World Cup 2014: No plans to move tournament from Brazil

By Ben Smith BBC Sport

Fifa says it has no plans to move the 2014 World Cup away from Brazil despite the latest setback to preparations for next summer's tournament.

Two workmen were killed as a crane fell and destroyed parts of Sao Paulo's Arena Corinthians stadium.
Brazil are due to play the opening match of the World Cup in the 65,000 capacity venue in less than 200 days.
Senior sources within world football's governing body continue to insist "there is no plan B" for the World Cup.

World Cup 2014 - the big picture

Ben Smith BBC Sport

"Against the backdrop of protests and social discontent, concerns over infrastructure and fears about crime in Brazil's major cities, the accident in Sao Paulo turns what has been a drip of bad news into a downpour."

Brazil has already admitted it is struggling to get all 12 venues completed for the tournament.

Six were ready for last summer's Confederations Cup but it is a race against time to finish the remaining six.
Wednesday's accident is the third to have caused deaths in World Cup stadiums in Brazil, with two construction workers having previously been killed during the past two years.
An investigation into the cause of the accident in Sao Paulo is expected to begin on Thursday.
Arena Corinthians, which will stage five further World Cup games, including a semi-final, in addition to the opening fixture, was due to be completed at the end of December to meet a Fifa deadline.
After the World Cup the stadium - also known as the Itaquerao - is expected to accommodate nearly 50,000 people. However, at Fifa's request, 20,000 temporary seats are to be added ahead of the tournament.
Mexico stepped in to host the 1986 World Cup after Columbia said it could not do so in 1982, largely because of economic reasons.
A year later, Mexico was selected as the new host and held the tournament 16 years after doing so for the first time.

Nigerian FA official banned for taking bribe

By Oluwashina Okeleji  BBC Sport, Lagos

A senior Nigerian football official and a club administrator have been banned for 10 years following their involvement in corruption, the country's football authority has announced.

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) banned the chairman of its own disciplinary committee, Olaleye Adepoju, for 10 years for taking a bribe from a club.
The NFF emergency committee also handed Dapo Lam-Adesina same sanction for his role in the scandal, excluding both men from all football-related activities following an investigation.

“Our football must be clean, fair, rid of dirty dealings and professionally run”

Chris Green NFF board member

The football authority also referred to police an allegation that the chairman of Enugu State Football Association, Chidi Ofo Okenwa, was an imposter.

Okenwa was told to step down from his role pending the outcome of the police probe.
"The sanctions handed down by the committee are entirely fair and should act as a deterrent to any club or individual who might consider breaching the rules," NFF board member Chris Green told BBC Sport.
"We've handed out a severe sanction to one of our own, another clear pointer to the fact that no-one is above the law.
"Our football must be clean, fair, rid of dirty dealings and professionally run.
"Every corruption or bribery scandal is damaging to the credibility of the sport, but the NFF will continue to work hard to prevent this ugly spectre of scandal from destroying our beautiful game."
Adepoju was a member of the NFF executive committee and also the chairman of the football association in Oyo state, south-west Nigeria.
He was alleged to have received a cash payment of 1.5 million naira ($9,400) before a disciplinary hearing against Shooting Stars, from the Oyo state capital Ibadan, after they abandoned a league match against Sunshine Stars earlier this year.
He was said to have received money to find in favour of Shooting Stars after their players refused to take the field in the second half when the score was 0-0, claiming that one of their officials had been attacked.
However, the NFF rejected Shooting Stars' account and suspended Adepoju from his role in charge of its disciplinary committee.
Adepoju, a lawyer, claimed he took the money for giving legal advice.
Shooting Stars were fighting relegation at the time. A subsequent hearing awarded Sunshine Stars the three points from the match.
"We are prepared to put up with the pain of deep investigations if it keeps the game cleaner," Green said.
Match-fixing and corruption is a problem in Nigerian football and has led to sanctions against a number of clubs, referees and officials.
The NFF's former secretary general Taiwo Ogunjobi was also banned for 10 years last month.
Four clubs were suspended earlier this year after two teams vying for promotion respectively with the NFF calling it a "scandal of huge proportions".

South Africa's MTN hopes for U.S.-Iran thaw to free its cash

JOHANNESBURG Wed Nov 27, 2013 11:53am EST

(Reuters) - Better U.S.-Iranian relations would be very welcome for South African mobile phone operator MTN Group (MTNJ.J) as it has been unable to repatriate around $450 million from a unit in Iran due to sanctions, a company spokesman said.
Johannesburg-based MTN, Africa's largest mobile phone operator, said its funds had been blocked since early last year because of Washington's sanctions against Tehran.
"Our primary focus remains to ensure that we are sanction-compliant with everything we do there," said spokesman Nik Kershaw. "But obviously it would be a great outcome if things did improve."
MTN owns 49 percent of local unit MTN Irancell, which contributed nearly 10 percent of its 2012 revenue.
Iran's Ghanoon newspaper on Tuesday quoted MTN Irancell executive Alireza Ghalambar Dezfouli as saying MTN had been unable to repatriate around $450 million from Iran.
Kershaw confirmed the money in Iran was around that amount, although he could not immediately give an exact figure because of exchange rates.
Around $120 million of that is dividends owed to MTN with the remainder made up of loans due to be repaid to the South African company, he said.
There have been signs of a tentative reconciliation between Washington and Tehran since the June election of President Hassan Rouhani, widely seen as a pragmatist and a centrist.
The United States described two days of nuclear negotiations with Iran this month as the most serious and candid to date after Western diplomats said Tehran hinted it was ready to scale back sensitive atomic activities to secure urgent sanctions relief.
(Corrects Oct 22 story to show Iran contributed nearly 10 pct of 2012 revenue, not 24 percent)
(Reporting by David Dolan in Johanesburg and Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai; editing by David Evans)

China's rumor crackdown has 'cleaned' Internet, official says

By Megha Rajagopalan

BEIJING Thu Nov 28, 2013 6:05am EST

1 of 2. A man talks on the phone as he surfs the internet on his laptop at a local coffee shop in downtown Shanghai November 28, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria

(Reuters) - China's campaign against online rumors, which critics say is crushing free speech, has been highly successful in "cleaning" the Internet, a top official of the country's internet regulator said on Thursday.
China has the world's most sophisticated online censorship system, known outside the country as the Great Firewall. It blocks many social media websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others, along with many sites hosted in Taiwan and those of rights groups and some foreign media agencies.
The crackdown on online rumors is really intended to quash anti-government discourse, activists say. High profile users of Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblog, have been targeted, apparently for political speech.
In a rare public appearance, Ren Xianliang, vice minister of the State Internet Information Office, emphasized China's commitment to scrubbing the web of content it deemed critical or offensive.
"The fight against rumors has received a positive response and has been quite effective," he said.
"The Internet has become clean. The frequency of slander has declined, but it has not impacted the orderly flow of information."
Although social media has become a platform for users to voice complaints and criticism about the government, authorities force domestic internet firms to delete user-posted content they consider too politically sensitive.
China will work to strengthen regulation of the internet by training local internet regulators and net companies, Ren added, and further "manage" search and microblogs as well as Tencent's popular WeChat app.
"We will meet the demands of the people to create a cyberspace with Chinese characteristics," Ren said.
He reiterated China's right to block websites with information on Tibetan independence or support for separatists in China's far western region of Xinjiang.
"Some websites propagating material on Tibet and Xinjiang aim to split our nation, or try to subvert the power of the state," Ren added. "This runs counter to China's laws and regulations."
(Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

November 28, 2013 7:00 pm JST

Cheap Chinese tablets flooding global market

YOSUKE SATO, Nikkei staff writer

Tablets are growing in popularity around the world, with a supporter using one to take a photo of an Afghanistan presidential candidate on Nov.20 at the capital. © AP

TOKYO -- Chinese tablet makers are pumping out bargain-priced models as they look to increase their sway in a global market that is growing at breakneck speed.
     Annual shipments worldwide will likely surge 50% on the year to 184 million units in 2013, according to technology research company Gartner. NEC and other Japanese tablet makers offer a variety of models starting around the upper-20,000 yen ($195) range. But China's low-end tablets, which are sometimes as cheap as 10,000 yen or less, are controlling the global market, especially emerging ones.
     According to research firm NPD DisplaySearch, Chinese tablet makers collectively bought 52% of September's shipment of liquid crystal display panels. Even U.S.-based Apple, the market leader, purchased only less than 20% of the month's shipment.
     The American company will probably account for a larger chunk of panel purchases in October and later, as it has recently released new iPad Air and iPad mini models. However, the figure will still be only about 30%, even when combined with the share of second-ranked Samsung Electronics of South Korea.
     Third-ranked Amazon of the U.S., Taiwan's Asus and China's Lenovo each has a share of about 4%, far behind the two largest LCD panel users.
Struggling to keep up
However, the responses of component makers to the rapid expansion of the tablet market are mixed. Makers of such key components as DRAM, NAND flash memory and LCD panels are concerned about the increasing challenge of forecasting demand.
     As long as only a few manufacturers of finished products monopolize the market, component makers can adjust their outputs and control inventories in accordance with such customers' product plans, such as the release of new models.
     However, now that a host of Chinese tablet makers are flooding into the market, it is becoming extremely difficult for component companies to predict market trends and keep a healthy supply-demand balance. An official at a major NAND maker says that the company cannot blindly celebrate the strong current business, because some Chinese makers are placing orders that are double or triple actual demand levels.
     Chinese companies also use components in ways that established makers would not even have considered.
     Tablets normally use mobile DRAM, the same used in smartphones. However, some Chinese tablet makers used general-purpose DRAMs normally found in PCs because mobile DRAM units were more expensive than general-purpose ones until recently. As a result, the price of both kinds of DRAM continued to rise in the first half of this year.
      In addition to the volatility in prices of such components as memory and LCD panels, the fluctuation of tablet prices can be crucial to the survival of component makers.
    According to Gartner's estimate, the shipment of tablets will continue to be larger than that of PCs until 2017.

U.S. judge dismisses Apple consumer lawsuit over data privacy

A woman holds her new Apple iPhone 5S after buying it at an Apple Store at Tokyo's Ginza shopping district September 20, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Toru Hanai

(Reuters) - A California federal judge has dismissed a consumer lawsuit over data privacy against Apple Inc, saying the plaintiffs had failed to show they had relied on any alleged company misrepresentations and that they had suffered harm.
The four plaintiffs claimed in 2011 that Apple had violated its privacy policy, saying the iPhone maker had designed its iOS environment to easily transmit personal information to third parties that collect and analyze such data without user consent or detection.
They also claimed that they suffered damages by paying too much money for their iPhones and by losing storage space, among other things, according to court documents.
U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh in San Jose, California dismissed the case.
"Plaintiffs must be able to provide some evidence that they saw one or more of Apple's alleged misrepresentations, that they actually relied on those misrepresentations, and that they were harmed thereby," Koh said in the November 25 ruling.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs and Apple either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment.
The case is one part of nationwide litigation Koh is overseeing that consolidates 19 related lawsuits.
The case is In re Apple Inc. iPhone/iPad Application Consumer Privacy Litigation, 11-md-02250, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
(Reporting by Casey Sullivan; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

Take aspirin before bed to cut morning heart risk

Taking aspirin before going to bed might reduce the risk of suffering a heart attack in the morning, according to a new study.

A trial involving 290 heart attack patients has shown that taking just one 100mg tablet before going to bed was more effective than taking it in the morning.

Researchers found that platelet levels were lower in patents who took the painkiller, which thins the blood and prevents clotting, at night.

Platelets, which lead to the formation of blood clots, tend to reach their peak in the morning.

This means that the risk of heart attack is often at its highest shortly before or just after waking up.

However, the findings by researchers at the Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, showed that taking aspirin before bed could reduce this peak.
They found that it was up to 22 units lower if taken before bed.
Tobias Bonten, one of the researchers who led the study, said: “Higher platelet activity contributes to a higher risk of acute heart events.
“This simple intervention – switching aspirin intake from morning to bedtime – could be beneficial for the millions of patients with heart disease who take aspirin on a daily basis.”
The latest results from the Aspirin in Reduction of Tensions II trial were presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions meeting in Dallas, Texas.
The 290 heart patients were told to take aspirin either before going to bed or upon waking over two three month periods.
At the end of each period their blood pressure and platelet activity was measured.
While changing the time at which the drug was taken did not affect blood pressure, another risk factor for heart attacks, it did lower the platelet activity.
The scientists say this should also reduce the risk of suffering a heart attack in the morning when platelets are normally at their highest.
Previous research has shown that heart attacks are more likely and more severe between 6am and midday, with patients suffering 20 per cent more damage to their hearts.
Around 103,000 people suffer a heart attack in the UK each year and an estimated 1.3 million people are now living in the UK after suffering a heart attack
Many of these will be taking aspirin on a daily basis to reduce the risk of suffering another heart attack. Previous studies have shown it can lower the risk by 10 per cent.
In his abstract to his presentation to the AHA, Mr Bonten said: "Simply changing the time of intake could make the use of this drug even more effective in preventing recurrent CVD without any additional costs."
However, the findings come less than a month after experts warned that taking aspirin on a daily basis can also carry other unintended side effects such as internal bleeding.
In a paper for the National Institute for Health Research, they said taking aspirin each day could increase the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding by 37 per cent and increased the risk of haemorrhagic stroke by between 32 to 38 per cent.
However, they said it could also produce a 15 per cent drop in heart disease and a 10 per cent drop in heart attacks and stroke.
This, they said could say up to 46 lives for every 100,000 people taking the treatment.