Rwanda demands respect from the West after aid cuts - Reuters
NAIROBI |
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Rwanda's foreign minister accused Western governments on Saturday of using aid to treat African states like children, after four countries cut or delayed aid to Kigali because of its policy in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
The United States last weekend cut military aid for this year while the Netherlands, Germany and Britain followed suit as donors reacted to a United Nations report that accuses Rwanda of backing rebels in the Congo.
The report, contested by Rwanda, said the country was supporting armed groups in neighboring eastern Congo, including the M23 group, which has seized parts of North Kivu province in fighting that has displaced more than 270,000 people since April.
"This child-to-parent relationship has to end ... there has to be a minimum respect," Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said in an address to the Kenyan business club Mindspeak.
"As long as countries wave cheque books over our heads, we can never be equal."
She added that Africans had to work hard to develop their economies in order to stop relying on Western donors.
Rwanda, which has been working to rebuild its economy after more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in a 1994 genocide, relies on donors to fund 50 percent of its annual budget, Mushikiwabo said.
Its ties with its much larger neighbor Congo had been thawing since 2009, following years of conflict in which Rwandan troops crossed the border in pursuit of remnants of the Hutu militias that carried out the genocide.
Mushikiwabo said it was too early to tell what kind of damage the withholding of aid would do to the government's economic development push.
"We have been in much worse situations than dollars being withheld from us," she said.
Germany's Development Minister Dirk Niebel said in a statement his ministry had warned Rwanda four weeks ago it would suspend aid payments due to indications of support for rebels.
"Rwanda did not use this time to rebut these serious allegations... suspending budget aid is a clear sign to the Rwandan government."
CONGO "MESS"
A Reuters reporter said on Saturday that heavily armed rebel forces had moved to Kibumba, around 30 km (20 miles) from the North Kivu capital of Goma, whilst drunk government forces had withdrawn their forces further south towards the city.
Yamina Benguigui, France's minister for relations with French-speaking countries who is in Congo, said Paris had requested a United Nations Security Council meeting for Monday to discuss the crisis.
"A declaration will be negotiated clearly condemning M23 and its support," she said.
Mushikiwabo accused the international community of using Rwanda as a scapegoat for the chaos in eastern Congo. "Do not draw Rwanda into this mess. It is not our business," she said.
The U.N. report said Kigali had supplied ammunition and communication equipment to the rebels, some of whom are Congolese of Rwandan descent. But Mushikiwabo said the type of ammunition alluded to in the report no longer existed in Rwanda, under regional small arms-reduction programmes.
The radio communications gear cited also was not being used by modern armies like Rwanda, proving they could not have supplied it to the Congolese rebels, she added.
Details of a neutral force to eliminate armed groups from eastern Congo, agreed on by the regional group of Great Lakes states that includes Rwanda and Congo, would be discussed by a meeting of the organization's ministers of defense and security chiefs in Khartoum over the next three days, Mushikiwabo said.
(Additional reporting by Alexandra Hudson in Berlin; Jonny Hogg in Kinshasa; Editing by David Lewis and Michael Roddy)
Invisible flame is burning issue of London Games - eTaiwan News
The enduring image of the Summer and Winter Games, lit Friday night at the climax of the opening ceremony, is out of sight from the throngs of fans who hoped to catch an inspiring glimpse or take the photo of a lifetime.
The cauldron sits low in the center of Olympic Stadium in London, invisible from the outside. It will be moved Sunday to a corner, and visible in person only to fans lucky enough to have tickets to track and field, which starts Friday.
Until then, if you want to see the Olympic flame, you'll have to settle for a beauty shot on television, where it looks from above like a small, distant campfire, or the pilot light under the eye of a giant stove.
"It's unfortunate," said John Morrissey, who traveled to London on a day trip from Ireland on Saturday, the first day of competition. "I didn't realize you couldn't see it. I was going to walk around until I saw it. It seems quite poorly thought out."
"That could have been made more user-friendly," said Lorraine Payne, an airline worker from London.
The lighting was one of the high points of the opening ceremony. Seven teenage athletes, meant to represent the next generation of British sports, touched flaming torches to 205 petal-shaped copper stems that spread into a ring of fire.
Then the flames rose and converged, as if into an elegant, blazing flower. Fireworks erupted over the stadium, Paul McCartney led a singalong of "Hey Jude," and London was off to a feel-good start to its games.
Just maybe a darker one than everyone expected.
The designer of the cauldron, Thomas Heatherwick, offered an artistic defense: "It's almost that the stadium represents some kind of temple and it's the flame that sits in the heart of that temple."
"We were aware that cauldrons have been getting bigger, higher, fatter as each Olympics has happened," he said.
Indeed, Beijing was a tough flame to follow. The Summer Games in 2008 featured a mammoth, spiraling cauldron attached to the inner roof of the stadium, so big that it dwarfed the wire-suspended gymnast who spacewalked around the rim to light it.
At the last Winter Games, in Vancouver in 2010, there was an outcry when organizers put the cauldron behind an unsightly chain-link fence along the harbor, touching off a "free the flame" movement.
Organizers ultimately ceded to public demand and opened up a rooftop promenade that allowed an elevated, unobstructed view for the thousands of people who came to the site every day to take photos.
This isn't the first time the Olympic flame has been kept inside a stadium in London. In fact, designers said they wanted to replicate the 1948 Olympics in London, when the cauldron was placed in a corner of Wembley Stadium.
"With the technology we now have that didn't exist at the time it can be shared with everyone in the park with screens," Heatherwick said. "We felt that sharing it with the screens reinforces the intimacy."
Before arriving for the opening ceremony, the flame had traveled across the U.K. in a 70-day torch relay covering 8,000 miles. Organizers said that public exposure _ 15 million Britons have seen it _ was more important than showing it off in a park.
The design and location of the cauldron were among the most closely guarded secrets of the games. The plans were devised two years ago with opening ceremony director Danny Boyle, the Oscar-winning filmmaker.
The London Olympic planners started with the assumption that the cauldron should be on top of the stadium, sticking up like the antenna on a cellphone, Heatherwick said.
But it dawned on them that the stadium was almost a perfect circle, he said, "and that the most powerful spot in the whole of that stadium is the very, very center."
Turning it into a beacon would have meant making it bigger, and that would not have met Boyle's and the designers' vision of "making something that was rooted in where people were," Heatherwick said.
The whole cauldron project _ which was approved by Prime Minister David Cameron _ was so hush-hush that secret rehearsals were held in the town of Harrowgate in northern England.
For the final tests inside the Olympic Stadium, only four people took part, waiting until 3 a.m., after all the volunteers and performers had gone and no helicopters were flying overhead.
After the flame is extinguished Aug. 12, the cauldron will be taken apart and exist no more. Each of the 205 countries competing in the games will take a petal home with them.
For now, the flame isn't completely in the dark. Images are being projected on big screens around Olympic Park, the complex of venues in the East End of London. Ever the civic booster, Mayor Boris Johnson said everyone should relax.
"It's going to be visible to everybody who watches it on TV," he said. "It's there. I don't think it's a big deal."
To Tanja Schmitt, a 27-year-old visitor from Frankfurt, Germany, it was sad.
"I had wanted to see the flame, but I'm not going to any athletics events, so I won't be able to get in the stadium."
The International Olympic Committee is leaving the matter to London organizers, spokesman Mark Adams said.
"We allow people to have cauldron where they want it," he said. "There have been precedents before. This echoes what happened in 1948. We're fully supportive of the decision they've taken."
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William Haydon contributed to this report.
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FULL TIME: Crewe 1 Wanderers 1 (From The Bolton News) - The Bolton News
FULL TIME: Crewe 1 Wanderers 1
4:52pm Saturday 28th July 2012 in Latest By Marc Iles
ZAT Knight became the latest defensive casualty for Wanderers in a pre-season that just hasn't seemed to get going.
With Tim Ream and Matt Mills left out of the squad, presumably through injury, and David Wheater still on the long term list – the last thing Owen Coyle wanted to see was the sight of Knight hobbling off after just 18 minutes at the Alexander Stadium.
Wanderers were already a goal down and with no recognised centre backs on the bench, it took a serious reshuffle of the back four to get the team back on a solid footing.
Crewe had seized an advantage after only 10 minutes when Mathias Pogba managed to thread a ball through for Max Clayton, who kept his composure to plant a shot into the bottom corner.
It should have been two moments later when Knight pulled up off the ball with an apparent groin injury and left Pogba to race in on goal and slide a shot narrowly wide.
Knight hobbled off, leaving Owen Coyle to bring Joe Riley on as an emergency left-back and move Marcos Alonso into the middle.
Martin Petrov inspired Wanderers to mount a recovery, and when Alan Martin had beaten one swerving shot away from the Bulgarian, he then had to face him from 12 yards as referee Steve Ruston gave a harsh penalty against Pogba for handball. This time, Petrov gave the keeper no chance and the scores were level.
That settled things down for the Whites, although home fans claimed referee Rushton should have levelled up the penalty count when A-Jay Leitch-Smith collapsed under pressure from Riley on the edge of the box.
Petrov continued his one man charge and went close with two fizzing left-footed efforts, which keeper Martin did well to see, let alone push away.
Just one change was made at the break, with Andy Lonergan replacing Adam Bogdan in goal, and Wanderers made a fairly enterprising start to the second half.
Mark Davies burst into life for the first time, exchanging passes with Tyrone Mears before his goalbound shot was blocked, and Michael O'Halloran – on for Chung-Yong Lee – squeezed an effort wide when he had cleverly got the wrong side of his marker.
Riley and then Andrews tested the Crewe keeper from fully 30 yards but he continued to put up stubborn resistance, meaning Wanderers' wait for a pre-season victory stretches on at least another couple of days.
The result could have been worse, as Pogba wasted a chance to cap off a fine afternoon with a lobbed effort over Lonergan that landed on the roof of the net.
Wanderers: Bogdan (Lonergan 46), Mears, Knight (Riley 19), Ricketts, Alonso, Chung-Yong (O'Halloran 55), Andrews, Pratley (Eaves 87), Mark Davies, Petrov (Vela 65), Kevin Davies (Wylde 65) Not used: Blakeman, McQuade.
Attendance: 2,440 (506)
U.S. lead to raise golden hopes - Reuters
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - The United States men raised hopes of winning their first gymnastics team gold medal since 1984 when they outclassed reigning champions China and 2008 silver medalists Japan to lead the way in qualifying at the Olympics on Saturday.
A series of errors and stumbles made China look vulnerable in the early qualifying session and by the time all their rivals had competed they were lying sixth.
After the third and final session, when Russia put on a strong show, the Americans led the 1996 Olympic champions by 2.747 points with hosts Britain 0.175 behind.
Consistent performances by Danell Leyva and John Orozco across the six apparatus gave the Americans, cheered on by enthusiastic, flag-waving fans at the North Greenwich Arena, the edge.
"I think it's going to be a historic team final," Leyva told reporters. "We've been telling the world for the longest time (that winning gold is possible) and now everyone is finally realising how much we believe in it and feel it in our hearts."
Germany, featuring twice world silver all-around medalist Philipp Boy who persevered despite hurting his ankle, qualified fourth with Japan, and below-par triple world champion Kohei Uchimura, fifth.
Scores are reset to zero in Monday's team final, for which the best eight teams qualified, so China, who have not been beaten since the 2004 Athens Olympics, still have a chance to preserve their reputation.
However, Saturday's showing gave cause for concern to a nation which won seven of the eight men's gymnastics titles on offer in Beijing four years ago.
With 2004 Olympic pommel horse champion Teng Haibin missing because of an arm injury, China tottered from one mistake to another.
Zhang Chenglong overbalanced on the pommel horse and somersaulted off, Guo Weiyang - Teng's stand-in - banged his head in a clumsy landing from a tumble on the floor and Zou Kai stumbled as he landed his vault.
"We should have beaten Britain but Teng's late withdrawal affected us and we did not perform as well as we should have," Chen Yibing, one of the 2008 team champions, told reporters via a translator.
"Guo came in as a substitute and he made quite a few mistakes because he has a lack of experience."
APPARATUS FINALISTS
The British team, basking in home advantage, were elated at their performance.
"It was just a dream competition," said Louis Smith who contributed a smooth pommel horse routine to earn 15.800, by far the highest mark of the day on the apparatus. "It is just unbelievable."
Smith had tears in his eyes after completing his routine on the apparatus that gave him a bronze medal in Beijing. Britain, the European champions, have not won an Olympic team medal since bronze in the 1912 Stockholm Games.
Saturday's qualifying also determined the 24 finalists for the all-around event and the final eight on each apparatus.
Leyva was the best all-round individual, 0.433 points ahead of Russian David Belyavskiy, with Germany's popular Fabian Hambuchen third. Beijing silver medalist Uchimura, who scored a low 12.466 on the pommel horse after a fall and a half-hearted dismount, qualified in ninth.
"It's definitely very big (to finish ahead of Uchimura)," Leyva said. "I'm very excited and I know for a fact that he's going to come back super strong."
China failed to get a man into next Wednesday's all-around final and Boy missed out, despite being 19th, as the higher-placed Hambuchen and Marcel Ngyuen claimed the two places each team is limited to.
Bulgaria's Jordan Jovtchev, competing in a record sixth Olympics at the age of 39, just made it into the rings final but Filip Ude, who became Croatia's first Olympic gymnastics medalist four years ago with silver on the pommel horse, went out after losing his grip and slipping off the apparatus.
Japanese brothers Yusuke and Kazuhito Tanaka will vie for medals in the parallel bars on August 7 after finishing top of the qualifiers while lone Dutch gymnast Epke Zonderland, twice a world silver medalist, led the way into the high bar final with a daring routine.
(Editing by Justin Palmer)
Olympics-Swimming-Phelps gets second chance on day two in London - Reuters
By Julian Linden
LONDON, July 28 (Reuters) - Michael Phelps will get another chance to win his first medal at the London Olympics and close in on another record when he competes in the 4x100 metres freestyle relay on Sunday.
The American needs to win three medals to surpass the overall record of 18, held by Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, but bombed out on his first race on Saturday when he finished fourth in the men's 400 individual medley.
The Americans are among the favourites for the men's relay although face a tough task winning gold against an Australian team that boasts the fastest two men in the world, including world champion James Magnusson.
The host-nation will get their opportunity to win their first medal in the pool when Rebecca Adlington defends her 400 freestyle title she won in Beijing, although she too faces stiff opposition for the gold.
The heats of both events will be held in the morning with the finals at night.
Sunday will also see the final of the men's 100 breaststroke and women's 100 butterfly with the fields already decided following Saturday's semi-finals.
Japan's Kosuke Kitajima has the opportunity to become the first male swimmer to win the same event at three Olympics when he booked his place in the breaststroke final.
Kitajima, who won the breaststroke double at Athens in 2004 and Beijing four years later, qualified sixth fastest overall with South Africa's Cameron van der Burgh setting the fastest time. Continued...
Shevchenko hangs up boots for politics - Football
Published: 28 Jul 2012 - 15:47:01
Ukraine's star striker Andriy Shevchenko on Saturday revealed he was joining a pro-business political party after announcing that he was quitting football for politics.
The talismanic player, who turned out for his final appearance for Ukraine when it hosted Euro 2012 last month, told his fans he was quitting all football after watching his side Dynamo Kiev's domestic clash with Goverla.
"Probably, I will shock all of you. My future will not be linked to football in any way... It will be linked to politics. I hope for your support," he said in a statement on the Dynamo Kiev website.
"It is certain, Dynamo Kiev is now my former club. This club, which I love with all my heart and I will always support," he added.
Shevchenko added later Saturday he had decided to join a pro-business party called Ukraine Forward! whose leader, Nataliya Korolevska, has broken away from the opposition party of jailed ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
"I want to fulfil myself in politics and share the experience I gained in Europe, do something for my country," Shevchenko said while visiting a children's summer school with Korolevska, according to a statement released by the party.
"I decided to join the team of Nataliya Korolevska because Ukraine Forward! is a party of the future, it is a party of young leaders," he said.
"In politics, I plan to support the social sector and sport. After all, my main slogan is a healthy mind in a healthy body," he said.
Korolevska thanked Shevchenko for his backing, saying he "made his choice for the politics of the future, politics of a new quality."
"I believe, together as a one team, a single force, we will make Ukraine move forward," she said.
Shevchenko first emerged in the 1990s at Dynamo Kiev under the great Ukrainian coach Valeriy Lobanovskiy. He collected the European footballer of the year award in 2004 during a seven-year spell with AC Milan.
After an often frustrating stint at Chelsea, he returned to Kiev for the last years of his career.
Ukraine Forward! is a new political force seen as a pro-business party. Korolevska is its only member of parliament and still formally represents Tymoshenko's bloc, but the party is hoping to win its first seats in October's parliamentary elections.
A hugely popular figure in Ukraine, Shevchenko's decision is a major coup for the nascent party.
The party has campaigned for Tymoshenko's release from jail, where she is serving a seven-year sentence for abuse of power despite Western outrage at what the EU says are politically motivated charges.
By going into politics, Shevchenko will be following in the footsteps of another Ukrainian sports star, the heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko.
Klitschko has founded his own political party with the aptly-chosen acronym UDAR (punch) and will be a serious contender in October's parliamentary elections in opposition to the Regions Party of President Viktor Yanukovych.
The trend is also being seen elsewhere in the former USSR. In Georgia, ex-football star Kakha Kaladze will run for parliament this autumn with the opposition coalition led by billionaire tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Shevchenko himself has previously flirted with politics although he has at times shown fluctuating political loyalties.
In the late 1990s, he and other teammates at Dynamo Kiev publicly backed the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine of then-president Leonid Kuchma, who ruled Ukraine from 1994 to 2005.
Later in 2005 Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-European leader who swept to power through the Orange Revolution that cancelled rigged polls, named him as an unsalaried advisor.
Related Dynamo Kyiv News
Frangilli's path to gold straight as an arrow - Reuters UK
(Reuters) - A dream came true, hearts were broken, a dynasty crumbled -- all on the fickle flights of arrows on Saturday.
Michele Frangilli's final shot earned Italy the Olympic archery team gold medal at Lord's Cricket Ground, denying the United States in the cruellest of fashions at the climax of a pulsating men's final.
The Americans, led by world number one Brady Ellison, had the gold within their grasp as Frangilli stepped to the line needing a perfect 10 to win.
With the wind swirling round the historic Lord's stadium and 4,000 fans holding their breath, the Italian rock took the pressure on his broad shoulders, let the seconds tick down, then loosed his arrow at the target 70 metres away.
A hush. A whirr. A thud. A roar.
"This is a dream come true. With the last arrow, hitting a 10, it was a dream," said Frangilli, who broke down in tears with the gold medal around his neck.
"I knew I had to score 10 .. There was the noise of the crowd and I felt the pressure so I tried to just empty my mind.
"The arrow flew, it flew straight, I saw it flying straight into the 10. My shot was clean."
Frangilli's team mates, Mauro Nespoli and Marco Galiazzo, stood transfixed as the final arrow flew to the target. They had missed out on the gold medal in 2008 after losing by two points to South Korea.
Galiazzo, who won the individual gold in Athens, said taking the team title had been a priority.
"The team gold is something we had been chasing for many years." he said. "We shot the best we could and here we are."
TEAM PRIDE
For the United States, winning the team silver represented a massive leap forward in their development under coaching guru Lee Ki-sik. The South Korean has turned Brady Ellison, Jake Kaminski and Jacob Wukie into world beaters.
Potentially at least.
They proved that in their semi-final victory over archery superpower South Korea, who set two world records in the ranking round on Friday and had won three consecutive team gold medals at the Beijing, Athens and Sydney Games.
"I'm very proud of our team ... with Jake and Wukie stepping up and shooting 10s, if I had shot 10 to back them up it would have swung the match," said Ellison.
"But everything happens for a reason and I'm really excited about the silver medal."
South Korea's defeat left Im Dong-hyun, Kim Bub-min and Oh Jin-hyek shellshocked, but they did their best to look happy with the bronze medal after beating Mexico in the playoff.
"I didn't do as well as expected against the United States," conceded Im, who set a world record in the 72 arrow ranking round on Friday.
"My condition was OK but somehow I couldn't get 10 points. I need to forget about it because I have the individual matches coming up."
Korea's stranglehold on the team event has not been matched in the individual archery competition, where no South Korean man has ever won the individual gold medal.
(Editing by)
Lyon win Champions Trophy in shoot-out - Football
Published: 28 Jul 2012 - 22:46:58
French Cup holders Lyon kicked off the new season by beating title-holders Montpellier on penalties to win the Champions Trophy at the Red Bull Arena here on Saturday.
Lyon came from behind twice in 90 minutes and, with no extra-time, they won 4-2 in the shoot-out, with Jimmy Briand scoring the decisive spot-kick.
It was a missed opportunity for Montpellier, who led twice courtesy of a John Utaka strike and a penalty from Argentine summer signing Emanuel Herrera, only for Lyon to hit back each time through Bafetimbi Gomis and then Briand.
OL missed their first kick in the shoot-out, with Gueida Fofana seeing his effort saved, but goalkeeper Hugo Lloris -- who is a transfer target of Tottenham Hotspur -- saved from Gaetan Charbonnier and Henri Bedimo to set Lyon on their way to a seventh Champions Trophy victory.
It was their triumph in last season's French Cup that handed them their place in this match, the traditional curtain-raiser to the French season, which was played at the home of Thierry Henry's New York Red Bulls in an attempt to promote French football on this side of the Atlantic.
But OL are not the force they once were, and Remi Garde's side were without skipper Lisandro Lopez because of a calf injury, while Swedish midfielder Kim Kallstrom left the camp on the eve of the game to complete a transfer to Spartak Moscow.
Lyon, then, were the underdogs even against a Montpellier side missing their two star turns from their title-winning season -- Younes Belhanda was suspended while Olivier Giroud has departed for Arsenal.
But their coach Rene Girard was able to hand debuts to summer signings Daniel Congre, Anthony Mounier and Herrera, and Montpellier started the stronger of the two sides on a humid afternoon.
They played with greater fluidity and attacking intent in the opening stages and were rewarded with the opening goal just before the half-hour mark when Utaka broke in from the left and got a favourable ricochet off Fofana before beating Lloris with a powerful drive from 12 yards.
Mounier, who started his career at Lyon but left to make his name at Nice, fired over soon after before Fofana flashed a warning shot just wide at the other end.
And Lyon drew level with barely a minute of the first half remaining when Gomis got in between Vitorino Hilton and Bedimo to head home a superb Yoann Gourcuff cross from wide on the left.
That goal proved that Lyon remain a danger going forward even without Lisandro, but their inability to keep the door shut at the back cost them dear last season and they found themselves trailing again not long after the restart.
Gomis was harshly penalised by the American referee when a Marco Estrada free-kick struck his arm inside the area as he jumped with the wall, and Herrera, brought in from Chilean side Union Espanola this summer, sent Lloris the wrong way from the spot.
That looked to be that, especially after Fofana fired just over from 20 yards from a Gourcuff cut-back, but then Alexandre Lacazette picked out an unmarked Briand, who volleyed home to make it 2-2 13 minutes from time.
Stung by that blow, Montpellier were then reduced to ten men when Estrada was sent off for a reckless challenge on young substitute Yassine Benzia, and they were lucky not to lose the game inside 90 minutes.
Lacazette somehow failed to hit the target with the goal gaping, and Briand hit the post with an acrobatic volleyed effort, but Lyon were ultimately not to be denied.
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