MADRID DJ Chark Jaguars Jersey , Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- FC Barcelona striker Luis Suarez was on Friday given a 2-game King's Cup ban by the disciplinary committee of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) following incidents in the players' tunnel following Wednesday's tie against Espanyol.
That game came just five days after Espanyol used physical tactics to draw 0-0 against their local rivals in the BBVA Primera Liga and feelings were still running high on Wednesday after another tense game which saw two Espanyol players (Pape Diop and Hernan Perez) sent off for foul plays.
According to the post-game report of referee Martinrz Muniera, Suarez waited in the tunnel for the Espanyol players and said, "I'm waiting for you here, come over here. You piece of rubbish."
This provoked a melee between players from both sides with technical staff and security personnel forced to intervene.
The sanction means Suarez will miss next week's return leg in the Copa and Barca's next game in the competition, which will probably be in the quarter-finals, given that they beat Espanyol 4-1 in the first leg.
The club has announced it will appeal against the suspension with a view of having it overturned or reduced to just one game.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- A video production group, hired by the Rio de Janeiro City Hall to cover the Olympic road cycling test event, were robbed by armed robbers during the competition on Sunday.
According to Brazil news hub UOL, the robbery occurred just minutes before the start of the competition. The five photographers and cameramen of this group were positioned in a tunnel to shoot the cyclists, but they were approached by two armed men in motorbike before their camera and cell phones were robbed. As none of the journalists resisted during the robbery, no one got injured.
The International Road Cycling Challenge is one of 45 test events being held as Rio prepares for the first Olympics in South America. The event also confronted a planned anti-government protest on Sunday, forcing Rio 2016 organizers to change the starting time and route.
Cyclists began the event at Copacabana beach at 8:30am, an hour earlier than originally scheduled. Protesters gather at the same location later in the day. Instead of finishing in Copacabana, the event ended at Sao Conrado beach, further southwest.
Street crime in Rio has always been a headache issue. Officials say they will deploy some 85,000 security personnel, double the number used at the London 2012 Games, to guarantee the security of the Olympics.
LINDAU, Germany, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- "Research has confirmed that central banks are not powerless at the effective lower bound," President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi said here Wednesday, reiterating the effectiveness of non-standard monetary policy taken by central banks on both sides of the Atlantic since the last financial crisis.
Draghi delivered a keynote speech at the 6th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on Economic Sciences, saying that central banks can continue pursuing their price stability mandates even in the most adverse circumstances, as long as they are willing to explore non-standard policy avenues including forward guidance, large-scale asset purchase, etc.
"While forward guidance is a useful instrument, recent research has highlighted that its effectiveness can be improved if combined with other non-standard monetary policies," he added.
ECB has kept the Eurozone base interest rate at historical lowest level of zero for 18 consecutive months, while buying bonds of over 2,000 billion euros as of July, which provided the euro area with impulse in inflation recovery as well as favorable financing conditions to corporations and households.
"Large-scale asset purchases can ease these constraints and increase investors' risk-bearing capacity, leading to a portfolio rebalancing towards risky assets and to strengthened lending activity for banks," Draghi said.
In addition, the ECB head regarded the unconventional tool of monetary policy -- "Outright Monetary Transactions"(OMT) -- a program to purchase bonds issued by Eurozone member-states in secondary sovereign bond markets under certain conditions, which was announced by the ECB in 2012 but was never used so far, as effective too.
"That the ECB had the tool at its disposal was sufficient to anchor expectations at the 'good' outcome," Draghi said, concluding that policy actions undertaken in the last ten years in monetary policy and in regulation and supervision have made the world more resilient.
"But we should continue preparing for new challenges," adding that policies, especially monetary policy, needed to be adjusted, even though it was never easy, when the world changes as it did ten years ago.
17 Nobel Laureates participate in the four-day Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences kicked off Wednesday. They meet with 350 young economists from 66 countries and regions.
The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, originally as European initiative of post-war reconciliation among scientists, focus alternately on physiology and medicine, physics, chemistry and economic science, aiming to foster the exchange among scientists of different generations, cultures, and disciplines.
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