More lows for Russian athletes

Russian doping scandal spreads to wrestling, sports minister prepared to quit

Mikhail Mamiashvili, President of the Russian Wrestling Federation

MOSCOW - Russia's sports minister said he was prepared to resign over a raging doping scandal in his country which could cost more Russian athletes their places at the Rio Olympics after "tens" more cases of cheating were exposed in wrestling.
Russian wrestlers may now join the country's track-and-field athletes in being barred from competing at the Games in August, after an internal Russian Wrestling Federation (WFR) investigation uncovered multiple doping cases, WFR President Mikhail Mamiashvili said.
The disclosure came a day after four Russian athletes were exposed as having tested positive for the banned drug meldonium, further damaging Moscow's efforts to overturn a doping suspension in time for the Olympics starting in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday his sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, would remain in his position despite the scandal. Mutko later said, however, that he was prepared to end his eight years in the job if asked to do so.
"The country has a leadership who take these decisions. When I see that the matter concerns me, I will leave my post," R-Sport news agency quoted him as saying.
Russian sport was thrown into turmoil last year when a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) exposed endemic cheating and corruption in Russian athletics.
Russian athletes have been suspended from international competition and will miss the Olympics if the country cannot get the ban overturned - a humiliating blow to the pride and prestige of a sporting superpower.
Since then, at least 18 Russian sportsmen and women have tested positive for meldonium, complicating Russia's drive to prove itself compliant with international anti-doping standards.
Mamiashvili said two male wrestlers, 2014 world championship silver medalist Evgeny Saleev and 2015 World Cup silver medalist Sergei Semenov, had been caught using meldonium.
But he said the sport's doping problem was widespread.
"There are tens of positive tests in the team, everyone is in a bad condition psychologically," Mamiashvili told R-Sport.
No female Russia wrestlers have tested positive for meldonium, R-Sport reported. The WFR declined to comment.
Talking to the state-owned TASS news agency about his team's chances of competing at the Rio Games, Mamiashvili said: "It may happen that simply none of us go."
Meldonium, which is used to treat diabetes and low magnesium levels, was banned by WADA on Jan. 1 after being linked to increased sporting performance.
It is particularly popular in Russia and the former Soviet Union, having been invented in Latvia and used to help Soviet soldiers fight at high altitude in the 1980s.
R-Sport reported Monday that around 40 Russian athletes from more than 10 different sports had tested positive for meldonium in the first two months of 2016.

Russians love meldonium

Russian athletics hit by first meldonium cases

Moscow (AFP) — Russia has announced four doping failures for meldonium in athletics as the country battles to be reinstated in time for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
These are the first known cases of the banned drug in Russian athletics in a potential blow to efforts to overturn an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) suspension from international competition because of doping scandals.
The athletics federation did not name the four athletes who tested positive. It was unclear whether sprinter Nadezhda Kotlyarova, who admitted to taking the banned drug on Sunday, was among them.
An unnamed source told TASS news agency however that the four athletes are Kotlyarova, long-distance runners Andrei Minzhulin and Gulshat Fazletdinova, and steeplechaser Olga Vovk. All are said to have tested positive for the drug at the Russian indoor championships last month.
The federation said in a statement it was conducting a "thorough investigation" into the cases and reiterated it had repeatedly warned athletes and trainers that the World Anti-Doping Agency was banning meldonium from January 1.
The drug is widely used for heart conditions and diabetes. But it also helps recovery from physical exertion so could help athletes.
A number of high-profile Russian athletes, including tennis star Maria Sharapova, short-track speed skater Semyon Yelistratov and swimmer Yulia Yefimova, have tested positive for meldonium.
Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said the meldonium scandal was not affecting Russian athletes' preparations for the Rio Olympics which start August 5.
Russia was suspended by the IAAF for other doping failures said to be "state sponsored". The IAAF will only decide in May whether Russian authorities have made enough efforts to return to international competition.
"All those who are training for the Olympics are being monitored," Mutko told TASS. "The issue of meldonium is a separate issue."
President Vladimir Putin last week blamed Russia's sports officials for failing to warn athletes that meldonium was being banned by WADA.
WADA says that more than 100 suspected positive tests have been recorded since January 1.
The agency moved meldonium from its "monitored" to "prohibited" list "because of evidence of its use by athletes with the intention of enhancing performance."

WADA takes charge of anti-doping for Rio 2016

IOC: WADA to lead anti-doping task force for Rio Olympics

 

LAUSANNE, Switzerland - A special World Anti-Doping Agency task force will identify athletes who should be targeted for drug-testing ahead of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro to deter and weed out any cheats before they get to the games, the IOC said Tuesday. The IOC also confirmed, as reported by The Associated Press last week, that hundreds of doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Games are currently being re-analysed with enhanced tests before Rio to catch any athletes who escaped detection at the time. The International Olympic Committee said a WADA task force is gathering information and intelligence, identifying any gaps in pre-games testing and coordinating extra doping checks in the lead-up to the Rio Games in August. The task force "will identify athletes or groups of athletes who should be included in registered testing pools, and those who the IOC should test during the four-week period" of the Olympics, it said. The WADA group will work with national anti-doping agencies of Australia, Denmark, Japan, South Africa, Britain and the United States. The task force will advise the IOC and Rio organizers who should be tested, both in and out of competition. The intelligence will be used to finalize the day-by-day testing plan during the period of the games, which begins with the opening of the athletes village on July 24. "We are trying passionately to protect those clean athletes who are going to Rio," IOC medical director Dr. Richard Budgett said. "And the best way to do that is to catch the cheats and deter the cheats before we get to Rio de Janeiro." As Budgett told the AP in an interview in London last week, the IOC said hundreds of selected samples from the Beijing and London Olympics are being re-analysed before Rio. The IOC stores samples for 10 years so they can be retested when improved techniques become available. "The IOC and WADA have together identified and agreed on the sports and countries being targeted," the committee said. "This includes in particular athletes likely to compete in Rio de Janeiro who also competed in London and Beijing, and specific methods of analysis where there have been advances." Budgett said the results will be known in a number of weeks or months. "The aim of the program is to prevent athletes who cheated in London or Beijing, and got away with it because we didn't have as advanced methods of analysis as we do now, from competing in Rio de Janeiro," he said.

Jamaica at the Summer Olympic Games

 

Jamaica set for their 17th Olympic Games

By Paul Burrowes

This Summer in Rio, Jamaica will take part in their 17th Olympic Games in 14 countries.
Already, 320 athletes have represented Jamaica at the Games, 207 men and 112 women. The island's medal count stands at 67, one from cycling and the other 66 in athletics, led by none other than Merlene Ottey-Page.
Only 10 countries have won more medals than Jamaica in athletics and living and still competing legend Usain Bolt needs three more medals to join Ottey on nine, the most Olympic medals ever won by a Jamaican.
Ottey, Veronica Campbell-Brown (seven medals) and Bolt (six medals) have established themselves as three of the 10 best Olympians ever to take the part in athletics at the Games.
Like Bolt, Campbell-Brown can also join Ottey on nine medals, and both will likely be taking part in their last Olympic Games.
When Jamaica set foot in the Olympic Games for the first time in 1948, 68 countries had experience in the quadrennial event.
Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana joined Jamaica in debuting at the Olympics at the Games in London, along with Syria, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Singapore, Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Myanmar, Lebanon and Iraq.
Swimmer Belinda Phillips and sailor Michael Nunes remain the youngest and oldest respectively to have represented Jamaica at the Summer Olympic Games. Belinda was 13 and Nunes 54 when they took part in the 1972 Games in Munich, West Germany from August 26 to September 11.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Jamaica fielded the most athletes (50) while in the 1972 Games, the country competed in the most sports (six).
The flag-bearers have been many, including Ottey twice (1988 and 1992), Wint the first (1952) and Bolt the last (2012).
Bolt could well be asked to carry the flag again, joining Ottey as the only two athletes that will carry the Jamaican emblem twice.
Campbell-Brown, Sandie Richards, Deon Hemmings, Juliet Cuthbert, Bert Cameron and Lennox Miller had all been flag-bearers at the Olympic Games.
Arthur Wint, known as the Gentle Giant, was the first Jamaican to win an Olympic gold medal (in the 400m at the 1948 Olympic Games in London).
Rio 2016, the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from August 5 to 21. More than 10,500 athletes from 206 countries are expected to participate, with 306 sets of medals in 28 Olympic sports. Rugby sevens and golf are included in this edition.
The motto of Rio 2016 is 'Live Your Passion'.

Garvey: African Nationalist Pioneer

Garvey had over eight million followers

Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), a black man from the West Indies, was the first to forcefully articulate the concept of African nationalism—of black people returning to Africa, the continent of their forefathers, to build a great nation of their own.

Marcus Garvey was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on Aug. 17, 1887. He went to elementary school there and at the age of 14 became an apprentice in the printing trade. In 1903 he went to the capital, Kingston, to work as a printer. He soon became involved in public activities and helped form the Printers Union, the first trade union in Jamaica. He subsequently published a periodical called the Watchman.

In 1910 began a series of travels that transformed Garvey from an average person concerned about the problems of the underprivileged to an African nationalist determined to lift an entire race from bondage and debasement. He visited Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador. After briefly returning home, he proceeded to England, where contacts with African nationalists stimulated in him a keen interest in Africa and in black history. In each country he visited, he noted that the black man was in an inferior position, subject to the whim, caprice, and fancy of stronger races. His reading of Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery at this time also had great effect upon him.

On his return in 1914 from England, where he had done further study, Garvey formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Communities League. These organizations were intended "to work for the general uplift of the Negro peoples of the world."

In 1916 Garvey went to the United States to raise funds to carry on the work of his Jamaican organizations. He was immediately caught up in the agitation of the times, and his voice thundered in the evenings on the streets of Harlem in New York City. A New York branch of the UNIA was established, soon followed by branches in other cities in the United States, in Central and South America, and in the Caribbean. The expansion of the UNIA was fostered by its official organ Negro World, a newspaper published in English, Spanish, and French. Published in New York City from 1918 to 1933, it was succeeded by the monthly Black Man, which ran through the 1930s, published after 1934 in London.

The Negro World reached out to black communities all over the world. It even penetrated into the interior of Africa, although it had been banned there by the white rulers. Garvey stressed the need for blacks to return to Africa for the building of a great nation, but he realized that until this was accomplished Africans needed to make themselves economically independent wherever they were. He encouraged blacks to start their own businesses, taking the commerce of their ghettos into their own hands.

Together with the American clergyman Archbishop George A. McGuire, Garvey formed the African Orthodox Church. This was in accordance with one of his basic principles, for he believed that each race must see God through its own racial spectacles. The Black Christ and the Black Madonna were proclaimed at the UNIA convention of 1924.

The Black Star Line shipping company and the Negro Factories Corporation were to be the commercial arms of the Garvey movement. It was the failure of the shipping venture that gave Garvey's enemies their chance to destroy him. Investments in the line were lost, and Garvey was imprisoned in 1925 in the United States. After serving 2 years 10 months of a 5-year sentence, he was deported to Jamaica. Previously, his plans for colonization in Liberia had been sabotaged by the colonial powers who brought pressure to bear on the Liberian government. As a result, the land which had been granted to the Garvey organization for the settlement of overseas Africans was given to the white American industrialist Harvey Firestone, and the expensive equipment shipped to Liberia for the use of Garvey's colonists was seized.

In Jamaica, Garvey attempted to enter local politics, but the restricted franchise of the time did not allow the vote to the black masses. He went to England and continued his work of social protest and his call for the liberation of Africa. He died in London on June 10, 1940.

Marcus Garvey was married twice. His second wife, Amy Jacques, whom he married in 1922, bore him two sons.

The Garvey movement was the greatest international movement of African peoples in modern times. At its peak, in 1922-1924, the movement counted over 8 million followers. The youngest cadres were taken in at 5 years of age and, as they grew older, they graduated to the sections for older children.

Garvey emphasized the belief in the One God, the God of Africa, who should be visualized through black eyes. He told black people to become familiar with their ancient history and their rich cultural heritage. He called for pride in the black race—for example, he made black dolls for black children. His was the first voice clearly to demand black power. It was he who said, "A race without authority and power is a race without respect."

In emphasizing the need to have separate black institutions under black leadership, Garvey anticipated the mood and thinking of the future black nationalists by nearly 50 years. He died, as he lived, an unbending apostle of African nationalism. The symbols which he made famous, the black star of Africa and the red, black, and green flag of African liberation, continued to inspire younger generations of African nationalists.

Drink to the heart

Three to five drinks a week good for your heart

People who drink wine, liquor or beer regularly are less prone to heart failure and heart attacks than those who rarely or never drink. Three to five drinks a week can be good for your heart.

Drinking a little alcohol every day may be part of a healthy lifestyle, according to Imre Janszky, a professor of social medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He says alcohol does more good than harm for your heart when consumed in moderation.

And, Janszky says, it doesn't matter much whether you drink wine, liquor or beer.

"It's primarily the alcohol that leads to more good cholesterol, among other things. But alcohol can also cause higher blood pressure. So it's best to drink moderate amounts relatively often," he says.

Decreased risk with each additional serving

Along with a number of colleagues from NTNU and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Janszky has published two studies regarding the relationship between alcohol and heart health. One, published in the January 15 issue of the International Journal of Cardiology, is about heart failure. The second, from September 2015, is on acute myocardial infarction (AMI), and has been published in the Journal of Internal Medicine.

In both cases, research shows that people who regularly drink alcohol have better cardiovascular health than those who consume little or no alcohol.

The studies showed that those who drank three to five drinks per week were 33 per cent less prone to heart failure than those who abstained or drank infrequently. In the case of heart attacks, the risk appears to be reduced by 28 percent with each additional one-drink increment.

This does not surprise the researchers at all.

A majority of researchers worldwide seem to think three to five drinks a week can be good for your heart.

Different drinking patterns

"The relationship between alcohol and heart health has been studied in many countries, including the USA and southern European nations. The conclusions have been the same, but the drinking patterns in these countries are very different than in Norway. In countries like France and Italy, very few people don't drink," says Janszky. "It raises the question as to whether earlier findings can be fully trusted, if other factors related to non-drinkers might have influenced research results. It may be that these are people who previously had alcohol problems, and who have stopped drinking completely," he says.

For this reason, the researchers wanted to examine the theory with a Norwegian population where a significant population drinks rarely or not at all. In the myocardial infarction study, 41 per cent of participants reported that they did not drink at all or that they consumed less than half of one alcoholic beverage per week.

Both studies are based on the longitudinal HUNT 2 Nord-Trøndelag Health Study conducted between 1995 and 1997.

The greater the drinking frequency, the lower the risk

The study, which looked at the relationship between heart failure and alcohol, followed 60,665 participants who enrolled in the HUNT study between 1995-1997 and who had no incidence of heart failure at that time. Of those, 1588 of them developed heart failure during the period of the study, which ended in 2008. The risk was highest for those who rarely or never drank alcohol, and for those who had an alcohol problem.

The more often participants consumed alcohol within normal amounts, the lower their risk of heart failure turned out to be. Those who drank five or more times a month had a 21 per cent lower risk compared to non-drinkers and those who drank little, while those who drank between one and five times a month had a two per cent lower risk.

Drinking isn't necessary for a healthy heart

"I'm not encouraging people to drink alcohol all the time. We've only been studying the heart, and it's important to emphasize that a little alcohol every day can be healthy for the heart. But that doesn't mean it's necessary to drink alcohol every day to have a healthy heart," says Janszky.

In the heart attack study, 58,827 participants were categorized by how much and how often they drank. 2966 of the participants experienced an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) between 1995 and the end of 2008. The adjusted analyses showed that each additional one-drink increment decreased the risk of AMI by 28 percent.

Alcohol may increase other problems

The researchers stressed that few participants in the study drank particularly much, so they cannot conclude that high alcohol intake protects against heart attack or heart failure. They also encourage looking at the findings in a larger context, since the risk of a number of other diseases and social problems can increase as a result of higher alcohol consumption.

For example, the researchers observed that the risk of dying from various types of cardiovascular disease increased with about five drinks a week and up, while those who drank more moderate amounts had the lowest risk. High alcohol consumption was also strongly associated with an increased risk of death from liver disease.

Penile transplant

Wounded U.S. Soldier Soon to Receive First U.S. Penis Transplant

 
BALTIMORE:  A US soldier wounded in an explosion will be the first person in the United States to receive a penis transplant, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital said, which could open the way for about 60 other servicemen with genital injuries to have this surgery.

Surgeons hope a donated organ from a recently deceased man will provide full function including urination, sensation and sex. The surgery requires joining nerves and blood vessels under a microscope.

Doctors and advocates who work with wounded soldiers note that the loss of the penis is one of the most emotionally traumatic injuries because it affects a sense of identity and manhood, especially for men hoping to become fathers.

"When you meet these guys and you realize what they've given for the country, it makes a lot of sense," Dr. Richard Redett, a plastic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital who will help perform the operation, told Reuters.

The recipient, who was not identified, lost most of his penis and had substantial groin injuries in a bomb explosion while deployed overseas. Media reports have said he was wounded in Afghanistan.

The surgery could occur in the coming weeks. Doctors are looking for a donor who is a good match in terms of age and skin color. The donor's family will need to give permission for the penis to be removed.

There have been two penis transplants in the world. The first in China in 2006 was unsuccessful. The second in South Africa in 2014 was a success.

Thor Wold, who served as a Marine medic in the Iraq war and now works as an advocate for veterans, said that after suffering genital injuries servicemen immediately wanted to know if they would still have sexual function.

"They would ask, 'Is everything OK down there, doc? My wife's at home and we're trying to have a baby when I get back,'" Wold told Reuters.

Redett said a veteran suffering from a blast injury could need to have not just his penis replaced but also the scrotum, part of the abdominal wall, groin tissue and part of the inner thigh.

"We've sorted out how to take that block of tissue from a donor and give it to a recipient," he said.

The penis transplant does not involve the testes, where sperm are produced, so if a man with a transplanted penis does father a child, the baby would be his genetic offspring, not the donor's.

While for now only wounded veterans are being considered for penis transplants, the surgery could eventually be performed on men with birth defects and transgender men and women.