Hasta La Gadget!

According to Bandai Namco’s announcement last year, Tekken 7 was confirmed to be arriving on the PS4. However what about other platforms like the PC or the Xbox One? Last we heard, the company had sent out a survey which indicated that they could be considering a PC release, but now it seems that an Xbox One launch has been “confirmed”.

This is according to a Twitter post in which the user by the name of YellowMotion claimed to have been at the MCM London Comic Con event, and apparently he spoke to a Bandai Namco representative who told him that the game would be out on the Xbox One and the PC as well, in addition to the PS4.

We suppose it does seem a bit suspect given that anyone can say anything they want online without any proof. However Attack of the Fanboy has corroborated the story by saying that they saw a pre-order box for Tekken 7 for the Xbox One at EB Games over the weekend, thus “confirming” the earlier report.

Needless to say it’s best taken with a grain of salt for now, although if the rumors are true we guess PC gamers and Xbox One gamers can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the game won’t be a PS4 exclusive. After Street Fighter V being a PS4 exclusive, we think it’s about time Xbox One gamers catch a break, right? In any case hopefully we’ll get some kind of confirmation at E3 2016 next month.

Tekken 7 Could Arrive On The Xbox One And PC After All , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Laptops come in varying sizes, but if you’re the type that moves around a lot, obviously lugging around a 3kg laptop will eventually take its toll on your back. This is why manufacturers are starting to offer up thinner and lighter laptops, and if you are after such a device, you might be interested to learn that ASUS has launched the ZenBook 3.

The ZenBook 3 is the company’s latest laptop and while its design is something to behold on its own, its key selling point would be the fact that it measures 11.9mm thin, and weighs just 910 grams, thus making it lighter and thinner than Apple’s MacBook laptops which is actually saying a lot.

As far as specs are concerned, the ZenBook 3 appears to pack quite a punch with specs offering up to an Intel Core i7 CPU with support for 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB PCIe SSD. Unfortunately due to its size, there are only so many ports that ASUS can fit and besides a 3.5mm audio jack, the ZenBook 3 will only come with a USB-C Universal Dock.

Other features of the laptop include a 12.5-inch Full HD screen, a backlit keyboard, a large touchpad, a built-in fingerprint sensor, quad speakers courtesy of Harmon Kardon, and will be priced starting at $1,499. Based on this, it certainly sounds like Apple’s next MacBook Pro better bring their A-game.

ASUS ZenBook 3 Laptop Announced With 11.9mm Thin Body , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Paul Dimeo, University of Stirling

The World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Olympic Committee and the International Association of Athletics Federations are facing a real dilemma. Having pushed Kenya towards improving its anti-doping environment, the question remains whether to follow through and deliver the ultimate sanction – disqualification from the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Such a move would potentially prove disastrous for Kenyan sport. Athletes would lose the opportunity of participating in the most prestigious event. Months, even years, of planning would feel wasted. The economic rewards would be lost. The reputational damage would be enormous and a huge shadow would be cast over the country’s involvement in other international events.

The arguments for such a move are clear. Media investigations claim to show widespread doping. More than 40 athletes have failed drugs tests since 2011 and 18 are currently serving bans. Some highly successful male and female athletes are now associated with doping and cheating. Only six months ago, former World Anti-Doping Agency President Dick Pound said it was “pretty clear there are a lot of performance-enhancing drugs being used” in Kenya. Some of these allegations go back four years.

Kenya’s non-compliance would mean it had not fulfilled all the requirements of the World Anti-Doping Code. These include having an effective independent national anti-doping organisation to oversee testing, education, sanctions and appeals. Subsequent legal amendments made by Kenya on specific recommendations would, it appears, result in the country being declared compliant and thus able to compete in the Olympics. But this remains to be seen.

It is not unique for a country to have doping cases – in some situations a high number of positives is seen as evidence of an effective anti-doping system. But the problem facing Kenya is its long-running non-compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code.

Despite warnings and support from the World Anti-Doping Agency over the past two years, Kenya’s sports and political leaders have left it to the proverbial last minute. In an effort to resolve this in time for the Olympics, the parliament is pushing through legislation.​

However, we should look beyond the policies to take stock of the wider situation and potential implications of a ban.

Kenya is not an isolated case

In the broader international context, Kenya is arguably unlucky to be singled out. This might be because it is home to so many successful athletes. Its various successes include finishing top of the table at the last World Athletics Championships with seven gold medals. The London marathon is also an example of their dominance: since 2004, the men’s race has been won by a Kenyan athlete on all but two occasions. This year Eliud Kipchoge won it for the second year in a row with a course record. Another example is Florence Kiplagat’s world record last year for the women’s half marathon.

It is hardly surprising that sports scientists have been searching for the secret to their success for over a decade. It is a high-profile target, similar to American champion cyclist Lance Armstrong.

But other countries have also recently faced issues with their anti-doping systems. In March 2016, Spain and Mexico were non-compliant, and Olympic hosts Brazil still had final steps to take even after being declared compliant. Six countries were added to the list and four had only just been declared compliant.

In April, the Chinese anti-doping laboratory had its accreditation suspended for four months. And, of course, Russia is the other country that could face disqualification after a damning report in November 2015 by a commission led by Dick Pound.

Given the apparent range of anti-doping system weaknesses, the Kenyan sports community might think itself hard done by if the county is the only one to be severely punished through removal from the Olympics.

What a ban would mean

The potential implications of a ban are far from clear. Presumably the sports and specific athletes not implicated in any doping investigation would feel highly aggrieved. Most of the focus has been on track and field, despite the fact that Kenya’s 2012 Olympic squad included boxers, swimmers and a weightlifter.
Athletes who do not have a positive test as evidence of their individual doping might have a legal case for compensation if a country-level ban prevented their participation.

Moreover, disqualification would open up challenging questions around where to draw the line in other contexts. As doping mainly occurs during training periods, any country that is not sufficiently testing its athletes during the full four years between Olympic events has arguably opened the door to cheating. So becoming compliant in the months before the Games hardly suggests a long-term commitment to anti-doping.

And would the Rio Games be of the same quality without the best athletes from all countries competing? Any disqualification would be a regression to the early 1980s, when political boycotts meant gold medal winners could not claim to be the best in their sport.

It was recently reported that even fans would not be too concerned if they were watching “doped” athletes in Rio. Once you take the best athletes out of a competition, there is potential to lose viewers and sponsors. This also harms the clean athletes, whose career opportunities are dependent on the economic viability of their sport.

Unfortunately the spate of recent scandals means that the World Anti-Doping Agency and international sports agencies are under pressure to prove that they are cracking down on doping.

The question of equality

Perhaps an even wider political lens needs to be taken on this subject. It is difficult for developing countries to meet the expectations of globalised anti-doping when economic resources are much scarcer and geographical locations make testing even more challenging. With each test costing US$500-$800, many African, Asian and South American countries might reasonably identify other priorities for public finances.

In addition athletes in developing countries see sport as a route out of poverty, not as a pastime for wealthy people. For example, some Kenyans describe athletes as a way to create new wealth for their family and community. By comparison, 20% of the British squad at the 2012 Olympics attended private fee-paying schools.

If Kenya were to be banned from Rio 2016, the overall inclusiveness of the Olympics and the global equality of sporting opportunities would be seriously questioned.

Paul Dimeo, Senior Lecturer in Sport, University of Stirling

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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By James M. Dorsey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dresses up his increasing authoritarianism with nationalist and religious overtones, sparking battles over the future of the Kemalist state. Those battles, pitting nationalist and conservative forces against secularists and Kurds, are nowhere more evident than on Turkish soccer pitches.

A series of incidents in recent months highlighted the mounting tensions in Turkish society. Controversy rages over what actually happened in some of the incidents, particularly those in remote locations or that occurred away from the prying eyes of fans and/or the media,

The underlying political and social battles are nonetheless evident and beyond dispute irrespective of who did what to whom when. The incidents frequently occurred in matches between teams who represent very different and frequently diametrically opposed visions of what the Turkish state and society should be.

Turkish-American soccer writer John Blasing who often blogs about violence and social and political tensions in Turkish soccer noted that the incidents involved “violence with political undertones, based…on religious and ethnic identities” that targeted Kurds and secularists, groups that traditionally have had disdain for one another. Kurds strived to achieve greater cultural and political rights; secularists championed a unitarian Turkish identity and viewed the Kurdish southeast of the country as backward.

“The current marginalization of both groups within Turkish society, however, also offers a unique opportunity for them to come together in ways that were not possible in the past,” Mr. Blasing said.

The changing nature of perceptions of one another in Turkey and the contradictory visions of
Turkey’s future were part of the environmental architecture when Altay SK Izmir played Erzurum Büyükşehir Belidiyese in April in eastern Turkey. Hailing from the Mediterranean coastal port city of Izmir, Altay embodies the ideals of progress, modernity and secularism espoused by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who in 1923 carved modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire.

Erzurum, an ethnic and religious hodgepodge in eastern Turkey, once described as The Rock by NATO, when it during the Cold War hosted the alliance’s most south-eastern air base, reflects the backbone of popular support for Mr. Erdogan: conservative and nationalist rural towns and cities.

Altay claimed on its website that an unidentified man brandishing a knife had attacked its players in their locker room during the match’s intermission. The incident allegedly occurred after Erzurum fans in the stands had denounced Altay in chants as hailing from infidel Izmir, a predominantly Greek city until 1923 when what Turks euphemistically call a population exchange were forced to leave.

In response, Yeni Akit, a local newspaper denounced Altay fans as terrorists who supported the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has been waging a more than three decades-long insurgency and proudly extolled how Turks from Erzurum had taken Greek soldiers hostage during the Turkish Greek war in the 1920s.

Also in April, officials of Amed SK which hails from Diyarbakir, widely viewed as the Turkish Kurds’ capital, assaulted their counterparts of MKE Ankaragücü, a team that calls Ankara, the Turkish capital home, in an attack that was caught on video. Diyarbakir fans allegedly threw stones at MKE players during an earlier match in the predominantly Kurdish city and whistled as the Turkish anthem was being played.

Formerly known as Diyarbakır Büyükşehir Belediyespor, the club in 2014 adopted Amed, the long banned Kurdish name of Diyarbakir, as its identity and changed its colours to the yellow, red and green of the Kurdish flag.

The move constituted part of Kurdish resistance to long standing restrictions on the user of their languages and expressions of ethnic or national identity. Kurds account for between 10 and 23 percent of Turkey’s population.

Similarly, a controversial call for making Turkey’s secular constitution Islamic by Ismail Kahraman, the speaker of the Turkish parliament, reverberated on the soccer pitch. Members of Carsi, the militant support group of Istanbul’s Besiktas JK that has a huge national following and played a key role in mass anti-government protests in 2013 chanted “Turkey is secular and will remain secular” during a match between Kayserispor and their team. The Carsi chant was also echoed by supporters of Fenerbahce SK, one of two Besiktas arch rivals.

The battle over secularism erupted in the stadiums as Turkish police arrested 38 people accused of framing Fenerbahce executives of match fixing as part of a failed power grab by self-exiled preacher Fethullalh Gulen. Those arrested included former police chiefs, lawyers and at least one journalist. They were accused of belonging to a “terror organization” and conducting illegal wiretaps.

A 2011 match-fixing scandal involving Fenerbahce signalled the fall-out between erstwhile allies Messrs. Erdogan and Gulen. The scandal amounted to a struggle for control of Fenerbahce, the political crown jewel of Turkish soccer, between the two men. Gulen supporters in the judiciary accused senior members of the then Erdogan government of corruption, leading to a crackdown and the banning of the group.

In April, fans further challenged Mr. Erdogan’s megalomaniac sense of glory by clashing with police after they were banned from attending the opening of Besiktas’ renovated and renamed stadium. In doing so, they ensured that the opening harked back to the stadium’s closure in the wake of the 2013 protests that were countered with brutal force.

Those fans that made it into the stadium defied a ban on chanting political slogans in stadiums by resurrecting the 2013 chants, “C’mon spray us with tear gas” and “We are Mustafa Kemal’s Soldiers.”

Mr. Erdogan, a purveyor of conspiracy theories in which dark forces – including Zionists, Germany, Britain, and a mastermind presumed to be the United States – continuously conspire against Turkey, has inspired the country’s pro-government media to extend the anti-Turkish plots to fans who take issue with his policies.

“Chaos Over Football: The Gang of Treachery Wants to Destabilize Turkey” read a headline in Fotomac in February, a day after a protester snatched a red card from a referee in the Black Sea town of Trabzon in protest against what he considered to be biased judgements.

“According to an allegation, there is a secret gang working behind the scenes of Turkish football. It has been stated that this gang pressed a button in order to drag the country into chaos by pulling masses to the streets via football. It has been learned that the secret gang, which had failed to drag Turkey into chaos during the Gezi Park protests, now has chosen Trabzonspor as a target, and it provokes the fans of this team by using referee mistakes as a pretext,” the newspaper reported, referring to Trabzon’s major soccer club.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a just published book with the same title.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

As further proof that 2016 is perhaps the most insane campaign year since — oh … 1876, or 1824, or maybe even 1800 (check ’em out) — Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have been talking, with some seriousness, about debating each other before the June 7 California primary.

But it seems this is not going to happen: Friday afternoon, Donald Trump put out a barely coherent statement in which he announced he was declining to participate in any such event: 

A debate between a “presumptive” nominee of one party (Trump) and the second-place candidate in the other party (Sanders) is definitely an idea without precedent. But let’s face it, it nevertheless befits the random, demolition-derby tenor of American politics today. And at first glance, it has some obvious appeal to both Trump and Sanders: Some debate-stage “presidential-ness” practice for The Messhugah-Don, and more free air time for the Birken-Stalker. And both men love the idea of erasing Hillary Clinton from the picture.

But the calculus would have been more complicated for the three remaining candidates — and for the other major players in this pre-convention phase of the 2016’s political psychodrama.

In all likelihood, most of them are feeling relieved that Donald bailed on the debate. On this week’s First to Last, we run down how all the prominent characters on the main stage might have gained or lost in what could have been another election-season sideshow. 

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Photos: Getty, Associated Press

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.