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Sponsors of golf superstar Tiger Woods have lost around $5 to $12 billion since reports of his extramarital affairs broke out, a new survey has said. The new study by the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) examined stock market returns for the 13 trading days that fell between November 27, the date of Woods’ car crash and December 17, a week after the sports champion announced his indefinite leave from the golf. Two UC Davis economics professors, Victor Stango and Christopher Knittel looked at eight of his sponsors - Accenture, AT&T, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf (Electronic Arts), Gillette (Proctor and Gamble), Nike, Gatorade (PepsiCo), TLC Laser Eye Centers and Golf Digest (Conde Nast).

“Total shareholder losses may exceed several decades’ worth of Tiger Woods’ personal endorsement income,” said Stango, noting that these are separate and much larger than the golfer’s own earnings, who before the scandal got about $100 million a year in endorsement income, more than any other athlete. “This pattern of losses is unlikely to stem from ordinary day-to-day variation in their stock prices,” the researchers said, based on conclusions that the scandal reduced shareholder value in the sponsor companies by 2.3 per cent, or about $12 billion.

The study also finds that three sports-related companies - PGA Tour Golf, Gatorade and Nike - have been worst hit, experiencing a 4.3% drop in stock value, equivalent to about $6 billion. “Our findings speak to a larger question of general interest in the business and academic communities: Does celebrity sponsorship have any impact on a firm’s bottom line”" Stango said. “Our analysis makes clear that while having a celebrity of Tiger Woods’ stature as an endorser has undeniable upside, the downside risk is sustainable too.

The scandal exploded following an accident on November 27 when Woods crashed his SUV outside his Florida mansion sustaining minor injuries. His wife Elin had to use a golf club to break the back window of the SUV to rescue him. The accident may have occurred following a fight with Elin accusing her husband of having an extramarital affair. Since then, ten women have claimed to have been involved with Woods, out of which eight have been named. Since the day of the accident, Woods has not been seen in public and US tabloids are reporting that this may be due to cosmetic surgery to repair a broken tooth following a fight with his wife who chanced upon a text message from one of the  woman he was having an affair.

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China is a vital market for Microsoft’s Web search business, as it chases leaders Baidu and Google in the world’s biggest Internet market, the world’s largest software maker said. Since launching its English-language Bing search site in June, Microsoft has been gaining steady share in the United States, with 10.3% in November versus 17.5% for Yahoo and 65.6% for dominant player Google, according to comScore. Microsoft hopes to get off to a similar fast with its Chinese-language Bing site, which is still in its beta phase following a low-key launch in June. “Microsoft is committed to the China market and the search market in China is the most important strategic market for Microsoft,” the company said on Tuesday.

“We specially set the search technology center in China to get a deeper understanding of what Chinese users need, to be able to deliver the best product to them.” China’s Internet market is a hot spot for global companies looking to expand overseas, but localization issues and tough domestic competition have made it tough to crack for global titans such as Yahoo, eBay and Amazon. China’s search market was worth $293 million in the third quarter, up 38% with homegrown leader Baidu well ahead with 63.9% followed by Google at 31.3%, according to search firm Analysis International.

“Google is taking a big share of the China market, roughly 30% but it is not yet threatening Baidu. Bing is still very far away,” said Credit Suisse analyst Wallace Cheung. Analysts analyst Jin Naili said users will need time to try out and get used to Bing before it has any chance of becoming a serious rival to any of the established players. But she added that since Microsoft launched Bing’s China beta versions in June, the number of users who have visited the site at least three months has increased 30% as of October.

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Afghan human right activists have opened the country’s first war crimes museum on the site, taking a first step towards national reconciliation for victims of atrocities. At the foot of the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains stands a tall, white marble monument and, nearby, the single-storey museum which leading rights advocate Nader Nadery said represents the Afghan public’s demand for justice. The museum aims to commemorate the death of tens of thousands of people in the past four decades of war and revolution that have blighted Afghanistan.

Inside the museum, glass cases display a vast and heartbreaking array of objects found in the mass grave outside Faizabad, capital of remote Badakhshan  province. Torn pieces of cloth, mangled shoes, rusty handcuffs and small personal belongings such as prayer beads and false teeth bear testimony to lives violently snuffed out and bodies tossed like garbage into a hole in the ground.

Hundreds of photographs, mostly black and white, of teenage boys and elderly men with beards and turbans - and every age in between - adorn the walls. “The demand from the public for justice led to establish this human rights victims’ war museum,” said Nadery, a senior commissioner with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) at its opening. “The objective is to make sure the victims are remembered and that war crimes never happen again,” he said, adding: It is like the Holocaust museum.”

The decision to build the monument followed the discovery here in 2006 of a mass grave containing the remains of more than 300 people. The victims were murdered in a “systematic mass killing” of people believed to have been opponents of Afghanistan’s communist regime, which took power in 1978, sparking a nation-wide armed resistance which lasted 10 years and cost millions of lives, said Samar. With the country now in the grip of an Islamic insurgency, Afghan civilians are still victims of both sides, dying in insurgent attacks and counter-insurgent operations alike.

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Australian cricket team skipper Ricky Ponting has emerged as the worst behaved player to play for the country in the last 20 years and has been asked by the former legends of the game to improve his on-field attitude. Former skipper Mark Taylor has asked Ponting to improve his attitude after the public lashed the Australian side for their behavior in the first Test against the West Indies. A list of official International Cricket Council (ICC) breaches obtained by The Sunday Telegraph placed Ponting among world cricket’s serial offenders.

Ponting has presided over more team offenses during his captaincy than predecessors Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor. Ponting has been forced to pay more than $25,000 in fines since the behavioral measures were introduced in 1992. Of his six breaches, four related to umpire dissent. Under Ponting’s  leadership, Australia has totaled 18 separate Code-of-Conduct breaches - double the number of incidents during Taylor’s reign between 1992-1999.

Ponting’s disciplinary record should spark alarm at Cricket Australia, which privately addressed players on their responsibilities to the game before this year’s Ashes series in June. One of the recent antics included Shane Watson’s churlish send-off to West Indies skipper Chris Gayle and a tense confrontation between Sulieman Benn and Australian duo Brad Haddin and Mitchell Johnson. “I just think the Australians could be a bit more pro-active in trying to nip these things in the bud, rather than let things escalate,” Taylor said.

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Air travelers worldwide faced tightened security on Sunday as authorities ramped up efforts to prevent attacks in the wake of a failed bid to blow up an airplane over the United States. Amsterdam-Schipol airport was also investigation how Abdulmutallab could smuggle on board explosives that he allegedly tried to detonate as the flight approached Detroit. The United States quickly asked airlines worldwide to tighten security and airport authorities said they were complying with extra screening and strict baggage limits that heaped hours on to check-in times.

Within the United States, the department of Homeland Security tightened security checks on all domestic and international flights. Extra measures, including frisking of passengers and searching hand baggage came into force on Saturday morning in the Netherlands. Take a look at the security measures undertaken by the following countries -

Singapore: Singapore introduced strict new rules for flights to the United States. One hour before the plane lands at a United States airport, all passengers must be seated, and should not have any baggage near them or be covered with any blanket. The in-flight entertainment system would also be turned off.

Hong Kong: Hong Kong carried Cathay Pacific said it was banning US-bound passengers from using cabin phones while Korean Air banned passengers from using phones or the Internet during US-bound flights.

Japan: Japan urged passengers to allow more time at the airport because tightened security would lead to delays.

Berlin: In Berlin, police said they were steeping up security at airports, particularly Frankfurt, Europe’s third-biggest hub.

London: In London, a British airways spokesman said new rules were coming into force, including additional screening of all US-bound passengers and hand luggage before they board their flights.

Paris: At Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport passengers were told that all hand baggage had to be checked into the hold, except for women’s handbags. Items for the flight had to be put into special plastic bags and passengers frisked again just before boarding when hand luggage was reexamined.

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US authorities charged a 23-year old Nigerian man with trying to blow up a Detroit airliner on Christmas Day, and officials said the suspect told them he had obtained explosive chemicals and a syringe that were sewn into his underwear from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with al Qaeda. The authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was burned in his failed attempt to bring down the airliner and is in a hospital to Michigan. But a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said on Saturday that the suspect’s account was “plausible” and that he saw “no reason” to discount it.

Abdulmutallab’s name was not unknown to US authorities. His father, a prominent Nigerian banker, recently told officials at the US Embassy in Nigeria that he was concerned about his son’s increasingly extremist religious views. As a result of his father’s warning, authorities in Washington opened an investigative file and Abdulmutallab’s name ended up in the American intelligence community’s central repository of information on known or suspected international terrorists.

Members of US Congress who were briefed on Saturday by governmental officials also pointed to a Yemeni connection. “The facts are still emerging, but there are strong suggestions of a Yemen-al-Qaeda connection and an intent to blow up the plane over US airspace,” said Jane Harman, a California Democrat who leads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence. In an affidavit filed in support of the criminal charges, the authorities said that Abdulmutallab had tried to ignite a device, which was attached to his body, resulting “in a fire and what appears to have been an explosion.”

The affidavit said the device contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, a highly explosive substance that was used in 2001 by Richard C Reid, the so-called shoe bomber whose attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight was also thwarted. Officials said analysis of the remnants of Abdulmutallab’s device was being carried out by the FBI laboratory, but it was possible that had the chemical mixture detonated, it might have brought down the aircraft. The suspect’s name was inserted last month into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or Tide. About 550,000 individuals are registered in the database. A subset of that is the Terrorist Screening Data Base, or TSDB, which has about 400,000.

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