FILE PHOTO: A man stands in front of the Olympic rings outside the headquarters of the Olympic Committee of Russia in Moscow, Russia November 28, 2019. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia was banned from the Olympics and world championships in a range of sports on Monday after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ruled to punish it for manipulating laboratory data, the TASS news agency reported.

WADA’s executive committee took the decision after it concluded that Moscow had tampered with laboratory data by planting fake evidence and deleting files linked to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug cheats.