White says in a statement Friday that the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority informed him of the penalty last week. The ban started on Oct. 13 and has now expired.

White rode with Armstrong on the U.S. Postal Service team.

After the doping admission, White lost his part-time role at Cycling Australia and his full-time role as a director of Australian professional team Orica-GreenEDGE.

White says "I accept full responsibility for my actions and there is no one to blame but myself for the decisions I made as an athlete in the past."

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which made the announcement Monday, said Williams-Sonoma already was aware of 45 incidents involving the hammock stands when it filed a report to the agency on Sept. 11, 2008, explaining the defects. The San Francisco, Calif.-based company and the government announced a recall of 30,000 of the stands about three weeks later.

The government alleged that when used outdoors, the wood in the hammock stands could deteriorate over time and break when a customer sat in the hammock. There were 12 reports of injuries requiring medical attention.

Williams-Sonoma agreed to the settlement without admitting or denying the charges.

A Las Vegas-based casino subsidiary launched the first fully legal poker website in the United States on Tuesday morning.

The site, run by Ultimate Gaming, is only accepting wagers from players in Nevada for now, but likely represents the next chapter in gambling nationwide.

Internet poker, never fully legal, has been strictly outlawed since 2011, when the Department of Justice seized the domain names of the largest offshore sites catering to U.S. customers and blacked them out.

This crackdown, dubbed "black Friday," left poker fanatics with two options: They could either get dressed and visit a card room, or break the law and log into an offshore site.

More recently, the federal government softened its stance on Internet betting, and three states New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada have legalized some form of online wagering within their borders.

With Tuesday's launch, Nevada wins the race to bring Texas Hold 'em back to the Internet.

"There was black Friday, and now we're going to have 'trusting Tuesday,'" said Ultimate Gaming CEO Tobin Prior. "Players won't have to worry if their money is safe. They are going to be able to play with people they can trust and know the highest regulatory standards have been applied."

About 20 other companies including Zynga, the creator of FarmVille are preparing to open their virtual doors in the Silver State.

UltimatePoker.com will look familiar to anyone who participated in the poker craze of the 2000s. Only the account setup and login process have changed. Instead of checking a box certifying they are older than 18, players will click through a lengthy setup process involving Social Security and cell phone numbers. Only those older than 21 will be allowed to play.

Ultimate Gaming hopes to win the trust not only of players, but of regulators and politicians.

"It's an opportunity to show the world how to properly run online poker," Ultimate Gaming chairman Tom Breitling said.

Several cash-hungry states are weighing legislation that would allow them to tap into what is expected to be a multibillion-dollar market. Some bills would legalize only poker, as Nevada has, while others would throw open the gates to all casino games, including slots, as New Jersey and Delaware have done.

Earlier this year, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval approved legislation that gives him the ability to sign interstate Internet gambling deals with other governors.

Players around the world currently wager an estimated $35 billion online each year, according to the American Gaming Association. A fully realized U.S. online poker market could generate $4.3 billion in revenue its first year, and $9.6 billion by year five, according to London-based research firm H2 Gambling Capital.

Still, with federal efforts to legalize Internet poker stalled, it may be a while before a critical mass of states link together to lure professional players back from overseas and drive up jackpots.

Nevada, a state of just 2.8 million, attracts 52 million visitors a year more than the population of California. But who wants to go on vacation just to fire up their laptop and play some virtual cards?

"I think the real excitement will be when we get a very populous state like a California or a New York allowing these companies to expand," ITG casino analyst Matthew Jacob said. "But these changes often take longer to occur than people assume. It requires a change in law and then it takes a while from when the law passes until the sites are up and running."

Prior says he intends to make Ultimate Poker profitable within a matter of years, in part through cross-promotion with mixed martial arts giant Ultimate Fighting Championship. Both companies are owned by brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who also control Station Casinos Inc., a chain that caters to locals in Las Vegas.

The Ultimate Poker logo has enjoyed prime placement in the UFC fight octagon for months. The Ultimate Poker Facebook page, which steers fans to a zero-stakes version of the site, features a mix of UFC glamour shots and stock images of guys in hoodies staring into laptop screens.

"When you look at the demographic of the UFC fan and the online poker player, it's almost a perfect overlap," Breitling said.

In the coming months, Ultimate Gaming will have to prove that its technology and 111 employees can prevent minors and out-of-state players from wagering real dollars, and guard against money laundering. The site will use several factors to track location, including the virtual customer's mobile phone and their IP addresses, the strings of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, according to chief technology officer Chris Derossi.

It will also have to pay 6.75 percent of its revenue in Nevada state taxes.

It's unclear how much of a boon the new market will be to the cash-strapped state. In 2012, the Pew Center on the States analyzed 13 states that had recently legalized new types of gambling, and found that more than two-thirds of "failed to live up to the initial promises or projections."

The gambling industry is hoping the return of Internet poker will revitalize interest in the game and help brick and mortar casinos capture a younger market.

The rise of Internet poker is generally credited with helping spark the poker fad of the last decade. The end of online gambling is thought to have helped quash interest in the game.

In the coming months, the industry will be watching closely to see if poker players come flocking back from their new hobbies, replacement computer games and illegal offshore gambling sites.

"This is a really huge moment for our company, the state of Nevada and the gaming community," Breitling said. "We're hoping to make poker fun again."

___

Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier

The Marketplace Fairness Act, S. 743, would obligate large online-only retailers to collect and remit the state sales tax due on purchases made online just as all Main Street retailers must do today.

"The current policy, which forces competitors to play by different rules, is inherently unfair and puts Main Street retailers at a disadvantage to out of state, online only competitors," said Bill Hughes, senior vice president for government affairs. "The Marketplace Fairness Act levels the playing field by providing states with the authority if they so choose to require online sellers to collect sales taxes just like Main Street retailers do today."

The Marketplace Fairness Act provides states with the power and flexibility to enforce their relevant laws as they see fit. For example, last week, in anticipation of passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act, the Ohio House of Representatives passed budget included a reduction of the state income tax should Congress give states the power to enforce their sales tax laws more effectively.

Last month, by of vote of 75 to 24, the Senate approved similar language as an amendment to the FY 2014 Budget Resolution introduced by the bipartisan sponsors of the Marketplace Fairness Act, Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND).

"Retailers embrace competition, it is at the heart of all that they do, they simply ask for a level playing field on which to compete and this legislation does just that," said Bill Hughes, senior vice president for government affairs.

Similar legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced by Representatives Steve Womack (R-AR) and Jackie Speier (D-CA) has generated strong bipartisan support.

RILA is the trade association of the world's largest and most innovative retail companies. RILA members include more than 200 retailers, product manufacturers, and service suppliers, which together account for more than $1.5 trillion in annual sales, millions of American jobs and more than 100,000 stores, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers domestically and abroad.

Background:

States' Rights and Fair Competition: The Marketplace Fairness Act, S. 743, simply provides states with the authority if they so choose to require online sellers to collect sales taxes just like brick and mortar and many of their dot.com websites already do today.

Governors & Conservative Thought Leaders Agree: America'shave offered outspoken support for the Marketplace Fairness Act. For example, today in a , economist Art Laffer said, "Addressing e-fairness from a pro-growth perspective creates several benefits for the economy. A gross inequity is addressedall retailers would be treated equally under state law. It also provides states with the opportunity to make their tax systems more efficient and better aligned toward economic growth, as well as improve the productivity of local retailers."

SOURCE Retail Industry Leaders Association

Some 50,000 years ago, aboriginal human settlers arrived on the continent, but how many people it took tois unknown. The new study, published Tuesday (April 23) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that about 1,000 to 3,000 individuals originally landed on Australia's shores.

"This is largely speculative, but I think this suggests something more than accidental colonization by a small group on a raft of vegetation or other unplanned voyage," study researcher Alan Williams, a doctoral candidate at The Australian National University, wrote in an email. "For me, this suggests a deliberate attempt at exploration (if not migration) more akin to those we see in the recent past from ." []

Arriving in Australia

Europeans did not discover Australia until 1606, when Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon spotted the Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland. A few landings andfollowed, but the indigenous people of the continent remained largely undisturbed until the British colonized it in the late 1700s, setting up a penal colony in New South Wales in 1788.

Even thein 1788 is a bit of a mystery, with estimates of the population ranging from 250,000 to 1.2 million. Further back, the story of Australia's human population is shrouded, though gene studies suggest a relatively large founder population would have been necessary to result in the genetic diversity seen today. It's not clear whether the original inhabitants of Australia multiplied and spread across the continent rapidly or remained small in number until the last 5,000 years or so, Williams told LiveScience.

Williams approached the question by using 4,575 radiocarbon dates from 1,750 sites around the continent. Radiocarbon dating works by measuring variations in carbon called isotopes that change predictably with age.

Williams assumed that more sites dating to a certain time reflected a larger population at that time. (It's possible, Williams said, that this assumption is flawed; though he doesn't believe it himself, some researchers have suggested that a small group of highly mobile people might account for spikes in the number of archaeological sites seen in a given time, without any population growth.)

Climate and colonization

Using this large database of dates, Williams reconstructed a timeline of Australia's population in prehistory. Assuming a single wave of colonization 50,000 years ago, he found that Australia stayed sparsely populated until about 11,000 years ago. The population then started increasing gradually to reach a peak of about 3 million individuals 500 years ago. (Today, 23 million people live in Australia.)

The data then show a decline to about 700,000 to 1 million individuals at the time of European contact. The reason for the drop is still unclear: It could be due to a quirk in the database, or it might reflect a real decline. In the 1700s before major European intrusion into Australia Indonesian sailors, known as Macassans, ventured to Australia to hunt sea cucumber, and that cultural contact may have brought disease that hit the indigenous population hard, Williams said.

Australiasshows a number of dips and spikes, some of which correspond with known climate changes, Williams said. Among the most pronounced population changes is a major decline from 21,000 years ago to 12,000 years ago, when the population dropped by 60 percent. This decline may have been due to the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets were at their most extensive point and Australia cooled and dried, Williams said. (This is also when the currentformed.) Its likely that fewer than 500,000 people lived in Australia at that time, so the effect wasnt quite as pronounced as it would be today, when a 60 percent decline in population would correspond to the loss of 14 million Australians today, he said.

The results raise new questions, Williams said, including what prompted the gradual increase in population about 11,000 years ago. Given that the founding population would have numbered in the thousands, the results also require a look at what might have motivated an organized exploration and colonization effort 50,000 years ago.

"Was it climatic? Was it cognitive?" Williams said. "It looks less like an accidental discovery."

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(Reuters) - Fisker Automotive Inc, which has not built a vehicle since July, has the potential to succeed and repay nearly $200 million in government loans if the "green" car maker is able to find the right "financial and strategic resources," according to former CEO Henrik Fisker.

Problems with the parts suppliers, delays in regulatory approval and recalls of its flagship Karma plug-in hybrid sports car were among the issues that dogged the automaker over the last few years, Fisker plans to tell lawmakers during a congressional committee hearing later on Wednesday.

"After resolving initial launch challenges, the cars perform well and customers love them," according to a copy of Henrik Fisker's testimony to the panel. "Fisker still has the potential to build on these achievements if the company can secure financial and strategic resources."

The House Oversight and Government Reform committee will focus on the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) decision to grant Fisker Automotive a $529 million loan in 2009.

The hearing comes as the automaker verges on collapse. Among the key questions is whether Fisker's prospects were strong enough at the start to warrant the DOE's backing, which helped trigger a flood of private financing for Fisker.

Fisker's failure to make a payment on the DOE loan on Monday is the latest of its troubles. In recent weeks, Fisker has fired 75 percent of its workforce and hired bankruptcy advisers.

"The Obama Administration owes the American taxpayer an explanation as to why this bad loan was made in the first place, and what they are going to do to minimize the loss that taxpayers face," said Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, chairman of the subcommittee holding Wednesday's hearing.

Henrik Fisker founded the company in 2007 and abruptly resigned as executive chairman in March. "While the company retains my name, we are not one and the same," Fisker will say, according to his testimony.

Nicholas Whitcombe, supervisory senior investment officer for the DOE loan program and Fisker co-founder Bernhard Koehler will also testify at the hearing.

DOE BACKING BOOSTED FISKER

The DOE's early public support helped open doors for Fisker, which sells the $100,000-plus Karma plug-in hybrid sports car. Fisker has raised $1.2 billion in private funds to date, according to SEC filings.

The 2009 loan signaled that the DOE had done a rigorous review of the project, said Salo Zelermyer, a senior counsel at the DOE under the Bush administration who also helped create the auto loan program. The loan program was funded in late 2008.

"It's fair to say the projects the DOE chose to proceed with were clearly given an added credibility with folks on the outside," said Zelermyer, now a senior counsel at Bracewell and Giuliani in Washington.

Fisker never received the full $529 million loan. It tapped $192 million before the DOE quietly decided to freeze Fisker's credit line in June 2011 when it became clear that Fisker would not meet performance milestones as part of the loan agreement.

Neither the DOE nor Fisker publicly disclosed that decision until early 2012. Lawyers and a DOE official said the department was not obligated to divulge its decision on Fisker.

In the confidential "information statement" sent to shareholders in December 2011 and obtained by Reuters, Fisker said it "will not meet certain financial covenants and project milestones" required in the DOE agreement, including earnings, net worth and certain financial ratio targets.

Fisker's troubles come after a string of green technology flops, including last year's bankruptcy of Fisker's lithium-ion battery supplier, A123 Systems.

Forecasts in 2009 for the sale of hybrid and electric vehicles far outstripped subsequent demand.

"I'm not sure there is anything anyone can say or do to help Fisker," said Theodore O'Neill, an analyst with Litchfield Hills Research LLC. "The company is adrift without Henrik.

"The supply chain is broken, so they can't get parts on credit anymore, and while it is one of the most beautiful cars on the road, there is insufficient demand," he added.

Lawmakers may raise questions about the relationship between the DOE and Fisker, which has been strained in recent months, people familiar with the matter have said.

The terms of Fisker's pact with the DOE were enough to put off potential suitors, including Chinese automaker Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd . The conditions included an obligation to restore capacity and jobs at the company's Delaware plant according to a schedule imposed by the U.S. government.

Officials with Fisker could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman and Paul Lienert in Detroit, Ayesha Rascoe in Washington and Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; editing by Matt Driskill and Matthew Lewis)

LONDON, April 22 (Reuters) - Paul Di Resta has urged his Force India team to go the extra mile to help him secure his first Formula One podium after another near-miss in Bahrain on Sunday.

The Briton equalled his career best with fourth place at Sakhir, leading the race for three laps and tantalisingly close to a top three finish before being caught by Lotus's Romain Grosjean in the closing laps.

"We've got to take a great amount of credit and positives from the first four grands prix," the Scot, who was fourth in Singapore last year, told reporters.

"But the team needs to work hard to bring updates because if they want this podium, they're going to have to work for it - probably more than we are at the moment," he added.

"They want a podium. I said give me a faster car and they'll get a podium. If they work a bit harder in the design office and essentially get a bit more resource in there, there's no reason why we can't do it."

Force India beat two McLarens, two Ferraris, two Mercedes and one Red Bull on Sunday and are now fifth overall and three points ahead of mighty McLaren in the constructors' table.

Team co-owner Vijay Mallya, delighted to see his cars filling the third row on the starting grid before the race, did not expect McLaren to stay behind for long but savoured the moment anyway.

The liquor and spirits baron, whose heavily loss-making Kingfisher airline has been grounded for months, held up Bahrain as proof that progress was being made anyway and said he wanted success as much as anyone.

"I am doing my damnedest to get there. I think that we missed out on at least three podium chances last year," he told Reuters. "It isn't as if approaching the podium is something that has only happened now.

"I have not said no to any technical request. (Technical director) Andy Green is fully aware that while I am willing to support him 110 percent he has to be responsible enough not to waste money. We don't have money to waste.

"If tomorrow I put another 100 million into this team, it's not going to guarantee me any performance," added Mallya.

Di Resta, who headed off to Bangalore after Sunday's race for promotional work, looked forward to the next race at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya in May which marks the start of the European season.

The team looked quick there in pre-season testing and, with a car that likes hot conditions, should be fast again at the Spanish Grand Prix if the sun shines.

"I think we've performed to the 100 percent maximum we could have done," said Di Resta of Sunday's race. "To go away with all those boxes ticked, credit to all the boys who are working hard."

The Scot's form tailed away last season, perhaps due to disappointment at missing out on a move to McLaren when Lewis Hamilton left, and he recognised that he had let his head drop.

"I kind of convinced myself that nothing was going right," he said. "(This year) was a fresh start and I think we've performed to what we could have... We just keep rolling on.

"We've got some new bits coming that are quite exciting for Barcelona. If they work, it could turn us round. But not all the teams are sleeping and I'm not going to get myself carried away," he added. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Pritha Sarkar)