LONDON (Reuters) – Jamaica’s triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt was among six Beijing gold medallists shortlisted for the 2008 World Athlete of the Year awards on Monday, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) said.
Bolt, who set world records in winning the 100 metres, 200 metres and 4×100 metres relay, joined Cuba’s 110 metres hurdles champion Dayron Robles and Olympic long-distance double winner Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia in the men’s category.
Fellow Ethiopian 5,000 and 10,000 metres champion Tirunesh Dibaba, 800 metres gold medallist and Golden League winner Pamela Jelimo of Kenya and Russian pole vault champion and world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva were the three women chosen.
The finalists were chosen following a poll of internet fans and the IAAF Family consisting of IAAF officials, member federations, ambassadors, leading athletes and selected members of the international press.
The winners will be announced during the 2008 World Athletics Gala in Monaco on Nov. 23.
(Writing by Padraic Halpin; editing by Justin Palmer)
Ireland’s Sara Louise Treacy leads the pack in the
junior girls category of the Lotto CrossCup in Mol,
Belgium.
The build up to the 15th SPAR European Cross Country Championship to be held in Belgian capital Brussels on December 14 is reaching a crescendo. The local fans got a first glimpse of the keen competition on cards at the Belgian capital, during the run-up event Lotto CrossCup meeting in Mol, Belgium this weekend.
Belgian Almensch Belete set the pace winning the women’s race in23.04 and was closely followed by compatriot Veerle Dejaeghere in the runners-up position ahead of 2006 European U23 silver medallist Fionnualla Briton of Ireland who announced her intentions with a third place finish at 23.26. Fionnualla had finish seventh in the last edition of SPAR European Cross Country Championship in Toro Spain. There were further top Irish performances as Linda Byrne took fifth ahead of her team mate Aoife Byrne in seventh.
In the senior men’s category Belgians put in a brave performance to take six of the top 10 positions. Atelaw Yeshetela Bekele of the host nation finished second with 30.22 while Pieter Desmet finished third at 30.36. Compatriots Willem van Hoof and Krijn Van Koolwijk secured fifth and sixth positions respectively.
In the junior girls’ category, Ireland’s Sara Louise Treacy romped home at 15.03 and was followed by Natasha Doel from Great Britain who finished 15.08. Belgian Katrijn Vande Riviere finished third with a timing of 15.24.
While in the boy’s category top honours were shared by Belgian and German athletes. Jeroen D’Hoedt of Belgium bagged the top prize with 20.49 and was followed closely by Nick Goolab of Germany who finished 20.50. Belgium’s Soufiane Bouchikhi came third with 21.19.
SALES of guns in the US are on the rise as gun enthusiasts fear president-elect Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress will impose new restrictions on firearms.
In October, as Senator Obama appeared headed for victory, sales of guns jumped 15 per cent, with about 150,000 long guns sold for a total of 1.18 million firearms purchased, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which checks police records of gun buyers.
Although more recent figures are not yet available, the spike in sales of rifles, handguns and semi-automatics began in the spring and surged in October.
“Certainly the election has something to do with it, certainly in October it did. As it got closer and closer and it looked more and more like an Obama victory, the sales went skyrocketing in late October,” said Tony Aeschliman, spokesman for the National Shooting Sport Foundation.
In gun shops across the country, sales were brisk.
“They are afraid of gun control. The Second Amendment says legally by law we can have firearms. He’s going to attempt to take that right away from us,” said Jimmy, owner of the Republic Arms gun shop in Houston, Texas, referring to the president-elect.
At the Continental Arms gun shop in Baltimore, Maryland, the owner said it was clear Senator Obama’s electoral triumph was driving gun sales even if customers were not saying so openly.
“People are not really saying something, but I’m sure it does have something to do with Obama’s election, because he’s very anti-guns,” said Jay, whose store has had a sales increase in recent weeks.
During the election campaign, Senator Obama said he respected rights associated with the Second Amendment of the US Constitution – which gun advocates say allows them to own a firearm – but as a state politician in Illinois, he voted for several measures restricting sales of certain categories of firearms.
“The philosophy behind this is that people are legitimately concerned that under the Obama administration with a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, there will be an attempt to ban certain types of firearms,” including semi-automatic rifles, said Dave Workman, senior editor of Gun Week.
The last election of a Democratic president in 1992 sparked a similar gun-buying spree, said Mr Aeschliman.
“That same phenomenon had happened when (Bill) Clinton was first elected. There was a lot of panic buying because he was not perceived to be favourable to guns,” he said.
A rise in unemployment – the jobless rate hit 6.5 per cent, the highest in 14 years – could also help explain the surge in sales.
“One thing we do know is when unemployment starts to climb, hunters tend to hunt more. They have time on their hands and they can put meat in the freezer. That’s definitely a factor,” Mr Aeschliman said.
Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (AFP) – An aircraft crash on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania has claimed the lives of four tourists and left the pilot seriously injured.
The Kenyan-registered plane was flying over Africa’s highest peak, Kilimanjaro regional police commander Lucas Ngh’oboko said.
“We have yet to determine the nationalities of the dead, but they were whites and two of them were women.
“The aircraft has Kenyan registration numbers and so far we don’t know what it was doing in the area.”
Rescuers and wardens from the Kilimanjaro National Park Authority collected remains from the accident scene and took the injured pilot to a hospital in nearby Moshi.
Ngh’oboko said the six-seater Cessna 206 crashed near Kilimanjaro’s Mawenzi peak, 4 330 metres above sea level. At 5 963 metres, Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest mountain.
Police said Tanzanian civil aviation detectives were probing the cause of the accident and trying to establish the identities of the victims.
In June 2006, three American mountain climbers died when they were struck by a cascade of falling rocks and boulders dislodged by strong wind on Kilimanjaro.
The spectacular mountain, which is near Tanzania’s border with Kenya, attracts thousands of tourists a year.
Scientists have long warned that global warming has degraded the snow and glaciers on the mountain, immortalised in Ernest Hemingway’s 1938 short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro and later by a Hollywood film version of the title.
NEW DELHI: Deriba Merga of Ethiopia pipped Wilson Kipsang of Kenya by just one second to win the men’s race in the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon here on Sunday.
On a pleasant winter morning, Merga survived the pressure of a nerve-wracking contest from Kipsang throughout the race.
Merga, thus, set a new course record of 59:15 to win the lucrative purse of $25,000. Kipsang clocked 59:16 for the silver and $15,000, while another Kenyan Wilson Chebet registered a timing of 59:34 for the bronze and $10,000. Merga’s time also equalled Haile Gebrselassie’s mark for the season.
Up to 10km, the top three had an identical timing of 27.30, but by the 19.5km mark Merga, at 54:10, took a two-second lead over Kipsang. Chebet, separated from the leader by five seconds, looked like losing the battle for the top spot.
Merga, who narrowly missed out on a medal and finished fourth at the Beijing Olympics this year, was over the moon with his effort.
The women’s competition was equally thrilling with another Ethiopian Mergia Aselefech winning the title by one second. Aselefech timed a caree-best 68:17 for the gold after a neck-and-neck fight with compatriot Genet Getaneh, who clocked 68:18.
The third place went to Kenyan Peninah Arusei, the World championship silver winner last month, who finished with a time of 1:08:20.
Good show by Indians
The Indian athletes’ performance was also equally commendable. Sandeep Kumar impressed in the men’s section by clocking 1:04:53 and his friend Kashinath Aswale finished a second later. The Indian women’s race was shrouded in confusion as some chips got mixed up and there was an uncertainty over the winner. However, Kavita Raut defended her title with a much improved showing of 1:17:12.
The results: Men: 1. Deriba Merga (Eth) 59:15; 2. Wilson Kipsang (Ken) 59:16; 3. Wilson Chebet (Ken) 59:34;4. Regassa Tilahun (Eth) 1:00:28; 5. Tadesse Tola (Eth) 1:00:45; 6. Dieudonne Disi (Rwa) 1:00:47; 7. Kiplimo Kimutai (Ken) 1:00:58; 8. Joseph Maregu (Ken) 1:01:03; 9. Eshetu Wondimu (Eth) 1:01:04; 10. William Chebon (Ken) 1:01:17.
K -v- Refugee Appeals Tribunal and Anor: High Court Judgment was delivered by Mr Justice McCarthy on July 31st 2008
Judgment
An asylum seeker from Ethiopia failed in his application to quash the decision of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, upholding a decision of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, to deny him {www:refugee} status on the grounds that he did not face persecution in his country of origin.
Background
The applicant’s father was a member of the Oromo Liberation Front and had been arrested and imprisoned in Ethiopia. The applicant and his brother were also detained by Ethiopian police and threatened that they would share their father’s fate. Subsequently the applicant fled the country and reached Ireland, where he applied for asylum.
This was refused by the Refugee Applications Commissioner, whose decision was appealed to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. The tribunal member upheld the original decision, referring, among other things, to the credibility of the applicant in relation to a number of matters, including his account of his and his brother’s arrest and release, doubts about his account of how he left Ethiopia, as the tribunal member stated he knew the border area with neighbouring Kenya did not have good roads, and the absence of any evidence that he would be persecuted if he returned.
In his application to the High Court, the applicant said the tribunal had taken irrelevant material into account when making his decision and added that he had given entirely consistent accounts of his arrest, torture and release after three days.
He said there was no evidence adduced of the state of the roads in the area and the tribunal member had regard to irrelevant material; the tribunal {www:member} invoked his personal knowledge of the area in impugning the applicant’s credibility as to how he fled the country, stating that the only international airport in Kenya was in Nairobi, 1,000 miles away, when there is an international airport in Mombasa from which the applicant could have flown.
He also said the tribunal failed to take into account the fact that the applicant only knew the Amharic language in questioning his ignorance of his itinerary; the conclusion that he did not face any threat of persecution did not take into account relevant material and the implications for him of his father’s arrest when he was a child, depriving him and his brother of his only parent and breached his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Decision
Mr Justice McCarthy said it was submitted that a number of significant errors in the assessment of credibility arose, in particular manifest errors of fact. After reviewing the case law on the subject, he said that the decision must be read and taken as a whole.
Referring to the account the applicant gave of his arrest and release, he said the decision-maker was entitled to draw to his attention what he considered to be inconsistencies and to be influenced by what he conceived to be evasion or illegitimate denial.
While the tribunal member was {www:wrong} about the airport, it was one of a number of issues which influenced him on the credibility of the applicant and was severable from the others.
However, if he was wrong on this, he said that want of credibility was not the basis for the tribunal member’s conclusion, quoting from the decision: “I am not satisfied that the . . . inconsistencies are material and/or significant to his claim for asylum.”
Therefore the decision could not be impugned on any one of these grounds.
This left the assertion by the applicant that he risked being killed if returned to Ethiopia. Mr Justice McCarthy pointed out that the test was a forward-looking, not a backward-looking one.
“It seems to me that of most significance is the fact that, accepting the applicant’s version of events, one has, at most, a once-off incident and that element of persistent or constant wrong-doing does not exist.”
He said that reference had been made to the legitimacy of the actions of the Ethiopian police.
“The country of origin information indicates that the Oromo Liberation Front . . . is an organisation in armed opposition to the government which, inter alia, campaigns for boycotts of elections.” However, the tribunal did not address this issue and he did not consider it in adjudicating on the matter.
The full judgment is on www.courts.ie
Mel Christle SC and Patricia Brazil, instructed by Colm Stanley, appeared for the applicant; Anthony Moore, instructed by the Chief State Solicitor, appeared for the respondent.
