Uefa say Bosman ruined football’s values
The News Review:
- Uefa say Bosman ruined football’s values
- Lost between war and peace, the Leb wild Westies
- Footballers’ wives are key to success
- Families angry as inquiry into July 7 bombing is rejected
- Loder: ‘Kong’ Is King – Movie News Story | MTV Movie News
- You can get your halls decked for $150 an hour
- $17 Japanese Apples For a Ka-Ching Dynasty
Uefa say Bosman ruined football’s values
Telegraph.co.uk – Dec 14, 2005
As a result, the traditional values of sport got lost. Those clubs who had access to all the money started to rob the smaller clubs, not just to get stronger themselves but to weaken the opposition. “What we want to do now is create an even playing field based on sports rules rather than commercial rules. Hopefully, it will prove a major step to improve the governance of the game. “From next season, Uefa has ruled that clubs appearing in the Champions League and Uefa Cup must select four players who have been domestically trained for at least three years, rising to eight in 2008-9.
Lost between war and peace, the Leb wild Westies
The Age – Dec 14, 2005
It isfurther compounded by media references to Lebs terrorising thestreets while Aussies were described as defending their territory. This has encouraged suspicion and distrust of Middle Easternneighbours, the blurring of the line between victim and villain andthe removal of the hyphen in Lebanese-Australian identity. Much of the evolving cultural identity of our home-grownLebanese youth is made in the US, with the pervasive influence ofthe American hip-hop culture in music and fashion. The rap lyricsdwell on economic disadvantage, victimisation, oppression anddefiance. I worked with street kids and gangs in Melbourne in the 1980s:the Lebanese Tigers, the West Side Sharps and the Black Dragons. The groups began as school playground protection against racistname-calling at the time of the civil war. The kids were derided asa barbaric and bloodthirsty race.
Footballers’ wives are key to success
Norwich Evening News – Dec 14, 2005
The squad that Mike Walker took into Europe – count them up. Married, family men – or in the case of Jeremy Goss, home-grown, soon-to-be-married men. And, yes, there are going to be exceptions. And, no, I’m not going to get into whether long-term partners count. Let’s just go for rings on people’s fingers. At least at some stage in their Canary careers… Given that Adam Drury got married that summer, it would be churlish not to include City’s first-choice left-back. I’ve counted Rivers, but ignored David Nielsen – if only because, apparently, it was Mrs Nielsen who dragged him back to Denmark a fortnight into the 2003-04 season. With Rivers, that’s actually 11 – plus the home-grown might of Robert Green, Ian Henderson, Jason Shackell and Ryan Jarvis. Those who didn’t quite fit the bill – and, remember, this is on Rioch’s strict, old fashioned rings-on-fingers criteria – were Zema Abbey, Phil Mulryne, Paul McVeigh, Jim Brennan, Alex Notman, Clint Easton and Damien Francis. Now do the same for the side that disappeared without trace against Wolves the other week. The result is quite interesting. Only two married men started that game – Huckerby and Drury.
Families angry as inquiry into July 7 bombing is rejected
The Independent – Independent – Dec 14, 2005
MPs and leading Muslims also voiced their anger as the Home Office confirmed there would be no public investigation into the attacks, and called on the Government to order a “comprehensive public inquiry” so that the country is “better prepared to prevent such tragedy happening again”. The Government will instead publish a definitive “narrative of events” of what happened, including material gathered from intelligence agencies and evidence compiled by police. Saba Mozakka, whose mother Behnaz was killed when one of the four bombs ripped through a Piccadilly Line Tube train near King’s Cross station, said: “This is not acceptable to us, and the families will be campaigning for there to be a full public inquiry. A narrative of events will not satisfy anybody. This is not something we will go away on… If they don’t then they have failed the people who died,” he said. The shadow minister for homeland security, Patrick Mercer, said: “We want an inquiry independent of Government. That independent inquiry should ask questions about the surveillance of the suspects before the attack, the lowering of the level of alert five weeks before the attack, and links between home-grown and international terrorists. “In addition, it should examine any links between the perpetrators of the July 7 attack and the perpetrators of the attempted attack on July 21. ” He said he did not want to detract from the success of the intelligence services who have prevented many attempted attacks on the country. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, repeated demands for a full inquiry. “It has to be a fully comprehensive public inquiry that will provide us the information we need as to what actually happened, how it happened and why it happened so that we will be better prepared to prevent such tragedy happening again,” he told the BBC’s News at Ten.
Loder: ‘Kong’ Is King – Movie News Story | MTV Movie News
MTV.com – Dec 14, 2005
Still, for as ridiculously gifted a director as he has turned out to be, a remake of that 1933 picture would seem a retrograde undertaking: How exciting could a big-monkey movie be in this day and age?Incredibly exciting, it turns out. Although it doesn’t have the built-in mythic resonance of Jackson’s triumphant film rendering of the “Lord of the Rings” books, his “Kong” has heart and soul, and a grand romantic sweep that was beyond the conception of the men who made the original movie. And the action, of course, is state-of-the-art amazing, in a way of which only Jackson and his home-grown army of New Zealand digital technicians seem capable right now. Some of the sequences — like a hair-raising dinosaur stampede through the jungle, and a spectacular fall through a webwork of vines to the bottom of a ravine, where prehistoric spiders mount an attack — are unlike anything else you’ve likely experienced. (The spider scene was cut from the original “Kong” when Merian C. Cooper, who co-directed it with his production partner, Ernest B. Schoedsack, noticed at an early screening that people in the audience were so blown away by it that they yakked about nothing else throughout the remainder of the movie.
You can get your halls decked for $150 an hour
USA Today – Dec 14, 2005
You go on a shopping website and fill in your list and some personality details of the people you’re shopping for, type in your credit card number, hit send and the gifts get sent out. Your “to-do” list becomes someone else’s “to-do” list. In these days of concierge, catering and home-decorating services, you can plan an elaborate holiday for friends and family — and let someone else do the work. You can enjoy a totally hands-off holiday. That is, if you have the money — from $150 an hour to have your tree trimmed to up to $50,000 to emblazon your home with tens of thousands of lights. The idea of letting someone else do holiday planning has been catching on in the past decade as more people have decided they don’t have time to do it themselves, says Pam Danziger of Unity Marketing, which studies luxury retail trends. “What separates the rich from everybody else is their ability to hire people to deal with the day-to-day stuff of life,” Danziger says… “But they want to enjoy the season, and they want to come to the party” — not do the work to throw a party. As a result, more people are hiring out everything about Christmas, says Sara-ann Kasner of the National Concierge Association. “The popularity of concierge services has grown from the image of a privilege for the wealthy to the everyday needs of moms and dads in the workplace,” she says. It’ll look like you did it
If you want to have someone else handle your holiday party, you can throw as modest or as elaborate a party as you wish and can afford. “I’ve done parties as simple as $5,000 for a sit-down dinner with a cook on-site to the-sky’s-the-limit — $100,000 — for a holiday party,” says Kasner, who runs a concierge service for corporate offices in the Minneapolis-St. “We’ll handle everything.
$17 Japanese Apples For a Ka-Ching Dynasty
Washington Post – Dec 14, 2005
And it is something they do well. "Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in Hirosaki, a village in Japan’s apple-growing region of Aomori, about 370 miles north of Tokyo. In the foothills of snowcapped mountains here, apple exports have grown from 2,000 to 15,500 tons over the past decade. This is the home of Japan’s cornucopia of luxury fruit. The fragile Mutsu apple, individually covered in bags on the branch until one month before harvest, when they are unwrapped and sunburnt a glossy pink. The Sunmutsu, softball-size and the pale shade of late daffodils. The mammoth Sekai Ichi, its peel a deep red with glorious crimson starbursts.