Mccain's vp choice

Come 2 me clinton suckers

CNN - McCain picks Alaska Gov. Palin as running mate

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McCain picks Alaska Gov. Palin as running mate

Sen. John McCain has picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a senior McCain campaign official told CNN on Friday.

Palin, 44, who's in her first term as governor, is a pioneering figure in Alaska, the first woman and the youngest person to hold the state's top political job.

She catapulted to the post with a strong reputation as a political outsider, forged during her stint in local politics. She was mayor and a council member of the small town of Wasila and was chairman of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska's oil and gas resources, in 2003 and 2004.

The conservative Palin defeated two so-called political insiders to win the governor's job -- incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary and former two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles in the 2006 general election. iReport.com: What do you think of McCain's VP pick?

Palin made her name in part by backing tough ethical standards for politicians. During the first legislative session after her election, her administration passed a state ethics law overhaul.

Palin's term has not been without controversy. A legislative investigation is looking into allegations that Palin fired Alaska's public safety commissioner because he refused to fire the governor's former brother-in-law, a state trooper.

Palin acknowledged that a member of her staff made a call to a trooper in which the staffer suggested he was speaking for the governor.

Palin has admitted that the call could be interpreted as pressure to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, who was locked in a child-custody battle with Palin's sister.

"I am truly disappointed and disturbed to learn that a member of this administration contacted the Department of Public Safety regarding Trooper Wooten," Palin said. "At no time did I authorize any member of my staff to do so."

Palin suspended the staffer who made the call.

Palin has focused on energy and natural resources policy during her short stint in office, and she is known for her support of drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a position opposed by McCain but supported by many grass-roots Republicans.

Her biography on the state governor's Web site says one of the two major pieces of legislation passed during her first legislative session was a competitive process to construct a gas pipeline.

Palin started Alaska's Petroleum Systems Integrity Office, an oversight and maintenance agency for the state's oil and gas equipment, facilities and infrastructure. She created the Climate Change Subcabinet that would forge a climate change strategy, according to the Web site.

At present, Palin chairs the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a multistate panel "that promotes the conservation and efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and the environment," the biography says.

She has been named chair of the National Governors Association's Natural Resources Committee. That panel is focused on legislation to ensure that federal policies take state priorities into account in agriculture, energy, environmental protection and natural resource management.

She is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and takes part in two of Alaska's popular pastimes -- fishing and hunting.

The governor's biography said Palin's other priorities have been "education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development."

The biography touts other achievements during her time as governor -- the investment of $5 billion in state savings, overhaul of educational funding and implementation of a program to help low-income elderly Alaskans.

Born in Idaho, she is a longtime Alaskan and a Protestant. Her biography said she arrived in Alaska in 1964, "when her parents came to teach school in Skagway."

She graduated from Wasila High School in 1982 and received a bachelor of science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987.

Her husband is Todd Palin, an oil production operator on Alaska's North Slope. They have five children, including a son who enlisted in the Army last year.

Congressional Quarterly notes Sarah Palin's other past occupations, including commercial fishing company owner, outdoor recreational equipment company owner and sports reporter.

Palin also made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor in 2002, Congressional Quarterly said.

Reuters - Nokia shares fall before MSCI index change: traders

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Nokia shares fall before MSCI index change: traders

Friday, Aug 29, 2008 12:26PM UTC

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Shares in the world's top cell phone maker Nokia <NOK1V.HE> fell sharply on Friday as an imminent change in a key MSCI index put pressure on the stock price, traders said.

Shares in Nokia were 2.6 percent lower at 17 euros by 8:11 a.m. EDT, weighing on the DJ Stoxx European technology index <.SX8P> which was 1.1 percent weaker. The shares traded as low as 16.90 euros.

"The index is being rebalanced tonight and the proforma number of Nokia shares is going to decrease," said an MSCI Barra spokesman.

Traders in Helsinki said the rebalancing in the closely followed index meant that some 8 million shares in Nokia were to be sold, hurting the stock.

Nokia declined to comment.

Traders added that Nokia was also pressured by gloomy comments from its closest rival Samsung <005930.KS> in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, which increased fears that the economic downturn would hurt consumer product demand during the key Christmas sales period.

"The seasonal gain is being overcome by the macroeconomic weakness," the paper quoted Samsung's investor relations head, Chu Woosik, as telling an investment conference in Seoul.

"We see the markets in the U.S. and Europe are softening quite a bit, although emerging-market demand seems to be holding quite well," he was quoted as saying.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki in Helsinki and Sitaraman Shankar in London; Editing by Erica Billingham)

Reuters - EU, mobile operators clash over call billing

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EU, mobile operators clash over call billing

Thursday, Aug 28, 2008 3:11PM UTC

By Huw Jones

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Mobile phone operators may face legislation from the European Commission to crack down on what the EU executive sees as overcharging, but industry said such a step would amount to micro-management.

European Union Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding is concerned that some mobile operators are charging by the minute rather than second for calls made while traveling between EU states, her spokesman said.

"In some cases operators are charging you for a call of one minute two seconds what they can charge you for two minutes. This leads to overcharging on average of 24 percent for calls made and 19 percent for calls received," the spokesman told a news briefing.

Mobile operators say they should have the fundamental right to determine their own prices in a competitive market as long as they are transparent about billing increments.

"The regulation of billing increments within the Eurotariff or any other roaming tariff would amount to micro-management and would risk further erosion of competitive differentiation in the market," said David Pringle, spokesman for the GSMA mobile industry lobby.

"Billing increments are a point of differentiation that operators can use to appeal to customers with different preferences," Pringle said.

In France, Spain, Lithuania and Portugal, operators have to bill by the second, but national legislation is not practical for roamed calls, the Commission spokesman said.

"This is an issue national regulators have recommended the European Commission to address ... If you tackle this issue you have to tackle it in EU legislation. This is something the European Commission will consider in the weeks to come," he added.

The EU has already adopted a law to cap the price of roamed voice calls for three years, with the cap due to be lowered on Saturday and in August next year before the law expires in 2010.

Reding is due to unveil proposals by early October to extend the voice roaming caps for another three years to 2013 and introduce a cap on roamed text messages.

She is also keen on capping the price of using a laptop or mobile phone to surf the Web while traveling in other EU states but it is unclear whether the rest of the Commission will back her.

Any plan for mandatory billing by the second would be included in her proposal. EU states and the European Parliament would have the final say.

(Editing by Dale Hudson)

Reuters - Microsoft to buy ciao.com price comparison firm

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Microsoft to buy ciao.com price comparison firm

Friday, Aug 29, 2008 11:54AM UTC

LONDON (Reuters) - Microsoft has agreed to buy Greenfield Online, owner of European price comparison website ciao.com, for about $486 million to boost its Internet search and e-commerce business in Europe.

Microsoft, whose $47.5 billion bid to buy Yahoo earlier this year failed after a protracted battle, said on Friday the acquisition should benefit its Live Search platform.

Internet search is dominated by Google, which has 62 percent of the global search market and 79 percent in Europe, according to the most recent data published by Web usage tracker ComScore.

Microsoft has a 2 percent market share in Europe and 9 percent worldwide, behind both Google and Yahoo. In Europe, Microsoft is also outranked by online auction site eBay and Russia's Yandex.

"The team at Ciao has built a passionate consumer community based on intuitive technology and extensive merchant relationships that we believe will deliver incremental benefit to the Microsoft Live Search platform," said Microsoft's vice president for Windows and online services, Tami Reller.

Ciao.com offers advice on purchases, mainly of consumer electronics, and encourages users to join a network of shopping experts to share opinions. It makes its revenues from e-commerce, merchant referrals and advertising sales.

Microsoft's offer of $17.50 per share betters an earlier proposal by media-focused U.S. buyout firm Quadrangle Group to acquire the company for $15.50 a share, and represents a slight premium to Greenfield's closing price of $17.25 on Thursday.

On August 26, Greenfield had said it had received a $17.50 per share offer but did not reveal from whom. The latest offer represents a premium of about 10 percent over Greenfield's closing share price on August 25.

Microsoft said it had agreed to sell off Greenfield Online's main business, which surveys consumer opinion online and sells the results to market researchers, to an unnamed financial buyer.

The companies expect both deals to close during the fourth quarter of 2008. Completion of the Greenfield sale to Microsoft does not depend on Microsoft's disposal of the online survey business, the two companies said.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty in Bangalore; Editing by Quentin Bryar)

Reuters - Gameworld: Videogaming enters the Third Dimension

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Gameworld: Videogaming enters the Third Dimension

Friday, Aug 29, 2008 5:1AM UTC

By John Gaudiosi

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Videogamers, your glasses to transport you into three dimensional space.

Visual computing technology company Nvidia <NVDA.O> has unveiled the first mainstream 3D gaming technology at the inaugural NVISION 08 conference in San Jose, which focused on the convergence of technology with Hollywood, games and business.

With Hollywood migrating to 3D for event movies like "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and next year's "Avatar" from James Cameron, the electronics and gaming industries have created new technology that lets home systems and PCs also deliver true 3D.

This technology uses clear 3D glasses similar to those used at an IMAX theater.

On the show floor, games like upcoming Spore and Call of Duty: World at War and recent releases like Race Driver Grid, Devil May Cry 4, and Unreal Tournament 3 were playable on 73-inch Mitsubishi 3D Ready 1080p DLP TVs and Viewsonic 3D Ready 120Hz LCD displays.

Publishers like Ubisoft <UBIP.PA>, which is developing the game based on "Avatar," are already taking advantage of this new technology for new gameplay experiences to be released next year.

"Stereoscopic technology will have gamers going back two or three years and playing older games just to see how they look in 3D," said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia.

A packed theater of thousands of engineers, designers, developers, gamers and business professionals from around the world put on 3D glasses and watched a spectacular castle siege in Microsoft's 2005 PC strategy game, Age of Empires III.

Huang also focused on the future of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. There are currently over 100 million active global gamers playing MMO games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest II and Pirates of the Caribbean Online.

"We believe the notion of an MMO and a social network will converge and create a new type of virtual world where people can meet and hang out and just chat with their friends," said Huang.

Korean developer Nurien showed off its Nurien Social Network, a hybrid game world that allows players to create and dress their avatar and then design their home.

This home serves as a 3D homepage for web browsing, watching videos and playing games like a dancing competition.

Tricia Helfer, who starred virtually last year as General Kilian Qatar in Electronic Arts' Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars game, showed how 3D technology is influencing Hollywood and her Sci-Fi Channel show, "Battlestar Galactica."

"What they're doing with visual computing is transforming a lot of industries," said Helfer. "I see on the set in Hollywood every day what computer technology is doing for entertainment."

Acclaimed game creator Lorne Lanning told the conference how game technology is opening up new opportunities for filmmakers.

"Videogame engines provide an entirely different logic to how we're thinking about making films," said Lanning.

"The game design industry grasps this easily. The filmmakers are taking some time to figure this out, but eventually they're going to get it. Hollywood loves it because using a game engine brings the budget down."

(Editing by Belinda Goldsmiht)

Reuters - GeoEye signs deal to provide imagery to Google

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GeoEye signs deal to provide imagery to Google

Friday, Aug 29, 2008 9:10AM UTC

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - GeoEye Inc on Thursday said it will provide imagery from its new $502 million high-resolution GeoEye-1 satellite to Google Earth and Google Maps after the spacecraft is launched on September 4.

GeoEye spokesman Mark Brender said the Google logo was on the first stage of the Delta II rocket that will launch the new satellite, which will provide the highest resolution commercial color imagery available on the market.

"Google is interested in collecting the highest quality satellite imagery available and as a symbol of this commitment has agreed to put the company logo on the first stage of our launch vehicle," Brender said.

He said Google did not have any direct or indirect financial interest in the satellite or in GeoEye, nor did it pay to have its logo emblazoned on the rocket.

If all goes well with the launch, GeoEye's new satellite will be the world's highest resolution commercial earth-imaging satellite, offering images at .41 meters resolution in black and white and 1.65 meters in color.

Under current government rules, the company can only offer the public half-meter images.

Google spokeswoman Kate Hurowitz said Google would begin receiving half-meter resolution imagery from the new satellite after 45 to 60 days, during which the company will make sure all the satellite's systems are up and running.

"The combination of GeoEye's high-resolution, map-accurate satellite imagery from GeoEye-1 and Google's search and display capabilities provides users with access to rich, interactive visual image maps of the Earth," Hurowitz said. She gave no details on the financial terms of the agreement.

Google already uses imagery collected by another high-resolution GeoEye satellite, IKONOS, as well as imagery from other sources, including GeoEye's main rival, Digital Globe, which plans an initial public offering this year.

DigitalGlobe launched its new high-resolution satellite, WorldView-1, in late 2007, which offers half-meter resolution and can collect up to 750,000 square kilometers (290,000 square miles) of imagery each day, albeit only in black and white.

Google will continue to use imagery from other providers, but GeoEye will provide its imagery exclusively to Google, not any other on-line mapping websites, Brender said.

GeoEye, which went public in September 2006, has expanded dramatically over the past five years, quadrupling its work force and reporting large revenue and profit increases.

Its shares were hammered in recent months on news of a delay in the launch of the new satellite, which was originally planned in April, and given a slump in orders from the Pentagon's National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

But GeoEye Chief Executive Matthew O'Connell said the launch of GeoEye-1 should help spur U.S. government orders and buoy the company's shares. He predicted strong growth over the next five years, bolstered by growing commercial, global and government demand for satellite imagery.

GeoEye's shares closed 2.4 percent higher at $23.18 on Thursday, up sharply from a low of $16.05 in May, but still well below a 52-week high of $37.37 in January.

(Editing by Gary Hill)

Reuters - Obama: "We are a better country than this"

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Obama: "We are a better country than this"

Friday, Aug 29, 2008 2:35AM UTC

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

DENVER (Reuters) - Barack Obama, preparing to take a historic step as the Democratic presidential nominee, launched a sharp assault on Republican rival John McCain on Thursday and promised to reverse the economic failures of the last eight years.

Obama, the first black White House nominee of a major U.S. party, said McCain had supported the policies of President George W. Bush that were responsible for the faltering U.S. economy and decline in U.S. global standing.

"We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight," Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery to the Democratic convention.

"On November 4th, we must stand up and say: 'Eight is enough,'" he said. "We are a better country than this."

Obama said McCain was out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of Americans and had been "anything but independent" on key issues like the economy, health care and education.

"It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it," said Obama, who has been criticized by some Democrats for not taking a tougher line against McCain.

"The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans -- Democrats and Republicans -- have built, and we are to restore that legacy," he said.

Obama was set to deliver the biggest speech in a career filled with big speeches later in Denver's open-air football stadium before an expected 75,000 supporters on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- a landmark in the U.S. civil rights movement.

The televised acceptance speech by Obama, who was formally nominated on Wednesday, gives the first-term Illinois senator his biggest national audience until he meets McCain in late September in the first of three face-to-face debates before the election.

The speech kicks off a two-month sprint to the general election against McCain, who tried to steal the limelight with word that he has chosen his running mate and will appear with the choice on Friday in Ohio.

"Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 percent of the time?" Obama asked, citing McCain's voting record in the Senate.

"I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change," he said.

Former Vice President Al Gore, the Nobel Prize and Academy Award winner who lost a disputed election to Bush in 2000, said things would have been very different if he had won.

"I doubt anyone would argue now that election didn't matter," Gore told a stadium filled nearly to capacity with flag-waving Democrats, describing Obama as "a clean break from the politics of partisanship and bitter division."

Obama, an early opponent of the Iraq war, promised to "end this war in Iraq responsibly" but said he would finish the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and would be willing to use U.S. military power when necessary.

"As commander-in-chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home," Obama said.

TOUGH DIPLOMACY

"I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," he said.

Obama is running even with McCain in most opinion polls, although a Gallup daily tracking poll on Thursday showed him beginning to get an edge from the convention and moving out to a 6-point advantage, up five points.

Obama addressed criticism he has not offered enough specifics along with his sometimes soaring rhetoric, restating an ambitious domestic agenda that includes a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans and an end to dependence on Middle East oil in 10 years.

He said McCain's emphasis on new offshore oil drilling was a stop-gap measure and not a long-term energy solution. He promised to invest $150 billion over the next decade to develop affordable, renewable energy sources.

While Obama's policy proposals were not new, national conventions are often the first time voters pay attention to a presidential race. Opinion polls show many still unfamiliar with Obama and concerned about his readiness for the job.

Supporters were slow to make their way into the stadium, with many seats in the upper decks still empty as the sun set during performances by singers Stevie Wonder and Sheryl Crow.

McCain launched an advertisement on cable television in which he spoke directly to Obama through the camera.

"Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say, congratulations," said McCain, who has been scathing in his criticism of Obama.

"How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day. Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight, senator, job well done."

The last presidential candidate to accept the nomination in an open-air football stadium was John Kennedy, who spoke to the Democratic convention at the Los Angeles Coliseum before 80,000 supporters in 1960.

(Editing by David Wiessler)

CNN - Putin accuses U.S. of orchestrating Georgian war

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Putin accuses U.S. of orchestrating Georgian war

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.

Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate -- Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush -- although he presented no evidence to back it up.

"U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict," Putin said. "They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino blasted Putin's statements, saying they were "patently false."

"To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational," she said.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood concurred, and labeled Putin's statements as "ludicrous."

"Russia is responsible for the crisis," Wood said in an off-camera meeting with reporters in Washington on Thursday. "For the Russians to say they are not responsible for what happened in Georgia is ludicrous. ... Russia is to blame for this crisis and the world is responding to what Russia has done."

When told that many diplomats in the United States and Europe blame Russia for provoking the conflict and for invading Georgia, Putin said Russia had no choice but to invade Georgia after dozens of its peacekeepers in South Ossetia were killed. He told Chance it was to avert a human calamity. iReport.com: First-person accounts from the center of the conflict

The former Russian president, still considered the most powerful man in the country, said he was disappointed the U.S. had not done more to stop Georgia's attack.

Putin recalled he was watching the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia unfold when he was at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games on August 8.

He said he spoke to U.S. President George W. Bush, also attending, who told the Russian prime minister he didn't want war -- but Putin spoke to CNN of his disappointment that the U.S. administration didn't do more to stop Georgia early in the conflict.

Also Thursday Putin announced economic measures which he said were unrelated to the fighting with Georgia. Nineteen U.S. poultry meat companies would be banned from exporting their products to Russia because they had failed health and safety tests, and 29 other companies had been warned to improve their standards or face the same ban, Putin said.

Putin said Russia's health and agricultural ministries had randomly tested the poultry products and found them to be full of antibiotics and arsenic.

While Putin repeated that the bans were not related to the Georgian conflict, they indicate the measures some Western countries -- particularly in Europe -- fear if Russia goes on a diplomatic offensive.

Russia is trying to counterbalance mounting pressure from the West over its military action in Georgia and its recognition of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

But Russia's hopes of winning international support for its actions in Georgia were dashed Thursday, when China and other Asian nations expressed concern about tension in the region.

The joint declaration from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, said the countries hoped any further conflict could be resolved peacefully.

"The presidents reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of respect for historic and cultural traditions of every country and efforts aimed at preserving the unity of a state and its territorial integrity," the declaration said, The Associated Press reported.

"Placing the emphasis exclusively on the use of force has no prospects and hinders a comprehensive settlement of local conflicts," AP reported the group as saying.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had appealed to the SCO at a summit in Tajikistan Thursday to support its actions, saying it would serve as a "serious signal for those who are trying to justify the aggression."

On Wednesday a U.S. ship carrying aid docked in Georgia, while Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband traveled to the Ukraine, which is worried about Russia's intentions in the region, to offer the UK's support.

Miliband equated Moscow's offensive in Georgia with the Soviet tanks that invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring democratic reforms in 1968, and demanded Russia "change course," AP reported. iReport.com: Do remember the Cold War?

Reuters - Jamaica sweeps the sprint golds in Beijing

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Jamaica sweeps the sprint golds in Beijing

Thursday, Aug 21, 2008 1:37PM UTC

By Sean Maguire

BEIJING (Reuters) - Jamaica made a clean sweep of Olympic sprint golds on Thursday with victory in the women's 200 meters to complete their domination over the United States.

The Americans, the traditional power in track and field, had a nightmare night with both the women and the men dropping their batons during the heats of the 4x100 meter relay to crash out.

The United States were also beaten in the final of women's softball, the first time the Americans have failed to win gold in that event.

The Caribbean island's Veronica Campbell-Brown powered through to gold in the 200m, taking a meter's lead by the halfway mark.

Her face was creased with pain but broke into a broad grin at the finish, where she dropped to her knees for a prayer.

Campbell-Brown also won the event in 2004. American world champion Allyson Felix came second and 100 meter silver medalist Kerron Stewart of Jamaica was third.

The victory will bring more rejoicing to an island already exultant over the two world records and double sprint gold of Usain "Lightning" Bolt. His jawdropping speed has brought superlatives pouring forth from media and commentators.

Bolt, 22 on Thursday, collected his second gold in a rain-soaked ceremony in the Bird's Nest stadium and gave his signature lightning bolt gesture for the cameras.

The head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has questioned the Jamaican's sportsmanship, taking exception to his exuberant celebration of his 100 meter win on Saturday when he pounded his chest even before crossing the finish line.

"I think he should show more respect, shake hands, give a tap on the shoulder to the other ones. Not making gestures like the one he made," Jacques Rogge said. "He still has to mature."

Jamaican coach and former sprinter Don Quarrie defended Bolt, saying his celebrations were just youthful high spirits, from a man who is "playful, funny, happy".

LITTLE CONSOLATION

The United States have won a major sprint medal at every Games since 1984 and this year's collection of silvers and bronzes will be little consolation for a team doing worse than anticipated in track and field, a traditional strength.

The failure in the relays, an unexpected loss in the final of the women's water polo the Netherlands and defeat to Japan in the softball will be salt in the wounds for the Americans.

Softball will not be at the 2012 Games and the U.S. had won every gold on offer since it became an Olympic sport in 1996.

That will do little to chip at the dominance of China in the medals table. The hosts have a commanding 45 golds to the U.S.'s 27, a lead that China says shows it now has the sporting prowess to match its growing economic might and superpower clout.

In Athens, the U.S. team topped the medals table with 36 golds to China's 32, but the hosts have invested heavily in selecting and training athletes intensively over many years.

"The world has to learn to live with a change of geopolitical nature," the IOC's Rogge said, adding that China's sporting success would last "as long as their sports system lasts".

One sport where Americans did enjoy success was women's beach volleyball.

An excited home crowd sheltered from torrential rain as China's Tian Jia and Wang Jie lost to the defending champions, U.S. pair Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, in straight sets.

May-Treanor and Walsh, who have dominated the sport for five years, left the door open to a return in London 2012, but said that might depend on plans to have children.

The rain did not matter to the men's marathon swimmers.

Dutchman Maarten van der Weijden, who was given only a slim chance of survival when diagnosed with leukemia seven years ago, won the 10km swim, one of the most testing Olympic events.

A stem cell transplant and chemotherapy saved van der Weijden's life.

"That makes it extra special," he said. "It proves that even after such an illness you can win gold."

HORSE DOPE TESTS

Equestrian sports were embarrassed by positive drug tests on four horses that could lead to Norway's Tony Andre Hansen losing his bronze medal.

Four horses tested positive for capsaicin, which is banned for its hyposensitizing and pain-relieving properties.

Hansen, on his horse Camiro, was a member of the Norwegian team that won bronze in Monday's team show jumping competition. A decision on his team's medal will come after a B-sample test.

"It is certainly a serious blow to the sport and we are very well aware of the possible implications it can have," said Sven Holmberg, the chairman of the International Equestrian Federation's jumping committee.

(Reporting by Beijing Olympics bureau; Editing by Jon Bramley)