Enjoy Commonwealth Games 2010: swimming pools get all-clear after contamination checks

Commonwealth Games 2010: swimming pools get all-clear after contamination checks
Exclusive: Organisers of the Commonwealth Games have tested all of the pools at the aquatics complex and found no evidence of any contamination in the water.

Green light: water in pools has been checked and given all clear Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Sources have told Telegraph Sport that the tests, carried out this morning after strong complaints by illness-riddled England, Canada, Wales and Australian team camps, all proved negative.
"The swimming will take place tonight as planned, there is no problem with the water," a source said.

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"Everyone should be reasured that it is safe."
Commonwealth Games Federation executive members were preparing an emergency switch of venue, or a postponement of events, if the water had proven to be a problem.
There had been rumours that pigeon droppings and feathers in the water may have been the source, but this has been discounted by the testing results.
However, the origins of the mystery virus that has spread through the swimmers - and also claimed some hockey and gymnasts - is uncertain.
Organising committee officials are now planning further extensive testing at the athletes village, especially among the plumbing, and have ordered more testing of the food.
Coppied by http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/commonwealthgames/8047768/Commonwealth-Games-2010-swimming-pools-get-all-clear-after-contamination-checks.html

Watches this Sports programs experience slow renewal after Katrina

Sports programs experience slow renewal after Katrina

Five years after Hurricane Katrina hit, some sports teams and communities are on the road to recovery, while others are stalled
NEW ORLEANS — They gathered for lunch last week, a handful of school, conference and college bowl officials who'd bonded into a support group of sorts since Hurricane Katrina tore so unimaginably through their city and their lives.
"I propose a toast," Sun Belt Conference commissioner Wright Waters said, rising to his feet in an upstairs, white table-clothed room in the Garden District's landmark Commander's Palace restaurant.

Darryl Williams, president of Friends of L.B. Landry, sits with boxes of trophies waiting on a display home in L.B. Landry High School. The second-oldest black high school in New Orleans, the Algiers neighborhood facility was rebuilt at a cost of $54 million and will field JV sports this season. Varsity sports will be added in 2011.
"To survivors, five years later."

Glasses clinked, the eight diners understanding that in that room — and across New Orleans' sports and recreation landscape — survival of one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in the nation's history has come in degrees.

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The Saints won a Super Bowl in February, and an entire region was famously uplifted. The Super Bowl is coming to town in another couple of years. Men's and women's basketball Final Fours, too. The Big Easy still can pull off the Big Event.

Tulane's college program has largely regained its footing since the hurricane blew ashore Aug. 29, 2005, announcing last month that it will return next fall to a full complement of 16 men's and women's teams. Still, there are conflicted athletes like Kat Alario, chased by the storm onto a bus to Jackson, Miss., just 2½ weeks into her freshman year, who saw teams folded and playing careers cut short.

"I mean, you can't compare it to anything that anybody else in the city who stayed here went through. I don't want to say, 'Oh, poor me,' " says Alario, a goalkeeper for the Green Wave's now-defunct women's soccer team.

Her voice catches. "But … it was a disaster for me, personally," she finishes, tears streaking her face.
coppied by http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2010-08-26-hurricane-katrina-new-orleans-tulane-colleges_N.htm

Lebanese army, Hezbollah appear closer after Israel clash

We are enjoy Lebanese army, Hezbollah appear closer after Israel clash

A Lebanese flag and wreaths at the spot where two Lebanese soldiers died in a firefight over tree cutting.

Beirut, Lebanon (CNN) -- The Lebanon mission to the U.N. has told CNN in a written statement that the Israeli Military "ignored a request by the LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) and UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) to postpone cutting down trees in a contested area along the "Blue line", the U.N. border line demarcating Israel and Lebanon.
The statement goes on to say: "The LAF fired warning shots asking Israeli soldiers to desist from their activities. However, the Israeli response came in the form of heavy gunfire and mortar shelling of three Lebanese villages killing one journalist and two Lebanese soldiers in addition to wounding six soldiers."
While Lebanon acknowledges Israel made proper notification of its tree cutting plans through proper U.N. channels -- by advising UNIFIL the work would commence -- the statement says the Lebanese Army was only informed of the plans 15 minutes before the work actually began and slams Israel for not "respecting" the "tripartite coordination" by preventing the Lebanese from requesting a delay on the work in the disputed area.
The document provides details about the firefight. The Lebanese mission says that 10 soldiers were immediately dispatched after hearing the IDF would begin work within minutes "to protect its sovereign borders from any Israeli infringement." It was presumably these soldiers who fired the "warning shots."
A heavy and prolonged firefight on August 3 cost lives on both sides: three Lebanese and an Israeli officer were killed in the skirmish.
Israel has consistently maintained that it bears no responsibility for the deadly border fighting and that its soldiers were operating on sovereign Israeli territory -- a claim backed up by the U.N. who confirmed that Israel did not cross the Blue Line into Lebanese territory.
While both sides have pledged to work closely with UNIFIL to prevent another outbreak of violence the Lebanese statement comes after questions were raised in Washington about U.S. funding of the Lebanese Army.
The border clash and resulting diplomatic saber rattling have lead some U.S. politicians to question the wisdom of arming a military that has been engaged in fighting with the United State's closest regional ally. Thus what has been a regional policy issue has been thrust into the Washington "beltway" of domestic politics. Earlier this month members of the House of Representatives put a hold on funding for the Lebanese military.
U.S. military aid to Lebanon has served a number of foreign policy objectives.
Arming the Lebanese military has been seen as a way of offsetting the heavily armed Hezbollah militia in the south and also allowing the government in Beirut to stand-up to the threat of Sunni insurgents operating in Palestinian refugee camps.
In a deadly three-month long conflict in the summer of 2007 the Lebanese army defeated insurgents in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp. Fatah al-Islam, the main group fighting the army from inside the camp has been accused of having past links to al Qaeda and Syria.
Coppied by http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/08/20/mideast.peace.analysis/index.html?hpt=C2#fbid=BRhT0Nxv594&wom=false