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Fifa Report ‘Erroneous’, Says Lawyer Who Investigated Corruption Claims

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Fifa’s report into allegations of corruption during the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups has been questioned – by the man who investigated claims of wrongdoing.

Michael Garcia, who conducted a two-year inquiry, said the report “contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations”.

Simon Johnson, who led England’s 2018 bid team, described the twist in the saga as “farcical”.Fifa

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Speaking to BBC sports editor Dan Roan, he added: “Before that statement by Mr Garcia, I was saying that it’s very difficult to have confidence in the conclusions of Mr Eckert’s report and that it looked like a politically motivated whitewash.

“Now that I have seen Mr Garcia’s statement, I am absolutely convinced that the report is a politically motivated whitewash.”

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Garcia’s statement will embarrass Fifa and raise concerns about the work of Hans-Joachim Eckert.

Fifa’s independent ethics adjudicator was responsible for drawing up the report that was published by Fifa at 0900 GMT on Thursday.

Eckert based his findings on the work of Garcia, who had been appointed by Fifa to conduct an independent investigation into claims of corruption.

The report cleared World Cup hosts Russia and Qatar of wrongdoing.

It also accused the English Football Association of flouting bid rules.

But Garcia’s statement, issued less than four hours after the report was published, has reopened the debate about the validity of the bidding process for both the 2018 and 2022 competitions.

But Garcia, a former United States federal prosecutor, says Eckert, a German judge, has erred and plans to appeal, a move that Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke described as “sad”.

Fifa had hoped Eckert’s report would bring closure to what has been a damaging episode, but there are now calls for Garcia’s own report, which runs into hundreds of pages, to be published in full.

“Fifa has no choice but to publish Michael Garcia’s report in full if it expects anyone to believe their claims that there has been no cover-up over allegations of corruption in the World Cup bidding process,” said British MP Clive Efford, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Sport.

Another British MP, Damien Collins, had already labelled Eckert’s report “a whitewash” before Garcia’s statement was issued.

Collins has campaigned for Fifa reform and in 2011 used Parliamentary privilege to allege that bribes helped secure Qatar the 2022 tournament.

He said those allegations remained unanswered.

“It is a whitewash as it is an attempt to con people that there has been a full and independent investigation when there has not been,” he said.

“The result is that allegations of bribery and serious wrongdoing remain unanswered and they are still suppressing the full report.”

Following the publication of Eckert’s report, Britain’s Fifa vice-president Jim Boyce said it was now time to move on.

However, his stance changed after Garcia’s statement.

“In view of the fact Michael Garcia has now stated he is not happy with the findings and is to appeal, I await with interest to see what further disclosures will be made,” said Boyce.

“I have always said as much of the report as it is legally possible to publish should be made public.”

Qatar’s bid team has always denied allegations of corruption.

The decision to award the 2022 World Cup to the Gulf state was a big surprise, given Fifa’s own technical team warned that summer temperatures were too high for players.

As for Russia, Alexey Sorokin, the chief of its 2018 World Cup organising committee, said the country had nothing to hide.

“We were always confident that there could be nothing which would come out from this investigation,” Sorokin told Sky Sports News.

“It’s something Fifa deemed important to do. It was done, we participated, we complied. What more can we do?”

Following the publication of the report, the English FA rejected the criticism levelled at it, insisting it had “conducted a transparent bid”.

It was accused of trying to “curry favour” with former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, who quit his role in 2011 amid bribery allegations, and of damaging Fifa’s image.

An FA statement read: “We do not accept any criticism regarding the integrity of England’s bid or any of the individuals involved.”

Lord Triesman, a former FA chairman, was also criticised by Eckert’s report for failing to co-operate with the inquiry.

However, Triesman claimed he was advised not to by his own legal team and also hit back at the report’s findings, although he said the criticism of the FA bid was both “legitimate” and “embarrassing”.

“I think that the report is extraordinary,” he told BBC Sport. “It reflects the fact that, in Fifa, there is a great dislike of England.

“But the crucial thing here is that the evidence is never really going to be produced in a way it would be in a proper court of law.

“For those reasons, who did what and how badly they behaved is never going to be that clear.”

Current FA chairman Greg Dyke also registered his unhappiness with Fifa’s report, claiming it left unanswered questions.

“If you read that report, it says all the bids were assessed,” said Dyke. “The one that was the highest risk was Qatar and they won.”

Asked if the FA had damaged the image of football’s world governing body, Dyke said: “I think it’s quite hard to damage the image of Fifa.”

Andy Warhol’s Elvis Triptych Sells For $81.9m

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Andy Warhol's Elvis Triptych Sells For $81.9m

Andy Warhol’s Triple Elvis has sold for $81.9m (£51.9m) at an auction of post-war and contemporary art in New York.

The 1963 work, which used ink and silver paint to depict the music icon as a gun-toting cowboy, was sold to an anonymous European telephone bidder.

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The pop artist’s quadruple portrayal of actor Marlon Brando was also auctioned for almost $70m (£44.3m).

Christie’s said the auction commanded a total of $852.9m (£540m), breaking its record for an sale of art of its kind.

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Two iconic works by Andy Warhol fetched the highest prices

Warhol’s two large portraits had been acquired by a German casino house in the 1970s.

The Presley image was one of 22 versions made by Warhol, while the Brando artwork – which repeats the same image four times – was one of only two, which were made in 1967.

Meanwhile, lots by Cy Twombly and Willem de Kooning reached world record prices for those artists.

Andy Warhol
Jeff Koons’ giant Balloon Monkey (Orange) was on display outside Christie’s New York headquarters

De Kooning’s life-size Clamdigger from 1972 stood at the entrance to his Long Island studio for four decades and sold for $29.2m (£18.5m).

An untitled 1970 painting from Cy Twombly’s Blackboard series fetched $69.9m (£44.3m), more than tripling his previous record.

An outsized sculpture of a monkey by Jeff Koons was another auction highlight, being snapped up for $25.9m (£16.4m).

But Balloon Monkey (Orange) failed to match the $58.4m (£37m) price paid for Balloon Dog (Orange) last year, which earned Koons the title of the most expensive living artist.

Christie’s chief executive officer Stephen Murphy said the auction was “a moment in art history”.

He added that its success proved that “enjoying works of art has become a universal pursuit in our time”.

Taylor Swift’s Record Label Rejects Spotify Figures

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Taylor Swift’s record label has denied Spotify’s claims that the singer was “on track” to make $6m (£3.8m) a year from the music streaming service.

In fact, Swift earned $496,044 (£317,000) in the past 12 months for streams of her songs in the US, Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta said.

Borchetta told Time magazine his label had made more from video streaming site Vevo than from Spotify.

Spotify hit back, saying Swift’s global earnings were closer to $2m (£1.2m).

“The more we grow, the more we pay artists, and we’re growing like crazy,” Spotify’s global head of communications Jonathan Prince said.

The argument between Swift and Spotify has escalated since she pulled her back catalogue from the service, just as her new album 1989 hit the charts.

“I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music,” she told Yahoo Music.

“I just don’t agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free.”

Taylor SwiftDaniel Ek pitches Spotify as a more lucrative alternative to piracy

On Tuesday, Spotify’s chief executive defended its business model, saying it had paid $2bn (£1.2bn) to the music industry to date.

“Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it,” Ek wrote in a blog.

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He argued that Spotify protected artists against illegal downloading, writing: “Piracy doesn’t pay artists a penny – nothing, zilch, zero.

“And sure enough, if you looked at the top spot on the Pirate Bay last week, there was 1989.”

He added: “At our current size, payouts for a top artist like Taylor Swift (before she pulled her catalogue) are on track to exceed $6m a year, and that’s only growing – we expect that number to double again in a year.”

But Borchetta refuted those figures, saying the decision to remove Swift’s music from the service was making a larger point.

“The facts show that the music industry was much better off before Spotify hit these shores,” he told Time.

“Don’t forget this is for the most successful artist in music today. What about the rest of the artists out there struggling to make a career? Over the last year, what Spotify has paid is the equivalent of less than 50,000 albums sold.”

Swift’s decision may be partly responsible for her stellar record sales in the US, where 1989 has been number one for the last two weeks, shifting 1.68 million copies.

The record’s first-week sales of 1.28 million were the highest for a single week since 2002, when Eminem’s The Eminem Show sold 1.32 million.

Swift also became the only act to have three albums to have sold more than a million copies in a single week, after Red in 2012 (1.21 million) and Speak Now in 2010 (1.05 million).

The album also went to number one in the UK, selling 90,000 copies.

The pop star is not the first artist to tussle with Spotify. Last year, Thom Yorke removed his solo recordings from the service in protest at its payouts.

But the altercation with Swift comes at a sensitive time for the Swedish company, with Google having just unveiled a rival YouTube subscription service that allows users to stream ad-free music videos and download them for offline use.

Mali steps up border controls after Ebola case arrives from Guinea

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Mali said it was reinforcing health controls at border posts but has no plans to close its frontiers after a man with Ebola arrived from Guinea and infected others including a nurse who has died of the virus.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta also urged the World Health Organisation (WHO) and health services in Mali and neighbouring states to set up a permanent information exchange to disseminate information about public health and hygiene.Ebola

The worst outbreak of the virus on record has claimed at least 5,160 lives in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and has led to a global watch for cases outside the region. Mali shares an 800 km (500 mile) border with Guinea.

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“The president of the republic has asked the prime minister to urgently look at the entire system put in place to fight Ebola and to strengthen health controls at the different frontier posts,” a government statement said late on Wednesday.

The nurse’s death on Tuesday prompted the quarantine of more than 90 people including U.N. peacekeepers. In its first case, a two-old-girl infected with Ebola in Guinea arrived in Mali and died last month.

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Mali must now trace others who had contact with the nurse and three others infected, just as an initial group of people linked to the girl completed their 21-day quarantine on Tuesday. Ebola’s maximum incubation period is 21 days.

Senior health ministry official Ousmane Doumbia told journalists the government was keeping borders open in line with WHO guidelines.

The man, a Muslim imam from the border town of Kouremale, was never tested for Ebola. In a series of rites that may have exposed many mourners to the deadly virus, his highly contagious body was washed in a Bamako mosque and returned to Guinea for burial without precautions against Ebola.

The WHO said there were now four confirmed and probable Ebola deaths in Mali, adding that one was a person who visited the imam in hospital. A doctor at the Pasteur Clinic where the nurse worked is also suspected of having contracted Ebola.

 

Oil Below $80 Hits Rouble, Naira; Politics Weighs on Ukraine

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Peak Oil Demand Forecasts Turn Sour As Demand Keeps Growing

A renewed downward lurch in oil prices put emerging market commodity currencies under more pressure on Thursday, with Russia’s rouble facing additional headwinds from a flare-up in tensions with Ukraine. As Brent crude dropped through $80 and Ukraine deployed troops amid fears of a new separatist offensive in the country’s east, the rouble sank more than 1.5 percent against the dollar. “There is a risk of oil prices dropping further and the geopolitical risk is making the market demand a premium (on Russian assets),” said Tatiana Orlova, senior Russia economist at RBS. Ukraine’s hryvnia is also near record lows, with the central bank raising interest rates by 150 basis points to 14 percent on Wednesday in defence of the currency. The hryvnia rose marginally at the central bank’s auction on Thursday to 15.54 per dollar.oil prices, central bank

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Ukrainian debt insurance costs are just off five-year highs hit on Wednesday, with five-year credit-default-swaps at 1,470 basis points, according to financial data provider Markit. “The central bank is trying to use all possible tools to stem the hryvnia depreciation but… at the end of the day it’s down to the lack of hard currency receipts. (Investment) has dropped and regions affected by hostilities are not exporting in the same volume,” Orlova said. One Kiev-based trader said there was no hard currency on the market at all and bank clients were clamouring for dollars. “You can’t really call this a market.

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There is at best 1-2 banks that are able to sell dollars,” he said. Among commodity currencies, South Africa’s rand weakened against the dollar as investors braced for data expected to show falling output in the mining sector. Nigeria’s naira fell hard for a fourth consecutive day, down 1.7 percent, as central bank interventions this week failed to distract investors from plunging oil prices, violence and messy pre-election politics. Oil’s fall also hit Gulf markets, with Saudi shares down 0.5 percent, while the petrochemical index fell 0.7 percent. In contrast, weaker oil prices benefit Turkey, which posted narrower-than-expected current account deficit figures, pushing the lira a quarter percent higher Broader emerging shares held their ground to trade near flat despite weak Chinese data, as a planned linkup between the Shanghai and Hong Kong markets kept Chinese markets firm.

Confusion Over Attempt To Bomb Babangida’s School

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"My High Chief Is Gone," Babangida Mourns Dokpesi

 

Ebola outbreak: MSF to start West Africa clinical trials

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new-diplomat default image
new-diplomat default image

Clinical trials to try to find an effective treatment for Ebola patients are to start in West Africa next month.

The medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres, which has been helping lead the fight against the virus, says three of its treatment centres will host three separate research projects.

Meanwhile, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has lifted the state of emergency imposed in the country.

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She warned “this is not because the fight against Ebola is over”.

It marks the progress being made in the country, where the weekly number of new infections is falling.

In a radio address she told the nation that night curfews would be reduced, weekly markets could take place and preparations were being made for the re-opening of schools.

Trials

One trial involves using the blood of recovered Ebola patients to treat sick people in the Guinean capital Conakry.

Two antiviral drugs will be trialled in Guinea and an unconfirmed location.

“This is an unprecedented international partnership which represents hope for patients to finally get a real treatment,” said MSF spokeswoman Dr Annick Antierens.

The Ebola outbreak is thought to have infected more than 14,000 people, almost all of them in West Africa. The death toll has risen to 5,160.

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The first trials are due to start next month. Initial results could be available in February 2015.

Ebola

The World Health Organization announced in September that experimental treatments and vaccines for Ebola should be fast-tracked.

Two experimental vaccines, produced by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the Public Health Agency of Canada, have already been fast-tracked into safety trials.

The GSK vaccine is being tested in Mali, the UK and the US. Research on the Canadian vaccine is also under way in the US.

The three latest trials are:

  • At the Donka Ebola centre in Conakry, Guinea, led by the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM), involving convalescent blood and plasma therapy – using blood from recovered patients containing antibodies that successfully fought off the virus to boost the patient’s immune system
  • At a site yet to be officially announced, funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by the University of Oxford, using the antiviral drug brincidofovir. It works by interfering with the virus’ ability to multiply. Up to 140 consenting patients will take the tablets twice a week over a two week period, and survival rates will be compared to those before the trial
  • In Gueckedou, Guinea, led by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), using the antiviral drug favipiravir.

Around 400 people participate in the first trials and they will be extended to other centres if the early results are promising.

Prof Peter Horby, from the University of Oxford, said: “There’s a great need for these trials.

“There’s both the humanitarian need, a tragedy for individuals and for communities and we need to do everything we can to offer some hope to those communities.

“But there’s also scientific need, we have these products which may or may not work in patients with Ebola and the only way we can test them is during an epidemic.”

Enormous task

There have been some anecdotal studies in previous outbreaks suggesting blood transfusions could benefit Ebola patients, but there is no scientifically proven evidence. This will be the first time there has been a human trial on any significant scale.

Speaking to the BBC from Conakry, lead researcher from ITM Johan van Griensven said:

“There are three important components [of this study] – the first is identifying Ebola survivors willing to donate blood. The second is the actual blood collection, and the third is the administration of the blood [to Ebola patients].”

However, organising safe blood donations in countries with decimated health systems is an enormous task.

Donating and taking blood is also extremely culturally sensitive in affected countries.

“There will be an anthropological assessment which will hopefully give us the information we need to understand a bit better how such a study would be perceived by the community” said Mr van Griensven.

“It will also give us a deeper understanding of the perspectives of people who have survived Ebola because suddenly they could have a specific role within the whole scale of treatment for other patients.

“This will be a key component to help us start implementing this study in a respectful and appropriate manner.”

Dr Antierens from MSF also said community engagement was a key priority.

“Each patient who consents to be part of a trial will have the potential risks of being subjected to a new therapy clearly explained,” she said.

MSF said these trials were “an exceptional measure in exceptional circumstances” as they try to bring the outbreak under control.

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Cumulative deaths up to 11 November

Graphic showing cumulative death toll of latest Ebola outbreak

*Figures are occasionally revised down as suspect or probable cases are found to be unrelated to Ebola. Figures for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea up to 9 November, while those for Mali, Nigeria and the US up to 11 November.

Shell ‘warned Nigeria pipeline could leak before spills’

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Oil firm Royal Dutch Shell was told a pipeline had reached the end of its life years before it spilled up to 500,000 barrels of oil, according to court documents seen by the BBC.

Two spills in 2008 affected about 35 sq miles (90 sq km) in southern Nigeria, according to a group suing Shell.

The area included sensitive mangroves.

Shell “dismisses the suggestion that it has knowingly continued to use a pipeline that is not safe to operate,” it told the BBC.

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The emails, letters and internal reports submitted to a court in London show that senior Shell employees were concerned before the spill that Shell’s pipelines in the area had reached the end of their lives and needed replacing to avoid danger to lives, the environment and the economy.

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Water

The spills took place in Bodo, a town in the Ogoniland region, where people interviewed for an Amnesty International report into the effects of the incident reported headaches and eyesight problems.

Shell

Following the spills, the price of fish, a local staple food, rose as much as tenfold, according to Amnesty. People who worked in fishing had to find jobs in other industries which proved more difficult to find.

Oil spills in the Ogoniland region have also contaminated local drinking water sources, seeping into groundwater, according to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Toxins found by UNEP in the wider Ogoniland area’s drinking water include benzene, which is thought to cause cancer.

The two spills came from the same pipe on the Trans Niger Pipeline, operated by Shell, which takes oil from its fields to the export terminal at Bonny on the coast. It carries about 180,000 barrels of oil per day. The firm disputes the size of the spills and says much of the oil was spilt as a result of thefts and sabotage.

In September 2006 – two years before the spills – a letter from Basil Omiyi, managing director of Shell’s Nigeria business, SPDC, to the governor of Rivers State said that the pipeline was of “immediate and utmost concern”.

Shell had not inspected the pipeline for several years due to difficulties in accessing it, he said.

“There is a risk and likelihood of rupture on this pipeline at any time, which if it happens, could have serious consequences for the safety of life, the environment and the nation’s economy.”

 

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