Australia Sport: Drugs And Crime 'Rife'

The use of performance enhancing drugs is "widespread" among professional and amateur athletes in Australia, according to a government report.

The report was the result of a one-year probe by Australia's leading criminal intelligence organisation into the use of drugs, both performance enhancing and recreational, as well as the association of organised crime with the trade.

"The findings are shocking and they will disgust Australian sports fans," home affairs minister Jason Clare said at a news conference to announce the release of the report.

"(It) has found the use of substances, including peptides, hormones and illicit drugs, is widespread amongst professional athletes.

"We are talking about multiple athletes across a number of codes. We're talking about a number of teams.

"The findings indicate the drugs are being facilitated by sports scientists, coaches, support staff as well as doctors and pharmacists.

"In some cases sports scientists and others are orchestrating the doping of entire teams. In some case players are being administered substances which have not yet been approved for human use."

The report said that organised crime was involved in the distribution of the drugs, which exposes players to the possibility of being co-opted into match-fixing, Mr Clare added.

One such case had been identified and was being investigated, he said, although he did not identify which code was involved.

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Sochi Winter Olympics: 'Russia Will Be Ready'

By Katie Stallard, Moscow Correspondent

Russia's president has promised the country's new Winter Olympics facilities will be ready in time for the opening of the games in a year's time.

Inspecting the mountain cluster of venues for the Sochi 2014 Games, Vladimir Putin said: "Overall, work is going according to plan. I have no doubt that all the sites will be ready on time and with the appropriate quality."

To the disappointment of the waiting media, the leader performed no trademark action man stunts in the Caucasus mountains - President Putin opting instead for a purposeful walk, dressed in aviator shades and a fur-collared jacket, as he met waiting officials for progress reports.

The games' apparently inexorably spiralling budget has reached an estimated $50bn (£32bn), making it the most expensive Olympics in history - surpassing even the Beijing games - and more than five times the original projected cost.

Construction is under way on the media village for the games

Organisers have stressed that around half of this will come from private investment, but critics have pointed out that much of the so-called private funding will come from state-owned, or at least state-controlled, companies.

And President Putin warned officials against allowing corruption to push costs even higher.

"The main thing is that no-one steals anything, so there are no unexplained increases in costs," he was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.

He later sacked a senior Russian Olympic Committee official over delays to the completion of the ski jumping complex.

Russian Olympics Committee deputy chief Akhmed Bilalov was fired after Putin asked who was responsible for the delay in the completion of the complex from 2011 to July this year.

President Putin is given a tour of the games' Alpine Centre in Rosa Khutor

"The decision about the sacking has been taken," Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told reporters.

At a similar latitude to Nice in the south of France, Sochi 2014 will be the world's first sub-tropical Winter Olympics and questions have been raised about its suitability as a venue.

The average February temperature at the coastal cluster on the Black Sea is 12C (53.6F) and there has been very little snow at the mountain venues for most of the last month.

But officials insist they have failsafe contingency plans, with more than 400 artificial snow-making machines imported from Finland to compensate for any natural deficit, and huge reservoirs of snow to be built up in the next 12 months to ensure sufficient coverage during the games.

The Rus-ski Gorki ski-jump center at the Krasnaya Polyana resort

Travelling to the mountain cluster currently involves a two-hour bus journey up a long and steeply-winding road, but they are in the process of building a new combined road and rail link, which they promise will whisk spectators from coast to snow in 30 minutes.

Sochi residents stuck in the apparently constant traffic jams associated with the overhaul of the city's infrastructure are assured they will soon have access to 367 new roads and bridges, along with new rail and sea terminals and an expanded airport.

Visiting journalists are offered door-to-door bus tours of the city's Olympic construction sites, in an apparent effort to show all of Sochi's achievements in the best possible light.

Sky News joined a tour of the coastal cluster in what has traditionally been known as a balmy beach resort.

It is a surreal trundle past the new Bolshoi Ice Dome through the rubble of what was once the summer playground of the soviet elite.

All of the venues here are being constructed from scratch in what is now a day-and-night race against the clock to get the Olympic park finished on time and without going too much further over budget.

Crumbling: The owners of these houses say Olympic contractors are to blame

But there is another side to this city that they are much less keen to show off.

On a hill overlooking the Olympic park we found a street of houses that appear to be sliding down the hill towards he new development.

The owners cannot prove the link definitively, but they say the houses only started to move after the contractors began dumping Olympic construction waste in the forest above them.

Tatiana Skyba showed Sky News around the ruins of the house she says she lived in for 18 years before, one night, it began to collapse around her.

This man said his home has sunk by one storey

She told us: "At first we thought there must have been an earthquake, one of the walls crumbled, of course we were really scared because we thought the earth was moving and we didn't know where to go, but then in the morning we saw that there was only this narrow strip of landslide.

"All our houses are crumbling towards each other, and slowly moving downwards, by the time the Olympics starts we will have slid all the way to the Ice Dome."

Her next-door neighbour showed us his house, which appears to be sinking - he says it has dropped by one full storey.

Inside there is an overwhelming smell of damp and they are attempting to pump out the water that is leaking in through holes in the walls, but they have already had to abandon what was their kitchen, and the situation seems to be getting worse.

Anaida Kaladgan: 'I want to scream and scream and scream'

His wife, Anaida Kaladgan, told us: "Sometimes I want to scream and scream and scream, maybe God will help us? But it doesn't help - I am sorry for my tears but I don't know anything now but tears and tears and tears.

"My children and grandchildren do not have a roof over their heads."

She showed us where her five-day-old granddaughter was sleeping upstairs and explained that they are trying to heat the room with a fan so she will not suffer from the damp. But she said her carpets are wet and her grandchildren wear wellies indoors.

"What can we do?" she asks. "I wish someone would help us, so we could live like humans and not like pigs. We live like pigs."

She said she had repeatedly tried to appeal to officials but had got nowhere.

"I will write another letter," she told us.

Sky News raised these cases directly with the city's mayor, but he said he had not heard of the street.

Some parts of Sochi's Olympic dream, it seems, are more visible than others.

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China: Baby Crushed By Van In 'One Child' Row

By Mark Stone, China Correspondent

A one-year-old boy has died after being crushed by a Chinese government vehicle during a row over the country's one-child policy.

Two government workers have been arrested following the incident near the city of Wenzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province.

According to local media reports, a dozen or so officials had arrived at the home of Chen Liandi and his wife Li Yuhong to collect fines after they had exceeded the one-child policy.

A tussle is said to have broken out during which the baby boy was dropped. The details of how he ended up underneath the van are not clear.

The couple had three children. In urban areas, couples are restricted to having one child.

"We were required to pay 30,000 to 40,000 yuan (£3,500) otherwise they would have detained us," Mr Chen is quoted as saying according to the state news agency Xinhua.

Confrontation: Crowds gather outside local Communist Party offices

The incident sparked an angry confrontation with police outside the local Communist Party offices.

Pictures posted on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, appear to show the confrontation, though Sky News has been unable to contact any of the account holders who posted the pictures.

One photo shows the child's father with a ripped jacket. The caption underneath claims that his clothes were torn in the scuffle with the "population enforcement officials".

According to the Xinhua news agency, the driver of the vehicle and a local Communist Party official have been arrested.

China has enforced a one-child policy for three decades in an effort to control its population. The Communist Party has faced increasing calls to revise or scrap the strict rules.

With incidents like this and reports of forced abortions, the policy has caused individual tragedy for some couples.

Nationally, a long-term crisis threatens with the country's population getting older and single children forced to look after ageing parents alone.

Through pressure, some regulations have been relaxed. Second children are permitted to couples living in rural areas and to couples who are themselves both only children.

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Iran: Syria's Assad Regime Ready To Negotiate

Syria's government is ready to sit down with the opposition to bring a two-year uprising against the regime to an end, Iran's foreign minister believes.

Ali Akbar Salehi told the Egyptian state news agency MENA: "I think that the Syrian government is ready to negotiate with the opposition."

Opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib has offered to talk to Syria's rulers about trying to end the conflict - subject to conditions including the release of 160,000 detainees.

But President Bashar al Assad has not yet commented on the offer and a key opposing faction flatly rejected the initiative.

The Syrian National Council, the main component of the opposition, has dismissed the possibility of any negotiations.

It said it was committed to ousting the Assad regime, rejecting dialogue with it, and protecting the revolution.

But Mr Alkhatib, who called on Mr Assad to agree to let Vice President Faruq al Sharaa open peace talks with his coalition, appealed for the opposition to "declare our willingness to negotiate" the regime's departure.

However, he also set a deadline of Sunday for the government to release all women detainees, otherwise he would regard his offer of dialogue as rejected by the president.

The Assad regime has signalled it believes it can still break the military stalemate, as its forces relentlessly pounded rebel lines around Damascus.

Fighting between rebels and the regime continues

"The army has launched a co-ordinated all-out offensive on all of the areas surrounding the capital," a Syrian security official said.

"All entries to Damascus have been sealed," he added.

Artillery and air strikes have prevented rebels entrenched to the east from advancing despite their capture of army fortifications, opposition activists said.

"We have moved the battle to Jobar," said Captain Islam Alloush of the rebel Islam Brigade. The district links rebel strongholds in the suburbs with the central Abbasid Square.

"The heaviest fighting is taking place in Jobar because it is the key to the heart of Damascus," he added.

Shia Iran is Mr Assad's main backer in the region, and has disagreed with mostly Sunni-led Arab states that have called for him to step down.

Meanwhile, the presidents of Iran, Turkey and Egypt held a meeting on the sidelines of an Islamic summit in Cairo to discuss the crisis.

"There was a three-way summit of Egypt, Turkey and Iran about the crisis and we look forward to it leading to the resolution of this crisis. We are optimistic," Mr Salehi said.

He said Iran had welcomed Mr Alkhatib's remarks. "In the end, the government and the opposition must sit together to negotiate," he said.

The UN has said more than 60,000 people have died in violence since the uprising started in March 2011.

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Iran Airs 'Footage' From Captured US Drone

Iran's state television has broadcast footage allegedly extracted from the advanced CIA spy drone captured in 2011.

The video aired late on Wednesday shows an aerial view of an airport and a city, said to be a US drone base and Kandahar in Afghanistan.

The TV also showed images purported to be the Sentinel landing at a base in eastern Iran, but it was unclear if that footage was the moment of the drone's seizure.

The chief of the Revolutionary Guard's airspace division, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that only after capturing the drone, did Iran realise it "belongs to the CIA".

A US ScanEagle Iran claims it seized last December

"We were able to definitively access the data of the drone, once we brought it down," he said.

Iran has long claimed it managed to reverse-engineer the RQ-170 Sentinel, seized in December 2011 after it entered Iranian airspace from its eastern border with Afghanistan.

It claims it is capable of launching its own production line for the unmanned aircraft.

After initially saying only that a drone had been lost near the Afghan-Iran border, American officials eventually confirmed the Sentinel had been monitoring Iran's military and nuclear facilities.

Washington asked for it back but Iran refused, and instead released photos of Iranian officials studying the aircraft.

Iran has accused the US of stepping up its espionage activities as part of intensified Western efforts to force Tehran to abandon its uranium enrichment programme.

The US and its allies suspect Iran may be trying to develop atomic weapons, which Tehran denies.

In an attempt to embarrass Washington, Iran has claimed to have captured several American drones, most recently in December last year, when Tehran said it seized a Boeing-designed ScanEagle drone. 

US officials said there was no evidence that the latest claims were true.

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Japan-Russia Air Space Row: Jets Scrambled

By Lisa Holland, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Japanese combat jets have been scrambled amid claims Russia invaded the country's air space.

Japan says two Russian fighter jets briefly entered its skies above the northern island of Hokkaido, something Russia denies.

If true, it would be the first such intrusion in five years.

Russia has been holding military manoeuvres around the islands this week.

However, it is no coincidence that the political dispute comes on what the Japanese call 'Northern Territories Day', when rallies are traditionally held calling for the return of disputed islands off Hokkaido.

The former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori is expected to visit Moscow later this month to discuss territorial issues.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev landed on the remote island chain in July prompting protests in Tokyo.

His trip to the islands - known as the southern Kuriles in Russia but as the Northern Territories in Japan - prompted complaints from Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Unlike Japan's dispute with China over islands in the East China Sea, which are rich in maritime oil and gas reserves, the feud with Russia has more to do with the legacy of World War Two.

Soviet soldiers seized the islands at the end of the war and the territorial dispute has soured diplomatic relations ever since.

"Flights of military aircraft are ... carried out in strict accordance with the international rules governing air space and do not violate the border of other states," Colonel Alexander Gordeyev, a Russian Defency Ministry spokesman, said of his country's military manoeuvres this week.

"All flights by the air forces in the region are strictly regulated by the joint command and are carried out under the supervision of air traffic control," he told the Interfax news agency.

Tensions are already high in the region between Japan and China.

Japan claims a Chinese frigate has directed radar used to launch weapons at one of its destroyers in waters near the islands, which are referred to as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

:: Follow Lisa on Twitter

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Tunisia: Belaid Assassination Sparks Clashes

Protesters have clashed with police in Tunisia as tension mounts following the assassination of a prominent opposition leader.

Petrol bombs were hurled by demonstrators in the central town of Gafsa, with officers there and in capital city Tunis reportedly using tear gas against those gathered.

The skirmishes in Gafsa, have come as protesters observed a symbolic funeral for Chokri Belaid, the leftist opposition leader killed on Wednesday.

Police fire tear gas at demonstrators in Tunis

The demonstration, in Tunisia's volatile central mining region was organised by the Popular Front, an alliance of leftist parties to which Mr Belaid belonged.

It was the first unrest reported in Tunisia on Thursday, after violence the day before left one policeman dead in Tunis and saw protesters ransack and set fire to offices of the ruling Islamist Ennahda party in a number of towns, including Gafsa.

The phosphate producing region has a history of unrest, with an uprising against the regime of ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2008 brutally suppressed - but has been held up by some as the birthplace of the so-called Arab Spring.

Khalfaoui Belaid's family mourn his death

Meanwhile, around 300 people marched down Habib Bourguiba Avenue in central Tunis calling for regime change.

"The people want the fall of the regime," chanted the protesters as they headed towards the interior ministry.

Police used loudspeakers to urge the protesters to remain peaceful and not throw stones, but later deployed tear gas.

Shops had reopened in the centre of the city following Wednesday's clashes, but many of them kept their shutters down to save their windows from being smashed.

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Police Officer Killed In Fired Cop Manhunt

A disgruntled former Los Angeles cop is being hunted over the fatal shooting of a police officer and the separate murder of a newly-engaged couple.

The LAPD says Christopher Dorner is suspected of involvement in an overnight ambush in nearby Riverside that killed one officer and critically wounded another.  

An earlier shooting in Corona involved two LAPD officers working a security detail. One officer was grazed.

The Riverside officers shot overnight were not actively looking for Dorner.

"We're asking our officers to be extraordinarily cautious just as we're asking the public to be extraordinarily cautious with this guy. He's already demonstrated he has a propensity for shooting innocent people," Cmdr Andrew Smith said.

Dorner was already the prime suspect in the killings of Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence, who were found shot dead in their car in Irvine in California on Sunday night.

The 33-year-old implicated himself in a multi-page document that had threatened more violence, police have warned.

Monica Quan

"I know I will be villified (sic) by the LAPD and the media," he wrote.

"Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name."

Police said Dorner - a US Navy reservist - was believed to be "armed and dangerous".

He may be driving a blue 2005 Nissan Titan pickup truck.

A badge and identification belonging to Dorner have been found near San Diego airport.

Police said the items were turned in at 2.27am on Thursday.

His last known address was in La Palma in northern Orange County near Fullerton.

Dorner was with the department from 2005 until 2008, when he was fired.

He was found to have made false statements about a colleague's alleged mistreatment of a suspect. 

Ms Quan, 28, was an assistant women's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton.

Her father is a former LAPD captain who represented Dorner in front of the police inquiry board that dismissed him.

Mr Lawrence, 27, was a public safety officer at the University of Southern California.

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Alaska Serial Killer Keyes' Chilling Poetry

Newly-released blood-stained notes recovered from serial killer Israel Keyes' Alaskan prison cell contain chilling poetry about his victims and superficiality in American society.

But the rambling tracts found under the 34-year-old's body contain no specific details about his crimes, or the names of additional victims.

Keyes, suspected of murdering 18-year-old Anchorage barista Samantha Koenig and several other people across the US, slit his wrists and strangled himself with a bedsheet in jail in December.

His poetry refers to a person under his control, the person's obvious fear, and inevitable doom.

"You are my love at first sight, and though you're scared to be near me, my words penetrate your thought now in an intimate prelude," he wrote.

"Your face framed in dark curls like a portrait, the sun shone through highlights of red. What color I wonder, and how straight will it turn plastered back with the sweat of your blood.

"Your wet lips were a promise of a secret unspoken, nervous laugh as it burst like a pulse of blood from your throat. There will be no more laughter here."

The yellow legal pad was at first too bloody to read, so it was sent to an FBI laboratory in Virginia and restored.

Agents determined Keyes left behind no code or hidden message in his writings - but the first two pages make reference to his hatred for US consumerism.

"Land of the free, home of the lie, land of the scheme, Americanize! Consume what you don't need, stars you idolize, pursue what you adore it is a dream, then its American die," Keyes wrote.

CCTV of Samantha Koenig's abduction by Keyes

Miss Koenig was abducted at gunpoint from a coffee stand last February, sparking a massive police hunt.

Keyes was arrested in March in Lufkin, Texas, after using her debit card. Her dismembered body was eventually fished out of an Alaskan lake.

Before he died - and before he could be tried - Keyes confessed to the killings of at least seven more people.

The FBI is working closely with state and local law enforcement agencies to identify other victims.

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South Africa Rape And Murder Shocks Country

The rape and murder of a teenage girl in South Africa has "outraged" the nation, the country's president has said.

Anine Booysen was found at a building site in the town of Bredasdorp, 130km (80 miles) east of Cape Town, and died later in hospital.

Her body had been cut open, exposing her internal organs.

Police are investigating whether the 17-year-old, who was reportedly lured away from her friends by a group of men, was gang-raped.

Officers have arrested two men aged 22 and 21, both of whom are expected to appear in court on charges of rape and murder. The offences carry a mandatory life sentence.

In a statement, President Jacob Zuma said: "The whole nation is outraged at this extreme violation and destruction of a young human life.

"This act is shocking, cruel and most inhumane. It has no place in our country.

"We must never allow ourselves to get used to these acts of base criminality to our women and children."

The high rate of sexual crimes in South Africa means offences are rarely highlighted.

According to official statistics, 65,000 offences were committed last year, although police estimate that only one in 36 rape cases is reported.

Studies have found that a quarter of South African men admitted raping a woman or a girl.

Patrick Craven, a spokesman for the Congress of South African Trade Unions, called for protests following the recent attack.

"When a very similar incident occurred in India recently, there was a massive outbreak of protest and mass demonstrations in the streets," he said.

"We must show the world that South Africans are no less angry at such crimes and make an equally loud statement of disgust."

In December the death of a 23-year-old student who was gang-raped on a New Delhi bus triggered huge protests against female violence in India.

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