours at least, this weekend when they take on West Bromwich Albion in the latest round of fixtures in the English Premier League.

Rafael Benitez's side suffered their first defeat of the season last weekend when they went down 2-1 at Tottenham Hotspur and laboured to a 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid in the Champions League in midweek.

But with Chelsea, who lead the table from Liverpool on goal difference, not in action until Sunday, the Anfield side know that three points will restore their place at the top and continue their impressive start to the season.

London, Nov 6 : Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton had an emotional homecoming at the McLaren headquarters where he expressed his gratitude to 1800 employee who contributed in shaping his future, and said he is not going to leave the F1 team.

“All of these trophies are your hard work. We’ve won together, we’ve lost together and now we are world champions,” The Telegraph quoted Hamilton, as saying.