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A-League in turmoil as Gold Coast wobbles

April 10, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

The A-League faces the biggest crisis in its five-year history, with glamour club Gold Coast United on death row and Football Federation Australia (FFA) unable to guarantee its survival.

After just one season Gold Coast’s future is under a huge cloud, as the competition’s richest benefactor Clive Palmer considers whether to pull his financial backing from the club.

It comes just days after the FFA bailed out fellow expansion club North Queensland Fury when owner Don Matheson decided to walk away, as he was unable to afford to keep the club going.

And A-League chief executive Archie Fraser has also resigned from his job overseeing the troubled competition, which now has all three Queensland-based sides either under FFA control or facing uncertain futures.

FFA chief executive Ben Buckley refused to guarantee that Gold Coast – home to Socceroo star Jason Culina and gun New Zealand striker Shane Smeltz – will be part of the competition next season.

But he says iron ore magnate Palmer has not handed back the club’s licence, and the FFA is “hopeful he will continue his commitment” to the club he launched amid fanfare and largesse less than two years ago.

“We have to gauge the level of community support, the level of commercial interest, the level of corporate support in any given city, in any given market that we have an A-League club operating,” Buckley said.

“Over the course of the next few weeks and months we will assess that on the Gold Coast.

“We’re certainly hopeful they will be [in the A-League next season] and… we will work collectively with Gold Coast to try and bring about that outcome.”

The FFA has endured a testy relationship with Palmer, whose regular criticism of the governing body and controversial crowd cap did little to win favour with either football administrators or Gold Coast fans.

While United threatened to take the minor premiership until the penultimate round, it drew an average crowd of only 5,392 – the worst in the competition.

Even more troubling for the FFA is that Gold Coast’s predicament means both A-League expansion clubs have hit major hurdles after just one season in the competition.

The news Palmer was considering pulling his funding took Gold Coast players and staff by surprise on Friday.

Chief executive Clive Mensink, a friend and relative of Palmer, is adamant Gold Coast will continue on in 2010/11.

But he did indicate Palmer, who is currently involved in a $3 billion float of his business holdings and is believed to have spent nearly $5 million on Gold Coast to date, may be open to sharing or off-loading the club’s licence.

“It’s a bit of a surprise but at the end of the day there are parties interested in the club and if that is the case we’re happy to have a chat – commercially you would be mad not to,” Mensink said.

“(Palmer) says there may be people involved in his overseas dealings that may be tying in with the club as well but there is nothing there at the moment.”

Should Gold Coast collapse, Melbourne Heart’s pending addition for 2010/11 means the A-League will be able to run a 10-team competition next season.

Gold Coast would become the second A-League club in five years to disappear, with New Zealand Knights canned in 2007 after two disastrous seasons.

Meanwhile, Adelaide United looks set to emerge from FFA control in time for the new season, with a consortium led by local businessman Alan Young getting the green light on Friday to eventually take over the club.

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North Korea’s Kim may have entered China: report

April 3, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – One of North Korea’s special armored trains used to carry Kim Jong-il arrived in the Chinese border city of Dandong early Saturday, indicating the reclusive leader may be on the move, Yonhap news agency reported.

World

There was no indication if Kim was on the train, an unnamed government source told Yonhap in a report that comes after a South Korean presidential spokeswoman said this week there were signs Kim may soon travel to China.

Kim’s trips to China, his destitute and isolated state’s biggest benefactor and the closest thing it can claim as a major ally, have often led to moves that decrease the security threat Pyongyang poses to the economically vibrant region.

A visit would bode well for reviving dormant international talks hosted by Beijing on ending Pyongyang’s atomic ambitions in return for aid to prop up the North’s broken economy and better global standing, analysts said.

Kim’s rare trips abroad are usually shrouded in secrecy and his state’s official media does not report on them until his journey is over and he is safely back in Pyongyang.

(Reporting by Kim Yeon-hee and Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

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Aliens in no mood to response to SETI right now

August 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, August 19 (ANI): The SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) telescope has produced its first scientific results, but unfortunately it’s still waiting for a response from the aliens.

The project, called the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) after benefactor and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, went live in 2007.

It was designed to scan for broadcasts from alien civilizations with more consistency and a wider field of view than any previous effort.

Run jointly by the SETI Institute and the University of California, Berkeley, from a site in northern California, the ATA is ultimately intended to comprise 350 dishes.

But, even with its current complement of 42, it has an impressively wide field of view. It uses relatively small, 6-metre dishes that together can take in five square degrees of sky at a time – a box as wide as 10 full moons.

“At any one moment, you look into a very large piece of the sky,” said Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute. “At 350 (telescopes), the ATA just blows any other survey telescope out of the water. Even at 42, it’s interesting,” she told New Scientist.

According to Joeri van Leeuwen, an ATA team member who presented the project’s first results at a conference in the Netherlands in June, “You can see entire galaxies within one shot.”

One question the ATA aims to answer is a mystery of missing gas.

Star-forming regions don’t seem to have enough molecular gas to keep up the star-formation rates we observe.

Some researchers think atomic hydrogen might make up the difference.

ATA team members have searched for it in four groups of galaxies so far, but have not yet found any new intergalactic gas, deepening the mystery.

“This paper was our first science paper, so we’ve answered some questions, but we’re finding new questions again. This paper really shows that our setup is working, we have all the algorithms working, and we could easily upgrade to a more powerful system still,” van Leeuwen said.

Such surveys do not distract from the search for aliens, which – if they exist and are attempting to communicate – may send out broadcasts at wavelengths not commonly emitted by astrophysical objects. (ANI)

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Modern day Robin Hood reunites 200 brides with paid-for wedding dresses from bankrupt shop!

June 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Jun 19 (ANI): After a bridal store went bust due to recession, a man swiped 200 paid-for wedding dresses from the shop and gave them to their owners.

Glasgow’s Capri Skies bridal store was set to have its assets, including the dresses, seized after being hit by recession, but thanks to the man, who told a local newspaper that “insiders” helped him get into the shop, the dresses were saved.

In a letter to the newspaper the man explained why he had stolen the dresses.

“I got out as many dresses as I could and delivered them to brides all over Scotland,” the Sun quoted the modern day Robin Hood as writing.

“Nobody knows who I am, but I like to think that I have done the owner of the shop and all the brides a favour by reuniting dresses with their true owners. The fat cats haven’t won this time,” he wrote.

The mother of one bride- to-be who got her dress praised their benefactor on June 18.

“My daughter was delighted the dress arrived on time. Getting it back saved the day, and we can’t thank the man enough. I’m glad someone went in and got the dresses out when they did,” she said.

A Strathclyde Police spokesperson had at first said that officers were investigating the incident, but later revealed that after some inquiries had been made, they decided no further action would be taken.

The spokesman said the matter was now one for the authorities overseeing the closure of the business. (ANI)

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Russian aristocrat’s heir reclaims Van Gogh painting ‘looted’ by Lenin

May 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Paris, May 29 (ANI): The heir of a Tsarist-era aristocrat has launched a legal fight to reclaim a Van Gogh masterpiece that was taken away from the family by Communnist era leader Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution.

Pierre Konowaloff, a naturalised Frenchman, claims that Van Gogh’s Night Cafe, which has hung on the walls of Yale University for nearly 50 years, was confiscated from his great-grandfather Ivan Morozov on the orders of Lenin.

According to The Telegraph, a court ruling in his favour would trigger a flood of similar claims from Russian imigris whose family art collections were plundered by the Bolshevik government.

It could also force western countries to widen the Washington Declaration of 1988, which required its 44 signatories to search for art plundered by the Nazis, and return it to the heirs of the original owners.

Konowaloff’s lawyers have written to Yale demanding the painting’s surrender. The university was forced to file a suit in a U.S. court to resolve the issue of ownership.

Regarded as one of the artist’s most profound interpretations of the human condition, Night Cafe was bequeathed to Yale in 1960 by Stephen Clark, a collector and benefactor who attended the university.

It was originally sold to a Berlin art gallery as one of dozens of masterpieces offloaded by Stalin in the early 1930s to finance a five-year plan meant to modernise Soviet industry and agriculture.

Yale maintains that the sale was legal and cannot therefore be challenged.

Konowaloff says he intends to give the painting to the Russian state in exchange for unspecified financial compensation. (ANI)

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Indian-origin girls bag first, third spots in Scripps National Spelling Bee

May 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 29 (ANI): Kansas-based, Indian-origin girl Kavya Shivashankar, 13, has become America’s spelling champion by winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The budding neurosurgeon from Olathe took home more than 40,000 dollars in cash and prizes and the huge champion’s trophy.

The word spelling which she became the victor on Thursday night was “Laodicean”, which means lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics.

It was Kavya’s fourth appearance at the bee, after having finished 10th, eighth and fourth over the last three years.

Finishing third at this year’s event was another Indian-origin girl from Illinois named Aishwarya Pastapur, 13, reports Fox News.

Second place went to 12-year-old Tim Ruiter of Centreville, Va., the only non-teenager in the finals. He misspelled “maecenas,” which means a cultural benefactor. (ANI)

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North Korea strongman Kim Jong-il admits to fatigue

April 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Seoul, Apr.18 (ANI): Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has confessed that he feels fatigue from his tough schedule, the communist state’s official media said on Friday.

“A man is not made of iron and must take care of his own body. But I have no time to do so,” the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun quoted Kim, long regarded as the country’s benefactor, as saying.

Kim, 67, is widely believed to have suffered a stroke last August.

South Korean officials have said that he made a good recovery, but the once-portly leader appears gaunt and much older and thinner in recent photos.

Nevertheless, according to The Telegraph, he has more than tripled his public appearances this year.

“Why wouldn’t I be tired and need more sleep? Even though I’m tired, I endure it. What drives me to keep going despite the fatigue and distress? Because I deeply feel responsible for the fate of our homeland, our people.” State media quoted him, as saying.

The Rodong Sinmun depicted him as tough but tender in a report two days after the North’s April 5 rocket launch. (ANI)

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South Korea set to curtail North arms trade

April 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea is expected to announce as early as Wednesday plans to curtail the North’s suspected trade in weapons of mass destruction, further raising tensions with Pyongyang after the North vowed to quit nuclear disarmament talks.

North Korea said on Tuesday it would re-start a plant that makes bomb-grade plutonium in response to a U.N. rebuke over its launching of a long-range rocket 10 days ago.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said its inspectors have also been ordered to leave North Korea.

In a move bound to ratchet up tensions, South Korea is poised to reveal it will soon join U.S.-led interception of shipments suspected of carrying parts or equipment for weapons of mass destruction. Pyongyang has said such an action would be considered a declaration of war.

The plan, called the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and joined by 94 countries, would let South Korea stop and board North Korean ships sailing in its territorial waters when suspected of carrying arms or other illicit materials.

North Korea’s threat on Tuesday to quit six-party disarmament talks poses the first big foreign policy test for the Obama administration.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the expulsion of the U.N. nuclear inspectors as an unnecessary provocation but said Washington was ready to talk.

“Obviously we hope that there will be an opportunity to discuss this not only with our partners and allies but also eventually with the North Koreans,” Clinton said in Washington.

North Korea’s expulsion of U.N. nuclear inspectors is a major reversal of steps it took in 2007 halting the operation of the Yongbyon nuclear complex and allowing the IAEA in to seal facilities there.

INSPECTORS EXPELLED

The U.N. Security Council on Monday condemned North’s launch of a long-range rocket, declaring it was a violation of a U.N. resolution adopted in 2006 after the North’s nuclear and missile tests and ordered the enforcement of existing sanctions.

Shipments of energy aid to the North has slowed since last year because of a dispute over how to verify the North’s nuclear inventory under the disarmament deal struck by the South and North Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China in 2005.

Experts said the North could have its plant that separates plutonium from spent fuel rods up and running again in as little as three months.

Announcements like this from North Korea are part of a familiar pattern of behavior and as such it is not likely to be a destabilizing factor for regional economies.

Japan’s conservative Yomiuri newspaper sounded a warning that the six-way nuclear disarmament talks may be about to fall apart and pressed China, the North’s key ally and main benefactor, to do more.

“As the North’s largest trading partner and biggest supporter, we hope China will take every effective measure it can against Pyongyang, including a strict application of sanctions on the nation,” the daily said in an editorial.

China has called for calm and restraint from all sides in the six-party talks while expressing hope that the negotiations it hosts would resume.

New U.N. measures may cause Beijing to curb trade in a few items but some analysts said it is likely to maintain its flow of energy, grains and other materials that prop up the North’s broken-down economy.

(Editing by Nick Macfie and Jeremy Laurence)

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Matilda named beneficiary of Ledger’s life insurance money

March 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Sydney, Mar 14 (ANI): Matilda, Heath Ledger’s three-year-old daughter, has been officially named the sole beneficiary of his life insurance policy.

Following a Los Angeles court hearing, her custodian John Laviolette and lawyer William Shernoff emerged from Superior Court Judge Luis Lavin’s chambers wearing smiles.

“It is finalised and everybody is mutually happy,” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Laviolette, as saying.

When asked if the money would go to Matilda, Shernoff said: “Yes. veryone is happy”.

The Dark Knight star took out the life insurance policy seven months before his naked body was found on January 22, 2008, in a Manhattan loft apartment he was renting.

He named Matilda as the benefactor.

An autopsy by the New York Medical Examiner’s Office found the Perth-born 28-year-old Oscar winner died from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, including painkillers and sleeping pills.

Matilda lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her mother and Ledger’s former fiancee, actress Michelle Williams. (ANI)

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Nuclear-armed Pak spinning out of control: Oz experts

March 5, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Melbourne, Mar.5 (ANI): A senior reporter with The Australian newspaper and author of the book “In the Shadow of Swords: On the Trail of Terrorism from Afghanistan to Australia”, has reiterated that nuclear-armed Pakistan is spinning out of control.

Sally Neighbour’s reaction to Tuesday’s attack on Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore, is that it has reinforced her belief that a force like the Taliban, which has been created by the Pakistani military and intelligence services, now is bent on destroying its benefactor.

“The country’s powerful security forces seem impotent to stop terrorist atrocities such as Tuesday’s attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore that have seen the country branded as the new epicentre of global terrorism,” Neighbour says.

“It is clear that the roots of the militant uprising and the new wave of terrorism lie next door in Pakistan, where a far graver crisis looms,” she adds.

William Maley of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University in Canberra observes: “There are huge problems in Afghanistan.

Confidence has plummeted because of the insecurity, but people haven’t turned against the democratic transition, they are still strongly committed to it, and that may well carry Afghanistan through.”

“But in Pakistan there is a profound crisis of confidence in the political system. It’s a failing state and a decidedly roguish state. And this is why a lot of Western leaders are becoming profoundly concerned,” he adds.

Maley says that the latest deal between the NWFP Government and the Taliban in the Swat Valley should only seen as a ” balloon-squeezing exercise”.

The militants will simply pop up somewhere else. The likeliest place seems to be the nearby Swat Valley, where the Pakistani Government last month agreed to allow sharia law in return for a ceasefire.

Like many experts, Maley predicts this will prove disastrous, merely creating a new sanctuary for the extremists bent on destroying the Pakistani state. (ANI)

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