The Olympics got off to an embarrassing start overnight when North Korea's women footballers refused to play after a mix-up over their national flag.

The match, at Hampden Park in Glasgow, was delayed for more than an hour after a giant screen at the stadium showed images of the North Korean team alongside the South Korean flag.

Red-faced organisers were quick to apologise for the howler, involving two nations which are technically still at war.

North Korea finally relented and went on to win the match against Colombia 2-0.

"Yes, we were angry because our players were introduced as if they are from South Korea, something that may affect us very greatly as you might know," North Korea coach Sin Ui-Gun said.

"Winning the game cannot compensate this. It is a different matter. We hope there is no repeat in the next matches," he added.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-26/flag-fury-as-officials-mistake-north-for-south/4155564

Olympic organisers have put thousands of VIP tickets on sale today in an attempt to solve the ticketing debacle.

Londoners were snapping up seats at the gymnastics and beach volleyball as organisers began a process of reclaiming accredited areas that have been unused.

London 2012 chiefs, who admit they have been caught out by the extent of VIP absentees, have reduced dignitaries’ areas at the equestrian, swimming and handball.

Organisers Locog started “trimming” the accredited areas — reserved for international federations and media — for the gymnastics at the O2 Arena, where a 300-seat section was handed to the public.

Around 3,000  seats “trimmed” from VIP areas have been put on sale to public overnight and this morning.

Once the seats have been given up, they cannot be returned to VIPs during the Games. It is part of a series of measures to contain the damaging images of hundreds of empty seats at “sold out” events.

They are also planning to upgrade members of the public to better seats left empty. Soldiers and other accredited Olympic workers and 150 schoolchildren and teachers have also been drafted in to fill seats.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/london-2012-thousands-of-vip-tickets-go-on-sale-in-a-bid-to-end-ticket-fiasco-7987294.html

VIPs... Very Important Pricks...

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/olympics/off-the-field/journo-blocked-as-games-tweets-raise-eyebrows-ire-20120731-23bf5.html#ixzz22Afok1J5

See toon at top...

“If you would like to request your account to be restored, please respond to this email and confirm that you've read and understood our rules,” reads their message.

My response is cut-and-pasted below, in full.

Evening

And sorry for the radio silence. For obvious reasons, my day has been a wee bit busier than normal.

I would love my Twitter account to be un-suspended.

However you have asked me to "confirm that I have read and understood" your rules.

I've read, and I have re-read your rules. Clearly I don't understand them, though, because I have no idea how I broke them.

You claim that I posted a "private email address."

I did no such thing. I posted a corporate email address, not a private one.

It was, like the work address of every other NBC Universal account holder, written in a very un-private format: firstname.lastname@nbcuni.com.

Moreover, it was already easily identifiable to anyone in possession of 30 seconds of free time and access to Google. For example, it had been published online over a year ago, at the link below

http://www.fidei.org/2011/06/boycott-nbc-removed-under-god-from.html

You will, I am sure, be aware that your own privacy policy, which you have urged me to read, states that "If information was previously posted or displayed elsewhere on the Internet prior to being put on Twitter, it is not a violation of this policy."

Mr Zenkel's email address HAD been posted on the internet prior to being put on Twitter, Therefore can you explain how my Tweet violated your policy? Or are you making this up as you go along?

Moreover, I just recieved a copy of a written statement from an NBC spokesman called Christopher McCloskey. It was issued via email this evening to Amy Willis, a correspondent at the Daily Telegraph, in answer to her query regarding how NBC's complaint came to be lodged with Twitter, and how NBC originally became aware of my original Tweet.

Mr McCloskey states (and I quote): "Our social media dept was actually alerted to it by Twitter and then we filled out the form and submitted it."

Unless he is lying, this means that my account was suspended after Twitter decided, at its own behest, to get in touch with a commercial partner in order to encourage them to have a hostile journalist removed from the Twitter-sphere.

Surely this runs against everything your company is supposed to represent? And surely it completely undermines Twitter's entire raison d'etre, corporate ethos, etc?

Mr McCloskey's email to Ms Willia also, helpfully, includes contact details for a Twitter spokesman, Rachael Horwitz. Am I to take it that this means NBC and Twitter's media departments are in some sort cahoots regarding this whole thing? And if so, does this whole thing not have a whiff of fish?

I don't know exactly where I'm meant to go from here, except to say that I really would like a proper explanation of how and why my Twitter account has been suspended.

And I'd also quite like to have it un-suspended. Please?

Guy

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nbcfail-nbc-blames-twitter-for-complaint-that-led-to-journalist-guy-adams-having-twitter-account-suspended-after-complaining-about-london-2012-olympics-coverage-7993753.html

In the green room at CNN's Los Angeles studio last night, a producer asked for my reaction to the still-breaking news that Twitter had decided, in their words, to "un-suspend" my account.

"I feel," I replied, "like Nelson Mandela walking through the streets of Cape Town, circa 1990." The producer looked at me, aghast. "Whatever you do," she commanded, "do not go and say that when we put you on air."

Joking aside, the situation neatly summed up the absurdity of a course of events which allowed a snarky, 140-character-or-less piece of prose, which ought to have sunk without trace, become the subject of a viral news story which is still being debated across the international media landscape. At about 6pm, London time, shortly before that green-room conversation, I had received an email from "Twitter support," announcing that I was no longer verboten in Twitter-land.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/guy-adams-twitter-backs-down-at-last--but-why-did-i-get-banned-7994947.html

Anarchy has entered the Olympic Park, and I applaud it loudly. This time, it wasn’t the fleeting appearance of the Sex Pistols that flickered subversion. It was eight badminton players, losing deliberately.

Four female doubles teams from China, Indonesia and South Korea have been disqualified and charged by the Badminton World Federation with trying to throw their matches and for “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport”. A quirk of the draw system meant that winning their group would mean meeting the toughest of opponents in the quarter-finals. Winning would mean losing. So they played like depressed blancmanges.

How I laughed. I laugh at the pomposity of this ruling. (Abusive? Really?) I laugh at the frothing commentators. I laugh at the worldwide condemnation (even the Chinese government smeared opprobrium on their own players). And, most of all, I laugh at the scenes of shuttlecocks limping towards the net before falling flaccidly at their feet.

It is funny because it exposes the Olympics propaganda, the frenzied state of medal fetishism, the gong charts, the status anxiety if “we” “lose”, the photos of athletes so hungry for metal they are pictured biting into the gold. We lust after those disks like Augustus Gloop with a golden ticket.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/patrick-strudwick-those-badminton-players-deserve-a-medal-7999143.html

A quarter of British adults now walk for less than nine minutes a day – including time spent getting to the car, work and the shops. The figures, from a YouGov poll for the Ramblers, published exclusively in The Independent on Sunday, reveal that a quarter of Britons walk on average for less than an hour every week.

The survey of more than 2,000 over-18s shows that while nine out of 10 Britons agree that walking is a good form of exercise which can keep you healthy, most are not doing so nearly enough.

Almost half of people surveyed walk for two hours or less a week – meaning they are not doing enough walking to stay healthy. Chief medical officers recommend that adults do 150 minutes of moderate physical activity, like walking, per week, but 43 per cent of people surveyed walk for 120 minutes or less.

William Bird, a GP who specialises in the benefits of exercise, said: "We're going to find this generation will die earlier than their parents if they don't start doing basic movement. We all age quicker when we're not moving and the consequences of that are age-related diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/one-small-step-inactivity-is-worlds-fourthbiggest-killer-8604087.html

See the Kartoffeln at top...

A professor in Sweden who recently spoke about the biological differences between men and women says he's now being investigated by his university. 

Germund Hesslow, a professor of neurophysiology at Lund University, is speaking out about how his employer has launched a "full investigation" into his remarks about the biological realities of gender.

According to the Sweden-based Academic Rights Watch, Hesslow has taught a course for years on "Heritage and Environment" in the Lund University medical program. In that course, he has addressed such topics as biological gender differences.

The watchdog organization reports that Hesslow would sometimes be questioned by students who don't like that his teaching is not based on "the gender scientific approach adopted in politics."

Hesslow maintains that gender is not entirely socially constructed because empirical research has found that there are statistical gender differences in behavior that are biologically based.

Hesslow told ARW, which was founded to monitor "attempts to restrict the fundamental rights of teachers and researchers," that he was asked by school administrators this month to apologize for his remarks on gender and LGBT people that drew the ire of feminist students who complained.

Hesslow fears that there are "forces in leadership" who seek to hire another teacher to teach the course that he has developed over the years.

The Christian Post reached out to Lund University for comment on Hesslow's claims. A response is pending.

According to ARW, Hesslow's troubles began after one of his students sent an email about him to another teacher at the university.

"I am writing about Germund Hesslow's lecture on heritage and the environment focusing on biological differences between men and women. I have understood that previous students repeatedly complained to the lecture. Partly because it embodies Hesslow's own personal anti-Seminars agenda, and that neither biological differences between men and women nor genetic theory belong to his area of ​​expertise," the student was quoted as writing.

"Why cannot we get a lecturer with the right skills on the subject instead? And, for example, could lecture about biological differences that have clinical significance? Or instead of a lecturer claiming that women are 'sexually cautious' because of the biology, they should be able to illustrate how women for centuries have been genital mutilation, forced sterilized, lobotomerate and forced labor in the name of medical science.

"I think that, as a woman, it is incredibly diminishing that a lecturer does not feel [the] social structures of oppressed women [that] made us modulate our behaviors for our own safety," the email adds. "How does this kind of lecture go with the gender perspective the education should have?"

The student also reportedly complained about how she heard from others that Hesslow has also "expressed himself transphobically."

"In response to a question of transexuallism, [sic] he said something like 'sex change is a fly.' Secondly, it is outrageous because there may be students during the lecture who are themselves exposed to [transphobia], but also because it may affect how later students in their professional lives meet transgender people," she argued. "Transpersonals [sic] already have a high level of overrepresentation in suicide statistics and there are already major shortcomings in the treatment of transgender in care, should not it be countered? How does this kind of statement coincide with the university's equal treatment plan? What has this statement given for consequences? What has been done for this to not be repeated?"

The student's concerns eventually made it to Christer Larsson, the chair of the Lund Medical Education Program Board. Hesslow was reportedly called to a meeting on Sept. 3 with administrators.

Hesslow was told to retract two particular statements by submitting in writing that those statements were "unfortunately formulated." One of the statements is "gay women have a male sexual orientation." The other: "Whether it's a sexual orientation is a definition question."

Hesslow, however, has refused to apologize.

Read more:

https://www.christianpost.com/news/professor-sweden-under-investigation-teaching-biological-differences-between-men-women

Soon the Olympics will be run for all, men and women of any sex, competing for the same medals. There will be a special section for people like Trump with a small tackle and one competition for those who like steroids. Beard and moustache optional for anyone of any unigender. Unisex toilets for all. See image at top...