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South Africa's Olympic committee says Caster Semenya will miss the Commonwealth Games in India because of a back injury.
SASCOC chief executive Tubby Reddy says a scan confirmed the 800m world champion is unfit to make her long-awaited return to major competition at the event which gets underway in Delhi next week.
Reddy says the 19-year-old Semenya has been experiencing back pain and "SASCOC and Athletics South Africa agree that we are not in a position to compromise her health by risking her competing".
Reddy said yesterday that Semenya underwent an MRI scan which "confirmed that she most certainly has a back problem".
Semenya had hoped to challenge for gold at the Commonwealth Games after being cleared to run by the IAAF in July following a gender test dispute.
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Posted in Fashion
The fashion designer Catherine Walker, known for dressing some of the world's most glamorous women, has died, aged 65.
Walker died on Thursday at a hospital near her Sussex home following a long battle with breast cancer, her family said yesterday.
Although born in France, the mother of two made a name for herself in the UK as an award-winning couture designer, and provided Princess Diana with many of her most iconic outfits.
In a statement, her family said: "Catherine overcame young widowhood and fought cancer twice with enduring bravery. As a designer, she never worked within the conventional mould; she had no formal training, shunned the limelight throughout her career and never showed her collections on the runway."
A private family funeral service has been arranged. A memorial service will be held at a later date.
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Veteran DJ Tony Blackburn is to return to BBC chart countdowns - nearly three decades after leaving Radio 1's chart show, it was announced today.
The presenter is join Radio 2 to host Pick Of The Pops, replacing Dale Winton who has fronted the show since 2000.
Winton is leaving due to "other commitments", the BBC said today.
Blackburn, 67, was famously the first presenter on air when Radio 1 launched in 1967. He hosted the station's Sunday Top 40 countdown for nearly two and a half years, taking over from Simon Bates.
Pick Of The Pops - which for many years was presented by Alan "Fluff" Freeman - looks back at vintage charts each Saturday, counting down the hits in the top 20.
Most recently he presented the UK's Million Sellers Chart on Radio 2 over the August Bank Holiday weekend, and he continues to present The Best Of Soul & Motown on BBC London 94.9FM - where he has been presenting for more than 20 years - on Sundays.
Although he has had a long association with the BBC, he has not been a regular host for Radio 2. However, he has presented a pair of one-off programme about top hits of the '60s and the best-selling singles of all time this year.
He said today: "I'm delighted to be taking up the reins of one of radio's most iconic and famous shows at the UK's most listened- to radio station.
"I'm very much looking forward to indulging in two hours of fantastic, rarely heard music from across the decades each week."
Lewis Carnie, head of programmes, Radio 2, said: "I'm delighted to welcome Tony Blackburn to Radio 2 on a permanent basis. He is one of this country's legendary broadcasters and brings a wealth of knowledge of popular music spanning the years.
"I'd like to thank Dale for being such a tremendous host of Pick Of The Pops for the last decade, and I look forward to continuing our relationship with him on future Radio 2 projects."
Winton's final Pick Of The Pops will be broadcast on October 30.
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A respected Mexican newspaper has asked drug cartels for guidance on how not to offend them following a photographer's murder, deepening alarm that drug-related violence has stifled media freedom.
El Diario de Juárez, the leading daily in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, published a front-page editorial yesterday titled "What do you want from us?" – addressed to the narco-traffickers.
Calling them "señores", the paper asked what news it should and should not publish following last week's shooting of a photographer, the paper's second murdered journalist in two years.
"We want you to know that we are communicators, not mindreaders. We do not want more deaths. It is impossible to carry out our role in these conditions. Tell us therefore what is expected of us."
In a blunt admission of Juárez's lawlessness, it said: "You are, at present, the de facto authorities in this city because the legally mandated authorities have not been able to do anything to keep our colleagues from continuing to fall, although we have repeatedly demanded they do so." Even in war, there are rules to protect media workers, it added. "Therefore explain to us what is wanted of us in order to stop paying the price with the lives of our colleagues."
The paper, which until now has chronicled the US border mayhem in detail despite fear and intimidation clamming up other media organisations, was shocked by the 16 September gunning down of Luis Carlos Santiago, 21, a photographer, and the wounding of an intern, as they left the office for lunch.
El Diario had not decided to censor reporting, for now it merely wanted to know what cartels considered out of bounds, Rocio Gallegos, a news editor, told the Guardian. "We want to know what their view is and that will inform our decision-making." The editorial was aimed as much at the government as drug lords, she said. "We are alone here. There is no state of law." Neither officials nor narco-traffickers had yet responded, said Gallegos. "We have no idea if we are going to get any answer."
El Diario is still awaiting a conclusion to a high-profile police investigation into the 2008 murder of a crime reporter, Armando Rodríguez, who was shot in his car outside his home. Of an estimated 6,400 murders in Juárez in the past two years only a handful have been solved.
Impunity was underlined by the release last Saturday of four men – who were recently paraded before the media and accused of 55 murders – for want of evidence. Despite a relatively small population of 1.3 million, the city, a smuggling point which borders El Paso, accounts for a large chunk of the 28,000 killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug cartels in 2006.
Around 30 media workers have disappeared or been killed, some of them tortured and mutilated, making Mexico one of the world's most dangerous places for reporters.
"The widespread and unpunished attacks are destroying citizens' constitutionally and internationally protected right to free expression," the Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based advocacy group, said in a recent report.
Many print and broadcast outlets have restricted coverage of drug violence to brief accounts that avoid identifying organisations and individuals. In some cities, notably Reynosa, shoot-outs in broad daylight go completely unreported.
El Diario, which has just one armed guard in its lobby, continued reporting Juárez's troubles, a conflict pitting the Sinaloa cartel against a homegrown group, as well as overlapping battles involving hundreds of criminal gangs and rogue police officers and soldiers. In the absence of detailed official statistics, the newspaper's "board of death" – a tally updated daily with a blue marker – is one of the few ways to track the bodycount.
Since Carlos Santiago's murder, the board has noted dozens more deaths, including a massacre in a city centre bar and the beating and hacking-up of a 52-year-old woman and her 14-year-old son in Juárez valley.
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The Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, is under mounting pressure to stand down after allegations that he was under the influence of alcohol during a live radio interview last week.
Former ministers and backbenchers in the taoiseach's ruling Fianna Fáil party are demanding an emergency parliamentary party meeting to discuss his leadership.
The demand for a debate comes amid continuing fallout from Cowen's disastrous performance on RTÉ radio – after which it was claimed the taoiseach had been inebriated on air.
During the nine-minute interview Cowen stumbled over his words and at one stage mistakenly referred to a national pay deal hammered out between the government and trade unions this year as the "Good Friday agreement" – the peace deal secured in Northern Ireland 12 years ago.
One Irish opposition politician, Fine Gael's Simon Coveney posted an allegation on Twitter that Cowen had been "halfway between drunk and hungover and totally disinterested".
Cowen has endured stinging criticism for going on the Morning Ireland programme after a Fianna Fáil meeting in Galway. There were allegations that Cowen stayed up until 4am at a party in the hotel where the conference was being held.
Asked afterwards if he had been under the influence of alcohol on air, Cowen replied: "I'm sorry, absolutely not. I mean, that's ridiculous. It's not true at all. Please."
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This November, the United States will hold elections for 37 crucial seats in the Senate. At present, Democrats hold 57 out of 100. It's a tenuous balance: if the Senate ends up with a Republican majority, President Obama's ability to advance any part of his policy initiatives will be in grave doubt. As a result, this is already shaping up to be one of the meanest campaign seasons in history.
Enter Glenn Beck, a recovered alcoholic and cocaine addict, darling of the Tea Party movement, a loose association of arch-libertarians, social conservatives and those who are diffusely angry at "liberal elites". Having hovered at the edge of rightwing shock jock media for years, Beck burst onto the national scene only recently, thanks in large part to the sponsorship of Roger Ailes, former Republican party adviser to Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush, and current head of Fox News.
Beck's poisonous power to manipulate the sense of disenfranchisement felt by white middle- and working-class citizens is serious business. He scares me, he scares Democrats, and he even scares many traditional Republicans who feel he panders to extremists. Listening to Beck is not unlike attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The world is broken down into simple ideals, laddered steps toward enumerated goals, reiterated creeds of belief and renunciation. As in AA, God is the only authority; admission of an engulfing corruption is the necessary starting point; and "restoration" of sanity is the goal.
Beck's expressed agenda involves rescuing America from what he depicts as its current state of depravity. While Beck frequently claims that he is "not political" – "I'm an evangelist for America" – his diatribes draw relentless divisions among We, You, Them and Those. "We" are "patriots". "They" are "traitors", "progressives", "socialists" and "Nazis". Beck is a masterful narrator of "reverse" race and class grievance. Despite all data to the contrary, he asserts that it is whites who collectively suffer at the hands of black racists – Obama and his seven circles of "radical" "comrades" being the prime and reiterated example. "We" will "reclaim the civil rights movement" in the name of individual rights and freedoms, says Beck. "We will take that movement because we were the ones who did it in the first place."
Beck is the founder of something called the 9.12 Project, designed to bring back the kind of American unity he believes was widespread on the day after September 11 2001. It is indeed an odd nostalgia – this "unification" coalesced by terror, trauma and inconsolable loss. On the other hand, it is very much in keeping with Beck's apocalyptic view of the world: he speaks constantly of the "rivers of blood" that will flow if America does not realise her Divine Destiny. In any event, whatever unity he envisions seems not to include the survivors and families of those who died in the fall of the twin towers. He has advised them to "shut up" because they are "always complaining… We did our best for them".
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The Munich Oktoberfest may be the world's most famous beer festival, but for the first time in its 200-year history, the organisers are planning to use bacteria to eliminate its more pungent odours.
The organisers claim that a smoking ban, which will come in to force at the festival this year, will remove the usual stench of cigarette smoke which previously hid the unpleasant smell of stale beer.
The extraordinary measures are to be enforced in the Oktoberfest's renowned Hofbräu beer tent and at least two other tents when the festival opens this weekend. The aim is to kill off the smell left by the gallons of beer routinely spilled on to the wooden floors of the tents, leaving a stale odour behind.
The Oktoberfest's organisers have dismissed charges that they have become fastidious or absurdly politically correct.
Ricky Steinberg, the manager of the Oktoberfest's Hofbräu tent, says the experience of Munich pub and club owners following the introduction of a state-wide smoking ban last month shows the threat posed by the odour of stale beer should not be underestimated.
"The night club owners say the smell has become very bad since the smoking ban was enforced," he told the city's Merkur newspaper.
From this Saturday, when the Oktoberfest opens for three weeks and marks its 200th anniversary, a special odour killing bacteria called Elbomex will be poured on to the floorboards of the Hofbräu and other festival tents. It will be the first Blitzkrieg against stale beer odour in German history. Elbomex, which is sometimes used to rejuvenate garden soil, is produced by a Bavarian company which sells commercial dishwashers. However the company insists that the bacteria are also useful in eliminating smells caused by cesspits and compost heaps and will be effective in combating stale beer smells.
The Hofbräu brewery hopes that the bacteria will provide a fresher atmosphere in which festival goers will feel encouraged to drink the Oktoberfest's traditional one litre measures of beer and eat the spit roasted chickens, grilled pigs' trotters and roast ox which are favourite food offerings at the event.
Having started out as a cattle market for farmers, the official Oktoberfest was first held in 1810 to celebrate the marriage of the Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen.
Once dismissed as a drinking factory for thigh-slapping Bavarians in leather shorts, it has now become one of Germany's most fashionable events, attracting unprecedented crowds of twentysomething visitors who delight in dressing up in traditional Bavarian costumes. "The Oktoberfest has discarded its old fashioned image and is chic again, especially for the young," wrote Der Spiegel magazine
The fact that 60 per cent of Oktoberfest visitors are largely non-smoking under-30-year-olds may account for the brewers' fears of an increased aversion among festival goers to the smell of stale beer.
At last year's Oktoberfest, beer consumption rose to 6.5 million litres. This year Munich's brewers are expecting to easily top that figure. To mark the festival's 200th anniversary, they have temporarily suspended the fierce competition that exists between them and joined forces to produce a special jubilee beer for the occasion.
The brewers claim the amber coloured ale, brewed to a secret recipe, is an improved version of the beer that was drunk at the festival 200 years ago. "It is full-bodied in taste with a flowery malt aroma," they announced in a joint statement.
At 6 per cent alcohol, it will also be considerably stronger than the average Bavarian beer and capable, no doubt, of making drinkers temporarily oblivious to any wayward whiff of stale ale.
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The death of a giant panda in captivity in Japan has caused something of a diplomatic stink. Apart from eating bamboo, this is something that pandas are very good at.
China's State Forestry Administration, which officially "owns" the animal, has ordered the keepers at Oji zoo in Kobe, Japan not to interfere with the panda's corpse until a crack team of Chinese experts arrives to investigate.
This tough talk has caused some eyebrows to be raised in the west. But only by those who fail to appreciate the immense importance of the panda to modern China.
Quite surprisingly, China showed little interest in this beautiful, rare and exclusively Chinese animal until the Chinese Communist party came to power. It was only then that the panda began to emerge as a "national treasure" almost synonymous with the Chinese nation itself. In a forthcoming book Panda Nation: Nature, Science, and Nationalism in the People's Republic of China, American historian Elena Songster argues that one of the reasons the panda was such a suitable emblem for the bold, new state was that it was completely free of associations with China's imperial past. Indeed, there are no known representations of the panda in Chinese art before the 20th century. So while many subjects were off limits for artists during China's turbulent cultural revolution, the panda was not, says Songster.
Another great feature of the panda, at least as far as Chairman Mao Zedong and his followers were concerned, was that the rest of the world, particularly the west, had become obsessed by its excruciatingly cute looks and behaviour. So between 1957 and the 1980s, the CCP gave more than 20 pandas as gifts to around 10 different countries, including Britain. Since the late 1990s, China has been offering pairs of pandas to foreign zoos on long-term research loans. In exchange, China demands about $500,000 per pair per year over a 10-year period, money it must use to benefit wild pandas.
Nevertheless, China will sometimes still deploy pandas for overtly political purposes. In 1999, a few years after the British handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese, the PRC gifted the region a couple of pandas and followed them up with another pair to mark the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty. In 2008, after several earlier offers, Taiwan finally accepted a panda gift from China. The names of the animals, Tuan-Tuan and Yuan-Yuan, meaning "reunion", caused a considerable stir in Taiwan.
There is at least one precedent for this latest panda-related controversy unfolding in Japan. In 2007, a female panda that had been on loan from China to Germany for more than a decade died unexpectedly in Berlin Zoo. The postmortem, conducted by German vets, pronounced that she'd suffered a heart failure as a result of acute constipation. When China did not accept the verdict and demanded compensation, the zoo invited in a delegation to conduct their own investigation. The Chinese never took up this offer, says the zoo, and the dead panda is still on ice in the mortuary.
In the Japanese case, China appears to be asserting itself more forcefully. There are probably several reasons for this: it is likely to have learned from the episode with Germany; the historical confrontations between China and Japan are almost certainly cranking up the tensions; and China, with the panda as its cuddly face, is prepared to show increasing swagger on the global stage.
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It is now 10 months since the Guardian newspaper's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, and Barclays Bank chief executive officer John Varley pledged to wipe away the tears of Emorikikinos farmers' village saving and loan association (VLSA). In October last year, the group, based in Katine sub-county, north-eastern Uganda, was robbed of Ushs 4.2m (£1,382) during a machete attack on the home of the group's treasurer, Mary Kokoi, who with her 18-year-old daughter were left severely beaten.
To many members of this poor community, the incident meant the loss of hard-earned savings, dashed hopes and regrets at ever having joined the association. But a month later disappointment suddenly turned to joy. The Guardian and Barclays Bank, who are both supporting the Katine community development project, announced that they would make good the farmers' losses during a visit to Katine in November by the paper's editor and Barclays' chief exec.
The African Medical Research Foundation (Amref), which is implementing the Katine project, was asked to ensure the money reached the farmers. Unfortunately it is only now, after months of waiting, that the Emorikikinos group is likely to receive the money.
"Farmers are asking for the money almost every day," said Desto Agudo, chair of the Emorikikinos farmers group. "They are wondering why it is taking so long for Amref to hand [it over]." A couple of months ago she wrote to Amref asking about the money but nothing came of it. Meanwhile, she said the farmers were fearing they would lose out, with no sign of the money ever appearing.
It was only after regular probing by the Guardian, that Amref through its project officer Fredrick Kabikira confirmed earlier this month that the funds had actually been received by Amref in Uganda. Kabikira said that after going through "our financial procedures, the money is now with us in Katine, and Barclays Bank money is at the Soroti branch. Therefore we are going to meet with the Barclays Bank Soroti branch manager to agree on a date to hand over the money to the VSLA next week."
The question remains why it has taken so long for a relatively small sum of money to get into the hands of the Katine farmers once Amref's London office had received matching donations from the Guardian and Barclays back in April this year.
Yesterday an Amref spokewoman in London told the Guardian that Amref had originally wired the money out to its main Africa office in Nairobi on 20 May - she said transfers of all funds from London only occured every one or two months because of high bank charges. She said it took several weeks to process and observe "due diligence" (security and accounting checks) before being wired on to Amref's Kampala office. Kampala staff then had to go through a similar process of ensuring the right amount of funding goes to the right people along the correct channels.
The spokeswoman confirmed that the money was "now in Katine" and a meeting was being set up this week at which all VSLA members would be present to receive it.
At long last, the Emorikikinos farmers can dare to start looking forward to a brighter future.
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Arsenal will have six first-team players missing for their Champions League Group H opener at home to Braga tonight, after Abou Diaby and Thomas Vermaelen were ruled out through injury.
Midfielder Diaby damaged his ankle in the Premier League victory over Bolton Wanderers on Saturday, while central defender Vermaelen is still nursing a knock to his Achilles tendon sustained while playing for Belgium last week.
"Diaby is out with an ankle problem following the tackle from [Bolton goalkeeper] Paul Robinson and I do not know for how long," manager Arsène Wenger said yesterday before bemoaning the nature of the challenge.
"He will not play tomorrow and certainly not at the weekend," Wenger added. "Thomas Vermaelen is out as well with an Achilles problem coming back from Belgium, so we do not have him either. We have Walcott, Van Persie, Bendtner and Ramsey already out. Now Vermaelen and Diaby, so that is quite a good team out."
Theo Walcott was injured while playing for England and faces a six-week lay-off, as does fellow striker Robin van Persie; Nicklas Bendtner has been struggling with a groin injury.
For Chelsea, no such problems and manager Carlo Ancelotti had the luxury yesterday of naming his side to face MSK Zilina tonight in their Champions League opener in Group F.
John Terry has shaken off a rib injury to play and it is only the England midfielder Frank Lampard who is out with a hernia problem. Ashley Cole has been rested and is back in London, while the Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba is suspended.
Ancelotti will play the young forward Daniel Sturridge in attack. "We want to involve more young players compared to last season," Ancelotti said. "These players are now more ready to play in the first team. Gaël Kakuta played on Saturday, and [against MSK Zilina] we will play Daniel Sturridge from the beginning. We want to use the young players so they play more games."
Of Sturridge he added: "He has improved a lot in the past year. He improved his character, his professional behaviour. I am happy. He has matured; he is a fantastic striker. I have never seen a striker as quick as he is."
Ancelotti was in bullish mood and said he was convinced his team would end Roman Abramovich's seven-year itch and win the Champions League.
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