GAZA CITY: In the ramshackle warrens of Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, four young athletes are plotting to swim their way out of the impoverished territory.

The four teenagers, who have spent their entire lives in the Gaza Strip, hope to represent Palestine in world swimming competitions in Asia later this year.

While their chosen sport is swimming, they face an unusual array of hurdles.
Gaza has only one swimming pool, half the regulation size and usually crowded with paddling children. And even the diesel needed to heat the frigid winter waters needs to be smuggled into the besieged territory.

“There’s no shame in poverty … but our economic circumstances are difficult, and that affects the level of training,” says 16-year-old Iyad Shamaa, who dropped out of school three years ago to help support his family.

The walls of the cramped house where he lives with his nine siblings were cracked and damaged during last winter’s Gaza war and his father’s carpentry shop was shut down after Israel and Egypt closed Gaza’s borders in 2007.

But every day he walks the three kilometres (two miles) to the Nama swimming club, an oasis in the crowded camp, to try to carve seconds off his time for the 50-metre freestyle.

He and another swimmer hope to compete in Singapore at the first Youth Olympic Games in August. Two other swimmers plan to participate in the Asian Games in China in November.

“I’m very happy because I will represent Palestine,” says Khaled al-Bursh, 16, who hopes to attend the China games.

“We know that the others have much better facilities and clubs and pools … But we are still determined to compete and to win.”

They have a long road ahead of them.

The Gaza Strip, an impoverished territory of 1.5 million people, has been under a crippling blockade since June 2007, when the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in a week of bloody street battles.

The ability of Palestinians to leave the territory is heavily restricted, with Israel mostly limiting permits to humanitarian cases and Egypt only rarely opening its Rafah crossing with Gaza.

The four hope to coordinate their exit through Egypt with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, but there are no guarantees.

The pool in Jabaliya is less than half the regulation size for the Olympics and most of the time is filled with children. The team going to China plans to use an Olympic-size pool in Sweden for a month before the games.

“A pool built according to international specifications would require huge capabilities, much more than we have in Gaza,” says Mahmud Shamaa, 28, the coach of the team and distant relative of Iyad.

“The circumstances are tough,” he adds.

The pool, built shortly before Hamas seized power, is heated 14 hours a day with diesel smuggled through tunnels beneath the Gaza-Egypt border.

If the athletes make it to the games they could have their first face-to-face encounter with Israelis, a thought that stirs disgust in many from their generation, which has come of age during years of war and strife.

“I don’t even want to see any Israeli athletes,” says Imad Salih, 16, whose older brother Ahmed was killed and whose house was destroyed during an Israeli incursion in 2006.

Both he and Shamaa say they would refuse to shake hands with Israeli athletes if they meet them at the Singapore games.

But the older Shamaa, their coach, has told them not to mix politics and swimming and to be “civilised ambassadors of Palestine”.

He thinks that given the right opportunities they could escape Gaza’s toxic confines and further the Palestinian cause through sport.

“With their abilities they could compete and come in first in any international competition,” he says. “But we need technical and financial aid to nurture them.”

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MANCHESTER: Manchester United fans are confused, upset, depressed and angry about the American owners of the club yet, despite the ‘green and gold campaign,’ the overwhelming feeling is one of impotency.

The campaign — in the colours of the Premier League club’s forerunners Newton Heath — is certainly eye-catching.

It reached a new level when David Beckham donned a green and gold scarf as he left the pitch after United beat his visiting AC Milan team 4-0 in the Champions League on Wednesday.

Whether it will have any influence on the Glazer family, the Americans who have repeatedly said they have no intention of selling the English champions, appears highly unlikely.

Other tactics, such as a mass late arrival for matches and non-renewal of season tickets, are similar pea-shooter efforts against armour-plated owners who the fans claim have made season ticket prices so high that the waiting list has shrunk.

The result is that the followers of the best-supported club in England, and arguably the world, are left without much hope.

A drowning man will clutch at any straw but are the so-called ‘Red Knights’ the answer?

CONFUSED FEAR

A loose affiliation of about 40 rich men with an interest in running United, but with probably as many varying views on how best to do so, appears a recipe for more confusion.

“If you’ve come here looking for answers, or expect me to tell you what to do, then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place,” read a long, sometimes emotional, editorial in the club’s independent fanzine “Red News” this week.

Desperate to escape the Glazers but wary of jumping into bed with a new set of suited financiers, the 23-year-old magazine’s editorial line was one of confused fear — “Who are these people, what are their plans, is it a pipe dream?

“What makes us so sure they would create this Utopian United many Reds seek and not exploit any desperation we have to get rid of the Glazers just to create an alternative ownership model that is not ideal, just not as bad?”

The letters page of Red News, local papers and the radio phone-ins are dominated by the subject of the Glazers, the debt and what, if anything, the ordinary fan can do.

“If I give up my season ticket, the most important thing in my life, and nothing changes I’d feel betrayed and devastated,”

wrote one fan.

“I’ve supported United for 40 years through thick and thin, why should I punish myself because of something these absent Americans have done?”, wrote another.

UNANIMOUS VIEW

On the streets of Manchester, among United fans at least, the seemingly unanimous view is that nobody understands how one of the world’s richest clubs can almost overnight become more than 700 million pounds ($1.06 billion) in debt.

Even if the Glazers decided to sell the club a lot of fans are not quite sure who or what should replace them.

“The whole thing should never have been allowed to happen,” said newspaper vendor and ‘lifelong fan’ Stan Rooney — no relation to the club’s prolific striker Wayne.

“They’re killing this club and nobody in the Premier League or the FA or UEFA cares.”

It was not so long ago that United fans were queuing up to complain about their Plc owners, before the Glazer takeover.

Prior to that former chairman Martin Edwards was being criticised for the way he ran the club and his blocked attempt to sell it to Rupert Murdoch’s Sky organisation.

For many non-United soccer fans the uproar sounds rather hollow.

“United have been courting financiers for years,” said Birmingham City fan Brian O’Leary. “They’ve set themselves up as the so-called ‘world’s richest club’ and they think they have a divine right to the biggest slice of TV money.

“But I don’t remember their fans showing too much concern when small clubs up and down the country were going into administration.”

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ISLAMABAD: Capital Police arrested 32 suspects during a search operation in a high-security zone in Islamabad on Saturday.

According to police officials, the suspects were arrested from the vicinity of the Bari Imam area and a high-security zone.

Fifty-three houses in the slum areas near Bari Imam were searched during the operation, which was jointly carried out by Capital Police and members of the Bomb Disposal Squad.

Meanwhile, police spokesman said another 18 suspects were arrested in the vicinity of Golra, Margallah, Sihala, Shalimar, Bhara Kau and Tarnol Sabzi Mandi police stations.

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NEW YORK: Golf clubs in hands or not, the kids of “South Park” are ready to take on Tiger Woods.

Creators of the Comedy Central cartoon have long since proven that no subject is sacred to them. So for the opening of its 14th season on Wednesday, the troubled golfer encounters Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman in their animated Colorado town.

A teaser clip with the label “All The Temptations” promoting next Wednesday’s first show of South Park’s 14th season has already been viewed by more than 62,000 people according to a counter on the network’s web site.

In the selection, an animated Woods stands at a podium much as the real one did last month in Florida when he made a public apology, speaking about how he felt he could get away with anything and deserved to enjoy “all the temptations around me.”

Only at the end of the clip does the scene expand to show Eric Cartman, one of South Park’s main characters, standing behind the cartoon Woods and looking up at him as he speaks.

“It’s such an important issue in America right now — the sex addiction outbreak,” Matt Stone, who makes the series with partner Trey Parker, said on Friday. “We’re all really concerned about him and hope he gets better.”

Sex addiction, the intersection of powerful men and willing women, late-night phone calls to the police and bad public relations gave them so much fodder they could have made an entire Tiger-centric season, Stone said.

Since the Peabody Award-winning show’s first episode in 1997, Parker and Stone haven’t worried about lines between good taste and bad if they can get a laugh. They mocked the Church of Scientology to the point of annoying Tom Cruise, and depicted Jesus Christ defecating on former President George W. Bush and the American flag.

“There’s a delicacy in talking about (Woods) that we don’t have to worry about,” Stone said.

He wouldn’t give many details about the episode, in part because he and Parker were still writing it on Friday. Stone said he was fascinated and disgusted by Woods’ public apology, so it’s likely that will be worked in.

“South Park” is airing its 200th episode next month.

“We can’t even believe we’re still here doing this,” he said.

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PESHAWAR: Residents recovered the bullet-riddled bodies of six militants in a tribal area of northwest Pakistan, an official said on Saturday.

The bodies were recovered in the Kurram tribal region near the Afghan border.

“There was infighting among two militants groups. One group killed six of the rival group and fled…. Residents discovered these corpses today,” Mumtaz Khan, a local administrative official in the area, told AFP.

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MANAMA: Fernando Alonso flexed his and Ferrari’s muscles when the former double world champion topped the times in third and final practice ahead of qualifying for the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix here on Saturday.

The 28-year-old Iberian, making his Ferrari debut after moving from Renault, clocked a best lap of 1min 54.099sec to outpace nearest rival German Nico Rosberg of Mercedes by two-tenths of a second.

Australian Mark Webber showed improved speed in his Red Bull to deliver the third-best lap time ahead of Rosberg’s senior team-mate 41-year-old seven-times champion and compatriot Michael Schumacher, who was fourth.

Another German Sebastian Vettel, runner-up in the drivers’ championship last season, was fifth in the second Red Bull ahead of Alonso’s Ferrari partner Brazilian Felipe Massa.

This left defending champion Jenson Button down in seventh for McLaren with his team-mate and fellow-Briton Lewis Hamilton struggling at 12th after suffering from brake problems and clocking only eight timed laps.

Hamilton’s time was 1.7s slower than Alonso’s top lap, but this was due partly to his absence from the action when the leaders clocked their best efforts in the closing minutes.

Poland’s Robert Kubica, who replaced Alonso at Renault, was eighth, Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi ninth for Force India and German new boy Nico Hulkenberg 10th in his debut weekend with the Williams team.

The session was run in warm and dry conditions that gave a decent indication of the likely form and pace in qualifying when the top runners all lapped with low fuel loads in the closing minutes.

Alonso’s lap appeared to have laid down an ominous marker to his rivals, but Rosberg, rising to the challenge of matching four world champions in the field for a hugely-anticipated 2010 season, almost snatched away the top spot with a bold lap.

Much as expected the final seven places in the 24-car field were filled by the newcomer teams and drivers with Russian new boy Vitaly Petrov winding up 18th in the second Renault ahead of German Timo Glock’s Virgin, the two Lotuses of Finn Heikki Kovalainen and Italian Jarno Trulli and Brazilian Bruno Senna, who was 22nd for Hispania Racing, clocking a valuable 11 laps.

Another Brazilian Lucas Di Grassi managed only two laps for Virgin in 23rd place leaving the last spot ‘vacant’ as Indian Karun Chandhok failed to turn a wheel in the second Hispania car due to gearbox problems. He is out of qualifying.

Glock survived a drama in the session when he lost his left front wheel break away from his car and roll away on its own. He was unhurt.

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NEW DELHI: The Netherlands gave veteran goalkeeper Guus Vogels a retirement present by winning the bronze medal in the men’s field hockey World Cup with a 4-3 win over England on Saturday.

In a thrilling play-off for the third and fourth place positions, Rogier Hofman scored the winning goal three minutes before the final whistle after the Dutch fought back from 1-3 at half-time.

Vogels, who turns 35 later this month, was named the Dutch captain instead of Teun de Nooijer for the bronze medal match, his last international game after earning 259 caps for his country.

European champions England, hoping for a podium finish for the first time since winning the silver medal in 1986, were swept aside in the second half by a determined Dutch side.

De Nooijer put the Netherlands ahead in the 22nd minute, before two goals from penalty-corner specialist Ashley Jackson and one from Alastair Brogdon helped England snatch a comfortable lead.

Dutch penalty-corner expert Taeke Taekema scored his eighth goal in the tournament to make it 2-3 in the 48th minute, before Klaas Vermeulen equalised six minutes later.

Hofman, who had a goal disallowed by the video umpire in the 13th minute, scored in the 67th minute to seal his team’s emphatic win.

The Dutch will take the World Cup podium for the first time since 2002 when they won the bronze medal in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

Defending champions Germany are due to meet strong challengers Australia in the final later on Saturday.

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CHITTAGONG: Graeme Swann and Stuart Broad shared five wickets as England tightened their grip on the opening Test against Bangladesh on Saturday despite Tamim Iqbal’s fighting 81 not out.

Off-spinner Swann took 3-40 and fast bowler Broad 2-30 before Bangladesh struggled to reach 154-5 in their first innings at stumps on the second day in reply to England’s mammoth 599-6 declared.

The England batting might was on view for a second successive day, with Paul Collingwood cracking 145 for his 10th Test hundred and Ian Bell making 84.

Skipper Alastair Cook earlier fell for 173, his best in 53 Tests.

Broad jolted Bangladesh with two quick wickets in an incisive opening spell before Tamim counter-attacked to steady the innings with a 94-run stand for the fourth wicket with Mohammad Mahmudullah (51).

Left-handed Tamim batted aggressively during a 115-ball knock, hitting one six and 13 fours in his fifth Test half-century.

Broad tested the batsmen with short-pitched deliveries, dismissing opener Imrul Kayes (four) and Junaid Siddique (seven) in the process.

Swann reduced Bangladesh to 51-3 when he had Aftab Ahmed (one) caught by Bell at short-leg in his first over before removing Mahmudullah, caught off the gloves by Collingwood at first slip while trying to sweep.

His third wicket came in the day’s penultimate over when he bowled skipper Shakib Al Hasan for one.

England earlier added 225 runs to their overnight total of 374-3, with all-rounder Collingwood and Bell doing the bulk of scoring. The pair made the most of a mediocre Bangladeshi attack, adding 184 for the fifth wicket.

Collingwood smashed four sixes and 10 fours in an impressive 188-ball knock and Bell hit nine fours in his 105-ball innings. Both were caught in the deep while going for big shots just before the declaration.

The hosts continued to struggle for success as they managed to grab just three wickets in more than a session, with key spinners Abdur Razzak and Shakib both giving away more than 100 runs.

Cook, leading England for the first time in Tests, hit two sixes and 16 fours in his career-best knock. His previous best in Tests was 160 against the West Indies at home last year.

He looked set to complete his maiden Test double-century before falling to off-spinner Mahmudullah in the morning, offering an easy return catch while attempting to pull a long-hop.

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KARACHI: Zahid Gulfam won the Tour de Pakistan cycle race, which concluded in Karachi on Saturday.

Gulfam, representing the Wapda department won the race despite not being among the top three finishers in the last stage of the race.

Asad Mehmood of Pakistan Army finished first in the final stage, followed by Wahab of Sindh and Saleem Gul of Balochistan.

The race got underway in Peshawar on March 1, and concluded at Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum in Karachi.

Cyclists raced through a number of cities across the country in the stage which was spread over 11 stages and 1,650 kilometres.

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NEW DELHI: India on Saturday condemned the bomb blasts in Lahore which claimed at least 57 lives as “acts of terrorism.”

“The government unequivocally condemns the series of bomb blasts in Lahore which claimed the lives of scores of people, including innocent civilians, and injured many more, among them women and children,” the foreign ministry said.

“Our condolences go out to the families of those killed by these acts of terrorism,” the ministry said in a statement a day after the blasts.

The suicide attackers walked up to army vehicles in Lahore’s R A Bazaar area and blew themselves up as people sat down to eat before the main Muslim weekly prayers were to begin on Friday.

Hours later, five small bombs exploded elsewhere in Lahore but caused no casualties.

India has blamed Pakistan-based militants for the November 2008 carnage in Mumbai which left 166 people dead and more than 300 others wounded.

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