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Valieva fourth in Olympic skating as doping scandal takes toll

AFP

Kamila Valieva finished fourth in the Olympic women’s figure skating final on Thursday after her error-strewn performance handed Russian teammate Anna Shcherbakova gold, as a doping scandal took its toll on the 15-year-old.

Shcherbakova scored 255.95 to seal the title, while Valieva, who was allowed to compete despite testing positive for a banned substance before the Games, fell several times to slip out of the medal positions in Beijing.

Another Russian, Alexandra Trusova, took silver, and Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto won bronze.

It was a major upset for Valieva, who looked completely broken at the end of her programme.

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She had been the clear favourite going into the Games, but a week in it emerged she had tested positive in December for trimetazidine, banned for athletes because it can increase blood flow efficiency and help endurance.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Monday ruled that she could carry on competing in the Chinese capital.

Dressed in black and red, Valieva looked focused as she powered onto the ice, cheered on by the crowd, as well as a large contingent of her teammates in the athletes’ stand.

But she failed to land multiple jumps she had completed with ease the week before when she performed the same “Bolero” programme in the team event.

Earlier, Shcherbakova’s clean, elegant skate had pushed her ahead of Sakamoto and Trusova, who included five quad jumps in her routine, though not all were landed safely.

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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had said if Valieva placed in the top three, no medals would be awarded until “due process” has been followed to decide if she had infringed the World Anti-Doping Code.

But given the results, the ceremony went ahead.

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FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Mexico and Deported to U.S.

Authorities in Mexico announced Thursday that Samuel Ramírez Jr., a U.S. citizen accused of murdering two women and listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Ramírez Jr., 33, was detained Tuesday in Culiacán just 1 hour and 13 minutes after being added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ten Most Wanted list, the agency said in a statement.

The suspect, who was born in California, has already been deported to the U.S. state of Washington, where he faces charges related to the fatal shooting of two women at a bar in Federal Way in May 2023.

A court issued an arrest warrant for Ramírez in November last year, and the FBI initially offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing the amount to up to $1 million.

“To protect individuals’ privacy and ensure continued cooperation from the public, the FBI does not confirm the identity of those who provide information,” the agency said in its statement.

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UN experts warn Nicaragua runs vast transnational network to monitor exiled dissidents

Nicaragua maintains an “extensive” transnational network to monitor and intimidate opposition figures living in exile, affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua warned on Tuesday.

In a statement, the experts said their report “details an extensive transnational architecture of surveillance and intelligence used to monitor, intimidate and attack the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad.”

The report, which will be presented on March 16 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, states that the structure maintained by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo includes the army, the police, migration authorities and diplomatic missions.

According to the statement, “the government has arbitrarily stripped 452 Nicaraguans of their nationality, left thousands more exiled in a situation of de facto statelessness, and prevented many from returning to Nicaragua.”

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Trump: ‘We Think It’s True’ Amid Claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Was Killed

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believes multiple reports claiming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the U.S. and Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic are likely true, though he stopped short of confirming the news.

“We have a feeling that the information is correct,” he said, according to NBC News. “I don’t want to say anything definitive until I see it, but we think that’s the case. And many of their leaders have disappeared,” he added.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “many indications” that Khamenei had died in an attack on his residential compound.