Uruguay has the star players and the experience of appearing for the fourth straight time in an intercontinental playoff for a spot at the World Cup, making Oscar Tabarez' squad a heavy favorite to secure one of the last two places for Brazil 2014.

Jordan has never reached the World Cup, while Uruguay has won football's ultimate prize twice.

The nearly 230,000 tickets in the second phase of sales for the 2014 World Cup were sold out Monday just seven hours after being made available on FIFA's website.

FIFA said the "level of interest was impressive," and was greater than in the first sales window, when almost 890,000 tickets were allocated through a random selection draw.

The vice president of the European Commission has said that taxpayer-funded bank bailouts remain a possibility if the current round of stress tests of Europe's biggest banks reveal significant capital shortfalls — or if Europe's debt crisis were to really flare up again.

However, Joaquin Almunia repeated that the governments' preferred method remains to force investors such as shareholders, bondholders and ultimately depositors, to pay first.

Novak Djokovic capped off a phenomenal autumn by defending his ATP World Tour Finals title with an impressive 6-3, 6-4 win over Rafael Nadal in a duel between the two dominant players of the season on Monday night.

There's no doubt Djokovic is the man to beat on indoor hard courts. And just for the record, his 22 consecutive wins to finish 2013 matched top-ranked Nadal's best stretch of the year. Djokovic's winning run started after a U.S. Open final defeat to Nadal, and during a span when the Spaniard replaced him atop the rankings.

The Indiana Pacers remained the NBA's only unbeaten team this season after Paul George scored 23 points and Lance Stephenson had the first triple-double of his career in a 95-79 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday.

Indiana became the NBA's seventh team to open the season with eight wins and no losses since 2000 — two more wins than the club's previous best start. And they followed a familiar script in the battle between last season's conference runner-ups by dominating the glass, dominating the second half and divvying up top honors.

Early this year as Jessica Chastain was in the midst of an Oscar blitz for "Zero Dark Thirty," media outlets picked up a story that her biological father, a musician named Michael Monasterio, had died. Chastain did not attend the funeral and she did not comment publicly on his death.

In Vogue's December issue, Chastain calls the attention "very difficult." She says no father is listed on her birth certificate and there's "no proof of anything." She says she remained silent at the time out of respect for her stepfather, Michael Hastey.

Alec Baldwin probably isn't relishing his part in this scene: a courtroom face-off with his accused stalker.

But it's likely to play out Tuesday in a New York City courtroom, where the "30 Rock" star is expected to testify against Genevieve Sabourin, a Canadian actress.

U.S. experts are raising the alarm over the spread of drug-resistant malaria in several Southeast Asian countries, endangering major global gains in fighting the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 600,000 people annually.

While the communicable disease wreaks its heaviest toll in Africa, it's in nations along the Mekong River where the most serious threat to treating it has emerged.

Five years after a global financial crisis erupted, the world's biggest economies still need to be propped up.

They're growing and hiring a little faster and creating more jobs, but only with extraordinary aid from central banks or government spending. And economists say major countries may need help for years more.

Felipe Massa has replaced Pastor Maldonado at Williams and will race for the Formula One team from the 2014 season after eight years at Ferrari.

The 32-year-old Massa will partner Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas next season, following in the footsteps of Brazilian drivers Ayrton Senna and Rubens Barrichello who both drove for the British team.