By John Mehaffey

LONDON, March 29 (Reuters) - Unprecedented levels of skill, intensity and endurance have transformed global sport into spectacular mass entertainment and handsomely rewarded its leading exponents.

Now that the euphoria of last year's acclaimed London Olympics has dissipated, however, a spate of troubling stories in the first quarter of 2013 show an altogether darker and more disturbing side to a glamorous, multi-billion-dollar industry.

In January, American cyclist Lance Armstrong admitted in a television interview that he had doped before each of his record seven Tour de France victories.

His confession after years of denial followed the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) decision to strip him of the title and accuse him of being at the centre of the "most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen".

A report from Australia's top criminal intelligence unit linked doping in sport with money-laundering and match-fixing after a year-long investigation. Six leading rugby league clubs, from one of the country's four football codes in a sports-obsessed nation, confirmed they were under scrutiny.

And Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, on trial in Madrid for allegedly running a doping ring in cycling, said in his opening testimony that he also had clients in soccer, tennis, athletics and boxing.

Fuentes, who said outside the court this month that he might be willing to co-operate with anti-doping authorities, is appearing in court almost seven years after steroids and blood bags were seized in an investigation code-named Operation Puerto.

"The same people who are trafficking in steroids and encouraging athletes to cheat by doping are the ones who are engaged in illegal betting," said World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) director general David Howman.

"This is essentially money-laundering, bribery and corruption in relation to match-fixing and spot-fixing."

BLACK MARKETS

At a WADA media symposium in London in February, Howman said at least 25 percent of international sport was controlled by the underworld.

"The black markets supply a lot of pharmaceutical products before they are out on the white market," he said. "That's run by the criminal underworld, so a lot of the pharmaceutical stuff comes out in that way."

Rob Koehler, the director of education and programme development at WADA, told an anti-doping conference in London this month the drugs problem in sport reflected the problems of society as a whole.

"We are always trying to push the limit," he said. "Adults are cheating. Students are cheating, in fact they think they are smart if they don't get caught."

Koehler said one percent of the population as a whole was rich while the middle class was shrinking and the lower class growing. The position was similar in sport.

"Top athletes are making millions, some athletes make a modest living, most barely get by," he said. "But what some athletes used to make in their career they are now making in one year."

Doping's black heartland has traditionally been in the speed and strength sports of track and field, weightlifting and cycling.

But it has also become increasingly apparent that the nature of ball sports, which rely on a unique set of skills peculiar to their disciplines, has changed.

Baseball, with its explosion of home runs in the 1990s, is an obvious example and this year slugger Barry Bonds, the record holder for home runs, and pitcher Roger Clemens, a seven-times Cy Young winner, were not elected to the Hall of Fame.

WIDESPREAD DOPING

The pair, appearing on the ballot for the first time after waiting five years following their retirements, were linked with performance-enhancing drugs in the Mitchell report which detailed widespread doping in the sport.

Baseball is similar in nature to Twenty20 cricket, where strength as well as technique is necessary to repeatedly clear the boundaries. Rugby union players, who used to be a mixture of the big and the powerful and the small and the speedy, are now uniformly bulked up.

Tennis, as the five-set marathons now common in the men's game demonstrate, demands sustained power and endurance to an extent once unimaginable.

Even golfers, as the modern breed of players headed by Tiger Woods demonstrates, are now athletes working out in the gym as well as frequenting the driving range.

In England, the Football Association reacted to concerns expressed by Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger about the possible use of EPO by announcing it would bring in testing for the blood booster, which was introduced into cycling in the 1990s.

"We have had some players come to us at Arsenal from other clubs abroad and their red blood cell count has been abnormally high. That kind of thing makes you wonder," Wenger said.

Wenger also called for blood testing in soccer, adding: "I don't think we do enough. It is very difficult for me to believe that you have 740 players in the World Cup and you come out with zero problems."

Roger Federer, a 17-times grand-slam tennis champion, also called for the introduction of biological passports, pioneered in cycling and subsequently introduced in athletics, which track changes in a competitor's blood profile which could be caused only by doping.

"A blood passport will be necessary as some substances can't be discovered right now but might in the future, and that risk of discovery can chase cheats away," the Swiss said.

"But there also should be more blood tests and out-of- competition controls in tennis."

WADA and its president John Fahey, whose six-year term ends this year, have never been busier and he told the London symposium there was no sign the bad news would end any time soon.

"As long as there is sporting competition there will be athletes who choose to cheat, and consequently a need to lead the fight against this global threat to sport's integrity," Fahey said.

"And, if the last eight months are anything to go by, that need is increasing in its urgency rather than receding." (Editing by Clare Fallon)

At 1:07 p.m., the following tweet appeared from The Associated Press: "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama Injured."

Reaction on the stock market was swift, as what had been a mildly positive day on the Dow Jones quickly turned negative, with America's benchmark stock index losing more than 134 points or more than a full per cent of its value in a matter of seconds.

Within minutes, it had become clear that the report was untrue, and the result of AP's account being hacked. White House spokesperson Jay Carney told journalists at a press briefing in Washington, "The president is fine. I was just with him."

Twitter moved to suspend AP's account until the agency could regain control of the account.

That caused an equally swift reaction, with the Dow regaining everything it had lost and then some within 10 minutes of the original tweet.

Reports suggest more than $20 billion worth of equity positions changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange during the brief trading hiccup.

The TSX was relatively unscathed, with Canada's benchmark stock index losing about 35 points in the aftermath of the report before gaining it all back and then some.

At the close of trading, the S&P/TSX composite index was at 12,090.94, up less than one point.

INDIO, California (Reuters) - California rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers closed out the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, amid high winds that swept across the desert and prompted attendees to don extra layers.

The Chili Peppers, formed by Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith, Flea and Josh Klinghoffer in 1983 in Los Angeles, showcased a catalogue of songs from their last four studio albums.

The band sang their classic hits, dark love letters to their home state of California, including "Dani California," "Californication," "Parallel Universe" and "Under The Bridge," as fans sang along in a finale to Sunday's events.

The Chili Peppers eschewed the tradition of headliners featuring a special guest, instead keeping their set all about their own music, with the exception of a cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground."

Prior to the Chili Peppers, Wu-Tang Clan drew a large crowd as all the living members of the hip hop collective came together to perform a set filled with their hit tracks, including "Bring da Ruckus" and "Clan in da Front."

The Staten Island collective, which has included rappers RZA, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and Ol' Dirty Bastard who died in 2004, will celebrate its 20th anniversary this year with a new album, "A Better Tomorrow," released in July.

The group will also perform 10 dates across North America and Europe at music festivals this summer, kicking off with Sunday's Coachella performance.

As winds of around 35 miles per hour (56 km/h) swept across the festival in the California desert town of Indio, some 130 miles east of Los Angeles, revelers dressed for the desert sunshine were forced to cover up as dusk fell across the grounds.

FOLK MUSIC AND EDM DRAW CROWDS

Coachella, which began as a two-day festival touting rock music in 1999, has expanded into a three-day festival with more than 150 bands performing across six separate stages, with the same line-up featured across two consecutive weekends in April.

While Coachella organizers Goldenvoice don't release attendance or ticket figures themselves, concert-tracking website Pollstar.com said the concert grossed $47.3 million across two weekends, with more than 158,000 tickets sold.

While in recent years, the festival has boasted top artists such as Madonna, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Paul McCartney among its headlining acts, this year the festival returned to its rock and taste-maker roots with Blur, The Stone Roses, Phoenix and the Chili Peppers.

Earlier on Sunday, Grammy-nominated folk band The Lumineers took the main stage in the afternoon, playing tracks from their self-titled debut album.

The band are part of a new wave of folk-rock bands taking the U.S. pop charts by storm, along with British folk-rockers Mumford & Sons and Icelandic folk group Of Monsters and Men.

Lead singer Wesley Schultz told the Coachella crowd that the festival was the largest live audience the band had ever played and led attendees in sing-a-longs, including the band's hit singles "Ho Hey" and "Stubborn Love."

The Lumineers warmed up the outdoor main stage ahead of indie-rockers Vampire Weekend, who played to the crowd as the sun set across the festival, with hits including "A-Punk" and "Holiday" that got attendees dancing.

London-based dubstep-electronica singer James Blake set a mellow, ethereal vibe for the crowd at sunset at one of Coachella's tented stages, singing tracks from his self-titled debut album.

The festival attracts a large number of people drawn to electronic dance music, and while not many DJs topped the bill this year, EDM fans still had veteran and rising dance music acts to check out.

After playing primetime on Saturday as part of British indie-electro group The xx, British music producer Jamie Smith performed solo under the name Jamie xx on Sunday, as long lines of attendees waited to hear his dance music set.

British DJ Paul Oakenfold, who has been at the forefront of EDM since the 1980s, pumped up the crowd at sunset at Coachella's dance tent with house music, electronica and trance tracks, including a remix of Bruno Mars's "Locked Out of Heaven."

Rapper Azealia Banks was expected to join Oakenfold, but instead he was joined by Wallpaper, a pop-hip hop group formed by Ricky Reed and Novena Carmel, who provided vocals for the DJ's dance-floor anthems.

Banks is expected to join the DJ for next weekend's repeat line-up at Coachella.

(Editing by Eric Walsh and Paul Casciato)

The giant painting hangs in the same central position it did before an epic, decade long, 375 million ($480 million) makeover, flanked by works by Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen and thousands of other Dutch cultural and artistic artifacts.

In a preview Thursday ahead of the April 13 reopening, Rijksmuseum director Wim Pijbes said the far-reaching improvements will justify the long wait.

"It's totally changed, renewed, improved, radiant everything is new," he said.

The Rijksmuseum houses the largest collection of Dutch artwork, with many treasures from the country's 17th-century Golden Age and beyond.

The 19th-century building's red-brick exterior, which resembles a fairy-tale castle, has been restored but left intact. Inside, twin central courtyards that had been gradually filled with extra floors as the museum grew over the years have been reclaimed. The clutter has been stripped away to let natural light flood into the center of the museum.

Despite reopening the courtyard, the museum preserved as much exhibition space as before by reclaiming some areas which had been used for offices.

From hand-painted details on every pillar, to newly laid mosaic floors and stained glass windows, to revitalizing the displays themselves, every part of the museum has been restored or rethought.

Pijbes said that almost never has a national museum undergone such a far-reaching facelift, with every single one of the 8,000 artifacts and pieces of art on display coming to rest in a different spot with one exception: "The Night Watch" itself.

That enormous canvas 4.35 meters wide and 3.79 meters high (14.86 x 12.43 feet) portrays a company of Amsterdam volunteer militiamen. It stands at the end of the museum's central gallery, just as it did in the original 1885 design by architect Pierre Cuypers.

The painting's placement reflects Dutch history, a crowning achievement of the Golden Age when the Netherlands was a major naval power and Amsterdam was one of the world's most influential and wealthy cities.

"The Gallery of Honor is a kind of basilica that ends not with a Christian display, but a civilian display: Rembrandt's 'Night Watch,'" Pijbes said.

The symbolism is that "that there is no one king that has the power, that the Netherlands is a country where an early republic decided a group of people would have power in their hands."

The main gallery is a who's who of Dutch masters, from landscape masters to portraitists. Highlights include Vermeer's delicate, quiet "Milkmaid" (1660), in which the act of pouring milk becomes an almost religious act; as well as larger and more raucous works like Steen's " The Merry Family" (1668) and Frans Hals's "The Merry Drinker" (1628).

And of course it includes paintings and sketches by Rembrandt, including several self-portraits and masterpieces such as one of his most-loved works, "The Jewish Bride" (1669), which shows a tender couple lightly touching.

The museum's head of collections Taco Dibbits said the 17th-century works will always set the museum apart from other national exhibitions.

"This little country became an enormous sea power, East and West, very rich," he said. "The old masters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Jan Steen they painted the world of the people, not Christ on the cross, they painted the people who made the country."

Outside the main gallery, the rest of the exhibits are dispersed along a 1.5 kilometers (about a mile) walk through the galleries.

The twin arms of the castle-like structure continue to divide the museum into wings, but with floors now organized chronologically by era.

Dibbits said the displays have been crafted to integrate artwork with artifacts that tell the story of the country's history and culture at the same time.

Before the renovation "there was one room for paintings, a room for glass, a room for silver, and so on, while in the new museum, you take a walk through the period," he said.

"The intention is ... to create a feeling for beauty of Dutch art and a feeling for the time," he said.

For instance, he said, you might a portrait painted by Rembrandt hanging above an ornate chest made by one of his friends, and silverware crafted by another of his friends on top of the chest.

"It's the relations between different art objects that tell the story of the Netherlands," he said.

The displays were arranged by French designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who also helped design the interior of the Louvre in Paris.

As a final, somewhat eccentric touch to remind the world Amsterdam is still a living city with its own cultural demands: a bike path runs straight under the center of the building's central arch, offering cyclists a view of the building's beautiful new courtyards.

The museum expects to attract as many as two million visitors annually after the renovations, from 1.3 million in the last year before it closed in 2003.

Tickets will cost 15 euros ($19).

Among totally new displays are an Asian art pavilion; access to the museum's ornate library; and a new wing devoted to the 20th century, with works by Piet Mondriaan and graphic artist and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld, among others.

"That's history now too, and we collect the past," Dibbits said, grinning.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto fans filled the Air Canada Centre ready to celebrate their team clinching an NHL playoff spot for the first time in nearly a decade on Thursday but the Maple Leafs' 5-3 loss to the visiting Islanders left many poised to push the panic button.

The Leafs are clinging to fifth place in the Eastern Conference on 53 points but their grip on a playoff spot is starting to slip.

Four chasing teams - the Ottawa Senators (52 points), New York Islanders (51), New York Rangers (48) and Winnipeg Jets (48) - all made up ground with wins on Thursday, setting up a nail-biting finish to the regular season.

"We have to stop the bleeding and get back to what has made us successful but our lack of success the last couple of games has nothing to do with us thinking we have a playoff spot," Leafs defenseman Cody Franson told reporters.

"We don't work that way, we work one day at a time."

Toronto have not reached the playoffs since 2004 and own the longest playoff drought of teams in the NHL today, while the surging Islanders, who have not reached the playoffs since 2007, took a step towards ending their own barren spell, moving to within a point of the Leafs.

Toronto, the only NHL franchise to have been valued at more than $1 billion by Forbes, are a massive success off the ice but for all their money cannot seem to buy a playoff spot.

When the Leafs last hoisted the Stanley Cup in 1967, the NHL was still a six-team league, players did not wear helmets and netminders had just discovered face masks.

'BIG PICTURE'

With four games to play in the current regular season, Toronto's postseason destiny is in their own hands but long-suffering fans have learned to take nothing for granted.

While 'Leafs Nation' may be getting a case of the jitters, players say there is nothing to panic about.

"It's just the way it goes sometimes, I don't think there is any reason to be panicked about it," said Maple Leafs netminder James Reimer. "It's just a couple of tough breaks and that's it.

"You look at the big picture. We've played probably 40 good games out of 44 and that's a good average.

"You're going to have some tough games sometimes. Nothing to be concerned about we know we can do it."

The Islanders, who ranked near the bottom of Forbes evaluations at $155 million, are proving to be good value as they picked up their fifth win in six games with the help of two goals from John Tavares, leaving him in the fight for league scoring honors with 26 on the season.

"We scored on our first two shots and thought we were on our way then we stopped," said Leafs coach Randy Carlyle. "It's back to the drawing board. The sun is going to come up tomorrow.

"We all hope anyway."

(Editing by Peter Rutherford)

Two airline trade associations and the Air Line Pilots Association said they have filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington to stop the furloughs, which are scheduled to kick in on Sunday. However, the earliest the court is likely to schedule a hearing is sometime next week, after the furloughs have begun, said Nick Calio, head of Airlines for America, which represents major carriers.

The way in which the FAA has chosen to implement the furloughs could result in one out of every three airline passengers across the country suffering flight delays or cancellations, industry officials said at a news conference.

"The impact of these cuts on our industry cannot be overstated," said Faye Black, vice president of the Regional Airline Association, which joined the suit. "We think there is not one airport in the nation that will be immune to this."

Sunday is a light air travel day, but by Monday the effects of the furloughs should start to "snowball," creating an air travel mess the equivalent ofhaving a "Hurricane Sandy in the North and Hurricane Katrina in the South," said Lee Moak, president of the pilots union.

Federal officials have said they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 of the FAA's employees, including nearly 15,000 controllers, if they hope to cut $637 million from the agency's budget by the end of September, as required under automatic, across-the-board spending cuts imposed by Congress. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week, which will amount to a 10 percent reduction in available controller work hours to staff air traffic facilities on any given day.

FAA officials declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The controller furloughs will save the agency $200 million, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said earlier this week. But fewer controllers will mean planes have to take off and land less frequently so as not to overload controllers on duty, he said.

An FAA analysis released Thursday said fewer controllers will mean major delays at some of the nation's busiest airports, although the delays will vary significantly depending upon the time of day and other factors unique to each airport.

Maximum delays of more than three hours were predicted for some flights to Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world's busiest airport as measured by the number of passengers who pass through it. But many flights arriving at the airport would suffer no delays or only brief delays, according to the FAA analysis.

Other airports predicted to experience significant delays as a result of the furloughs include Newark Liberty in New Jersey, John F. Kennedy and La Guardia in New York, O'Hare in Chicago, Los Angles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, San Diego and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood in Florida. Airports in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Miami and Charlotte, N.C., as well as Chicago's Midway International Airport, are forecast to experience lesser delays.

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