Miscellany

Salt Lake City Olympics organizer Thomas Welch, facing a domestic violence charge and questions about his continued usefulness to the 2002 Winter Games, denied that he ever roughed up his wife.

Welch, 52, president and chief executive officer of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, was charged Monday with battery for allegedly scuffling with his wife, Alma, 47, on July 9 at their home.

Warren Harper, 65, who was head football coach at Texas-El Paso from 1963 to 1964, an assistant at Oklahoma and a scout for the Seattle Seahawks, has died in Norman, Okla.

After retiring at Oklahoma in 1982, Harper became a scout for Seattle.

FIFA said it’s investigating a newspaper report that Saddam Hussein’s son tortured the Iraqi national soccer team after it lost a qualifying match for next year’s World Cup, sending the team to a military camp where they had the soles of their feet caned and their backs beaten, and were warned to do better or face imprisonment.