That was no small matter, considering that Lincecum threw 148 pitches in his first career no-hitter Saturday night.

The Freak, indeed.

While he was still trying to put his no-hitter into perspective, Lincecum said his arm was OK after his incredible effort in the San Francisco Giants' 9-0 victory against the last-place San Diego Padres.

"I haven't played catch yet but right now I feel good," he said, sitting in the dugout an hour before the defending World Series champion Giants tried for a four-game sweep.

Lincecum looks different now that he's cut his long hair, and he doesn't throw quite as hard as he used to. One thing hasn't changed, though. Lincecum has never iced his arm after starts, including his 148-pitch performance.

It turns out there was no ice of any kind Saturday night.

"Not even in the drinks that I didn't have last night," he said with a laugh.

"I said to him, 'One time, can you ice it?'" manager Bruce Bochy recalled.

Lincecum, a two-time NL Cy Young Award winner, said he had a low-key celebration. He spoke by phone with his father and spent time with his girlfriend and his two dogs. He said he didn't get to sleep until around 3:30 a.m.

"I woke up today, so I'm good," he said.

Lincecum said his family and friends "get more excited than I do just because it's hard for me to kind of realize and take in what's going on."

"It kind of goes back to what my dad tells me: 'Don't get too excited about the good stuff and don't get too down about the bad stuff,'" he added. "I'm trying to hover in the middle, and it could be the plague of me right now. I'm not really finding a way to enjoy this, I guess. But being able to share it with my family and friends was the best part."

There was still a buzz in the Giants' clubhouse, where 12 hours earlier Lincecum was doused with champagne.

"Timmy!" one teammate hollered when Lincecum walked in, wearing a beanie and glasses. Another Giants player gave the slightly built pitcher grief about the fanny pack he was wearing.

"It's momentum. It's exciting," said right fielder Hunter Pence, whose sensational diving catch of Alexi Amarista's sinking liner in the eighth inning preserved the no-no.

Pitching coach Dave Righetti who threw a no-hitter for the New York Yankees on July 4, 1983, a year before Lincecum was born said the Freak's pitch count became an issue in the sixth inning.

"The only way he was staying in was if he didn't give up a hit," Righetti said.

"He wanted it. You could tell. He was definitely in his zone, so to speak," Righetti said.

"It goes without saying how badly a guy wants it when it's going like that," Lincecum said. "You just hope they give you a leash to do so and you do so with the slack that you're given. I think it just turns into an internal focus and you try to take advantage of the pitches you have left and you know that every pitch that you throw is that much more worrisome, I'm pretty sure."

Bochy said he was impressed with how Lincecum got locked in when he had thrown about 100 pitches.

"Sure, that's a lot of pitches, but there's days when a guy gets in a groove, he's not putting a lot of effort in it and you let the dog run. ... There's no way I could have taken that kid out," Bochy said. "First of all, he probably wouldn't have talked to me the rest of the season. But he was still going strong."

Lincecum struck out 13, walked four and hit a batter.

He struggled this year and last, although he's also been plagued this season by poor run support.

Lincecum's no-hitter for the Giants follows Jonathan Sanchez's no-no in 2009 also against the Padres and Matt Cain's perfect game last year.

Righetti recalled that early in Lincecum's career, his stuff was so good that it wasn't uncommon to think, "Uh oh, this is the day."

"I don't know that he'd say this publicly, I think he maybe felt his time was past," Righetti said. "I knew he watched Jonathan get his, and then Cain, and you know he's thinking about it.

"For him to get it, I had tears in my eyes. I know what he's been through, back and forth, and being the guy, and people picking him apart. I'm proud of him. I told him that the last game the way he's been handling it all, and the way he's gone through this wave that every guy's got to go through."

Lincecum's no-hitter the first in Petco Park's 10-year history was popular well beyond the pro-Giants crowd in San Diego.

Lincecum is from Seattle and pitched for the University of Washington. During a pitching change during the Angels-Mariners game at Safeco Field, the ninth inning of the Giants-Padres game was shown on the video board, until there were two strikes on the last batter, Yonder Alonso.

Josh Hamilton then stepped into the batter's box and the other game was taken off the board, drawing boos from the crowd. Hamilton had a long at-bat and word began trickling through the crowd that Lincecum had finished the no-no.

Before the next batter, the final out of Lincecum's no-hitter was shown, and the crowd cheered.

___

AP Sports Writer Tim Booth in Seattle contributed to this report.

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The 52-year-old American is one of the longest hitters on the over-50s Champions Tour and he views his length off the tee as "a huge advantage" on the 6,711-yard, par-70 layout at Omaha Country Club.

"It's all going to be how well I drive the golf ball is how well I play this week," Perry told reporters on Wednesday while preparing for Thursday's opening round at the fourth of the season's five senior majors.

"Definitely length is going to be a big advantage this week, but you've still got to hit the fairways. The rough is very penal out there. It's chip-out rough.

"It's got definitely a U.S. Open feel out there, with the greens as small as they are and undulating. But with my power, if I can keep driving it straight like I did at Fox Chapel ... I've got a huge advantage."

Perry landed his first major title by two shots in last month's Senior Players Championship at Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh for his third career win on the Champions Tour.

He capped a superb driving display there with a closing six-under-par 64 to seal victory but this week he knows he will need stamina as well as power if he is to visit the winner's circle for a second consecutive event.

"This is probably the hardest walking course I've ever been on," Perry said of the Omaha Country Club layout. "I played the (PGA) Tour 27 years and a couple of years out here and it's the hilliest I've seen. It's very physically demanding.

"You're always coming off the green and walking 50 to 80 yards up the hill to the next tee box, and then you're walking straight down and then back (up).

"The guys that will do well this week are going to be the guys who are in pretty good shape."

MAJOR DEAL

Winning a first major crown, even at senior level, meant a great deal to Perry, who had twice been beaten in playoffs for one of golf's four blue riband events on the regular PGA Tour.

"Anything that has major attached to it was always my one goal," said the American, a 14-times winner on the PGA Tour. "I came so close at the PGA (Championship) when Mark Brooks beat me in the playoff, and then I lost to Cabrera at the Masters.

"Our majors out here (on the Champions Tour) probably are not looked upon like they are on the PGA Tour, but yet they're still a major.

"It still will be attached to your name," said Perry, who was pipped by fellow American Brooks in the 1996 PGA Championship at Valhalla, then lost out in a three-way playoff for the 2009 Masters won by Argentina's Angel Cabrera.

Perry also suffered a close call in May at the Senior PGA Championship at Bellerive Golf Club in St. Louis where he fell back into a tie for second after going into the final round with a two-stroke lead.

"It was a huge monkey off my back when I won (the Senior Players Championship)," he said. "I had a three-shot lead with six to play at the Senior PGA, and I blew that one.

"It was finally nice to get that off my back. It was finally nice to say, 'Hey, yeah, I was able to do it.' That was awesome. That was a great feeling."

Englishman Roger Chapman is defending his title this week, having won last year's U.S. Senior Open by two strokes in Lake Orion, Michigan.

Also competing are Americans Tom Watson and Loren Roberts, who are each seeking to emulate Jack Nicklaus by winning a fourth different senior major title.

(Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles; Editing by Gene Cherry)

The Emergency Services Ministry says in a statement that 25 other people were injured in the Saturday crash. The severity of the injuries wasn't stated.

The accident occurred when the truck plowed into the side of the bus near Oznobishino, a settlement in the Moscow municipality about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the city center.

Russian news reports say the drivers of both vehicles are among the hospitalized.

U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody of Philadelphia had planned to rule July 22 in a legal fight that involves about 4,200 former players and could be worth billions of dollars.

But instead she ordered the two sides to begin mediation with retired federal Judge Layn Phillips. The retirees want the right to sue the league, while the NFL insists the claims must be arbitrated under terms of the collective bargaining agreement.

Brody asked for a progress report by Sept. 3, while placing a gag order on the lawyers. Both sides agreed to comply.

Many former players say they suffer from dementia, Alzheimer's disease and other neurological conditions, which they believe stem from on-field concussions. The league insists that safety has always been a top priority.

Both sides have something to fear from a court ruling. Brody could throw out the lawsuits and steer them to arbitration; or accept some or all of them, and open up internal NFL files to plaintiffs' lawyers looking for a smoking gun. Still, sports law professor Marc Edelman, who teaches at Fordham University and Baruch College, called it "highly unlikely" that either side would budge during mediation.

"The sentimental impact of this type of case is one that would make it strongly advantageous for the plaintiffs to get to a jury," Edelman said. "The position the NFL has taken is they are not liable for anything that's happened to the players."

In legal arguments before Brody in April, NFL lawyer Paul Clement said teams bear the chief responsibility for health and safety under the contract, along with the players' union and the players themselves. Players' lawyer David Frederick accused the league of concealing studies linking concussions to neurological problems for decades.

"The plaintiffs got in a lot of their case, that the NFL glorified violence all these years. I would think in mediation that Judge Phillips would let it go further, if that's what they want to talk about," said Andrew Brandt, who directs a sports law center at Villanova University School of Law.

In recent years, a string of former NFL players and other concussed athletes have been diagnosed after their deaths with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, including popular Pro Bowler Junior Seau and lead plaintiff Ray Easterling. Both committed suicide last year.

About one-third of the league's 12,000 former players have joined the litigation since 2011. Some legal experts feel the NFL may be most vulnerable on claims from a few hundred "gap" players, who played during years when there was no contract in place.

"We respect and will comply with the court's order regarding mediation and will be available to meet with Judge Phillips at his direction," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said in a statement. The Plaintiffs' Executive Committee for the former NFL players also pledged to "follow the court's directive."

Phillips, 61, had a meteoric law career before leaving the federal bench in Oklahoma and moving to private practice before age 40. He was a tennis standout at the University of Tulsa, where he also played flag football, according to an online biography. He is now based in Newport Beach, Calif.

"Judge Phillips is pleased to have been appointed ... in this challenging and complex matter. He looks forward to working with the parties to achieve resolution," his office said in a statement.

Now, enter the goat cafe, which houses a pair of friendly goats for customers to pet, play with and even take for walks through Tokyo's concrete jungle.

Rena Kawaguchi and her staff brought the animals - named Sakura and Chocolat, or Cherry and Chocolate - three years ago, hoping to attract a new breed of animal-loving customers and spice up flagging weekend business.

"Back then animal cafes were booming, places where you could play with cats or dogs," Kawaguchi said. "But we reckoned a normal animal like that wouldn't have the wow factor of a goat."

Customers can pet the goats in their pen while drinking a coffee, or book a slot to take them for a walk through the crowded area surrounding Shibuya station, a hub for commuters and Tokyo's trend-conscious youth.

"When you live in the city like I do, places where you can meet animals are so far away and you rarely get the time to go there," said Kotaro Nakazato, a 21-year-old university student.

"Having them nearby like this makes it easy to commune with nature."

Keeping the goats has its challenges. Staff have to muck out their pen between serving customers, and the goats are fed special protein-rich pills to prevent foul-smelling droppings.

With the goats proving a hit, Kawaguchi says she's got even bigger plans. An elephant cafe is at the top of her list, although it was not clear what her pen-cleaning staff thought of the prospect.

(Reporting by Ruairidh Villar; Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Paul Tait)

LONDON (Reuters) - Antibodies to a high-risk type of a virus that causes mouth and throat cancers when transmitted via oral sex can be detected in blood tests many years before onset of the disease, according to a World Health Organisation-led team of researchers.

In a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers said their findings may in future lead to people being screened for human papillomavirus (HPV) antibodies, giving doctors a chance to find those at high risk of oral cancers.

"Up to now, it was not known whether these antibodies were present in blood before the cancer became clinically detectable," said Paul Brennan, of the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), who led the study and described the findings as "very encouraging".

"If these results are confirmed, future screening tools could be developed for early detection of the disease," he said.

While HPV is better known for causing cervical and other genital cancers, it is also responsible for an increasing number of cancers of the mouth and throat, particularly amongst men.

The issue was highlighted earlier this month by Hollywood actor Michael Douglas, who said his throat cancer was caused by HPV transmitted through oral sex.

Oral, head and neck cancers are traditionally associated with heavy smoking and alcohol consumption, but over the past few decades rates of the diseases have increased dramatically, especially in Europe and North America.

Brennan said this is probably due to HPV infections because of changing sexual practices, such as an increase in oral sex.

According to IARC data, about 30 percent of all oral cancers are estimated to be HPV-related, and the main type of HPV associated with these tumours is HPV16.

EARLIER DETECTION

A study in the British Medical Journal in 2010 also found rates of head and neck cancer linked to HPV were rising rapidly, prompting calls from some doctors for boys as well as girls to be offered vaccinations to protect them against HPV.

Two vaccines - Cervarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline, and Gardasil, made by Merck & Co - can prevent HPV.

This new study, by scientists from IARC as well as the German Cancer Research Center and the U.S. National Cancer Institute, used data from a large study known as EPIC, which involves 500,000 people from 10 European countries who were recruited in the 1990s and have been followed up since.

Researchers found that of the 135 people in the study who developed oral cancers, 47, or about one third of them, had HPV16 E6 antibodies up to 12 years before the onset of disease.

In a telephone interview, Brennan said early detection would also allow doctors to track patients with antibodies and intervene early if tumours develop. "The earlier the detection, the better the treatment and the greater the survival," he said.

The antibody test used in the study was relatively simple and cheap and could be developed as a tool for more widespread screening within about five years if these results are confirmed in future studies, he added.

He cautioned, however, that more work was needed to improve the tests' accuracy, since in this research there were about 1 in 100 "false positives" - where a person with the HPV16 antibodies did not go on to develop an oral cancer.

Brennan said another significant finding of the study was that patients with oral cancers linked to HPV16 were three times more likely to be alive five years after their diagnosis than oral cancer patients whose tumours were not HPV-related and may have been linked to other risks such as smoking or drinking.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

The blood, gore and antisocial behavior seen in games like Grand Theft Auto understandably make parents nervous. And when faced with horrors like the massacre of elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut or the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, it can be hard not to consider a possible connection between kids spending 18 hour days shooting down victim after victim onscreen and real life violence.

But the research investigating the role that virtual violence has on actual behavior hasnt been so helpful, and with the data so difficult to interpret, expert opinion is also highly polarized. Game advocates note that as gaming has increased, violent crime rates in the U.S. have dropped. One 2011 study that tracked retail game sales and reported crime even found that an 1% increase in sales of violent games was linked with a .03% drop in violent crime.

Dozens of other studies, however, have shown more aggression and less caring behavior following game play. Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State who led a 2010 review of the research involving nearly 70,000 participants said, I think the field is not really divided. It is like . 95% of scientists believe [videogames can cause violence and reduce empathy], and a vocal minority do not.

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Bushman was not associated with the new , published in PLOS One, which failed to replicate prior research showing that violent games decrease peoples willingness to help others, while games that involve kindness increase that tendency. This research lends support to the idea that public concern over violent video games might be mismatched, says lead author Morgan Tear, a PhD student at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Tears team asked a group of 64 college students to play one of four different video games for 20 minutes; two of the games, Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty: Black Ops, were violent and two, World of Zoo and Portal 2, were not. After playing, participants filled out questionnaires about their experience with the game, but what the scientists really wanted to know was whether the games influenced the participants tendency to help others. It turned out that they did not. When the researchers pretended to spill their pens in their rush to leave the room, both groups of gamers were equally likely to help them pick up their pens.

This suggests that the effect of violent video games on behavior might be small and that public concern ought to be minimal, says Tear. So which factors hold more sway? Not surprisingly, things such as whether someone is a friend, a stranger or potential academic advisor is likely to play a bigger role in whether you go out of your way to help than the nature of a game you might have just played. Not taking such contextual factors into account could produce misleading results in investigating the influence of violence in video games. In the study, if the researcher dropped the pens at a point in the experiment when the participants thought the scientist might return, 75% helped him pick up but if they thought the study was over and they would never see him again, just 31% gave aid.

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The biggest effect was more related to when the pen drop occurred than what games were played, says Dr. Richard Hall, professor of psychiatry at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, who was not connected with the research, What that suggests is that in the environment in which these studies are done, there are multiple factors [at play] and little things such as whether the examiner was smiling or not could have a dramatic impact on what is reported.

Because its impossible to minimize such factors entirely in a study setting, it may be too challenging to answer the question of whether violent video games can result in more aggressive behavior or a reduced ability to empathize with others. I think we really dont know enough, says Hall, What I worry about is that this topic has become very political.

And that means that the research may also fall victim to some polarizing, non-scientific influences. The literature is so contested because some of the prominent researchers vehemently disagree with each other, says Tear, At the far end are those who contend that the effect of violent video games on society is profound and damaging, while at the other are those who maintain any effects are benign. As better data and better designed experiments are published, I think the picture will become clearer.

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A lot of the problem with the data is that people get results and then overstate them or misapply them, Hall says, For example, I dont think theres anyone out there who would disagree that too much videogame playing is bad for an individual. The risks, however, lie in the specifics. What were trying to do with these studies is apply them to the whole population and that may not be a good way to look at it. A lot of people ask: are video games good or bad? As a clinician, the question I ask is, It is good or bad for this child?

If a teen plays excessively but is active in extracurricular pursuits, socializes with friends, earns good grades and behaves reasonably at home, theres little cause for concern, for example. But if gaming starts to substitute for friendships and family time, it might not be as healthy, and parents should look into why the video games are so important for their child. Research shows that addictive gaming is strongly linked with some type of distress, whether it originates from family problems, psychiatric conditions or social issues or, most often, a mixture of all of the above. And those problems could make some people vulnerable to the negative effects of the virtual violence in video games.

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The real question [is] whether video games have a uniquely negative effect on those individuals compared to the many other activities and scenarios that they would routinely encounter in their daily lives, Tear says. I suspect that video games would be one of many possible things that could affect those particularly vulnerable people but we would need good evidence to conclude that video games are any more harmful than other activities, such as playing basketball or chess.