Cyclist Ullrich banned 2 years for blood doping

Sport’s highest court banned 1997 Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich for two years on Thursday and stripped him of his third-place finish in the 2005 race for blood doping.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that the 38-year-old German, who retired in 2007, was “fully engaged” in the doping program of Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes that was exposed in the 2006 Operation Puerto probe.

The CAS panel “came to the conclusion that Jan Ullrich engaged at least in blood doping in violation of … anti-doping rules,” the court said.

Ullrich’s suspension comes three days after CAS banned Alberto Contador for two years and stripped him of his 2010 Tour title for doping. A U.S. federal investigation into alleged doping involving seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong and his teammates was dropped Friday.

Ullrich is banned from cycling through August 21, 2013, and all his results from May 1, 2005, until his retirment are annulled. Ullrich must also pay $10,970 US toward the International Cycling Union’s legal costs.

“It is established that Jan Ullrich was fully engaged with Dr. [Eufemiano] Fuentes’s doping program at least from that date,” the court said.

Along with his loss of a podium placement in the 2005 Tour, which was won by Armstrong, Ullrich will also be stripped of his victory in the 2006 Tour de Suisse. Spanish rider Francisco Mancebo, who was also implicated in the Puerto investigation, moves up from fourth to third in the 2005 Tour. Ivan Basso, the second-place finisher in ’05, also served a two-year suspension based on Puerto evidence.

CAS, however, rejected the International Cycling Union’s request to impose a lifetime ban and disqualify all of Ullrich’s results since May 2002. CAS said Ullrich’s six-month ban for using amphetamines outside of competition in 2002 should not be classified as a doping offence. A second offence could trigger a life ban.

The UCI wanted Ullrich banned for life to prevent him from ever working again in professional cycling.

Cycling’s governing body appealed to CAS to challenge a decision by Switzerland’s Olympic committee to decline responsibility for prosecuting the former Swiss-based rider.

From: http://ping.fm/ICLBR

Alberto Contador vows to fight ‘terrible injustice’

Alberto Contador has described the two-year ban handed down to him on Monday for failing a drugs test during the 2010 Tour de France as a ‘terrible injustice’ and plans to continue to fight to prove his innocence.

 The Spaniard was found guilty of doping after testing positive for clenbuterol and was stripped of his 2010 Tour victory, as well as many other titles. Since his ban runs until August this year, he will miss this year’s Tour as well as the London Olympics.

“My feeling of injustice is terrible. I have done everything possible to show that I am innocent,” Contador said.

Contador has claimed throughout the process that his positive result was due to eating contaminated meat, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected that defence.
In a press conference today, 29-year-old Contador announced his intention to appeal against the decision: “My lawyers are examining the possibilities and as I have said before we have to fight to the end.

“I will continue in cycling. I will continue to do so in a clean way as I have all my life. And I know that will make me stronger in the future.

“Everybody has been saying that I’m guilty of something that is against my own moral standpoint.

“I want to leave good memories for the fans and have memories of doing my job well. Every victory I’ve had hasn’t just been mine, it’s been for all the people. They will decide if I am a champion or not.”

Earlier on Tuesday, John Fahey, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said Contador should now be considered a “cheat”.

“The simple fact is that anyone who has a prohibited substance in their system is a cheat,” he said.

From: http://ping.fm/xVPse

Detroit Closing Down 16 Schools

Detroit is slated to close down 16 public schools permanently by the end of the year and will have to convert another four into charter schools by this fall.

Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts said that the schools are being closed because they are underused and children attending those schools will be merged into other schools.

“We have been using an outdated educational model that we must discard,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

Detroit’s school system “must embark on a bold and ambitious journey that I believe will return this city to its rightful place as the world class leader in public education, a position it once held,” he added.

From: http://ping.fm/fk11e

Health News Oregon hospital layoffs continue; study shows high stakes of health reform as Legislature mulls budget

 For more than a week now, the Oregon Legislature has worked on a bill to implement long-discussed health reforms, hoping to qualify Oregon for additional federal funding of as much as $500 million a year for the next five years.

The money could help offset a roughly $600 million budget hole in the Oregon Health Plan. But questions remain: exactly how much new federal funding will actually materialize, and how will it be spent?

A recent study released by the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems underlined the importance of those questions.

The Portland consulting firm ECONorthwest found that Oregon’s hospitals are directly responsible for almost 60,000 full- and part-time jobs, and indirectly for another nearly 70,000.

Some of those jobs are starting to go away as state and federal cuts to Medicaid and Medicare loom. The state budget contemplates cuts of about $240 million in general fund spending, which will result in the loss of federal matching funds as well — for a total reduction of approximately $600 million.
Oregon’s health reforms are supposed to achieve better care at a lower cost. But reduced spending will come from somewhere, which is why the hospital association commissioned the ECONorthwest report.

“The state budget has a direct correlation to jobs in this state,” said Andy Van Pelt, spokesman for the association. “We want the decision makers in Salem to understand that the 58 hospitals in Oregon create jobs consistently.”

This year, Legacy Health is cutting 365 jobs primarily in the Portland area, citing projected cuts in Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement of about $30 million. Earlier, Salem Health and Providence Health & Services made their own reductions, citing reduced reimbursement.

More cuts are on the way. PeaceHealth, a health plan that operates several hospitals in Lane County, recently announced a projected $19 million loss of Medicaid would require cuts, including in labor. The number of layoffs has not been announced.

The cuts won’t be restricted to hospitals, which is why other health care providers have also been lobbying Salem over rules of a new reformed system — rules that could affect market share down the road.

From: http://ping.fm/M2rZs

Walmart on Brown Deer Road closing this fall

Walmart has announced it is closing its store on West Brown Deer Road this fall, and will move to a bigger building at Timmerman Plaza on Silver Spring Drive. The bigger store means at least 50 new jobs, but it’s another hit for an already struggling area of Milwaukee.

There seems to be a growing trend along Brown Deer Road in Milwaukee: empty parking lots, vacant buildings and stranded shopping carts. “So many stores have closed. Stein’s, Lowe’s, and look at how long Northridge has been out of here. I mean, there’s nothing,” one shopper said.

Walmart will be yet another business packing up and leaving, as it looks for a bigger space on Milwaukee’s northwest side. “We don’t like to see businesses moving out of the area, but I don’t think it really signals that the area is bad, or the area is in decline,” Al Hill, the president of the Granville-Brown Deer Chamber of Commerce said.

From: http://ping.fm/neX7G

Danskes 2,000 Job Cuts to Be Frontloaded

Danske Bank A/S (DANSKE) will bring forward the 2,000 job cuts it’s planning as Denmark’s biggest lender steps up efforts to stay competitive with European rivals, Chief Financial Officer Henrik Ramlau-Hansen said.

“The program will be a little bit frontloaded so we’ll take the major things in 2012 and 2013,” Ramlau-Hansen said in an interview in Copenhagen today. “That will take us a long way to be competitive on the cost side.” There will “not necessarily be pay cuts but we expect a rather limited development in underlying pay,” he said.

The cuts are needed to help Danske reduce costs by about 2 billion kroner ($358 million), or 10 percent of its underlying cost base, Ramlau-Hansen said. In November, the bank gave itself three years to complete the job reduction plan. Danske is struggling to stay competitive as it grapples with the fallout of a burst housing bubble and regional banking crisis at home, while loan losses at its Irish business show scant sign of abating.

“The Irish operation is our current pain,” Ramlau-Hansen said. “We have high impairments there and we also expect impairments to continue at a high level for some time.”

Danske’s loan losses swelled 61 percent last quarter on continued impairments in Ireland. The lender bought National Irish Bank and Northern Bank in 2005 just before the property bubble there burst, prompting Ireland to seek an international bailout to stay afloat.

From: http://ping.fm/5a7uQ

Fed Fines Banks $766 Million Over Mortgage Practices

The Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that as part of the larger $25 billion foreclosure settlement agreed to by U.S. banks and states that it was imposing penalties totaling $766.5 million on five U.S. banks over their mortgage servicing practices.

From: http://ping.fm/tRGYP

48 people laid off at Loris hospital

48 people who work at McLeod’s Loris Hospital and Seacoast Medical Center lost their jobs.

A spokesperson for the hospital says the layoffs are partly due to cuts in federal and state funding of more than $2.5 million.

The hospital also says a drop in patients because of the economic downturn has made it more difficult for the facilities to pay down a loan from the federal government.

Last month, the two hospitals became affiliated with McLeod Health.

From: http://ping.fm/Rsmsz

PepsiCo to Cut 8,700 Jobs, Boost Marketing Spending – Bloomberg

PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) plans to cut 8,700 jobs and boost marketing spending for its brands by as much as $600 million as Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi works to turn around the world’s largest snack-food maker.

The increased spending will have a “particular focus” on North America, the Purchase, New York-based company said today in a statement. The job cuts represent about 3 percent of PepsiCo’s global workforce.

Nooyi is looking to boost U.S. beverage sales and regain market share from Coca-Cola Co. (KO) The company brought investors together in New York today to reveal a multi-year plan to boost earnings and restore confidence after two years of lowered profit targets.

“They struggled on the beverage side both in North America and abroad, and there is a lot of pressure on that company to perform better this year,” Jack Russo, an analyst with Edward Jones & Co. in St. Louis, said in a telephone interview. “They need product innovation, cost savings and more marketing.”

From: http://ping.fm/yWatU