Archive for August 13th, 2008
Jamaica worried about many drugs tests
(Reuters): Jamaican athletes have undergone an "extremely unusual" number of doping tests since arriving in Beijing for the Olympic Games, potentially harming their performance, the team’s chef de mission said on Wednesday. More than 32 blood and urine tests have been conducted on Jamaican athletes in the past five days alone, a number that has alarmed team officials. (Left Jamaican Olympic sprinter Asafa Powell) Go to article
Optimism in Evolution
(New York Times): When the dog days of summer come to an end, one thing we can be sure of is that the school year that follows will see more fights over the teaching of evolution and whether intelligent design, or even Biblical accounts of creation, have a place in America’s science classrooms. In these arguments, evolution is treated as an abstract subject that deals with the age of the earth or how fish first flopped onto land. Go to article
.jpg "Brett slashes previous best")
Brett slashes previous best
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(CNS): Coming close to his big goal of a 2-minute swim in the 200-metre Backstroke Wednesday, Brett Fraser (left with brother Shaune) said he was really happy with a time of 2:01.17 in his heat, finishing 29 out of 49 swimmers in this event. “This was a great swim from Brett – he dropped an awful lot of time from his best. He looked real strong and powerful in the water. He had a good time and swam real well,” Cayman Swimming Coach Dominic Ross told Cayman Islands Olympic Committee journalist Shurna Robbins.
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Brett, whose only major international experience was the Pan Am Games in Brazil last summer – a much smaller event than the Olympics – has already dropped his time from 2:07.23 since then. “He’s really starting to believe in what he’s doing and believe that he can do well and be up there with the best,” Ross said.
Brett and his brother Shaune, who both attend the University of Florida, have now completed all their events at the Beijing Olympics. This was Shaune’s second Olympics – in the 2004 Athens Games the Cayman Islands team included Andrew Mackay and Heather Roffey. (Photos Shurna Robbins)
War and weather to boost petrol prices
(thisismoney.co.uk): Motorists face another huge rise in petrol and diesel prices. There were predictions of a return to the record prices paid at the pumps last month when diesel peaked at an average of £1.33 a litre and petrol £1.19. A series of events worldwide could herald another round of escalating fuel prices in the autumn.
Cubans pass by
(CNS): Eleven Cuban migrants on a vessel passed through Cayman Islands waters Monday, 11 August, Immigration Department officials report. The migrants – four women and seven men – were spotted off East End, in Grand Cayman. They did not come ashore and officials monitored the group’s departure.
According to Cayman Islands policy, if Cuban migrants receive assistance from Cayman officials, even water, they will be repatriated to Cuba. Based on the latest figures from Immigration, the number of Cuban migrants repatriated last year was 92 while 12 have been repatriated so far this year. Some 104 were repatriated in 2006 while 122 were repatriated in 2005.
The vast majority of Cubans escaping the island now enter the US through Mexico after relatives pay thousands of dollars to organized crime networks that pick them up from Cuba’s westernmost tip in speedboats. According to official Mexican reports, more than 1,000 Cubans had been detained in Mexico by late June, compared with 1,359 in all of 2007.
Coast Guard interceptions of suspected traffickers are up this fiscal year by about 20%, with 323 encounters since Oct. 1, 2007.
Low-cost carrier set to begin service by next April
(The Jamaica Observer): AirOne Ventures Limited, which bills its yet-to-be-named airline as the Caribbean’s first low-budget carrier, says that it will begin service to nine regional and United States destinations between March to April 2009. Fares will be as low as US$10 but on average 40-70 per cent cheaper than existing airlines. Go to article
.jpg "Another best for Shaune")
Another best for Shaune
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(CNS): Cayman’s Shaune Fraser swam another personal best at the Beijing Olympics finishing his 100-metre freestyle heat in 49.56 seconds, down from 49.96 seconds from his previous best set the Pan Am Games in Brazil last summer.
Fraser placed fourth in heat five and ranked 36 out of 64 swimmers. But like his race in the 200-metre freestyle two days before. Only the top 16 swimmers made it into the semi-finals.
"It was my new personal best so I can’t be mad about that," Fraser told Cayman Islands Olympic Committee journalist Shurna Robbins. "I know a lot of these guys like to take it out really fast. I like to bring it home a little faster, so I conserve my energy in the first 50 and then give it all I have in the second 50."
"That was a great swim from Shaune," said Cayman Swimming Coach Dominic Ross. "He dropped four-tenths of a second off his best time and he looked real strong in the water, so we looked forward to the next swim."
Trinidad & Tobago’s George Bovell, who became the English-speaking Caribbean’s first swimming Olympic medallist when he won bronze in the 200-metre Individual Medley in Athens, won his heat and also produced a career-best swim of 48.83 in the 100m freestyle, chopping more than a second off his previous best of 49.95 seconds in this event. However, this was also not fast enough for a semi-final spot.
Aruba’s Jan Roodzant won the second heat in 51.69 seconds but was considerably off the qualifying range. Bermuda’s Roy-Allan Burch finished fifth in heat two in 52.65 seconds, while Barbadian Terrence Haynes (50.50) was third in heat three. The finals of the Men’s 100m Freestyle will be on Thursday.
Fraser’s next and final event is the 100-metre butterfly (heat 2) on Thursday, where he will be competing with American superstar Michael Phelps. "Obviously, Michael is going to be the greatest athlete that has ever swam, but I am definitely not intimidated by him," said Fraser. "I know that I have got to do a couple things a bit better and train a little harder. This is not one of my best events so I am just looking to have fun with it.”
Phelps became the Olympics’ all-time gold medal leader Wednesday with two more wins at the National Aquatics Center — one by himself in the 200-meter butterfly and one as part of the United States’ winning 4×200-meter freestyle relay team, making a total of five golds so far in Beijing and 11 altogether.