Thursday's news
25 Jul 2013
The royal baby's name has been announced, Australian cyclist Stuart O'Grady has admitted to Tour de France doping, the death toll has passed 50 in Spanish train crash and an old SA mine is being searched for missing girl's remains.
Royal baby named
The Prince of Cambridge has been named George Alexander Louis, with the official title His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge being announced by Kensington Palace.
Six former British kings have been named George, including the baby’s great grandfather (who chose the crown name despite being christened Albert), Alexander is the male form of Queen Elizabeth’s middle name Alexandra, and Louis is one of William’s middle names.
More than 50 dead after Spanish train crash
A train has derailed and caught fire between Madrid and Ferrol in the Galicia region of Spain, leaving more than 50 people dead and another 70 injured.
Surviving passengers have spoken of escaping through piled-up carriages and fire, and passing the corpses of their fellow passengers.
The accident occurred several hundred metres before the main train station of Santiago de Compostela, on the eve of the city’s major Christian festival, when thousands of pilgrims would be expected to arrive.
Read more and watch rescue efforts as smoke billows from the crash site below.
O’Grady admits doping
Australian Cyclist Stuart O’Grady has admitted doping in the lead-up to the 1998 Tour de France.
O’Grady, who announced his retirement on Wednesday following the completion of his 17th Tour, in which he rode in the Australian Orica GreenEdge team, was set to be named in a French parliamentary inquiry into doping in cycling.
"I did it for two weeks before the Tour de France. I used extremely cautious amounts because I'd heard a lot of horror stories and did the absolute minimum of what I hoped would get me through,” said O’Grady,.
The top three riders in the ’98 Tour – Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantini and Bobby Julich – have all been named in French daily paper Le Monde as testing positive to EPO at the time, as has green jersey winner Erik Zabel.
Read more about O’Grady’s admission and news about other doping test results from the 1998 Tour at SBS News Cycling Central.
SA mine searched for girl’s remains
A search for the remains of a teenager missing for 23 years has resumed in the SA outback town of Coober Pedy. SES workers, police and a mine rescue team are into the second day of a painstaking excavation of on old mine, where they expect to find the remains of Karen Williams, who went missing in the area in 1990 at the age of 16.
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