World Chess title for Indian

The world chess championship in Iran has been won by the Indian grandmaster, Viswanathan Anand -- the first Asian to win a world title.

He takes three-a-half million dollars in prize money after defeating his Russian-born Spanish rival Alexei Shirov: he resigned on the forty-first move of Sunday's decisive game. The contest was organised by the International Chess Federation FIDE; its title is a rival to the championship won recently in London by Vladimir Kramnik, who beat the former undisputed champion, Garry Kasparov.

Iran is widely believed to be the birthplace of chess and is making a comeback internationally after being banned for a time after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, because some clerics objected to it.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service