DOHA: China's Li Na has pulled out of next week's $2.3 million Qatar Open after failing to recover from the ankle injury she suffered in her Australian Open final defeat to Victoria Azarenka.
"Li Na has withdrawn from QatarTennis due to her ankle injury from the Australian Open final. #WTA #tennis," the WTA said on its Twitter account.
The Qatar Open starts on Monday.
- AFP/de
"There is a complete lack of employment opportunities here," he told a gathering on Thursday. "The development that should have taken place in Uttar Pradesh is not there."
The 42-year-old Gandhi scion later laid the foundation for development works worth Rs 30 crore at Tiloi, including the construction of over two dozen roads. The project will be carried out using Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme funds.
"I have to travel [around] the whole country, but when I come to Amethi it feels like I have come home," he said. "Amethi is my family and home. So, I feel extremely delighted when I come here. I know the youth here have a lot of problems."
Gandhi also held closed-door meetings with party functionaries and leaders.
On the second day of his trip on Friday, the Congress leader will visit the Bhetya area, where he is scheduled to meet party workers and office-bearers before returning to Delhi.
The fired California cop who set off a region-wide manhunt after allegedly shooting three police officers this morning -- one fatally -- had initially gone to a yacht club near San Diego where police say he attempted to steal a boat and flee to Mexico.
Police say that former police officer Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, who officials believe posted an online manifesto outlining his plan to "terminate" his former colleagues and their families, is armed with a long gun and might have several other guns and high-capacity magazines. He is also believed to have access to military uniforms because he has served in the Navy.
"We are considering him armed and dangerous," Lt. Julia Engen of the Irvine Police Department said.
Police allege that he went to the yacht club Wednesday night at Point Loma, Calif., near San Diego to steal the boat. He aborted the attempted theft when the boat's propeller became entangled in a rope, law enforcement officials said. It was at that point he is believed to have headed to Riverside, where he allegedly shot two police officers.
"He pointed a handgun at the victim [at the yacht club] and demanded the boat," Lt. David Rohowits of the San Diego Police Department said.
Police say the rifle marksman shot at four officers in two incidents overnight, hitting three of them: one in Corona, Calif., and the two in Riverside, Calif.
Sgt. Rudy Lopez of the LAPD said two LAPD officers were in Corona and headed out on special detail to check on one of the individuals named in Dorner's manifesto. Dorner allegedly grazed one of them but missed the other.
"[This is an] extremely tense situation," Lopez said. "We call this a manhunt. We approach it cautiously because of the propensity of what has already happened."
The Riverside Police Department said two of its officers were shot before one of them died, KABC-TV reported. The other is in stable condition with two gunshot wounds, police say.
"They were on routine patrol stopped at a stop light when they were ambushed," Lt. Guy Toussant of the Riverside police department said.
In the manifesto Dorner published online, he threatened at least 12 people by name, along with their families.
"Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over. Suppressing the truth will leave to deadly consequences for you and your family," Dorner wrote in his manifesto.
A badge and identification belonging to Dorner have been found in San Diego, according to San Diego police Sgt. Ray Battrick. Dorner's LAPD badge and ID were found by someone near the city's airport, and turned in to police overnight, The Associated Press reported.
Police around Southern California are wearing tactical gear, including helmets and guns across their chests. The light-up signs along California highways show the license plate number of Dorner's car, and say to call 911 if it is seen. The problem, police say, is that they believe Dorner is switching license plates on his car, a 2005 charcoal-gray Nissan Titan pickup truck.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said today that 40 protective details have been deployed to protect officers and their families.
"We are taking all measures possible to ensure safety of our officers and their families," he said.
Dorner is also believed to be responsible for the weekend slayings of an assistant women's college basketball coach and her fiancé in what cops believe are acts of revenge against the LAPD, as suggested in his online manifesto.
Lawrence was found slumped behind the wheel of his white Kia in the parking lot of their upscale apartment complex in Irvine Sunday and Quan was in the passenger seat.
"A particular interest at this point in the investigation is a multi-page manifesto in which the suspect has implicated himself in the slayings," Maggard said.
Police said Dorner's manifesto included threats against members of the LAPD. Police say they are taking extra measures to ensure the safety of officers and their families.
The document, allegedly posted on an Internet message board this week, apparently blames Quan's father, retired LAPD Capt. Randy Quan, for his firing from the department.
One passage from the manifesto reads, "I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty."
"I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own," it reads. "I'm terminating yours."
Dorner was with the department from 2005 until 2008, when he was fired for making false statements.
Randy Quan, who became a lawyer in retirement, represented Dorner in front of the Board of Rights, a tribunal that ruled against Dorner at the time of his dismissal, LAPD Capt. William Hayes told The Associated Press Wednesday night.
According to documents from a court of appeals hearing in October 2011, Dorner was fired from the LAPD after he made a complaint against his field-training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans, saying in the course of an arrest she had kicked a suspect who was a schizophrenic with severe dementia.
After an investigation, Dorner was fired for making false statements.
Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of more than 150 skulls from an ancient shrine in central Mexico—evidence of one of the largest mass sacrifices of humans in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica.
The skulls, many facing east, lay beneath a crude, slightly elevated mound of crushed stone on what was once an artificial island in a vast shallow lake, now completely dry.
"The site is barely a bump on the horizon in the middle of nowhere," said lead archaeologist Christopher Morehart, of Georgia State University. And that was baffling. Previous evidence of such sacrifices came from grand pyramids in large ceremonial centers.
The discovery suggests that the site—near the town of Xaltocan (named after the ancient lake)—played a significant role in the political turmoil during the period between the years 650 and 800. The great city of Teotihuacan, only nine miles (15 kilometers) away, had suddenly begun to collapse, and the power it once exerted over the region was slipping away. Many experts believe this turn of events was triggered by a massive drought.
What followed was a time of "political, cultural, and demographic change," according to Morehart, a National Geographic research grantee. As people left Teotihuacan and moved to the surrounding areas, new communities formed and new leaders competed for power. "There's a good chance that the sacrifices are related to these competitions," Morehart said.
The sacrificed individuals could even have been war captives—often the case in Mesoamerican cultures. The site itself was probably not a battlefield, though. It was a sacred space that was specially prepared for rituals.
The people who lived in this area appear to have performed elaborately choreographed rituals at the shrine before the fall of Teotihuacan, but they didn't include human sacrifice. Because of its water-bound location and the presence of freshwater springs nearby, the shrine was likely the site of ceremonies that petitioned gods associated with rain and fertility. Artifacts uncovered include clay images of Tlaloc, a rain god.
The rituals began to include sacrifices, though, as power struggles gripped the parched region. Morehart and his colleagues from the National University of Mexico believe that victims were first killed and dismembered. The body parts may then have been thrown into the lake, while the heads were carefully arranged and buried. Incense was burned during this ceremony, along with the resinous wood of pine trees. Flowers added their own perfume to the fragrant smoke, and foods such as ritually burned maize were presented as additional offerings.
Over the following centuries, new peoples arrived in the area and political power ebbed and shifted, yet the sacred nature of the site persisted. Morehart and his team found evidence for rituals here during both the Aztec and colonial periods, and they even came across a recent offering.
"As we were digging we found a black plastic bag. Inside was a hardboiled egg, a black candle, and some photos of people," he said. "It's a fascinating example of continued ritual activity in a place despite dramatic changes in social, political, and cultural contexts."
NEW YORK: US stocks closed fairly flat on Wednesday after a choppy day of trading, with some positive earnings reports providing support.
At the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 7.22 points (0.05 percent) at 13,986.52.
The S&P 500 rose 0.83 (0.05 percent) to 1,512.12, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 3.10 (0.10 percent) to 3,168.48.
- AFP/de
The three-day interaction with central office-bearers has left little doubt about Rahul's plans - he would rather focus on states and lower levels of AICC.
It has put paid to hopes that as Congress vice-president, Rahul would make a clean break from the party as run till now. "He is a marathon man, not a sprinter. Why this belief of abrupt change?" asked a key party manager.
The possibility of revamp being largely confined to rather insignificant secretary-level personnel in AICC is in contrast to the vociferous demand for change made by senior leaders at the recent interaction.
Congressmen believe that revamp apart, party fortunes in the critical political calendar depend on how the organization is led in poll-bound states and how the workers are rejuvenated in the course of Lok Sabha polls.
While the party is confident in top priority Karnataka, it has its task cut out in end-of-the-year polls in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Delhi.
The four states will have a bearing on the political sentiment -- Congress's magnetism among anti-BJP minorities and "secular" regional parties who are its potential allies.
A section of insiders believes Rahul has to act fast to maintain the momentum from Jaipur after his emotional appeal found strong resonance with workers and even helped remove doubts about his long-term political engagement.
Leaders want Rahul to move quickly to sustain the interest of workers, who are likely to be disappointed by the absence of massive changes in the party management and impression of business as usual. "His basic appeal in Jaipur lay in his promise to change affairs radically and quickly. He may not have meant it but that was the message that went down the line," a leader said.
Another section of leaders, who advocate slow change, argue that workers would react more to how their local leaders in states are picked and not how managers are moved in Delhi.
Leaders warn that delay in initiating changes may dent the Jaipur momentum. "It has to be clinched before the budget session starting from February 21. After that, the focus will shift to budget and government," a senior leader said.
Though Rahul has lost no time in starting the engagement with party managers, leaders argue he has a small margin of error in the year that will mould the shape of the Lok Sabha battle.
Congress mouthpiece 'Sandesh' echoed the burden of expectations from Rahul. "The unification of the Congress which led to the return of the party to power under Congress president Sonia Gandhi will now be further enhanced with a new generation, Rahul having accepted this responsibility," an editorial in the latest edition said.
Men, here's another reason to work up a sweat: It boosts your sperm count.
According to new research, couch potatoes who watch lots of TV have fewer sperm than men who exercise moderately or vigorously each week.
Sperm count is a measure of semen quality, which has mysteriously declined in U.S. men in recent decades. Low sperm count is linked to infertility as well as testicular cancer, prostate cancer, and cardiovascular problems later in life.
(Related: "Deep-Voiced Men Have Lower Sperm Counts, Study Says.")
That's why scientists have been searching for ways that men can improve their sperm—including changing daily behaviors.
"We know little about how lifestyle may impact semen quality," said study leader Audrey Jane Gaskins, a doctoral student in nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Her discovery that two changeable behaviors—exercise and TV watching—"could have a big impact on sperm count is pretty exciting," she said.
"Impressive" Sperm Finds
For the study, Gaskins and colleagues asked 189 young men, mostly college students from the University of Rochester in New York, to fill out questionnaires on their physical activity, diet, stress, and other lifestyle factors.
Each man then provided a semen sample in a medical clinic. (See "Sperm Recognize 'Brothers,' Team Up for Speed.")
The results showed that the men who reported exercising more than 15 hours a week had 73 percent higher sperm counts than men who exercised fewer than 5 hours a week. And men who watched more than 20 hours of TV had 44 percent lower sperm counts than men who watched little to no TV.
These are "pretty impressive differences," said Gaskins, whose study appeared February 4 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
The team also ruled out smoking and being overweight—two clinical causes of low sperm counts—as contributing factors among participants in its study.
Why couch potatoes produce less sperm is unknown, although there are two theories, Gaskins said. One is that exercise produces more antioxidant enzymes that can prevent a natural process called oxidative stress from damaging cell membranes in the body. This damage can disrupt the creation of new sperm cells. (Find out how a man produces 1,500 sperm a second.)
The other reason is somewhat controversial: That when men watch TV, their scrotums get squished against their bodies, making that region hotter and possibly preventing new sperm from being made.
Some research has shown that sperm production slows if the scrotum temperature rises 1.8 to 3.6ºF (1 to 2ºC) above normal body temperature, Gaskins said. But other studies have also shown that warmer scrotums have no bearing on sperm creation.
Get Moving, Men
But the study also raises some more questions about sperm count, experts noted.
Oddly, the sedentary subjects' sperm didn't show any changes in their physical structures or in how well they swam—two soft indicators of sperm health, noted Phillip Mucksavage, a urologist at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia who was not involved in the study. (See "Sperm Tracked in 3-D-A First.")
Though there are fewer of them, "the sperm that are there still look good."
Mucksavage added that the study's results would have been stronger if the scientists had found other sedentary activities—such as sitting at a computer or reading a book—had the same affect on sperm count as did watching TV.
What's more, said T. Mike Hsieh, a urologist at the University of California, San Diego, the study doesn't have any implications for fertility, one of the main reasons men are concerned about sperm count.
That's because one semen sample is not enough to determine fertility. That requires a more thorough analysis, including multiple semen samples and blood work, said Hsieh, who wasn't involved in the study.
It's not like if you "stop watching TV you'd go from infertile to fertile," he said.
But all the experts agreed on one thing: you should get active if you aren't already.
Said Hsieh: "I would use this as a piece of evidence to motivate my patients to get off the couch and start working out."
Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks.
In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.
As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.
“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”
Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.
Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”
Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.
Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”
When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”
Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”
In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.
If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.
“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”
This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.
WASHINGTON: US prosecutors said Tuesday they have no plans to press criminal charges against cycling cheat Lance Armstrong, despite his confession that he owes his Tour de France victories to illegal doping.
US Attorney Andre Birotte, who led a federal investigation into the disgraced rider, did not definitively rule out action, but said Armstrong's public admission had not yet changed the decision not to prosecute.
"We made a decision on that case, I believe, a little over a year ago," he said, when asked about the status of the federal inquiry into long-standing claims that Armstrong had run a doping program and had lied to federal agents.
"Obviously we've been well aware of the statements that have been made by Mr Armstrong and other media reports," he said, referring to Armstrong's bombshell confession to chat show legend Oprah Winfrey last month.
"That has not changed my view at this time. Obviously we'll consider -- we'll continue to look at the situation, but that hasn't changed our view as I stand here today," Birotte told a news conference in Washington.
The 41-year-old Texan was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles last year after the US Anti-Doping Agency gathered compelling testimony that he had been the ring-leader of a large-scale doping conspiracy.
He had long angrily professed his innocence, including in questioning by US federal agents investigating the same allegations, but the mask fell away last month when he confessed his guilt to Winfrey in detail.
The admission threw up a number of legal questions, including whether the federal probe might be re-opened, whether he might be prosecuted for perjury and whether he might be sued to recover former payments and prize money.
Dallas insurance company SCA Promotions has already demanded the return of $12 million in bonuses it paid to Armstrong for multiple Tour titles.
SCA withheld a $5 million bonus due after Armstrong's sixth Tour de France win in 2004 because of doping allegations circulating in Europe, and Armstrong took them to court.
He won the case because SCA's original contract had no stipulations about doping, and Armstrong attorney Tim Herman told USA Today that the shamed cyclist doesn't intend to pay back any of the money.
"My only point is no athlete ever, to my understanding, has gone back and paid back his compensation," Herman told the newspaper in an article published Tuesday.
Herman cited New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton, who was suspended for a season by the NFL for the team's alleged pay-for-hits "bounty" scheme.
"They were suspended, but nobody said you've got to give your paycheck back," Herman said.
While Armstrong told Winfrey he would like to get his lifetime ban reduced, so that he could eventually compete in marathons, for example, by the time he's 50, Herman said the shamed cyclist was now prepared to cooperate with anti-doping authorities in a bid to clean up cycling even if is eligibility isn't restored.
"Whether it's a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or some comprehensive attempt to clean things up, it doesn't make any difference as long as something like that is convened," Herman said. "Lance will definitely cooperate."
Herman told the newspaper that Armstrong doesn't believe that USADA is best-placed to lead the battle against doping in cycling, since the sport is largely based in Europe.
Nor has USADA chief Travis Tygart's claim that Armstrong lied in some of his comments to Winfrey eased relations between the two parties.
"To hear Tygart tell it, Lance Armstrong is responsible for the culture he was dropped into on a team (that) was engaged in misconduct long before he got to the team," Herman said.
"He was a 19-year-old kid dropped in this culture, just like everybody else. He didn't create it."
-AFP/ac
In Hyderabad, businessman Mohammed Arashad of Baba Nagar lodged a complaint against Togadia at the Kanchanbagh police station Monday night, alleging that he had made a "hate speech" against Muslims in Indore.
"The complainant alleged that Togadia, in his speech in Indore a few weeks ago, used foul language while referring to the Muslims and made several derogatory comments. He requested us to take appropriate action," Kanchanbagh inspector Syed Jahangir said.
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