UPDATE 1-NBA-Anthony leads Knicks over Timberwolves

(Adds quotes, details)
* Knicks have 5 1/2-game division lead
* T'Wolves lose without injured Love
Dec 23 (Reuters) - Carmelo Anthony took over in the last two minutes to carry the New York Knicks to a 94-91 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday.
Anthony, who was ejected during Friday's loss to the Chicago Bulls, finished with 33 points, scoring 19 in the fourth quarter, as the Knicks came from behind to secure the home win.
"We didn't want to look back at this game later in the season and say this was a game we shouldn't have lost," Anthony told reporters. "We picked it up defensively in the second half and we won the game."
New York trailed for virtually the entire game before Anthony went on an 8-0 run in the final two minutes to put the Knicks up by four.
Anthony scored the Knicks' last 12 points to seal the win.
"That was kind of an MVP performance at the end. He stepped up and made the plays," said New York coach Mike Woodson. "When he got that fifth foul called, it's like a light went off and he made the plays big-time."
J.R. Smith scored 19 off the bench for New York (20-7) while Tyson Chandler had 16 and nine rebounds as the Knicks maintained their 5 1/2 game lead in the Atlantic Division.
Nikola Pekovic recorded 21 points and 17 rebounds to lead the Timberwolves (13-12), who were missing All Star Kevin Love due to an eye ailment.
Minnesota went up by nine at half-time and led by 11 midway through the third before New York made their move.
Chandler scored 10 in the third quarter as the Knicks cut the deficit to two heading into the fourth.
New York are still without forward Amar'e Stoudemire, who has been out the entire season with a knee injury but has recently started practicing with the team.
Despite his absence, the Knicks are off to a strong start and have a 5 1/2-game lead in the Atlantic Division. (Writing by Jahmal Corner in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

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Anthony leads Knicks over Timberwolves

 Carmelo Anthony took over in the last two minutes to carry the New York Knicks to a 94-91 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday.
Anthony, who was ejected during Friday's loss to the Chicago Bulls, finished with 33 points, scoring 19 in the fourth quarter, as the Knicks came from behind to secure the home win.
"We didn't want to look back at this game later in the season and say this was a game we shouldn't have lost," Anthony told reporters. "We picked it up defensively in the second half and we won the game."
New York trailed for virtually the entire game before Anthony went on an 8-0 run in the final two minutes to put the Knicks up by four.
Anthony scored the Knicks' last 12 points to seal the win.
"That was kind of an MVP performance at the end. He stepped up and made the plays," said New York coach Mike Woodson. "When he got that fifth foul called, it's like a light went off and he made the plays big-time."
J.R. Smith scored 19 off the bench for New York (20-7) while Tyson Chandler had 16 and nine rebounds as the Knicks maintained their 5 1/2 game lead in the Atlantic Division.
Nikola Pekovic recorded 21 points and 17 rebounds to lead the Timberwolves (13-12), who were missing All Star Kevin Love due to an eye ailment.
Minnesota went up by nine at half-time and led by 11 midway through the third before New York made their move.
Chandler scored 10 in the third quarter as the Knicks cut the deficit to two heading into the fourth.
New York are still without forward Amar'e Stoudemire, who has been out the entire season with a knee injury but has recently started practicing with the team.
Despite his absence, the Knicks are off to a strong start and have a 5 1/2-game lead in the Atlantic Division.

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Anthony leads Knicks over Timberwolves

 Carmelo Anthony took over in the last two minutes to carry the New York Knicks to a 94-91 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday.
Anthony, who was ejected during Friday's loss to the Chicago Bulls, finished with 33 points, scoring 19 in the fourth quarter, as the Knicks came from behind to secure the home win.
"We didn't want to look back at this game later in the season and say this was a game we shouldn't have lost," Anthony told reporters. "We picked it up defensively in the second half and we won the game."
New York trailed for virtually the entire game before Anthony went on an 8-0 run in the final two minutes to put the Knicks up by four.
Anthony scored the Knicks' last 12 points to seal the win.
"That was kind of an MVP performance at the end. He stepped up and made the plays," said New York coach Mike Woodson. "When he got that fifth foul called, it's like a light went off and he made the plays big-time."
J.R. Smith scored 19 off the bench for New York (20-7) while Tyson Chandler had 16 and nine rebounds as the Knicks maintained their 5 1/2 game lead in the Atlantic Division.
Nikola Pekovic recorded 21 points and 17 rebounds to lead the Timberwolves (13-12), who were missing All Star Kevin Love due to an eye ailment.
Minnesota went up by nine at half-time and led by 11 midway through the third before New York made their move.
Chandler scored 10 in the third quarter as the Knicks cut the deficit to two heading into the fourth.
New York are still without forward Amar'e Stoudemire, who has been out the entire season with a knee injury but has recently started practicing with the team.
Despite his absence, the Knicks are off to a strong start and have a 5 1/2-game lead in the Atlantic Division.

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UPDATE 4-NBA results

Dec 24 (Infostrada Sports) - Results from the NBA games on Sunday (home team in CAPS)
BROOKLYN 95 Philadelphia 92
NY KNICKS 94 Minnesota 91
Utah 97 ORLANDO 93
SAN ANTONIO 129 Dallas 91
LA Clippers 103 PHOENIX 77
SACRAMENTO 108 Portland 96

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Basketball-Greek Katsikaris named Russia coach

 Greek Fotis Katsikaris has been named coach of Russia's men's national team and will continue to manage Spanish club Bilbao Berri, the country's basketball federation (RBF) said on Monday.
The agreement with the RBF, which runs through to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, allows Katsikaris to coach Russia for a few months during the off-season before returning to his full-time job with Bilbao.
"I won't break any rules," he said, referring to the Spanish league's law prohibiting holding two jobs simultaneously.
"Each year on June 30, I'll break up my contract with Bilbao before start working in Russia, then I can return to Spain and re-sign my club deal again."
Katsikaris, 45, replaced American-born Israeli David Blatt, who quit as Russia coach in October after guiding his team to the Olympic bronze medal in London.
In his first coaching spell in Russia in 2005, Katsikaris guided Dynamo St Petersburg to third place in the domestic league before the club went bankrupt at the start of the new season, forcing him to seek a job in Spain.
Katsikaris, who has also coached Valencia as well as Greek clubs AEK and Aris, led Bilbao to a runners-up finish in the 2011-12 Spanish league behind Barcelona and an automatic place in the Euroleague - Europe's premier club competition.
Lithuanian Alfredas Vainauskas was named coach of the Russian women's team, replacing Boris Sokolovsky, whose team finished fourth in London.

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NKorea says it has detained a US citizen

North Korea said Friday that an American citizen has been detained after confessing to unspecified crimes, confirming news reports about his arrest at a time when Pyongyang is facing criticism from Washington for launching a long-range rocket last week.
The American was identified as Pae Jun Ho in a brief dispatch issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang. News reports in the U.S. and South Korea said Pae is known in his home state of Washington as Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old tour operator of Korean descent.
An expert said he is likely to become a bargaining chip for the North, an attempt to draw the U.S. into talks. Five other Americans known to have been detained in North Korea since 2009 were all eventually released.
North Korean state media said Pae arrived in the far northeastern city of Rajin on Nov. 3 as part of a tour.
Rajin is part of a special economic zone not far from Yanji, China, that has sought to draw foreign investors and tourists over the past year. Yanji, home to many ethnic Korean Chinese, also serves as a base for Christian groups that shelter North Korean defectors.
"In the process of investigation, evidence proving that he committed a crime against (North Korea) was revealed. He admitted his crime," the KCNA dispatch said.
The North said the crimes were "proven through evidence" but did not elaborate.
KCNA said consular officials from the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang visited Pae on Friday. Sweden represents the United States in diplomatic affairs in North Korea since Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations.
Karl-Olof Andersson, Sweden's ambassador to North Korea, told The Associated Press he could not comment on the case and referred the matter to the U.S. State Department.
The State Department was not immediately able to provide any additional information about the report.
The operator of a Korean language website for the Korean community in the Northwest, Chong Tae Kim of JoySeattle.com, said the detainee's father lives in Korea and his mother lives in Lynnwood, Washington.
"She hopes the State Department and Swedish Embassy help with his release," he said Friday. "She's trying not to speak to reporters, fearing that could affect her son's release."
The office of U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene says it has reached out to the mother and is pressing the State Department for information.
"We are very concerned about it and seeing what can be done on our end to help with this," said spokesman Viet Shelton.
State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell on Friday would only say that they were aware of the detention and that Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang is providing consular services.
"We can, indeed, confirm that a U.S. citizen has been detained in North Korea," Ventrell said, adding that he could not say more because of privacy restrictions.
In Seoul, the Segye Ilbo newspaper reported last week that Bae had been taking tourists on a five-day trip to the North when he was arrested. The newspaper cited unidentified sources.
News of the arrest comes as North Korea is celebrating the launch of a satellite into space on Dec. 12, in defiance of calls by the U.S. and others to cancel a liftoff widely seen as an illicit test of ballistic missile technology.
The announcement of the American's detainment could be a signal from the North that it wants dialogue with the United States, said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. He said trips by former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to North Korea to secure the release of other detained Americans created a mood for U.S.-North Korea talks.
"North Korea knows sanctions will follow its rocket launch. But in the long run, it needs an excuse to reopen talks after the political atmosphere moves past sanctions," Cheong said.
Cheong said he expects that the American will be tried and convicted in coming months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has the power to grant amnesty and will exercise it as a bargaining chip, Cheong said.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said earlier this week that Washington had been trying to reach out to Kim.
"Instead, that was met not only with an abrogation of agreements that had been made by the previous North Korean regime, but by missile activity both in April and in December," she told reporters.
She said Washington had no choice but to put pressure on Pyongyang, and was discussing with its allies how to "further isolate" the regime.
In April 2009, a North Korean rocket launch took place while two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were in North Korean custody after allegedly trying to sneak into the country across the Tumen River dividing the North from China.
They were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor before being released on humanitarian grounds after Clinton flew to Pyongyang to negotiate their release.
Subsequently, three other Americans were arrested and eventually released by North Korea. All three are believed to have been accused of illegally spreading Christianity.
North Korea has several sanctioned churches in Pyongyang but frowns on the distribution of Bibles and other religious materials by foreigners. Interaction between North Koreans and foreigners is strictly regulated.

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Gunmen kill 11 Pakistanis, Afghans in SW Pakistan

An official says gunmen have killed eleven Pakistanis and Afghans in a border town of southwestern Pakistan as they were trying to cross to Iran to travel on to Europe as illegal migrants.
Local government official Zubair Ahmed said Saturday the shooting took place late Friday in the Sunsar town of southwestern Baluchistan province.
He said the dead and wounded were Afghans and Pakistanis.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, but hundreds of such Pakistanis and Afghans are captured by Iranian border guards every year for illegally trying to travel to Europe to find better jobs.
Iran deports such detainees after questioning.
Quetta is the capital of impoverished Baluchistan province, where nationalist groups have also waged a low-level insurgency.

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People flee Japan nuke disaster to faraway Okinawa

 Okinawa is about as far away as one can get from Fukushima without leaving Japan, and that is why Minaho Kubota is here.
Petrified of the radiation spewing from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant that went into multiple meltdowns last year, Kubota grabbed her children, left her skeptical husband and moved to the small southwestern island. More than 1,000 people from the disaster zone have done the same thing.
"I thought I would lose my mind," Kubota told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I felt I would have no answer for my children if, after they grew up, they ever asked me, 'Mama, why didn't you leave?'"
Experts and the government say there have been no visible health effects from the radioactive contamination from Fukushima Dai-ichi so far. But they also warn that even low-dose radiation carries some risk of cancer and other diseases, and exposure should be avoided as much as possible, especially the intake of contaminated food and water. Such risks are several times higher for children and even higher for fetuses, and may not appear for years.
Okinawa has welcomed the people from Fukushima and other northeastern prefectures (states) affected by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that set off the nuclear disaster. Okinawa is offering 60,000 yen ($750) a month to help relocating families of three or four pay the rent, and lower amounts for smaller families.
"We hope they feel better, maybe refreshed," said Okinawan official Masakazu Gunji.
Other prefectures have offered similar aid, but Okinawa's help is relatively generous and is being extended an extra year to three years for anyone applying by the end of this year.
Most people displaced by the disaster have relocated within or near Fukushima, but Okinawa, the only tropical island in Japan, is the most popular area for those who have chosen prefectures far from the nuclear disaster. An escape to Okinawa underlines a determination to get away from radiation and, for some, distrust toward Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that operates Fukushima Dai-ichi.
Kazue Sato lived in fear of radiation because the roof of her home in Iwaki, a major city in Fukushima, was destroyed by the earthquake.
And so she moved with her husband, a chef, back to Okinawa, where she had grown up. She now lives in her grandparents' home and hopes to turn it into a coffee shop with her husband.
But Sato is still struggling with depression, especially because her old friends criticized her for what they thought were her exaggerated fears about radiation. She struggles with a sense of guilt about having abandoned Fukushima.
"Little children have to wear masks. People can't hang their laundry outdoors," she said. "Some people can't get away even if they want to. I feel so sorry for them."
Sato and Kubota are joining a class-action lawsuit being prepared against the government and Tokyo Electric on behalf of Fukushima-area residents affected by the meltdowns. It demands an apology payment of 50,000 yen ($625) a month for each victim until all the radiation from the accident is wiped out, a process that could take decades, if ever, for some areas.
Independent investigations into the nuclear disaster have concluded that the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant was unprepared for the massive tsunami, in part because of the nuclear industry's cozy relationship with government regulators.
"We think people have the right to live in an environment not polluted by radiation that may harm their health, and that right has been violated by this accident," Izutaro Managi, one of the case's lawyers, said in a meeting earlier this month for plaintiffs in Naha, a major Okinawan city.
Japan's statute of limitations requires that the lawsuit be filed no later than March 11, 2014. About 20 of the evacuees in Okinawa have signed on to the lawsuit, which has gathered 100 other people in the three weeks since it began.
Kubota, who now works part time for an Okinawa magazine publisher, said the problem is that no one is taking responsibility for the accident.
"Seeking accountability through a lawsuit may feel like such a roundabout effort. But in the end, it's going to be the best shortcut," she said.
She is getting health checkups for her children, fretting over any discovered problems, including anemia, fevers and nosebleeds.
Her fears are heightened by the fact that she and her children had lived in their car right after the disaster, which had liquefied the land and destroyed their home. They had unknowingly played outdoors while the nuclear plants had been exploding, she recalled.
The disaster ended up separating her family. Her husband refused to leave his dentist practice in Ibaraki Prefecture. They argued over whether to relocate, but she knew she had to leave on her own when he said: "There is nothing we can do."
These days, he visits her and their two boys, ages 8 and 12, in her new apartment in Okinawa on weekends. He sends her money, something he didn't do at first.
"I wake up every day and feel thankful my children are alive. I have been through so much. I have been heartbroken. I have been so afraid," she said.

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Afghan leader: Foreigners to blame for corruption

Afghanistan's president accused on Saturday the countries that fund hisgovernment and military with enabling the widespread corruption that undermines his efforts to establish rule of law in the war-wracked country.

Graft and payoffs are widely recognized as a major problem facing Afghanistan as the government works to establish authority over a volatile country and win the trust of the people over from the Taliban insurgency. The country regularly ranks among the most corrupt in the world in indexes and nearly every Afghan has stories of having to pay a bribe to a police officer or a government official.

International donors have long argued that they are trying to help Karzai's administration clean up the endemic corruption but are stymied by his unwillingness to prosecute political allies. Karzai in turn has repeatedly said that he has not been given the ability to control the billions of dollars flowing in to Afghanistan from foreign countries and so has not been able to police the funding.

"Corruption in Afghanistan is a reality, a bitter reality," Karzai said in a nationally televised speech. "The part of this corruption that is in our offices is a small part: that is bribes. The other part of corruption, the large part, is hundreds of millions dollars that are not ours. We shouldn't blame ourselves for that. That part is from others and imposed on us."

Karzai argued that foreign donors give contracts to high-ranking Afghan officials or to their relatives in an effort to gain influence over the government, thereby sowing the seeds for corruption.

As an example, he brought up his half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was seen as the main power broker in southern Kandahar province before he was assassinated by insurgents in 2011. Karzai recalled a conversation with former U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal in which McChrystal told Karzai to rein in his brother because he was corrupt. Karzai said he pointed out that it was the U.S. government, not the Afghan government, that was awarding contracts to Ahmed Wali Karzai.

"I asked him, why have you given contracts to the president's brother? Why give to him and to other high ranking government officials?" Karzai told the crowd assembled for the speech at a high school in the capital.

The question of the roots of corruption in Afghanistan is only going to become more important in the coming years, as donors have made much of their future funding conditional on evidence that the Afghan government is cleaning up the pervasive system off payoffs and patronage. And there has been debate within the Afghan government over who to blame.

Even at Saturday's event, Karzai's top anti-corruption official spoke first and pointed his finger at other Afghan officials, without mentioning the international donors. He said that the courts have not done enough to prosecute corruption cases and administration officials and lawmakers need to be forced to explain things like large property acquisitions.

"The system is the problem," Azizullah Ludin told the crowd.

Karzai has repeatedly taken populist stances against his foreign allies, placing blame on them for many of the country's ills. In the past, he has said that NATO local offices known as Provincial Reconstruction Teams undermine the Afghan government's authority by doling out money directly to the public, and that foreign countries encourage criminality by funding private security companies that operate outside the law. The foreign security companies have since been shut down and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams are being phased out.

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Mob in Pakistan kills man accused of burning Quran

 A mob in southern Pakistan stormed a police station to seize a mentally unstable Muslim man accused of burning a copy of Islam's holy book, beat him to death, and then set his body afire, police said Saturday.
The case is likely to raise further concerns about the country's harsh blasphemy laws, which can result in a death sentence or life in prison to anyone found guilty. Critics say an accusation or investigation alone can lead to deaths, as people take the law into their own hands and kill those accused of violating it. Police stations and even courts have been attacked by mobs.
Local police official Bihar-ud-Din said police arrested the man on Friday after being informed by residents that he had burned a Quran inside a mosque where he had been staying for a night.
An angry mob of more than 200 people then broke into the police station in the southern town of Dadu and took the accused man, who they say was under questioning. Din said police tried their best to save the man's life but were unable to stop the furious crowd.
He said that police had arrested 30 people for suspected involvement in the attack, while the head of the local police station and seven officers had been suspended.
Past attempts by governments in predominantly Muslim Pakistan to review these laws have met with violent opposition from hardline Islamist parties.

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