LAHORE: A Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) appellate tribunal on Sunday suspended a five-year ban on controversial fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar for a month so that he could participate in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL). The tribunal, headed by former High Court judge Aftab Farrukh, accepted a plea from Akhtar’s lawyers that the ban should be suspended temporarily so that the pacer can play in the lucrative IPL. A PCB disciplinary committee, headed by Lt Gen (r) Munir Hafeez, banned Akhtar last month for several incidents of indiscipline. It is pertinent to mention that last week the tribunal allowed Akhtar to play outside Pakistan but the Indian authorities refused to permit him to take part in the IPL unless the ban was lifted.

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(BEIJING, May 3) – The 33-day “Journey of Harmony,” the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay outside the mainland of China, came to an end on May 3 when the chartered plane carrying the flame arrived in Sanya, Hainan, at 10:25 p.m. in advance of the start of the domestic torch relay.

Since April 1, the Beijing Olympic flame has traveled 100,000 kilometers as a messenger of peace and friendship, visiting 21 cities in 20 countries en route.

The Olympic flame warmed hearts and lit up faces wherever it traveled, in spite of attempts to cause disturbance to the relay by a small number of people in Istanbul, London, Paris, Canberra, Nagano and Seoul. In Paris, Chinese wheelchair athlete Jin Jing proved to be a “Smiling Angel in a Wheelchair” when she protected the torch from a “pro-Tibet independence” activist who attempted to grab the torch from her. Read the rest of this entry »

HONG KONG, May 2 (Xinhua) — The Beijing Olympic torch relay in Hong Kong concluded at 16:56 local time on Friday as Wong Kam Po, a world champion cyclist, lit the cauldron at the Golden Bauhinia Square on the southern coast of the Victorian Harbor.

As Wong, also the last torch bearer, ran into Golden Bauhinia Square, he was greeted by hundreds of people waving red flags and chanting support for Beijing Olympics.

“The torch relay in Hong Kong has successfully completed, but the Olympic spirit of friendship, peace and harmony will pass on forever,” said Timothy Tsun-Ting Fok, president of Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, said at the closing ceremony.

“We expect a successful Beijing Olympic Games and a good performance of Chinese athletes including those from Hong Kong,” said Fok, also the second from last torchbearer. Read the rest of this entry »

Like the Five Olympic Rings from which they draw their color and inspiration, Fuwa will serve as the Official Mascots of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, carrying a message of friendship and peace — and good wishes from China — to children all over the world.
Designed to express the playful qualities of five little children who form an intimate circle of friends, Fuwa also embody the natural characteristics of four of China’s most popular animals — the Fish, the Panda, the Tibetan Antelope, the Swallow — and the Olympic Flame.
Each of Fuwa has a rhyming two-syllable name — a traditional way of expressing affection for children in China. Beibei is the Fish, Jingjing is the Panda, Huanhuan is the Olympic Flame, Yingying is the Tibetan Antelope and Nini is the Swallow.
When you put their names together — Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni — they say “Welcome to Beijing,” offering a warm invitation that reflects the mission of Fuwa as young ambassadors for the Olympic Games.
Fuwa also embody both the landscape and the dreams and aspirations of people from every part of the vast country of China. In their origins and their headpieces, you can see the five elements of nature — the sea, forest, fire, earth and sky — all stylistically rendered in ways that represent the deep traditional influences of Chinese folk art and ornamentation.
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OC President Jacques Rogge welcomed the new Special Adviser to the United Nations (UN) Secretary General on Sport for Development and Peace, Mr Wilfried Lemke, to the IOC headquarters yesterday.

Lemke, a former manager of first division German football club Werder Bremen, and a former Senator of the German State of Bremen, succeeds Adolf Ogi.  Read the rest of this entry »

Olympic games are international sports event. It is segregated into the summer and winter sports. The Olympic games are held every four years. This was known as Olympiad. However, since 1992, the summer and winter sports events are subdivided into two years. In fact, the first modern Olympic was sponsored by Evangelos Zappas. Around 1894, Pierre Fredy (Baron de Coubertin) established the International Olympic Committee. And the first the IOC’s Olympic Games was held around 1896 in Athens, Greece.

Over the years, Olympic Games have undergone metamorphic change. All the nations worldwide are encouraged to participate in the games. In this regard, effective improvements in the satellite communications have been of great help. Besides, the live telecast of the Games have also aided in recognizing the importance of the games across the world. In fact, news channels and media partners have also extended their help.

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NEW DELHI:  Combative Harbhajan Singh has been suspended for slapping his Indian team-mate and IPL rival S Sree Santh just after their league match at Mohali on Friday night.

The Indian Premier League’s chairman and commissioner, Lalit Modi, announced this late on Saturday night even as the slapstick episode was threatening to overrun the league itself. ‘‘There is enough prima facie video evidence to temporarily suspend Harbhajan with immediate effect,’’ he said in a statement.
‘‘The match adjudicator and referee, Farokh Engineer, has seen and reviewed the evidence and has arrived at this decision,’’ he said in the press release. Harbhajan cannot play in the crucial IPL match against Team Hyderabad on Sunday now, pending the inquiry into the incident.
Before the evidence emerged, Harbhajan had been slapped with a show-cause notice and was given till Monday to present his case. The feisty off-spinner had barely escaped a similar ban during the recent tour to Australia when the host broadcaster couldn’t provide evidence to prove he had made racist remarks against Andrew Symonds.
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The Vision
The vision of the Youth Olympic Games is to inspire young people around the world to participate in sport and adopt and live by the Olympic values. It was during its session in Guatemala in July 2007 that the IOC decided to create a nw sporting event to educate, engage and influence young athletes inspiring them to play an active role in their communities.

What are the YOG?
The Youth Olympic Games are a sporting event for young people, balancing sport, education and culture. These Games work as a catalyst in these fields throughout the Olympic Movement.

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Gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland, athletes from around the world who represent the voice of sportsmen and women on the International Olympic Committee, met to discuss how to address the challenging international backdrop into which the Olympic Games have been drawn in recent weeks.
The Athletes’ Commission members spoke passionately and from their own experiences about the inappropriateness of manipulating and using athletes as political tools. At the close of the meeting, they released the following statement.

“In 2001, the International Olympic Committee voted to award the Olympic Games in 2008 to Beijing, China. We believe the rationale for that choice – that the bid was the best one, technically excellent and that the Games should be brought to a country where one fifth of the world lives – was a sound rationale then, and remains sound today. Indeed, some of our Commission members were members of the IOC at the time and fully supported the choice of Beijing and still do.
The Olympic Games are an event that allow athletes from across the globe to show us a world as it can be when people come together peacefully to celebrate their commonality rather than focus on their differences. We believe firmly that sport has, over the past seven years of Games preparation, served as an entry point to allow a growing understanding between China and the world and vice versa. Of particular note is that in the past weeks three World Championships, which by the way are also the test events for the Olympic Games, have been staged smoothly and successfully. There can be no better way to encourage China’s change and celebrate the positive steps already taken, than to engage through sport. And no better way than through the Olympic Games, watched by billions around the world, and millions who will come to Beijing.
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The Olympic Games is an international multi-sport event subdivided into summer and winter sporting events. The summer and winter games are each held every four years (an Olympiad). Until 1992, they were both held in the same year. Since then, they have been separated two years apart. The original Olympic Games (Greek: Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες; Olympiakoi Agones) were first recorded in 776 BC in Olympia, Greece, and were celebrated until AD 393. Interest in reviving the Olympic Games proper was first shown by the Greek poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem “Dialogue of the Dead” in 1833. Evangelos Zappas sponsored the first modern international Olympic Games in 1859. He paid for the refurbishment of the Panathinaiko Stadium for Games held there in 1870 and 1875. This was noted in newspapers and publications around the world including the London Review, which stated that “the Olympian Games, discontinued for centuries, have recently been revived! Here is strange news indeed … the classical games of antiquity were revived near Athens”.

The International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 on the initiative of a French nobleman, Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin. The first of the IOC’s Olympic Games were the 1896 Summer Olympics, held in Athens, Greece. Participation in the Olympic Games has increased to include athletes from nearly all nations worldwide. With the improvement of satellite communications and global telecasts of the events, the Olympics are consistently gaining supporters.The most recent Summer Olympics were the 2004 Games in Athens and the most recent Winter Olympics were the 2006 Games in Turin. The upcoming games in Beijing are planned to comprise 302 events in 28 sports. As of 2006, the Winter Olympics were competed in 84 events in 7 sports.

The Olympic Symbols
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