• The The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has named the two independent international experts who will ‘ help the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) overhaul its anti-doping program and rebuild confidence in the anti-doping system in Russia’. The Sports Integrity Initiative first reported in March that WADA would station two independent experts at RUSADA. The experts are Australia’s Peter Nicholson, a former member of the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) and the International Cricket Council (ICC)’s Ethics Officer, and Ieva Lukosiute-Stanikuniene, the Director of the Lithuanian Anti-Doping Agency and Chair of the Council of Europe Advisory Group on Education.

• The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) have released a statement confirming that they sent a formal communication to Liverpool FC, informing the club that they were investigating an adverse finding in a doping test of their player Mamadou Sakho. In the statement, UEFA said that both Sakho and Liverpool FC had ‘until Tuesday to request the analysis of the B sample as well as to provide explanations for the presence of a prohibited substance in the player’s body’. Neither the Football Association (FA), the governing body of football in England, or UK Anti-Doping (UKAD), who coordinate the UK’s testing programme across more than 40 sports, including football, have commented on the issue.

• The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), has announced that the FIFA Appeal Committee have decided to reduce the ban against Harold Mayne-Nicholls from seven to three years. In July 2015, Mayne-Nicholls, former Chairman of the Bid Evaluation Group for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA Would Cups, and a former Chilean football association President, was issued a seven-year ban for a series of offences including offering and accepting gifts and other benefits. His sanction has been reduced after the Appeal Committee found that it was ‘not proportionate to the breaches committed’.

• The FIFA Appeal Committee has also rejected the appeal by Ganesh Thapa to reduce his ten-year ban from football. In November 2015 Thapa, the President of the All-Nepal Football Association (ANFA), was found by the Adjudicatory Chamber of the Independent FIFA Ethics Committee to have ‘committed various acts of misconduct over several years, including the solicitation and acceptance of cash payments from another football official, for both personal and family gain’. The Appeal Committee said however that it had taken into account Thapa’s agreement not to participate in any football-related activity for 210 days during the ethics proceedings. It has therefore backdated Thapa’s ban to start from 16 April 2015, instead of 16 November 2015, as was originally sanctioned.

• The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) has published the number of match alerts it has received from the betting industry for the first quarter of 2016. A match alert is triggered by ‘unusual or suspicious activity around a match’. In total, the TIU said that 48 alerts were received, an increase from the 31 alerts received during the same period last year. The figures were released as the first of a series of headline figures that the TIU has committed to publishing on a quarterly basis, after it was criticised for a lack of transparency earlier this year.

• Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter has said that he has agreed with Franz Beckenbauer, the former Vice-President of the German Football Association (DFB), not to communicate with each other while FIFA investigates possible undue payments and contracts in the awarding of the hosting rights for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Beckenbauer, who was head of the World Cup organising committee during the bidding, is alleged to have privately agreed to multi-million dollar payments with Blatter at FIFA without the DFB’s knowledge. Blatter has said that he did not remember any such agreement or associated meetings. FIFA opened formal proceedings against Beckenbauer and other DFB officials earlier this year.

• The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball announced that Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Chris Colabello has been suspended for 80 games without pay after testing positive for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone, in violation of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. The suspension of Colabello is effective immediately.

• The Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC) is to meet with the country’s newly-appointed Sports Minister, Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye, to discuss the establishment of a National Anti-Doping Agency, reports Ghanaweb.

• Xu Youxuan, Head of the Beijing Laboratory, told Xinhua that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) decided to suspend its accreditation after it reported two false positives.