■ BASEBALL
Bonds indictment reworked
Major League Baseball home run record holder Barry Bonds was charged with 14 counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice in a new indictment that was a result of the BALCO doping investigation. Bonds originally was charged with four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice for lying about whether he knowingly used illegal substances on Nov. 15. However, US District Judge Susan Illston ordered government prosecutors on Feb. 29 to rework the indictment so that each charge alleged only one lie rather than combining several alleged falsehoods into single counts. The new indictment does not add any new alleged falsehoods. The case against Bonds is still built on whether he lied when he told the grand jury that his personal trainer Greg Anderson never supplied him with steroids and human growth hormone.
■ GOLF
Bush reveals why he quit
US President George W. Bush said on Tuesday he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of Americans killed in the war in Iraq. “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf,” Bush said in an interview with Yahoo and Politico.com. “I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,” he said. Bush said his last round of golf was in August 2003 when he was informed that a truck bomb had wrecked the UN headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. “They pulled me off the golf course and I said: ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do,’” Bush said.
■ FOOTBALL
Tetupu in driving arrest
Seattle Seahawks Pro Bowl linebacker Lofa Tatupu admitted on Tuesday to being arrested three days earlier for drunken driving. Police in Kirkland, the suburban home of the Seahawks’ headquarters and practice facility, reported Tatupu registered blood-alcohol levels of 0.155 percent and 0.158 percent in breath test readings — nearly twice the legal limit in Washington. Those tests came almost 90 minutes after the 25-year-old cornerstone of Seattle’s defense was handcuffed and driven to a police station. “I want to apologize to my family, teammates, the Seahawks ownership and organization and the fans for making a poor decision and putting myself in a bad situation,” Tatupu said in a statement released by the team on Tuesday.
■ RALLYING
Dakar goes to South America
The Dakar Rally switches continents next year with a grueling 9,000km event planned for Argentina and Chile. The move from its traditional home in Africa to South America was triggered by the cancelation of this year’s rally because of security concerns after four French tourists were murdered in Mauritania in December. Details of next year’s route were released by organizers in Paris on Tuesday. The race, featuring 6,000km of special stages, sets out from Buenos Aires on Jan. 3, with the Dakar caravan crossing the Andes at altitudes of over 4,500m into Chile and a stop off at the Pacific Ocean resort of Valparaiso. It then makes its way back to the Argentine capital’s Plaza de la Republica for a Jan. 18 finish. “It will be the same adventure as Africa, with the same ingredients, but the terrain is markedly different and the conditions will be difficult,” Dakar director Etienne Lavigne said. “It’s a real Dakar.”
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