Lance Armstrong is used to winning, but his most recent victory was unlike any he had experienced before.

Federal prosecutors dropped their investigation of the seven-time Tour de France champion Friday, ending a nearly two-year effort to determine whether the world's most famous cyclist and his teammates joined in a doping program during his greatest years.

The president of Egypt's football federation and his board of directors resigned Saturday, having already been fired by the country's prime minister following the riot at a game that left more than 70 dead.

Egyptian Football Association Samir Zaher also was reportedly banned from leaving Egypt pending an investigation into the country's worst outburst of soccer violence.

Champis the bunny doesn't only hop — he also knows how to herd his masters' flock of sheep, possibly having picked up the skill after watching trained dogs do the job.

The 5-year-old pet rabbit from the small village of Kal in northern Sweden shot to online fame last week, having garnered more than 700,000 YouTube hits so far, after a clip of his sheep herding skills surfaced on a blog.

Italy is now a "safe place" amid market turbulence; Premier Mario Monti said in an interview published Saturday, pressing for Europe to turn its political energy to generating growth rather than further plans to strengthen budget discipline.

Monti's comments in an interview with the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung came ahead of a planned appearance at the Munich Security Conference.

Russia's state-controlled Gazprom natural gas giant acknowledged for the first time Saturday that it had briefly reduced gas supplies to Europe amid a spell of extreme cold.

Gazprom deputy chief Andrey Kruglov reported to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the cuts lasted for several days and reached up to 10 percent, but supplies are currently back to normal. Officials in Austria and France, however, have reported cuts of as much as 30 percent, and Italy said supplies were down by 24 percent Thursday.

Trading jokes and swapping leads, investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard spent the conference call strategizing about how to bring down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, responsible for a string of embarrassing attacks across the Internet.

Unfortunately for the cyber sleuths, the hackers were in on the call too — and now so is the rest of the world.

Apple Inc. has temporarily blocked Motorola Mobility's attempt to have it withdraw several iPhone and iPad models from its Internet store in Germany, the latest twist in an extended legal duel over patents between the companies.

The sale of the devices was briefly halted after Libertyville, Ill.-based Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. enforced a ruling it won against Ireland-based Apple Sales International Inc., from a court in Mannheim, Germany.

Last year was the deadliest on record for Afghan civilians with 3,021 killed, a rise of 8 percent from the year before as insurgents ratcheted up violence with roadside bombs and suicide attacks, the United Nations said Saturday.

Taliban-affiliated militants were responsible for more than three-quarters of the civilian deaths in 2011, the fifth year in a row in which the death toll went up, the U.N. said.

The Afghan Taliban on Saturday denied that their leader Mullah Omar had written to President Barack Obama last July.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said reports that Omar had sent a letter indicating an interest in talks key to ending the war in Afghanistan were "baseless allegations."

Inter Milan's match at Roma on Saturday has been postponed due to a rare snowstorm in the capital.

It began snowing near midday Friday in Rome and the cobblestone streets in the capital were covered with slush, prompting the local police chief to call off the match.