Australian rider Stuart O'Grady has announced his retirement, one day after completing a record-equaling 17th Tour de France.

The 39-year-old O'Grady called time on a 19-year professional career after a strong performance by his Orica GreenEDGE team in this year's Tour. Teammate Simon Gerrans won the third stage and O'Grady stood on the podium when the Australian-based outfit won the team time-trial in the fourth stage.

Olympic champion Oussama Mellouli of Tunisia got stuck trading elbows and kicks with a French challenger.

Five-time world champion Thomas Lurz of Germany had to waste precious energy fighting off herds of competitors just to get around the buoys lining the course.

The Palestine Football Assocation is competing to host FIFA's annual congress in 2017.

FIFA says Palestine is among 10 members expressing interest in hosting in 2017, and 14 have proposed hosting the 2016 congress.

Gold medal favorites Chen Ruolin and Liu Huixia of China topped the preliminaries of the women's 10-meter synchronized platform diving at the world championships on Monday.

Chen is a three-time defending world champion in the event and a four-time Olympics gold medalist.

The publisher that bought the German rights to a novel for a song before learning that the author was Harry Potter writer J.K. Rowling said Sunday it was eyeing a windfall.

Munich-based Blanvalet Verlag snapped up the rights in February to "The Cuckoo's Calling", a purported debut novel by a certain Robert Galbraith about a private detective who investigates a model's suicide, its editor Anja Franzen told news weekly Focus.

Rapper J. Cole is apologizing to those with autism and their families for an offensive lyric.

Cole says in a blog post Sunday that he doesn't agree with the recent trend of rappers facing pressure to apologize when they step over a perceived line, but in this case he feels he went too far in a verse he contributed to Drake's "Jodeci Freestyle."

The first time Miriam Lipton had breast cancer, her thick hair fell out two weeks after starting chemotherapy. The second time breast cancer struck, Lipton gave her scalp a deep chill and kept much of her hair — making her fight for survival seem a bit easier.

Hair loss is one of chemotherapy's most despised side effects, not because of vanity but because it fuels stigma, revealing to the world an illness that many would rather keep private.

European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to blacklist Hizbullah's armed wing, holding it responsible for terror attacks in Europe.

"It is good that the EU has decided to call Hizbullah what it is: a terrorist organization," said Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans.

The U.S. Navy said on Monday it is considering salvaging four unarmed bombs dropped by U.S. fighter jets into Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park last week when a training exercise went wrong.

The two AV-8B Harrier jets launched from the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard during joint exercises with the Australian military each jettisoned an inert, concrete-filled practice bomb and an unarmed laser-guided explosive bomb into the World Heritage-listed marine park off the coast of Queensland state on Tuesday. None exploded.

The white sands of Copacabana beach typically draw millions of sun-worshippers, New Year's Eve revelers and fans for free concerts by the likes of Stevie Wonder and the Rolling Stones. In the coming week, the star of the show is infinitely less flamboyant than Mick Jagger, but he promises to stir up just as much passion among devotees.

Pope Francis, the 76-year-old Argentine who became the church's first pontiff from the Americas in March, will turn the crescent-shaped shoreline into a giant stage for his first international trip as pope, returning to the embrace of Latin America to preside over the Roman Catholic Church's World Youth Day festival.