Ali Saidi Sief, who tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone during the recent World Athletics Championships, has been stripped of the 5,000-metre silver medal that he had won in Edmonton, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) confirmed. IAAF spokesman Giorgio Reineri said that the 23-year-old Algerian had been officially disqualified. Sief’s disqualification favours Ethiopia’s Million Wolde and Kenyan John Kibowen, who will now receive the silver and bronze medals, respectively. “The procedure has for the moment been finalised with the positive results from the A and B samples. Saidi Sief is disqualified,” said Reineri. Saidi Sief also faces a two-year ban from the sport.
Other important events
1812 Russian forces are defeated at Smolensk, which is occupied by the French.
1825 Scottish explorer Alexander Gordon Laing becomes the first European to reach Timbuktu, now in Mali.
1866 The North German Confederation Treaty is signed in Berlin.
1868 French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium.
1870 Western Australia is granted representative government.
1914 Germany declares war on Russia.
1932 Jim Mollison, a Scottish aviator, makes the first westbound transatlantic solo flight.
1968 More than 100 women and children are killed when a landslide sweeps two buses into a river on Japan’s Honshu Island.
1986 Sudanese rebel group claims responsibility for shooting down Sudan Airways passenger plane in which all 60 people aboard were killed.
1987 Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene escapes an assassination bid.
1989 In Colombia, leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galan is assassinated outside Bogota.
1993 Bosnia’s warring factions agree to put their capital under UN control for up to two years.
1994 A powerful earthquake rips through north-west Algeria, collapsing thousands of dwellings and killing at least 150 people.
1995 Flash floods in the Marrakesh region of Morocco kill at least 73 people.
1996 In Pakistan, gunmen fire on a group of Shiite worshippers in central Punjab, killing 18 people.
1999 Shaikh Ahmad Bin Hasher Al Maktoum wins first gold medal in the ninth Pan Arab Games.
2001 At least 78 people are killed and 41 others injured in a pre-dawn fire at a Philippines hotel.
2005 Russia and China launches their first-ever joint military exercises.
2008 Pervez Musharraf resigns as president of Pakistan.
2009 Emirati sprinter Omar Juma Bilal Al Salfa becomes the first Arab to enter the quarterfinals at the IAAF World Championships.
2010 A packed passenger bus plunges off a Philippine mountain highway into a 100-foot ravine, killing 40 people.
2011 A roadside bomb kills at least 21 passengers travelling on a minibus in western Afghanistan.
2013 Former rebel leader Michel Djotodia was sworn in as president of the Central African Republic.
2015 A bomb on a motorcycle explodes outside a Hindu shrine in Bangkok, killing 27 people.
