Sporting quotes of the past 10 years

LONDON (Reuters) - Sporting quotes from the past 10 years:

OLYMPICS

"All these people who crucify me on TV are the same people who wanted to be photographed with me after every success. But after crucifixion comes resurrection." Greek sprinter Costas Kenteris before he withdrew from the 2004 Athens Games after missing a drugs test.

"He may be human but he's from a different planet; a different galaxy." Russian swimmer Alexander Sukhorukov describes racing against Michael Phelps at the 2008 Beijing Games.

"I'm Lightning Bolt. I'm not Flash Gordon or anybody. My name is Lightning Bolt." Usain Bolt clarifies after setting a second world record at the 2008 Beijing Games.

"What I find really terrible is to organize this kind of manhunt on one person, where one is being hunted like Osama bin Laden." Austrian skier Hermann Maier on the hunt for biathlon coach Walter Mayer, who fled the 2006 Turin Winter Games after doping raids on the team.

SOCCER

"Boys, even if it means dying on the pitch, we must win this semi-final," Marc-Vivien Foe to his Cameroon team mates at halftime in a Confederations Cup match against Colombia. Thirty minutes later the midfielder collapsed without warning and he died soon afterwards.

"I'm sure sex wouldn't be as rewarding as winning the World Cup. It's not that sex isn't good but the World Cup is every four years and sex is not." Brazilian striker Ronaldo after scoring the two goals which gave his country a record fifth World Cup in Japan.

"This game is not mathematics. It is football and football plus two rarely equals five. Sometimes it's three. Often it's four." Trinidad and Tobago coach Leo Beenhakker.

CRICKET

"For Muslims there is Mecca and for cricketers there is Lord's." Bangladesh spinner Enamul Haque on his team's international debut at Lord's against England.

NFL

"He's like a mad scientist with some of these guys. Most coaches will correct mistakes after they see the film of the game. Hell, he corrects mistakes on the field right away." Gene Upshaw, head of the NFL Players Association, on coach Bill Belichick after the New England Patriots win their third Super Bowl in four years.

MOTOR RACING

"His is a car that goes like a Ferrari and is built like a tractor. It just never breaks down." David Coulthard eulogizes Michael Schumacher's Formula One car.

TENNIS

"I threw the kitchen sink at him but he went to the bathroom and came back with his tub." Andy Roddick after losing to Roger Federer in the 2004 Wimbledon final.

GOLF

"These days, you play the golf course and you play Tiger. You can beat the field but it doesn't mean you're going to beat Tiger." South African Ernie Els on Tiger Woods.

"After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf. I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father and person." Woods's statement on his personal website after admitting he had been unfaithful to his wife.

source:http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BM4H820091223

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Yemen says Fort Hood-linked imam may be dead

SANAA (Reuters) - The leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and a Muslim preacher linked by U.S. intelligence to deaths at a U.S. army base are believed to have died in a Yemen air strike, a security official said on Thursday.

Yemen said 30 militants were killed in the strike in the eastern province of Shabwa.

Among those believed killed was Anwar al Awlaki, whom U.S. officials linked to the gunman who killed 13 people at the Fort Hood army base in Texas on November 5.

"Anwar al Awlaki is suspected to be dead (in the air raid)," said the Yemeni official, who asked not to be identified.

The air attack targeted a meeting of militants planning an attack on Yemeni and foreign oil targets, the official said.

He added that the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Basir Nasser al-Wahayshi, may also have been killed in the strikes but that there was no confirmation.

"We are still unsure if two of the top leaders have been killed or not. One of them is the ... al Qaeda member Nasser al-Wahayshi," he said, declining to say whether more strikes would take place on Thursday.

Saudi and Yemeni militants said earlier this year they were uniting under the name Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, using Yemen as their base.

In a video announcement earlier this year, al-Wahayshi, a Yemeni, threatened attacks against Westerners in the oil-exporting region. The group has also called for the overthrow of the U.S.-allied Saudi royal family.

Al Arabiya television said there had been four air strikes.

Yemen's Supreme Security Committee issued a warning to citizens in the province of Shabwa not to aid the militants.

On Monday, Yemen said its security forces and war planes last week foiled a planned series of suicide bombings. About 30 al Qaeda militants were killed in those airstrikes with 17 arrested in Abyan and in Arhab, northeast of the capital Sanaa.

Yemen, which has intensified its campaign against Al Qaeda militants over recent weeks, is also facing a Shi'ite rebellion in the north and secessionist violence in the south.

source:http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BN0S220091224

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U.S. probes banks on sale of risky securities: report

(Reuters) - U.S. regulators and legislators are investigating whether Wall Street investment banks deliberately sold risky structured securities to clients, and then bet on the securities failing, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Investigators in Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority are looking at banks' sales of complicated instruments known as collateralized debt obligations, according to the paper.

It said banks that created these securities, and then bet on their failing, include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank.

The paper said any probes are in early stages, but investigators seem to be focusing on whether banks violated fair dealing laws, or securities laws, in selling CDOs to investors and then betting against their clients using credit derivatives.

In some cases, the securities appear to have been deliberately stuffed with particularly risky mortgages, in order to perform poorly if the housing market tanked, according to the paper.

FINRA and the SEC did not immediately reply to Reuters emails seeking comment that were sent outside of regular U.S. business hours. Officials from Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley in Asia were not immediately available for comment.

Goldman Sachs said in a statement: "It is fully disclosed and well known to investors that banks that arranged synthetic CDOs took the initial short position and that these positions could either have been applied as hedges against other risk positions or covered via trades with other investors."

source:http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BN0EE20091224

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Northrop links to academics to boost cyber defense

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Northrop Grumman Corp unveiled Tuesday an industry-academic research group to tackle growing cyber threats to U.S. computer networks and to networked infrastructure.

Joining the Pentagon's No. 3 supplier by sales are cyber research arms of Carnegie Mellon, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Purdue University.

The initiative is the latest by a major U.S. defense contractor aimed at hatching solutions to cyber threats at a time that big-ticket weapons programs are being squeezed by cost-cutting imperatives.

Northrop plans to invest an unspecified "number of millions of dollars per year" to fund graduate fellowships and other research for at least five years and probably much longer, said Robert Brammer, chief technology officer for Northrop Grumman's Information Systems business unit.

"We need significant new technology developments," implemented widely, to counter growing cyber threats to the economy and to U.S. national security, he told a news conference. The theme was echoed by representatives of Carnegie Mellon's CyLab, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and Purdue's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.

Northrop will deal on a case-by-case basis with each research institute on splitting jointly developed intellectual property, said Brammer.

The group, called the Northrop Grumman Cybersecurity Research Consortium, initially will sponsor 10 projects with an eye to such things as attribution in cyberspace, supply chain risk and securing critical infrastructure networks, the company said.

The group's members will coordinate research projects, swap information and author joint case studies, among other efforts to speed hardware and software solutions into practice, participants said.

The consortium will serve "to help increase our nation's security in cyberspace," Brammer added in a statement. He said in a brief interview he expects some research results as soon as next year.

Northrop's cyber work was in the news recently for a report prepared by the company that implicated the Chinese authorities in extensive cyber activities against the United States.

The report, commissioned by the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said Beijing appeared to be conducting "a long-term, sophisticated, computer network exploitation campaign" against the U.S. government and U.S. defense industries.

Brammer told the news conference that identifying a cyber aggressor was "very difficult" with current technology.

Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier by sales, last month announced the formation of a cyber security technology alliance of its own with leading technology providers, including Microsoft Corp, Cisco Systems Inc and Dell Inc.

Boeing Co, the second-biggest Pentagon contractor, also has put together a cyber-security research alliance, headquartered in Washington state, with university and commercial partners, said Barbara Fast, the company's vice president of cyber and information solutions.

source:http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5B046Z20091201

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