[More from BGR: ]

This article was

Intolerance has been on the rise for the past five years under Pakistan's democratically elected government because of the growing violence of Islamic radicals, who are then courted by political parties, say many in the country's communities of Shiite Muslims, Christians, Hindus and other minorities.

On Saturday, the country will elect a new parliament, marking the first time one elected government is replaced by another in the history of Pakistan, which over its 66-year existence has repeatedly seen military rule. But minorities are not celebrating. Some of the fiercest Islamic extremists are candidates in the vote, and minorities say even the mainstream political parties pander to radicals to get votes, often campaigning side-by-side with well-known militants.

More than a dozen representatives of Pakistan's minorities interviewed by The Associated Press expressed fears the vote will only hand more influence to extremists. Since the 2008 elections, under the outgoing government led by the left-leaning Pakistan People's Party, sectarian attacks have been relentless and minorities have found themselves increasingly targeted by radical Islamic militants. Minorities have little faith the new election will change that.

"We are always opposed to martial law (but) during all the military regimes, the law and order was better and there was good security for minorities," said Amar Lal, a lawyer and human rights activist for Pakistan's Hindu community.

About 96 percent of Pakistan's population of 180 million is Muslim. Most are Sunni, but according to the CIA Factbook about 10 to 15 percent are members of the Shiite sect. The remaining 4 percent are adherents to other religions such as Christians, Hindus and Ahmedis a sect reviled by mainstream Muslims as heretics because they believe a prophet came after Muhammad, defying a basic tenet of Islam that Muhammad was the last prophet. Sunni radicals view Shiite Muslims as apostates.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in a report last month berated the Pakistani government for its poor record of protecting both its minorities and its majority Sunni Muslims and recommended that Pakistan be put on a list of worst offenders, which could jeopardize billions of dollars in U.S. assistance.

"The government of Pakistan continues to engage in and tolerate systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief," the report said. "Sectarian and religiously motivated violence is chronic, especially against Shiite Muslims, and the government has failed to protect members of religious minority communities, as well as the majority faith."

Lal said that in the past three years, 11,000 Hindus living in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province have migrated to India because they were worried about security and frustrated by kidnappings and forced conversions of young Hindu girls to Islam. Pakistan's Hindu minority complains that scores of Hindu girls have been kidnapped, forced to marry their abductor and convert to Islam.

"In Pakistan's southern Sindh province, from every Hindu house, one member of the family has left either for Karachi or for a foreign land," said Lal, who was once a special adviser to Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People's Party until her assassination in December 2007.

"We have lost our hope from the democratic forces because they do everything for money" and nothing for minorities, he said.

Pakistan's Christian communities have complaints as well.

In March, a mob of young Muslims stormed and set fire to nearly 150 homes and shops in the Joseph Christian Colony, a Christian enclave on the outskirts of Lahore, the capital of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, where 60 percent of Pakistanis live and where militant Islamic groups have their headquarters. The mob gathered after one resident was accused of blasphemy, but local people say it was a tiff over money. Most residents fled for their lives, returning the next morning and eventually rebuilding their homes.

On April 30, some radicals attacked 25-year-old resident Babar Ilyas. His injured arm and leg wrapped in bandages, Ilyas told the AP that he was beaten by radicals who warned Christians to leave the area and drop charges against at least two people arrested in connection with the earlier attack.

"We do not have any hope in elections," said Salim Gabriel, a self-declared social worker for Christians and colony resident. "Dictatorship is better for minorities."

Gabriel accused political parties of aligning with radical Islamic groups to get votes, campaigning with well-known militants which he says emboldens radicals among Pakistan's Sunni majority to carry out attacks against minorities with impunity. Minority religious groups fear extremists will piggyback on the backs of mainstream political parties to a position of political power. They most often point to Nawaz Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League.

In an interview with the AP, Sharif's spokesman Siddiq-ul-Farooqi flatly rejected any links to extremist groups.

"We are a moderate party and have no relationship with extremists," Farooqi said.

Members of the party, however, have been seen on the campaign trail with members of extremist parties like the Ahle Sunat Wal Jamaat, a new name for the outlawed Sunni militant group Sipah-e-Sahabah Pakistan, or SSP. Minority leaders and election monitoring groups say Sharif's party is withdrawing candidates in certain electoral constituencies to give radical religious candidates an unchallenged run for election.

Farooqi denied any accommodation with extremist groups.

But Pakistani politics is rarely straightforward. Sharif's party has fielded several Shiite candidates, even as it rubbed shoulders with militant Islamists who publicly call Shiites apostates deserving of death.

Most of the deadly attacks targeting Shiites in Pakistan have been carried out by a group affiliated with the SSP. Yet the renamed SSP is fighting elections as part of a coalition of six radical religious parties. Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi, the leader of the SSP and a candidate, said the coalition has 300 candidates running for election. His party placards often hurl abuses at Shiites, calling them kafirs, or non-believers.

The non-believer epitaph is also widely used in reference to Ahmedis, who consider themselves Muslims but have been explicitly declared non-Muslims in Pakistan's constitution. As well as violent attacks on its members, Ahmedi leaders told the AP they have been singled out with a separate electoral roll that identifies them as Ahmedis. The separate list also gives their addresses, making them easy targets. Security was tightened after a brutal attack in 2010 when militants simultaneously hit two Ahmedi mosques in Lahore killing more than 100 people and wounding scores more.

Ahmedis rarely vote in elections because to do so they have to declare they are non-Muslims, says Shahid Ataullah, a spokesman for the Ahmedi community in Lahore.

So virulent is the abhorrence of Ahmedis by Pakistan's religious right-wing parties that many candidates in Saturday's elections have found it necessary to openly declare their view that Ahmedis are non-Muslims.

The country's controversial blasphemy laws are often used to jail Ahmedis for crimes as simple as saying Assalam-o-Allaikum, a traditional greeting among Muslims and often used by non-Muslims living in predominately Muslim countries. It means "May the peace of God be upon you."

___

Kathy Gannon is AP special regional correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan and can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon

First, there was what felt like a million questions. "What kind of dress was I looking for? What size am I? What kind of color? Long or short?" said the 15-year-old freshman at Mount Edgecumbe High School, a state-run boarding school in Sitka, Alaska.

Her answers gave her passage into a room stocked full of dresses a bounty that Kayla, or most students, in rural Alaska have never seen.

The dresses were brought to the school by the Seattle-based Prom Princess program, which brings the prom experience to Mount Edgecumbe, where many students don't have the resources or the help from their far-off families to get party dresses, tuxedos and makeup for their big night.

"All of these people are here helping them (the students) out and doing all this stuff, and suddenly they realize they're a lot more important than they ever thought they were," said Ivy Lanthier, project director for the school's dorms. "That's the big thing."

In its fifth year of helping students at the school, the program arranges for donations of the dresses, discounted tuxes, and hair and makeup artists.

Mount Edgecumbe, which sits in the shadow of a dormant volcano, is the only state-run boarding school in Alaska. It has nearly 400 students, and about 80 percent this year are Alaska Native. Many, like Kayla, hail from small communities well off the state's limited road system. Many schools in these rural villages don't have proms, and ones that do aren't at Mount Edgecumbe's level.

Program founder Terri Bogren said she and other volunteers, mainly her co-workers at the Seattle-based Alaska Airlines, are proud of the teenagers for leaving their families and villages to get a better education, and this is a way to show their admiration.

"They don't have the family support to help them do this. So we're kind of like fairy godmothers here to help them make sure they can look as good as they want to go to their prom," she said.

Bogren got the idea for the program when she lived in Sitka and helped a niece, who was attending the school, get ready for the prom. That's when she realized other girls weren't going to the dance because they didn't have a dress.

Bogren moved to Seattle after she got a job as an account specialist with the airline, which had just celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2007. She decided to see if anyone would be willing to donate her party dress from the anniversary ball for the girls at Mount Edgecumbe.

"I know lots of people buy expensive dresses and only wear them once," she said. "So I figured this would be a good opportunity to ask for donations."

That first year, 30 dresses were donated. That number has increased to about 130 this year, and the girls get to keep the frocks they pick.

The main booster for the program, Bogren solicits donations while talking to people on airplanes, in airports, at work. The program has a signature identifier: During the prom, all the volunteers wear tiaras, but Bogren sports one throughout the year to attract attention to her program.

The number of volunteers also has grown, from Bogren and five others the first year to about 40 this year. The volunteers are Alaska Airlines or Horizon Air employees, and their family and friends from across the Pacific Northwest. The volunteers include professional hairdressers, nail artists, even a master tailor.

Last Saturday, they gave the girls up-dos, fancy nails, took prom photos and made flower decorations.

Like many students, sophomore Jessica Mute was appreciative for the help. She spent the day primping for the all-school prom, but also found time to make her boyfriend a boutonniere. Mute said it was especially nice since the boarding students "have no parents or moms" there to help them.

For many, Saturday's prom was the first time they have dressed formally for a dance, had clothes altered, had their nails and hair done, got tanning, even wore jewelry. "It's something that many of them have seen on TV," Lanthier said. "They know other people do it, and now they're doing it."

Kellie Oester, a Portland, Ore.-based flight attendant who was in Sitka for the second year, said the freshman girls "touched my heart."

"I have a daughter that is 17. I think, 'Oh, it would be hard for her to be away from home.' So I think they kind of get the nurturing from us," said Oester, who described her duty as "glam fairy," spraying girls with glitter.

And for the record, Kayla picked a dress that was black on the top with white frilly ruffles on the bottom. She planned to wear it when she and friends went to a pizzeria before the dance. "I'm just going to be extra careful" not to drop any food on it, she laughed.

The first stage is an 81-mile leg that will follow a circuit in downtown Naples.

''It would be a dream to take the pink jersey in the first stage,'' Cavendish said. ''It's just incredible to ride the Giro. It's one of maybe two races I insist on doing each year. I also have a place in Italy, so it's kind of like my home tour.''

Cavendish has won 10 stages in the Giro and worn the leader's pink jersey twice, including when his former team Columbia won the opening team time trial in 2009. But taking the lead with an individual win would be different.

The last time the Giro opened with a regular-length sprint stage came 10 years ago, when Alessandro Petacchi edged out Mario Cipollini in Lecce. The last time there was a sprint in Naples was when Cipollini won before 200,000 fans in 1996.

Other contenders include Matthew Goss of Australia, John Degenkolb of Germany and Italian trio Daniele Bennati, Manuel Belletti and Sacha Modolo.

''Straight out the door and we're into a 130-kilometer road race,'' Goss said. ''Sometimes it's nice to have a prologue, because you get yourself in the rhythm, you get your body used to racing that intensely. Saturday is going to be a straight into it. But I look forward to it. You get a good opportunity to take the jersey.''

Cavendish is also aiming for the red-points jersey.

''My goal is to win at least a stage,'' Cavendish said. ''Hopefully a jersey comes from that. The riders who go in to hunt for jerseys are more the attacking riders like (Peter) Sagan. For me, I have to rely on winning stages to get jerseys.''

However, Sagan isn't riding the Giro.

The Naples course features two mild climbs in the Posillipo neighborhood and several loops down the finishing straight alongside the bay.

''It's quite straight forward and it's going to be a sprint,'' Cavendish said. ''Of course, there are a lot of corners and cobblestones that can make it a little more challenging. But I think it should be OK.''

Traffic will be banned in the car-clogged Naples city center, with the only exception for wedding brides.

The second stage Sunday is a team time trial on the nearby island of Ischia.

The race ends May 26 in Brescia.

Its founders -- a 61-year-old former college professor and a 27-year-old former campaign aide -- seemed an unlikely pair to stir up grassroots support for .

But since its formation earlier this year and its official launch at the beginning of the month, the Ready for Hillary PAC has already had an impressive track record. The group, which calls itself "the nation's premier organization urging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016 and laying the groundwork of support for her potential candidacy," has developed more than a whiff of legitimacy.

According to organizers, financial contributions -- more than 1,000 of them -- have been pouring in. Activists have gathered for boisterous pro-Hillary events outside two of the former secretary of state's recent speaking appearances (in Washington, D.C., and New York). And Ready for Hillary has built a slick website and a fast-growing social media presence.

Ready for Hillary has also amped up its credibility in a big way over the past two weeks with a series of high-profile endorsements from three prominent Clinton backers: Democratic strategist James Carville, long-time Clinton confidant Harold Ickes and former California congresswoman Ellen Tauscher.

"She needs to know -- and it's our goal to demonstrate to her and to the country -- thatthere's an army ready to help her candidacy," the group's communications director Seth Bringman said in an interview with ABC News.

What began as a quirky venture run by Bringman and a handful of Clinton fanatics, is suddenly looking a lot more serious. Organizers are assembling something of a shadow campaign-in-waiting, complete with an email list 150,000 supporters strong -- and growing. And although the super PAC would be legally barred from coordinating with Clinton's campaign if she decides to run, the group's success in cultivating a grassroots network, raising money and sparking genuine passion for her candidacy (a political ingredient that Barack Obama arguably had in greater supply in 2008) could send a powerful signal to potential challengers from both parties and to Clinton herself, who remains the group's most important target audience.

Bringman said that the recent support from both Carville and Ickes was a "huge" boost for the organization.

"I'm not going to waste my time writing you about how great Hillary is or how formidable she'd be -- you know it all already," Carville wrote in a recent message sent to the group's email network. "But it isn't worth squat to have the fastest car at the racetrack if there ain't any gas in the tank -- and that's why the work that the Ready for Hillary PAC is doing is absolutely critical. We need to convert the hunger that's out there for Hillary's candidacy into a real grassroots organization."

Carville's note stressed one of the key reasons the small band of committed Hillary enthusiasts decided to form the group in the first place: Clinton had to cease her political organizing activities during her four years at the State Department.

"We owe it to Hillary to start putting the building blocks of her campaign together now," wrote Carville, who advised her 2008 presidential bid and served as a top strategist to Bill Clinton. "The modern political campaign demands it."

A few days later, Ickes, a Clinton stalwart and expert fundraiser, chimed in on behalf of the upstart group, telling the Sunday Times of London that he had signed on as an adviser.

And last week, Ready for Hillary circulated a news release trumpeting the addition of Tauscher, who served for three years as undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, as a supporter and strategic adviser to the group.

"I have been up close to her -- as close as you can get," Tauscher said in an interview with ABC News. "She is second to none. I will support herwhatever she does, but selfishly, I hope she runs."

Tauscher, who represented a Northern California congressional district for a dozen years before leaving for the State Department, has already put her money where her mouth is. She wrote the group a $2,500 check this month.

Her donation was its first clue it had a potential big-name surrogate in the midst. Tauscher said that within hours of contributing to the Ready for Hillary website, a staff member called to ask if she was, in fact, "the Ellen Tauscher."

"I thought it was pretty funny," she said.

Bringman said the support of Tauscher and many others shows "there's no shortage of folks who want to help Hillary, want her to run for president and want to see her succeed."

As proof of that, he blasted out an email message to supporters over the weekend, noting that Ready for Hillary blew past the 100,000 fan mark on Facebook. He wrote that the group "has been expanding its social media base at a rate of one new person every 14 seconds," helping it amass more than 55,000 Twitter followers too.

Despite Ready for Hillary's thousands of newfound friends, the group currently employs just three paid staffers: Bringman, who works out of his home in Columbus, Ohio, and worked on Clinton's 2008 bid; Matt Felan, the national finance director who is based in Michigan and served as deputy national finance director for Clinton's campaign five years ago; and Nickie Titus, the group's digital director who was director of digital media on Tim Kaine's successful 2012 Virginia Senate campaign.

The group's co-founders, Allida Black and Adam Parkhomenko, have been volunteering their time. Black was a professor at George Washington University for 20 years and is now an independent historian. In an office on the second floor of her brick colonial home in Arlington, Va., Black surrounds herself with books and photos of Clinton and other political leaders. Among her treasured possessions is a pair of orange high-top sneakers signed by Clinton that Black said she wore while traveling the country as a super-volunteer for Hillary during the 2008 campaign.

Black, who hatched the idea for Ready for Hillary with Parkhomenko shortly after the 2012 election said that the goal was simple: to "build the most effective operation that we can to buy Hillary some time."

"We are not a fly-by-night group," Black said. "We know what we're doing."

She and Bringman said that neither of them has received pushback from members of the Clinton's inner circle."We've gotten nothing but encouragement," Bringman noted, from people close to the former first lady. "I don't think there's anyone who would tell Hillary supporters not to express their support for her."

And organizers say they this is only the beginning. Parkhomenko plans to become the group's executive director next month. The finance operation will grow to include a team of regional fundraisers across the country. The group plans to acquire office space in the Washington, D.C., area sometime in the next few months. And the super PAC will file its first fundraising report this summer.

But supporters and donors such as Tauscher, who was effusive about Ready for Hillary's efforts when reached at her home in California last week, said the PAC's organic feel was what attracted her to it in the first place.

"That's what I loved about it," she said. "There's nothing better than to have a real grassroots movement made up of grassroots people that are much more in tune with people than those inside the Washington bubble."

Other Clintonites, however, continue to view the effort with a dose of skepticism. One former Clinton 2008 campaign staffer said Ready for Hillary appeared to be a good vehicle for the latent enthusiasm that exists for another Clinton White House bid but predicted that it would ultimately have little impact on her political calculus.

But Black, Parkhomenko, Bringman and their small band of Clinton warriors simply can't wait for Hillary to make up her mind.

"She's a leader of my lifetime," Black said, "and I could not sit this out in good conscience."

NASCAR selects the panel from a list of 48 people former car owners, crew chiefs and drivers, as well as current track promoters and industry veterans. Their identities will not be revealed until after their decision, which can be appealed to NASCAR chief appellate officer John Middlebrook. The May 1 appeal will be conducted at the Research and Development Center in Concord.

The penalties have been one of the biggest stories of the season so far. NASCAR seized parts from the rear suspensions of both Penske cars during pre-race inspections at Texas, accusing the team of using unapproved parts in the rear housing.

NASCAR docked 25 points each from Keselowski and Logano in the driver and owner standings, fined crew chiefs Paul Wolfe and Todd Gordon $100,000 each, and suspended Wolfe, Gordon, car chiefs Jerry Kelley and Raymond Fox, engineers Brian Wilson and Samuel Stanley and Penske competition director Travis Geisler for six points races.

All seven suspended employees were put on probation through Dec. 31. Penske officials say they are concerned that's more than double the probation any previous infraction received.

Team owner Roger Penske told The Associated Press the parts were approved, but NASCAR alleged they had been modified before use.

"NASCAR has approved parts and unapproved parts. The parts that we had were approved parts, they are concerned that we modified them. That's where the discussion is," he said. "From an overall standpoint, NASCAR felt what we had provided them for approval, then these parts were different during the inspection process."

Penske also said the team was working in a gray area of the rule book.

"I certainly don't think it's cheating," Penske said. "You are looking at the rules and you are working in a gray area. We all work in the gray areas. We're trying to be as competitive as we can be, we've got very creative minds and it takes a lot of creative minds to be competitive.There are many different areas we are all working on. We just looked at a particular rule that maybe NASCAR has a different view of. Now we'll get a chance to have an unbiased panel look at it."

Penske President Tim Cindric researched and found the three-member appeals panel has not overturned a NASCAR penalty regarding body infractions in the last three years. But, crew members are allowed to work during the appeal, and teams use the time to restructure and prepare for when the penalties are enforced.

Last year, Middlebrook overturned a six-race suspension for Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Chad Knaus and restored 25 points for five-time champion Jimmie Johnson.

Knaus had been punished for allegedly modifying sheet metal on Johnson's car at Daytona. Middlebrook left intact the $100,000 fine against Knaus.

This time, NASCAR has not revealed many details of its case against Penske.

Teams very much were manipulating the rear suspensions of their cars last year, and NASCAR slowly addressed the issue through a series of technical bulletins issued over the course of the season. The rule book was specifically tightened this season, with added language to the passage demanding that all suspension systems and components must be presented "in a completed form/assembly" prior to being used in competition.

A second new passage clearly states, "all front end and rear end suspension mounts and mounting hardware must not allow movement or realignment of any suspension component beyond normal rotation or suspension travel." That puts in writing that NASCAR will not tolerate teams altering the skew of the rear ends the way they did a year ago.

Penske said there was no prior warning from NASCAR that the team was potentially in violation of the rules, and that Logano's car had already cleared tech at Texas before inspectors called him back after taking parts from Keselowski's car. Logano barely made the start of the race.

Under the agreement, Actavis will be licensed to market a specified number of bottles of its generic OxyContin beginning January 1, 2014.

Actavis expects the agreement to represent more than $100 million in combined gross profit in 2014 and 2015, but the other terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

If Actavis is unable to get U.S. regulatory approval for its generic OxyContin prior to September 1, 2014, it will be permitted to launch a specified number of bottles of an authorized generic version of Purdue's abuse-deterrent product beginning in October 2014.

OxyContin had U.S. sales of about $2.8 billion for the 12 months ending January 31, 2013, according to IMS Health, Actavis said in a statement.

Actavis, formerly known as Watson Pharmaceuticals, announced on Thursday it had settled a lawsuit with Shire Plc, related to a generic version of Shire's drug, Intuniv, to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The drugmaker changed its name from Watson after buying Actavis as part of its strategy to expand in international markets and offer more specialty drugs.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Sreejiraj Eluvangal)

Six alternate jurors were chosen on Tuesday following the selection a day earlier of a jury of six men and six women for what is expected to be an emotional three-month trial.

The conclusion of the month-long search for a jury set the stage for opening statements to begin in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday.

Jackson's 82-year-old mother, Katherine, is suing AEG Live, the promoters of his never-realized series of 2009 London comeback concerts, for the wrongful death of her son.

The lawsuit alleges AEG Live was negligent in hiring Dr. Conrad Murray to care for the singer while he rehearsed for a series of 50 shows.

AEG Live contends that it did not hire or supervise Murray and that Jackson was addicted to prescription drugs for years before he agreed to do the "This Is It" London concerts.

The concert promoters also argue that they could not have foreseen that Murray, who was convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's death, posed a danger to the singer.

Jackson, 50, died in Los Angeles on June 25, 2009, from a lethal dose of the surgical anesthetic propofol that Murray was administering for sleep problems. Murray, who is not being sued, formally appealed against his criminal conviction on Monday.

Potential witnesses in the civil trial include Jackson's mother, his two oldest children, Prince, 16, and Paris, 15, as well as Murray, singers Prince and Diana Ross, and Jackson's ex-wives, Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe.

Katherine Jackson and her son's three children are seeking some $40 billion in damages from privately held AEG Live for loss of the singer's earnings and other damages. The final amount will be determined by the jury should it hold AEG Live negligent.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Eric Beech)

MONTE CARLO (Reuters) - Current anti-doping measures in tennis are a "disaster" and the introduction of biological passports can only improve matters, world number six Tomas Berdych said.

"The system right now... I don't know how it works with the others but with me, it does not work at all," the Czech told Reuters in an interview at the Monte Carlo Masters this week.

"You have to say every single day... where you are. I've done this for three or four years already and I had only two tests out of the tournaments," Berdych said.

"So why do I have to do this all the time and then they come twice in four years? It's just like complete nonsense."

Under International Tennis Federation (ITF) rules, players must give their location for at least one hour of each day in case they are required for an out-of-competition drugs test, usually by means of a urine sample.

"If some people were hired to think about that and have come up with this kind of idea, if it was me, I would have fired them straight away," Berdych said.

"This system is a complete disaster. So whatever they're going to do differently, it's going to be good, new or whatever."

The ITF said last month it would introduce biological passports for players this year, in line with measures adopted in other sports such as cycling.

The new system, under which test results are collated over time to enable testers to track any changes which might indicate doping, would involve more blood tests being done every year, the federation said.

According to their website (www.itftennis.com), the ITF carried out 21 out-of-competition blood tests in professional tennis in 2011.

By comparison, cycling's world governing body UCI conducted 3,314 in the same year.

Top players, including 17-times grand-slam winner Roger Federer, have welcomed the introduction of biological passports in tennis and Berdych added his backing.

"Sure, I'm definitely on this side. There should be more tests," Berdych said.

World number nine Richard Gasquet of France also praised the new system.

"We still have urine tests that are a bit behind the times and we know that potential cheats always are way ahead," he told Reuters.

Urine tests can detect many drugs including EPO, one of several substances taken by disgraced former Tour de France cycling champion Lance Armstrong, but only blood tests can detect human growth hormone.

World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) head John Fahey earlier this year called on tennis officials to increase the number of blood tests.

(Reporting by Gregory Blachier; Editing by Clare Fallon)

Hotline editors weigh in on the stories that drive the day

Dems up in 2014 are still nervous about ObamaCare's potency as a political weapon, just not in the way you might think. It's not the bill itself; GOP health care ads run in 2012 didn't hurt Democrats as much as Republicans hoped. It's the implementation, the pages and pages of regulations and rules that invite renewed scrutiny on an already-unpopular law. Baucus had a point: The train wreck is in the details. Toomey, whose approval rating is the highest the Q poll has recorded thus far in his term, increased his bipartisan cred during the gun debate. That's likely to be helpful in '16, when Toomey stands for reelection among an electorate more likely to resemble '12 (D+10, per exits) than '10 (D+3). Color us skeptical that Bill Nelson is going to jump from a safe seat, where he's never faced much opposition, into a nasty primary where he'll have to raise and spend more money than at any other time in his career -- all at the ripe age of 70. Then again, that's not stopping Phil Gingrey. But, aspointed out last week, during his 1990 campaign, Nelson argued that Lawton Chiles, then 60, was too old to be governor. Scott Honour and (likely) Bruce Rauner are taking their venture capital backgrounds into politics, mounting gubernatorial campaigns in blue-leaning states. The question: can they replicate Rick Snyder's 2010 model of the sensible, apolitical technocrat, or will they be defined -- like Mitt Romney -- as "corporate raiders"?

"Woman, 80, swallows diamond at Fla. charity event" ().

"This was not an easy decision (to not seek re-election), but the last few months I've felt the calling: It whispered to me among the elk resting in a meadow east of the Bridger Mountains. I heard it as thousands of snow geese flew over the Rocky Mountain Front. The pull came up from my soul like the ducks that rose in clouds from the winter wheat fields of Teton County at dusk. ... I'm happier than I've ever been" -- Baucus, in an op-ed explaining his decision to retire ().

"Screw you guys, I'm going home" -- Cartman ("").

, Editor