Kashmiri migrants can't be forced to return: Omar

JAMMU: Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday said Kashmiri Pandits cannot be forced to return to the Kashmir valley, which they left in the 1990s fearing for their safety.

"Their exodus was forced their return can't be. All I can do is redouble my efforts to facilitate conditions for Pandits to return to Kashmir," he posted on Twitter.

He was replying to a Twitter follower about the return of Kashmiri Pandits who left the valley after some members of the community were killed.

More than 350,000 people left the Valley and settled in migrant camps in Jammu or moved to Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.

Around 1,400 people later shifted back to the Valley after sthe government offered them jobs under a reserved category.

"I would have loved to go back had there been a guarantee of permanent peace and no hostility toward the community," said Shadi Lal Bhat, a Kashmiri Pandit, who retired recently.

"We are not tourists who would be welcomed there. If we go, we will go on a permanent basis," Bhat said.

But Shailder Dhar, who shifted to a township built for Kashmiri Pandits near here, agreed with Abdullah's view.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced a Rs.1,600 crore package for return and rehabilitation of the community members in 2008. Safe clusters were also constructed in some parts of the Valley for them.

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Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study


Researchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.


The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.


Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.


"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.


She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.


In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.


Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.


About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.


___


Online:


Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov


Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org


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Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Inauguration to Cost Millions But Total Price Unclear













How much will all the inaugural events cost? It's hard to say.


While most events that occur in the capital have a hard-and-fast budget, the inauguration's many moving parts, safety concerns and large geographic reach make it hard to quantify – especially before the main event.


In 2009, ABC reported the total cost of Obama's first inauguration was $170 million. While incumbent presidents historically spend less on a second inauguration, it's unclear what the total bill will be this time around. Analysis of some of the known appropriations so far puts the total at $13.637 million, but it will no doubt be a much larger price tag when everything is accounted for.


RELATED: 12 Things You Didn't Know About the Inauguration


One of the main chunks missing from this year's tab is the budget for the Presidential Inaugural Committee – the group responsible for using donated money to put together this year's celebrations, including National Day of Service, the Kids' Inaugural Concert, the Parade and the Inaugural Balls.


In 2009, the PIC collected more than $53 million in donations, according to a report filed with the Federal Elections Commission 90 days after the inauguration.






Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images











Politically Dressed: Inauguration First Daughters Watch Video









While enthusiasm for the inauguration was running higher that year, it is possible the PIC will haul in more money this time around, as they have eliminated some of the self-imposed regulations on the kinds of donations they can accept. For his first inauguration, President Obama did not take money from corporations or gifts that exceeded $50,000.


In 2013, his committee did away with those rules. PIC spokesman Brent Colburn would not say why the change took place, insisting that each committee operates independently from the precedent set by the inaugurations before – even if staff like Colburn are repeats on the committee from 2009.


RELATED: Inauguration Weekend: A Star-Powered Lineup


The PIC also won't say how much they have already collected or even what their goal was. Colburn explained that these are "moving budgets," which won't stabilize until after the inauguration.


They have, however, released the names of donors on their website weekly. As of Friday afternoon, they were up to 993 donors.


Another leg of the costs is covered by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. They take care of the swearing-in ceremony and the Congressional luncheon. For those events they have a total budget of $1.237 million, down by about $163,000 from 2009. Whereas the PIC budget comes from donations, the American taxpayers foot the bill for the JCCIC.


Beyond those two inauguration-focused groups, there are a myriad of broader organizations that spend money on the inauguration as well.


RELATED: Plenty of Room at the Inns for 2013 Inauguration


A Congressional Research Service report from December says the government spent $22 million reimbursing local and state governments and the National Park Service for their participation in the 2009 inauguration, but that figure is low. The D.C. government alone received twice that amount, according to the mayor's office. Officials from D.C., Maryland and Virginia estimated their total need to be $75 million.


NPS got an appropriation from Congress of $1.2 million so far this year, according to communications officer Carol Johnson, and another $1.4 million went to the U.S. Park Police.






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Algerian army stages "final assault" on gas plant


ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - The Algerian army on Saturday carried out a final assault on al Qaeda-linked gunmen holed up in a desert gas plant, killing 11 of the Islamists after they took the lives of seven more foreign hostages, a local source and the state news agency said.


"It is over now, the assault is over, and the military are inside the plant clearing it of mines," a local source familiar with the operation told Reuters.


The state oil and gas company, Sonatrach, said the militants who attacked the plant on Wednesday and took a large number of hostages had booby-trapped the complex with explosives.


The exact death toll among the gunmen and the foreign and Algerian workers at the plant near the town of In Amenas close to the Libyan border remained unclear.


Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 burned bodies at the plant. Efforts were under way to identify the bodies, the source told Reuters, and it was not clear how they had died.


Sixteen foreign hostages were freed on Saturday, a source close to the crisis said. They included two Americans, two Germans and one Portuguese. Britain said fewer than 10 of its nationals at the plant were unaccounted for.


The attack on the plant swiftly turned into one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades, pushing Saharan militancy to the top of the global agenda.


INTERNATIONAL CRISIS


It marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.


The captors said their attack was a response to the French offensive. However, some U.S. and European officials say the elaborate raid probably required too much planning to have been organized from scratch in the week since France launched its strikes.


Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified gas compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to the French intervention in neighboring Mali.


Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed.


Before the final assault, different sources had put the number of hostages killed at between 12 and 30, with many foreigners still unaccounted for, among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons and Americans.


The figure of 30 came from an Algerian security source, who said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.


The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details.


Leaders of Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed frustration that the assault was ordered without consultation and officials have grumbled at the lack of information.


France's defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, declined to criticize the Algerian response to the crisis, however.


"The Algerian authorities are on their own soil and responding in the fashion they can. The overriding mission is to tackle the terrorists," he told France 3 television.


The base was home to foreign workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.


VETERAN JIHADIST


The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough Algerian security measures.


Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.


France says the incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary.


The field commander of the Islamist group that attacked the plant is a veteran fighter from Niger called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, Mauritanian news agencies reported.


Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.


The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in a civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.


Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year.


(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Mark Trevelyan)



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Myanmar Spitfire hunter still optimistic






YANGON: An archaeologist involved in a search for dozens of rare Spitfire planes said to have been buried in Myanmar played down doubts on Friday about the existence of the rumoured trove.

The BBC reported that the British-led team believes that no planes are buried at the locations where they have been hunting in the northern city of Myitkyina and Yangon airport, a wartime airfield, in the Mingaladon district.

The team's leader had previously said he believed that dozens of the iconic single-seat aircraft were buried in 1945 by Britain, the former colonial power in what was then Burma.

But local geophysicist Soe Thein, who has been involved in the search for more than a decade, said he remained optimistic, pointing to the recent discovery of a crate buried in the ground at the site in Myitkyina.

"I am sure what we found in Myitkyina is a Spitfire. We are still trying to search in Mingaladon," he told AFP.

The team said last week that it was unable to determine the contents of the crate by inserting a camera because of murky water obscuring the visibility.

A local businessman involved in the project, Htoo Htoo Zaw, also distanced himself from the report on the BBC website, which quoted project leader David Cundall as saying that the team might be looking in the wrong place.

"We are still doing surveys and haven't started the digging yet. We can't say anything yet," Htoo Htoo Zaw said.

Issues such as dealing with modern-day obstacles such as underground electricity cables have delayed the actual excavation.

Confusion about the project deepened after Cundall - a farmer and aircraft enthusiast who has spent 17 years chasing the rumoured Spitfires - cancelled a press conference that had been planned for Friday.

Cundall could not immediately be contacted for comment. A spokesman for Wargaming.net, the video game company providing financial backing for the project, did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

There are thought to be fewer than 50 airworthy Spitfires left in the world and the prospect of finding a new haul has excited military history and aviation enthusiasts around the world.

- AFP/de



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Journalists should adhere to principles of truth: Pranab

KOLKATA: President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said the journalists should adhere to the principles of truth, credibility and make efforts to find out the truth.

"Certain fundamentals have to be kept in mind and that is truth, credibility, placing the facts and making efforts to find out the truth," Mukherjee said at a function organised by the Kolkata Press Club and Indian Journalists' Association here.

Eulogizing the first president of IJA Mrinal Kanti Basu, the President said, "He truly believed that comments are free, but facts are sacrosanct and many of the doyens of journalism have strictly adhered to this principle that "yes, I am free to give my views, but facts are to be reported as they are".

"Of course, there has been revolutionary change in information technology. That's why persons belonging to the older generation who developed the habit of reading and sometimes reading in details are not accustomed to give what you describe as byte because to give that short cryptic comment, it takes some time to acquire the mastery over the art of conceptualizing our views and expressions in the most appropriate words," he said.

In an expansive mood, Mukherjee said, "I had very frequent interactions with the friends in media. It is not always correct that I was polite to them or cooperative towards them."

"More than often, I became rude to them. Being an old man perhaps, they accommodated my rudeness," the President, who has been a politician for decades and held several key portfolios in different ministries, said.

"Whatever I received from people I came in contact with, it was more that what I have given them. Journalists are no exception," Mukherjee said.

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Flu remains widespread in US; eases in some areas


Health officials say nine more deaths of children from the flu have been reported, bringing the total this flu season to 29.


In a typical season, about 100 children die of the flu, so it is not known whether this year will be better or worse than usual.


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says half of confirmed flu cases so far are in people 65 and older.


This year's season is earlier than normal and the dominant flu strain is one that tends to make people sicker. The flu is widespread in all states but Tennessee and Hawaii and is starting to ease in some areas.


Health officials say it's not too late to get a flu shot to help protect against the flu.


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Manti Te'o's Fake Girlfriend May Have Duped Others













Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend "Lennay Kekua" may have hoaxed other unsuspecting suitors.


"Catfish" movie director and actor Ariel Schulman told "Good Morning America" today that he believes there may have been "a few other people duped by the fake Lennay character."


Schulman and his brother Nev Schulman have been looking into the elaborate scam and claim to be corresponding with various players involved. They have come to believe that there were "a lot of other people that she was corresponding with before and maybe even during her relationship [with Te'o]."


Nev Schulman was the subject of the 2010 movie "Catfish," which spawned the TV series, because he himself was sucked in by an Internet pretender -- or a "catfish" -- who built an elaborate fake life.


As questions mount about Te'o's possible role in the complex scam, the number one question is whether Te'o was unknowingly ensnared, as he says, or whether he was complicit in the scam.


"I stand by the guy. My heart goes out to him," Ariel Schulman said. His brother has reached out to Te'o, but has not heard back.


"He had his heart broken," Schulman said. "He was grieving for someone, whether she existed or not. Those were real feelings."






Streeter Lecka/Getty Images











Manti Te'o Hoax: Was He Duped or Did He Know? Watch Video









Manti Te'o Hoax: Notre Dame Star Allegedly Scammed Watch Video









Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video





Click here for a who's who in the Manti Te'o case


Te'o has kept a low-profile since the news of the scandal broke. He released a statement calling the situation "incredibly embarrassing" and maintaining that he was a victim of the hoax.


He was captured briefly by news cameras on Thursday at a Florida training facility, but has not spoken publicly.


As for the woman whose photo was used as the face of Lennay Kekua, "Inside Edition" has identified her as Diane O'Meara who is very much alive. The show caught up with her on Thursday, but she declined to comment.


ABC News' legal analyst Dan Abrams said that O'Meara may be the one person in the scandal with the power to sue since her likeness was taken and used without her permission.


As for Te'o, even if he knew about the deception, it appears that he did not do anything illegal.


"He's allowed to lie to the public. He's allowed to lie to the media. He's not allowed to lie to the authorities," Abrams said on "Good Morning America."


Questions also remain about the timeline of events and when Te'o discovered that the "love of his life," as he called her, was nothing more than a fake Internet persona.


According to Notre Dame's timeline of events, Te'o learned his girlfriend didn't exist on Dec. 6.


But in a Dec. 8 interview with South Bend, Ind., TV station WSBT, Te'o said, "I really got hit with cancer. I lost both my grandparents an my girlfriend to cancer." And on Dec. 11, he talked about his girlfriend in a newspaper interview.


Te'o alerted Notre Dame on Dec. 26 about the scam, the university said.


Click here for more scandalous public confessions.


Skeptics have also cited comments by Te'o's father Brian Te'o who told a newspaper how Kekua used to visit his son in Hawaii.


Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the university launched their own investigation.


"Our investigators, through their work, were able to discover online chatter between the perpetrators," Swarbrick said at a Wednesday news conference. "That was sort of the ultimate proof."






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Sixty foreigners still caught in Sahara hostage crisis


ALGIERS (Reuters) - More than 20 foreigners were still being held hostage or missing inside a gas plant on Friday after Algerian forces stormed the desert complex to free hundreds of captives taken by Islamist militants, who threatened to attack other energy installations.


Thirty hostages, including at least seven Westerners, were killed during Thursday's assault, along with at least 18 of their captors, said an Algerian security source.


The attack, which plunged capitals around the world into crisis mode, is a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.


"We are still dealing with a fluid and dangerous situation where a part of the terrorist threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, but there still remains a threat in another part," British Prime Minister David Cameron told his parliament.


A local Algerian source said 100 of 132 foreign hostages had been freed from the facility. The fate of the other 32 was unclear as the situation was changing rapidly.


Earlier he said 60 were still missing with some believed still held hostage, but it was unclear how many, and how many might be in hiding elsewhere in the sprawling compound.


Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among the seven foreigners confirmed dead in the army's storming, the Algerian security source told Reuters. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.


Those still unaccounted for on Friday included 10 from Japan and eight Norwegians, according to their employers, and a number of Britons which Cameron put at "significantly" less than 30.


France said it had no information on two Frenchmen who may have been at the site and Washington has said a number of Americans were among the hostages, without giving details. The local source said a U.S. aircraft landed nearby on Friday.


Some countries have been reluctant to give details of the numbers of their missing nationals to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to their captors.


As Western leaders clamored for news, several expressed anger they had not been consulted by the Algerian government about its decision to storm the facility.


The sprawling facility housed hundreds of workers. Algeria's state news agency said the army had rescued 650 hostages in total, 573 of whom were Algerians.


"(The army) is still trying to achieve a ‘peaceful outcome' before neutralizing the terrorist group that is holed up in the (facility) and freeing a group of hostages that is still being held," it said, quoting a security source.


MULTINATIONAL INSURGENCY


Algerian commanders said they moved in on Thursday about 30 hours after the siege began because the gunmen had demanded to be allowed to take their captives abroad.


An Irish engineer who survived said he saw four jeeps full of hostages blown up by Algerian troops.


A French hostage employed by a French catering company said Algerian military forces had found some British hostages hiding and were combing the sprawling In Amenas site for others when he was escorted away by the military.


"I hid in my room for nearly 40 hours, under the bed. I put boards up pretty much all round," Alexandre Berceaux told Europe 1 raid. "I didn't know how long I was going to stay there ... I was afraid. I could see myself already ending up in a pine box."


"When Algerian solders ... came for me, I didn't even know it was over. They were with some of my colleagues, otherwise I'd never have opened the door."


Western governments are trying to determine the degree to which the hostage taking was part of an international conspiracy and was linked, as the captors claimed, to the week-old French military intervention in neighboring Mali.


The Algerian security source said only two of 11 militants whose bodies were found on Thursday were Algerian, including the squad's leader. The others comprised three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman, he said.


Algeria state news agency APS said the group had planned to take the hostages to Mali.


The plant was heavily fortified, with security, controlled access and an army camp with hundreds of armed personnel between the accommodation and processing plant, Andy Coward Honeywell, who worked there in 2009, told the BBC.


U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said those responsible would be hunted down: "Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere," he said in London. "Those who would wantonly attack our country and our people will have no place to hide."


MALI WOES


The crisis posed a serious dilemma for former colonial power Paris and its allies as French troops attacked the hostage-takers' al Qaeda allies in Mali, another former colony.


The desert fighters have proved to be better trained and equipped than France had anticipated, diplomats told Reuters at the United Nations, which said 400,000 people could flee Mali to neighboring countries in the coming months.


In Algeria, the kidnappers warned locals to stay away from foreign companies' oil and gas installations, threatening more attacks, Mauritania's news agency ANI said, citing a spokesman for the group.


Algerian workers form the backbone of an oil and gas industry that has attracted international firms in recent years partly because of military-style security. The kidnapping, storming and further threat cast a deep shadow over its future.


Hundreds of workers from international oil companies were evacuated from Algeria on Thursday and many more will follow, BP, which jointly ran the gas plant with Norway's Statoil and the Algerian state oil firm, said on Friday.


The overall commander of the kidnappers, Algerian officials said, was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria's bloody civil war of the 1990s and one of a host of Saharan Islamists, flush with arms and fighters from the 2011 civil war in Libya. He appears not to have been present.


Algerian security specialist Anis Rahmani, author of several books on terrorism and editor of Ennahar daily, told Reuters about 70 militants were involved from two groups, Belmokhtar's "Those who sign in blood", who travelled from Libya, and the lesser known "Movement of the Islamic Youth in the South".


"They were carrying heavy weapons including rifles used by the Libyan army during (Muammar) Gadaffi's rule," he said. "They also had rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns."


Algeria's government is implacably at odds with Islamist guerrillas who remain at large in the south, years after the civil war through the 1990s in which some 200,000 people died.


Britain's Cameron, who warned people to prepare for bad news and who cancelled a major policy speech on Friday to deal with the situation, said he would have liked Algeria to have consulted before the raid. Japan made similar complaints.


U.S. officials had no clear information on the fate of Americans, though a U.S. military drone had flown over the area. Washington, like its European allies, has endorsed France's move to protect the Malian capital by mounting air strikes last week and now sending 1,400 ground troops to attack Islamist rebels.


The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough security measures.


(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London and Padraic Halpin and Conor Humprhies in Dublin; Writing by Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Peter Graff)



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Football: Rodgers slams Suarez over diving admission






LONDON: Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers on Thursday said that his controversial striker Luis Suarez could face punishment from the club after admitting that he dived to try to win a penalty in a league game with Stoke City.

In an interview with Fox Sports Argentina, Suarez admitted "falling" during October's 0-0 draw between the clubs at Anfield, prompting Rodgers, who had defended him from criticism at the time, to hit out.

"I think it is wrong. It is unacceptable. I have spoken to Luis and it will be dealt with internally," said Rodgers. "(Diving) is not something we advocate. Our ethics are correct."

Rodgers spoke to Suarez on Thursday and said he had been "totally understanding on where I am coming from as manager of the club.

"What was said was wrong. He takes that and we move on," he added.

Suarez hit the headlines for a theatrical fall in the Stoke game after he went to ground under a challenge from Marc Wilson in an unsuccessful attempt to win a second-half penalty.

FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce was moved to describe Suarez's tumble as "cheating", adding that the tendency for players to easily fall to the ground was a "cancer" in the game.

Suarez has been accused of diving at regular intervals during his time in England and he admitted in the interview that he had gone down on purpose.

"I was criticised for trying to win a penalty by falling in a match against Stoke," said the Uruguay international. "It's true I fell because we were drawing against Stoke at home and we needed to do something.

"But afterwards, the coaches of Stoke, Everton, all of them, came forward. I came to realise that the name of Suarez was a (newspaper) seller."

Suarez sparked controversy again earlier this month when he handled the ball prior to scoring Liverpool's winning goal in their 2-1 victory at non-league Mansfield Town in the FA Cup.

"The other day, a ball hit my hand without me meaning it to," he said. "I kissed my wrist (in celebration) and everyone started rounding on me."

Suarez also claimed that foreign players are treated differently to home-grown players in the Premier League.

"It's difficult," he said. "It's what Carlitos (Tevez) said, it's what Kun (Sergio Aguero) said: foreigners, and especially the South Americans, are treated differently to local players."

Suarez added that his run-in with Manchester United defender Patrice Evra, which saw him hit with a 40,000 fine pounds and an eight-match ban for racial abuse, was long forgotten.

"When people come and insult me, saying I'm South American, I don't start crying. It's something that stays on the pitch, part of football. My conscience is clear," he said, before claiming that Manchester United control the British press.

"They've got a lot of power and they'll always help them."

- AFP/fa



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