Joe Dumars and the Detroit Pistons had been waiting a while for this offseason — and it showed.

The Pistons have finally been able to give their roster a significant makeover, adding Josh Smith, Chauncey Billups and Italian star Luigi Datome. It remains to be seen how much the team will improve but, for the first time in a while, there's a bit of a buzz surrounding this struggling club.

Pele will soon travel to Iraq to meet with sports leaders in the region as part of a plan organized by a Brazilian legislator who is a robust supporter of next year's World Cup in Brazil.

Congressman Vicente Candido said Wednesday that Pele would travel at the end of August or in early September.

Even when he expects to lose, Tour de France champion-in-the-making Chris Froome cannot help but win. He's that strong and he's making it look easy.

On a day when the British rider was planning to save some energy for upcoming mountains, Froome still brushed aside the field and took his third stage win of this 100th Tour.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter said Brazil might have been the wrong choice as host of the 2014 World Cup if the tournament is affected by social protests like those as at the Confederations Cup last month.

Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets during the warm-up tournament in June, demanding better public services and expressing their anger over the costs to stage the World Cup.

A strange glow in space has provided fresh evidence that all the gold on Earth was forged from ancient collisions of dead stars, researchers reported Wednesday.

Astronomers have long known that fusion reactions in the cores of stars create lighter elements such as carbon and oxygen, but such reactions can't produce heavier elements like gold.

An official of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Louay al-Meqdad, has rejected the assassination of a pro-government Syrian journalist, saying he should have faced court instead of elimination.

In remarks to An Nahar newspaper published on Thursday, al-Meqdad said that the punishment of Mohammed Darrar Jammo “without a fair trial is a crime.”

China's population of Internet users has grown to 591 million, driven by a 20 percent rise over the past year in the number of people who surf the Web from smartphones and other wireless devices, an industry group reported Wednesday.

The end-of-June figures from the China Internet Network Information Center represent a 10 percent rise in total Internet use over a year earlier. The number of wireless users rose to 464 million.

A person with knowledge of the situation revealed Manchester United has rejected a bid from Chelsea for striker Wayne Rooney.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not publicly authorized to discuss the bid.

The 17th stage of the Tour de France has started, with riders setting off in reverse order on a hilly time trial in the Alps.

Because the overall classification is reversed for the race against the clock, this means that overall leader Chris Froome will be the last to start the undulating 32-kilometer (20-mile) route from Embrun to Chorges.

The trainer for Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson has insisted he didn't give the sprinters performance-enhancing drugs and says it's time for them to take "responsibility for their doping instead of looking around for a scapegoat."

In a statement The Associated Press received on Tuesday from one of two email accounts for Chris Xuereb, the trainer is quoted as saying he has done nothing wrong since the Jamaicans hired him in May to provide massage therapy and nutritional help.