A free Premium Blogger theme.
Graphic designer Alexandre De Sève says he’s a big fan of both sports and wanted to try something he’s never been done before.
Alexandre De Sève / Via behance.net
Alexandre De Sève / Via behance.net
Alexandre De Sève / Via behance.net
Alexandre De Sève / Via behance.net
Alfredo Hawit and Juan Angel Napout — two high-ranking Latin American officials — were detained in dawn raids in Zurich Thursday.
The FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, Oct. 20.
Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty Images
Two top FIFA officials have been arrested in dawn raids in Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday morning on suspicion of taking "millions of dollars" in bribes related to marketing rights for Latin American soccer tournaments, the Swiss Federal Office of Justice said in a statement.
Later Thursday, the department revealed in another statement that the two officials were Alfredo Hawit — the Honduran president of Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) and a FIFA vice-president; and Juan Angel Napout — the Paraguayan president of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), who is also a FIFA official.
Juan Angel Napout, left; Alfredo Hawit, right.
AFP / Getty Images
They were arrested at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, who are carrying out an investigation into corruption at world soccer's governing body.
The statement said:
The two FIFA officials were arrested by the Zurich cantonal police today in Zurich. The detention orders issued by the FOJ are based on arrest requests submitted by the United States Department of Justice on 29 November 2015. In the light of further investigations conducted by the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, these individuals are now also suspected of having received bribes. The high-ranking FIFA officials are alleged to have taken the money in return for selling marketing rights in connection with football tournaments in Latin America, as well as World Cup qualifying matches. According to the arrest requests, some of the offences were agreed and prepared in the USA. Payments were also processed via U.S. banks.
The arrests took place at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, where other FIFA officials were arrested in May, the New York Times reported. FIFA officials had gathered in the city to vote on reforms to the scandal-hit organization.
In response to the arrests, FIFA released a statement saying it would "cooperate fully" with the investigation.
FIFA became aware of the actions taken today by the U.S. Department of Justice.
FIFA will continue to co-operate fully with the U.S. investigation as permitted by Swiss law, as well as with the investigation being led by the Swiss Office of the Attorney General.
FIFA will have no further comment on today's developments.
At a press conference after the FIFA meeting where the reforms were discussed, the organization's reform committee chairman Francois Carrard said the arrests were "an important step," the BBC reported.
"Fifa is going through a major crisis - a crisis is a unique opportunity for change, for renewal," he said.
Carrard also announced a raft of reforms for FIFA, and a comprehensive reorganization of the body's structure.
He said that, in future, FIFA would increase the number of women involved in decision making to at least one per continental federation. He also announced term limits for senior officials, whose salaries would be made public.
FIFA has posted the full slate of reforms in detail here.
The reforms will be ratified by 209 member associations Friday. However, a proposal to increase the number of teams competing at the World Cup from 32 to 40 has been deferred to a future date, pending further study.
The South African state won its appeal against the initial culpable homicide sentence handed to the athlete for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Oscar Pistorius listens to his original judgment in Pretoria, Oct. 21.
Pool / Getty Images
Olympic and Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius had his sentence for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013 upgraded to murder in South Africa's Supreme Court in Bloemfontein Thursday morning.
Appeal Judge Lorimer Eric Leach said the verdict by the case's original judge, Thokozile Masipa — which led to Pistorius being found guilty of culpable homicide, or manslaughter — in October 2014, was "fundamentally flawed."
"He ought to have been convicted not of culpable homicide, but murder," Leach said.
Judge Eric Leach delivers his judgement in the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein, Dec. 3
Pool / Reuters
In his opening remarks, Judge Leach said the case was a "human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions."
"A young man overcomes huge physical disabilities to reach Olympian heights as an athlete. In doing so he becomes an international celebrity, he meets a young woman of great natural beauty and a successful model, romance blossoms, and then, ironically on Valentine's Day, all is destroyed when he takes her life," he said, according to NBC News.
And it’s dad goals AF.
Via motoroids.com
STAR
Tyson Fury said homosexuality would lead to the apocalypse – but has denied that he is homophobic.
Change.org / Via change.org
Tyson Fury (right) in the ring with Christian Hammer.
Richard Heathcote / Getty Images
But LGBT rights campaigners have called for him to be excluded from the list due to his recent comments on homosexuality.
The Manchester-born boxer told the Mail on Sunday in November, in the build-up to his fight against Klitschko, that there are three things that need to happen "before the devil comes home".
"One of them is homosexuality being legal in countries, one of them is abortion and the other is paedophilia," he said. "Who would have thought in the 50s and 60s that those first two would be legalised?"
"Tyson is a brilliant boxer but a very bigoted and confused Christian," he told the Daily Mail.
"To equate same-sex love with abortion and paedophilia is deranged and offensive."
Matt Cardy / Getty Images
Vichly44 / Getty Images / Via thinkstockphotos.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Worries about “designer babies” might obscure the threat of far more likely abuses from a fast-moving genetic engineering method, researchers warned Tuesday at an international scientific summit.
An era of elite athletes doping their genes with muscle-builders intended for the elderly, or of genetic treatments intended to boost cognition in Alzheimer’s patients infiltrating the business world, were among the abuses conjured up at the International Summit on Human Gene Editing.
Held at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and co-sponsored by science academies of China and the United Kingdom, the international summit this week features scientific and ethical presentations devoted to the brave, new world of genetic engineering promised by a new gene editing biotechnology called CRISPR. CRISPR, cribbed from bacterial genes, allows scientists to easily tinker with or remove DNA.
CRISPR led to the first genetic engineering of human embryos, reported in April by Chinese researchers who, after doing their initial experiments, imposed a temporary moratorium on it. In September, a British scientist asked for permission from the the United Kingdom’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to also attempt genetic modification of human embryos.
“Things are clearly moving very quickly and this deserves serious discussion,” said Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the 2012 discovery of the gene editing method.
The summit came about because of deep concerns over the possibility of genetic tweaks to human embryos that would forever alter the “germline” DNA of babies in every cell of their bodies, including sperm and ovaries, with uncertain effects passed along to future generations.
But Harvard’s George Church said at the summit on Tuesday that worry about designer babies was overstated. The bigger risk, he suggested, is the use of this technology on so-called somatic cells, which are not passed on to offspring.
For example, Church said, this somatic editing could lead to gene doping in sports or of brain-boosting gene treatments, similar to abuse of stimulants in academia. “If we are going to worry about something in international competition, it will be somatic enhancement, not germline enhancement," he said.
Genetic tweaking in somatic cells is already happening in the medical realm. Researchers have applauded proposals to use CRISPR to treat diseases such as HIV, sickle cell anemia, and cancer, by editing the DNA inside of somatic cells in the blood. In March, Sangamo, one of at least three biotech firms pursuing gene editing of immune cells, launched a clinical trial that will tweak the genes of people with HIV.
Other meeting attendees echoed Church’s concerns. Bioethicist Insoo Hyun of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, said that genetically engineered immune cell treatments (such as those helping with muscle wasting in AIDS or cancer patients) could get in the hands of athletes for illicit use. Stem cell researcher George Daley of Boston Children’s Hospital acknowledged this was “a real worry” tied to FDA rules that allow doctors to prescribe “off-label” uses for prescription drugs. “We may want stricter rules in this case,” he said.
The FDA has already established regulations for older methods of gene editing that have been tried in human patients, bioethicist Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin said. Such rules “become rigid over time,” she said, making them hard to change.
Another researcher at the summit, Jonathan Weissman of the University of California, San Francisco, suggested that gene editing might treat HIV, cancer, or other ailments without adding or removing DNA from cells in any way. Instead CRISPR can move around DNA markers that cells use to turn genes on and off.
He proposed giving people pills dosed with CRISPR proteins tuned in this way to deactivate a gene called CCR5 that makes people vulnerable to HIV, for example. Once they stop taking the pill, the gene would reactivate, obviating worries about permanent changes to genes.
Despite the progress in the field — illustrated by the journal Science releasing a paper on Tuesday reporting a way to improve the accuracy of CRISPR edits — scientists such as Nobel Prize Winner David Baltimore of Caltech cautioned that the basic biology of CRISPR needs more work before any of the promised benefits or worries will come true.
“The whole simplicity of the method is a little overhyped,” Baltimore said. “It’s not really something you can do in a garage.”
LINK: Chinese Study Of Human Embryos Raises Fears Of Designer Babies
LINK: The Pentagon Is Putting Big Money Into Synthetic Biology
LINK: Does Biotech Need Limits?
