Dogs owned by Sacramento Kings forward Ron Artest have spent a total of 77 nights at the pound since July because of poor care by their owner, costing the NBA star US$1,942 in boarding and impound fees, county records show.
Placer County animal control officers have gone to Artest's 2-hectare estate seven times in that period in response to callers' complaints about dogs being loose or not being fed.
Allan Frumkin, president of the Sierra Ridge Estates Home-owners Association at the gated community where Artest lives in Loomis, about 40km northeast of Sacramento, said some neighbors stepped in and cared for the dogs themselves.
"It became general knowledge that he wasn't taking good care of his dogs," said Frumkin. "One neighbor fed them and bought a watering machine for them."
The latest incident came on Sunday, when animal control officers took Artest's Great Dane, Socks, saying the animal wasn't being fed.
"This dog was a rack of bones," said Rosemary Frieborn, president of Friends of Placer County Animal Shelter.
In an e-mail to the Sacramento Bee, Artest said he hopes to get Socks back and has hired a new caretaker for the dogs.
He blamed Socks' condition on the fact that another dog, an American bulldog, "dominated all the food."
He said the situation "got out of hand" when he was on a one week Kings' road trip. "Then we got back and got a handle on it."
"I have a new professional doggy watcher from out of state that will help me train my dogs better," he wrote. "I'm horrible at that."
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier