2011年6月26日星期日

Sri Lanka's Tharanga gets three-month doping ban (Reuters)

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DUBAI (Reuters) – Sri Lankan opening batsman Upul Tharanga has been suspended for three months after failing a doping test, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said on Friday.

An ICC statement said the 26-year-old left-hander's urine sample, taken after this year's World Cup semi-final against New Zealand in Colombo on March 29, contained prednisone and prednisolone which are on the World Anti-Doping Agency's banned list.

Tharanga pleaded guilty to the offence at an early stage in the proceedings, it added.

A three-member independent tribunal, chaired by Tim Kerr, accepted that the opener had ingested the substances when drinking a herbal remedy for a long-standing shoulder injury.

"It also found that Tharanga had no intention to enhance his sporting performance or to mask the use of another performance enhancing substance, but that he had failed to satisfy the high levels of personal responsibility implicit upon him as an international cricketer subject to anti-doping rules," the statement said.

The tribunal used its discretion to back-date Tharanga's suspension, which started on May 9 and expires on Aug. 8, from all cricket-related activities.

"I apologise to the fans and followers of Sri Lanka cricket for inadvertently committing an offence," Tharanga was quoted as saying in the statement.

"I hope my fellow sportsmen will learn from my experience and be more vigilant when taking medical treatment, so that their careers do not suffer in the way that mine has."

Tharanga has 21 days to appeal against the decision.

"We recognise that Upul has not been found guilty of deliberately cheating, but the ICC maintains its zero-tolerance approach towards doping for the benefit of all its stakeholders," ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat said.

"Cases like this serve as a reminder to all players that they must take great care and personal responsibility at all times for the substances that they consume.

"I am satisfied with the tribunal's decision and pleased at the way the ICC has handled this case with both sensitivity and efficiency."


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Afghan MPs hit back over court ruling, crisis deepens (Reuters)

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KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan's political crisis worsened on Saturday with lawmakers voting to sack the five most senior judicial officials and international consternation growing after a presidential tribunal threw out a quarter of parliament.

The special court, set up by a decree by Afghan President Hamid Karzai after fraud-marred parliamentary elections last year, ruled on Thursday that 62 lawmakers would have to be replaced because of alleged poll fraud.

Karzai's critics have said the court was set up after the Sept. 18 election, in which Karzai's rivals made major gains, to further his own political agenda. Afghan and Western critics have questioned the legality of the court.

With anger growing over the decision, lawmakers voted on Saturday to fire the five most senior members of Afghanistan's Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Abdul Salam Azimi and his deputy Bahahuddin Baha, for failing to stop the special court's decision.

Fatima Aziz, a lawmaker from northern Kunduz province, said 183 MPs out of 190 who attended parliament on Saturday voted to impeach the five members of the Supreme Court's High Council.

Ahmad Humayoun, a lawmaker from eastern Khost province, said the vote was taken because the five had all advised Karzai to set up the special court to resolve the weeks of protests and infighting that followed the elections.

It was not immediately apparent if the five would indeed be fired, with no comment from the presidential palace. Karzai is in neighbouring Iran attending a security conference.

"RULE OF LAW"

The political uncertainty comes at a worrying time for Afghanistan, with violence at record levels and NATO-led forces preparing to hand over security to Afghans in several areas at the start of a gradual process that will end with all foreign combat troops leaving by the end of 2014.

Karzai's court announced its new election findings only hours after U.S. President Barack Obama detailed the beginning of a U.S. drawdown, with 10,000 U.S. troops to return home by the end of this year.

European Union Ambassador Vygaudas Usackas met a parliamentary delegation on Saturday, including Speaker Abdul Raouf Ibrahimi and 35 other lawmakers, to discuss the crisis.

He said Afghanistan's "peaceful future lies in the building of robust democratic institutions based on the rule of law and the clear respect for the separation of powers".

He said in a statement the EU reconfirmed its commitment to work with the Afghan government and people to promote "the principles of a democratic state".

Privately, other Western officials in Kabul have expressed shock and anger at the court's ruling. Another Western diplomat said on Thursday he was "totally flabbergasted".

There has been no comment on the ruling yet from Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) or from the United Nations, which helped fund and organise the poll.

The IEC threw out nearly a quarter of the 5.6 million votes cast last year over fraud and technical concerns, and later clashed with the attorney general's office when the special court began recounting votes.

Karzai, re-elected after a similarly tainted presidential election in 2009, has often been criticised for treating parliament as a rubber stamp.

The latest assembly did not sit for the first time until Jan. 26 -- four months after the vote -- and bickered in public for weeks before it chose Ibrahimi as speaker.

Underlining the political paralysis, Karzai has still not been able to name a complete cabinet because of objections from parliament, with caretakers still in several key posts.

Karzai is known to be unhappy with the make-up of the new parliament after the September vote. While not united, the new assembly could have yielded a more vocal and coherent opposition to challenge him.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Sugita Katyal)


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Pakistan, India seek to lower nuclear fears (Reuters)

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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan and India agreed on Friday to try to ease fears about their nuclear arsenals, in unexpectedly positive talks between the two countries' top diplomats.

Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir agreed to expand confidence-building measures in both their nuclear and conventional weapons.

A meeting of experts would be asked to "consider additional measures ... to build trust and confidence and promote peace and security," they said in a joint statement after a two-day meeting in Islamabad.

The outcome of the talks was better than expected, with both foreign secretaries holding an unscheduled joint news conference, and also agreeing to try to improve trade and travel across the ceasefire line dividing disputed Kashmir.

"The ideology of military conflict should have no place in the 21st century," Rao told the news conference.

India and Pakistan in February resumed a formal peace process broken off after the November 2008 attack on Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants which killed 166 people.

But as in previous peace efforts, progress has been slow, and vulnerable to any attempts by Islamist militants to try to trigger a war between Pakistan and India by launching another Mumbai-style attack.

Both countries, which announced they had tested nuclear weapons in 1998, have fought three full-scale wars since winning independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

The foreign secretaries gave few details of how they expected to build confidence in their nuclear capabilities.

India and Pakistan already exchange information about missile tests and have an agreement not to attack each others' nuclear facilities.

But with India building its conventional capabilities and Pakistan reported to be developing battlefield nuclear weapons, security analysts say the risk of a conflict escalating into nuclear war is always present.

MISCALCULATIONS AND BATTLEFIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS

"Negative thinking exists on both sides so there are chances that either one of them could misread or miscalculate the other's movement and begin assembling and loading nuclear weapons," said Pakistan defence analyst Hassan Askari Rizvi.

The outcome of the talks was very good, he said. "They should talk more and more because this is how they can minimise the threat of war and particularly nuclear war."

Uday Bhaskar, director of the National Maritime Foundation think tank in New Delhi, also welcomed the inclusion of nuclear confidence-building measures in the talks.

"For the sake of regional security, we need an uninterrupted dialogue on the WMD issue," he told Reuters.

"At some point we have to talk about nuclear postures ... We need to have some more transparency about the respective inventories, a certain amount of transparency on capability and intent."

The foreign secretaries also agreed to convene a working group next month to improve trade and travel across the Line of Control (LoC), the heavily militarised ceasefire line dividing Kashmir.

Split between India and Pakistan since independence, families on both sides of Kashmir have been cut off from each other and old trade routes suffocated.

"We must help the people of Jammu and Kashmir to connect with each other -- to travel, to trade," Rao said.

India and Pakistan came close to agreeing a roadmap for peace in Kashmir in 2007 which aimed to make the borders dividing the region between India and Pakistan irrelevant.

That agreement stalled when then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf ran into political turmoil at home which eventually forced him out of office.

The people of Kashmir, who launched a separatist revolt against Indian rule in 1989, say they want the right to govern themselves.

"We welcome the efforts by the two countries to address the problem and also expand the trade across the border," said Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, chief of the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, the moderate grouping of Kashmiri separatists.

"But they did not speak on the resolution of Kashmir. In the future we hope they would make some headway on the dispute and include the Kashmiri leadership to find a lasting solution," he told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by C.J. Kuncheria in New Delhi, Sheikh Mushtaq in Srinagar and Kamran Haider in Islamabad; editing by Elizabeth Piper)


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2011年6月25日星期六

Vettel grabs another pole for Red Bull (Reuters)

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VALENCIA, Spain (Reuters) – Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel chalked up his seventh pole position in eight races this season as Red Bull swept the front row in qualifying for the European Grand Prix on Saturday.

Australian team mate Mark Webber was second fastest with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton third and sharing the second row with Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, racing in front of his home crowd.

Red Bull have now taken nine poles in a row dating back to the end of last year, the first team to do so since McLaren in 1998.

Their continued dominance seemed to make a mockery of suggestions that the champions could suffer from a clampdown by the governing body on the use of engine electronics and exhaust gases to influence performance.

"People expect us to lose more than others but that's where I disagree," grinned the 23-year-old German, who will be chasing his sixth win of the year around the Mediterranean port city's streets.

Vettel's fastest lap of one minute 36.975 seconds was the fastest ever in Valencia and made the pole a foregone conclusion with minutes still to run on a bright and breezy afternoon.

"I think, mate, we've said it enough. We've come here and we didn't expect any different," said Webber, whose sole pole of the season so far came in Barcelona in May when Red Bull also swept the front row, of the rule change.

"Some other teams spoke a lot about it, maybe even some people in our team spoke a bit that maybe technically are not completely on top of things, but in the end we've just got on with our job, basically."

Webber's time was 0.188 slower than his team mate's, with Hamilton's best effort a 1:37.380.

Brazilian Felipe Massa qualified fifth for Ferrari with McLaren's Jenson Button, the winner in Canada two weeks ago, lining up sixth.

"It's not very good. The car felt pretty good in Q2 (the second phase) but then in Q3 I had massive oversteer. I don't know why but I just couldn't get any rear grip," said 2009 world champion Button.

"The car was great this morning in practice but with the heat maybe our balance isn't working because of the track temperature. I just didn't expect it. It's not great but we'll still have a good race."

The second phase was red flagged and halted for four minutes after Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado's Williams was left stranded on the track with what looked like an engine failure with seven minutes and 59 seconds remaining.

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by John Mehaffey; For Reuters sports blog Left Field go to: http://blogs.reuters.com/sport)


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ICC to discuss change in chief selection process (Reuters)

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MUMBAI (Reuters) – The International Cricket Council (ICC) will discuss constitutional amendments to abolish the rotational policy of appointing its head and avoid "government interference" in the game's administration at next week's conference in Hong Kong.

"Under the new proposal, the executive board will decide the process and term of office from time to time, subject to certain qualifying criteria," the ICC said in a statement on Friday.

"This would remove the current rotational system of nomination and the fixed term of appointment as set out in the ICC Articles of Association."

Any such constitutional amendment would impact Pakistan the most as the South Asian country was supposed to nominate the administrator who would succeed New Zealander Alan Isaac, now a vice president, as the ICC chief in 2014.

Isaac will take over from incumbent Sharad Pawar of India next year.

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) officials have been quoted in the media as saying that they would vehemently oppose the amendments.

The ICC move to reduce government interference would also affect the PCB, the chairman of which is appointed directly by country's president, who is designated chief patron of the board.

Sri Lanka is not free from government interference either. The Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) is an interim body and issues such as team selection have to be approved by their sports ministry.

"The full council of the ICC will consider a constitutional amendment aimed at ensuring free elections of member boards and avoiding undue government interference in the administration of cricket, in line with the regulations of other major sporting bodies," the statement said.

The five-day conference, which starts on Sunday, will also consider the recommendations made by the cricket committee that includes the Decision Review System (DRS) and day-night test matches.

Ireland, who recorded memorable victories over Pakistan and England in the past two editions of the World Cup, will have their fingers crossed when president Pawar asks the ICC executive board to reconsider its decision to restrict the 2015 edition to the 10 test-playing member nations.

The ICC initially decided to restrict the next edition of the 50-over World Cup, to be held in Australia and New Zealand, to the 10 member nations but later proposed a qualifying tournament for associate nations.

(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; Editing by John O'Brien; to query or comment on this story, email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)


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Pakistan army rejects report on bin Laden's cell-phone (Reuters)

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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The Pakistan army condemned on Friday a report in the New York Times that a cell phone found in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden contained contacts to a militant group with ties to Pakistan's intelligence agency.

The newspaper, citing senior U.S. officials briefed on the findings, reported on Thursday that the discovery indicated that bin Laden used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside Pakistan.

The cell phone belonged to bin Laden's courier, who was killed along with the al Qaeda leader in the May 2 raid by U.S. special forces on bin Laden's compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad, the Times said.

Pakistan army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said in a statement sent by text message that the military "rejects the insinuations made in the NYT story".

"It is part of a well orchestrated smear campaign against our security organisations," he said.

The army has been angered by media reports that elements in the Pakistani security establishment may have helped bin Laden hide in Pakistan.

"Pakistan, its security forces have suffered the most at the hands of al Qaeda and have delivered the most against al Qaeda; our actions on the ground speak louder than the words of the Times," Abbas said.

In tracing calls on the cell phone, U.S. analysts determined that Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen commanders had called Pakistani intelligence officials, the Times reported, citing the senior American officials.

The officials added the contacts were not necessarily about bin Laden and his protection and that there was no "smoking gun" showing that Pakistan's spy agency had protected bin Laden.

(Reporting by Kamran Haider, writing by Myra MacDonald; editing by Elizabeth Piper)


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Govt raises diesel prices to ease subsidy burden (Reuters)

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India raised diesel prices about 9 percent on Friday after months of delay, a politically unpopular move that will add to inflationary pressure but also eases the government's subsidy burden and could bolster its image among wary investors.

"This is the only window they have for any cutting of subsidies. By the end of the year they will be in (state) election mode," political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan said.

Since it was first elected in 2004, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government has often refrained from pushing through tough reforms in favour of pleasing its predominantly rural voter base.

Persistently high inflation as well as the government's handling of a spate of corruption scandals has led to what many critics describe as policy paralysis in New Delhi.

With galloping spending and slowing growth, New Delhi must reassure investors fretting over political and bureaucratic delays for major projects that it can run the economy and keep voter support.

Diesel will now cost just over 41 rupees per litre in the capital after the government panel raised prices by a record 3.4 rupees (7.6 U.S. cents) per litre including local taxes. It also raised kerosene and cooking gas prices.

"The inflationary implications of the diesel price hike are unavoidable. Broadly, with inflation currently at around 9 percent, the hike in prices should take the WPI (wholesale price index) into double digits again and keep it there for a while," said Rupa Rege Nitsure, chief economist at Bank of Baroda.

The increases, announced by Oil Minister S. Jaipal Reddy, were roughly in line with expectations.

Taken together, they will directly add about 55 basis points to headline inflation, said Yes Bank economist Shubhada Rao in Mumbai, who expects another 25-50 basis points of interest rate increases by the RBI, which has already raised rates 10 times since March 2010 despite the risk to growth.

PRICES AND POLITICS

Diesel accounts for 40 percent of petroleum product demand in India and is the most widely used transport fuel. It powers tractors and irrigation pumps for farmers in one of the world's biggest producers and consumers of grains and sugar.

Lifting prices is politically fraught.

"I am sandwiched between economists on the one hand and populists on the other hand," said Reddy, an advocate of price rises, following the meeting. "Political problems will always be there and economic problems do not wait for solution of so-called political crises."

Since the government agreed in principle to lift fuel costs a year ago, international crude prices have soared 33 percent, swelling the money spent on subsidising fuel prices to a country with 500 million people living in poverty.

However, world oil prices fell 6 percent on Thursday after major consuming countries announced an emergency release of stocks, only the third time ever, and dropped further on Friday.

With inflation in India above 9 percent and domestic fuel costs up nearly 13 percent on the year, raising fuel prices will immediately hit the fractious coalition's core voters among the poor who live on less than the cost of 2 litres of diesel a day.

"This is a completely inhuman gesture on the part of the government to increase prices with food and overall inflation being what it is," Nirmala Sitharaman, a spokeswoman for the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, told Reuters.

Petrol prices, which largely affect more affluent Indians, have gone up about 23 percent since they were freed a year ago.

"This is quite a bold step on their part when the government is getting attacked from all directions," said N.R. Bhanumurthy, economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy

"It makes a lot of economic sense. Ultimately, if you want to control inflation, stabilise growth, it is imperative you pass on the hike in international prices," he said.

FISCAL BURDEN

J.P. Morgan this week cut its forecast for benchmark Brent oil for the third quarter to $100 a barrel from $130 but on Friday global crude prices paused from losses.

"As this remains a one-off price hike we do not expect demand to take a major hit," said Praveen Kumar, senior consultant at FACTS Global Energy in Singapore.

The longer-term benefit to the country's finances comes from reducing massive spending on subsidies and boosting revenues for state-run fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp.

Private oil refiners Reliance Industries, owner of the world's biggest refining complex, and Essar Oil could now find it attractive to sell in the local market instead of relying on exports.

Revenue losses for oil companies will shrink to about 1.2 trillion rupees ($26.7 billion) in the current financial year from 1.7 trillion rupees estimated before the hike, Reddy said.

Cutting customs duty on crude and petrol products and reducing excise duty on diesel will result in a total revenue loss to the government of about 490 billion rupees this year.

Ahead of the decision, shares in Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum rose 2.8 percent and 6.1 percent respectively in market that ended 2.9 percent higher.

($1 = 44.955 Rupees)

(Additional reporting by Swati Bhat and Shamik Paul in MUMBAI and C.J. Kuncheria)


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