ESPNsoccernet - England - Barwick: We’ll put game right
The News Review:
- ESPNsoccernet - England - Barwick: We’ll put game right
- A new era for local music, or just an idle dream
- Don’t bet on a new league succeeding
- US Senate approves clean energy Bill
- The Discovery of France
- “The Homecoming”: You can go home again, but you’ll pay…
ESPNsoccernet - England - Barwick: We’ll put game right
go.com - Dec 18, 2007
Barwick is in no doubt the 61-year-old fits the perfect ‘template’ for awinning coach to lead England into a new era - after he and FA director offootball development Sir Trevor Brooking pledged to scour the planet for a’world-class’ coach to succeed Steve McClaren, who was sacked following theabject failure of the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. Much has, though, been made of the fact there were no leading home-growncoaches ready to take over the national team. The FA are currently undertaking a ‘root-and-branch’ review of the wholestructure of the English game, and there is also set to be a decision takenlater this week on the future of the much-maligned national football centre atBurton. Barwick maintains that will be followed through to make sure there is thecorrect development of both players and coaches. ‘The FA’s strategic review will be published in March 2008, and it will takeus through the next five years of our life at the Football Association,’ saidBarwick. ‘Central to it is the development of coaches and coaching in this country.
A new era for local music, or just an idle dream
Channel News Asia - Dec 18, 2007
But fluke or not, the crowning of Singapore’s Hady Mirza as the first Asian Idol on Sunday is stirring the embers of hope among those who yearn nostalgically for the days when home-grown names like Anita Sarawak and Sweet Charity were top draws at the concert box office - locally and in South-east Asia. Could Hady’s win herald a revival of those glory days of the 1960s and ’70s for Singapore’s music scene?
Singapore Idol judge Florence Lian, for one, believes it has debunked the cynical perception that homegrown singers aren’t any good. “It just rubbishes the belief that Singapore only grooms Chinese singers. For me, the biggest hope will be that this win changes the buying patterns and thinking of music fans here,” said Ms Lian, a senior vice-president at MediaCorp Enterprises. “The win is something Singapore should be very proud of,” said the first Singapore Idol, Taufik Batisah… But fluke or not, the crowning of Singapore’s Hady Mirza as the first Asian Idol on Sunday is stirring the embers of hope among those who yearn nostalgically for the days when home-grown names like Anita Sarawak and Sweet Charity were top draws at the concert box office - locally and in South-east Asia. Could Hady’s win herald a revival of those glory days of the 1960s and ’70s for Singapore’s music scene?
Singapore Idol judge Florence Lian, for one, believes it has debunked the cynical perception that homegrown singers aren’t any good. “It just rubbishes the belief that Singapore only grooms Chinese singers. For me, the biggest hope will be that this win changes the buying patterns and thinking of music fans here,” said Ms Lian, a senior vice-president at MediaCorp Enterprises. “The win is something Singapore should be very proud of,” said the first Singapore Idol, Taufik Batisah. “Hopefully, local listeners will open up their eyes and ears.
Don’t bet on a new league succeeding
Globe and Mail - Dec 18, 2007
And last spring, Datsyuk signed a long-term extension to stay with the Red Wings for the rest of his career. In Malkin’s case, he was practically forced to flee from Russia, Cold War style, after his club team, Metallurg Magnitogorsk, tried to get him to sign a contract extension under duress. Financially, Magnitogorsk was in a position to retain Malkin, a home-grown talent, and desperately wanted to do so in the year they were opening an 8,000-seat arena. Even that set of circumstances — the prospect of playing at home, for big money, an owner playing the loyalty card — wasn’t enough to keep Malkin at home. He wanted to test himself at the NHL level and his club went to court in the United States to get him to come back, a tactic that Ovechkin’s former employer, Moscow Dynamo, tried the year before, also without success. In the case of all four players, there were compelling reasons, personal and financial, to play in Russia, but instead, they opted for the NHL alternative. It may well be that by 2014, in the run-up to the Olympics, (and especially if the NHL decides to bypass the Olympics in Russia) that the oligarchs will make huge financial offers to the best Russian players to get them to stay home and play in the Olympics, if only for that single season.
US Senate approves clean energy Bill
Legalbrief - Legalbrief (subscription) - Dec 18, 2007
The Bill now heads to the House, which is expected to approve it this week. The Bill contains scores of initiatives designed to save energy and promote less-polluting technologies, from requirements for more efficient appliances to loans that would help small businesses use cleaner energy sources. But it has two major requirements that will cut the nation’s oil use: a 40% increase in fuel efficiency for new cars and light trucks by 2020 and a fivefold increase in the amount of alternative home-grown fuels, such as ethanol, that must be added to the nation’s gasoline supply by 2022.
The Discovery of France
The Age - Dec 18, 2007
But that wasbecause, as a statesman, he was concerned with governance. What this eye-opening book, by the author of excellentbiographies of Balzac, Hugo, and Rimbaud, cares about is theprovenance of the cheeses. Who did the work to bring them intoproduction, the men, the women or the children? What did peasantseat when they were not feasting on home-grown fromage? What didtheir speech sound like when they knew no French, but spoke in oneof the hundreds of dialects and patois that have almost died out?Where was the actual borderline in that major north-south dividebetween the langue d’ol and the langue d’oc in the ancientstand-off over which word (oui or oc) to use for “yes”?How on earth was such an amorphous frontier traced? (In 1873 aheroic two-man expedition interviewed hundreds, establishing athird of it before one died and the other lost an eye. ) Why did ouiwin? (The imposition of linguistic unity at the time of theRevolution came, naturally, out of Paris. )Robb has approached the familiar territory of his belle Franceusing a methodology that is not only new for him, but for the wholegenre of so-called travel writing. Posing a myriad questions, hehas come up with the most astonishing answers, backing them withminimal footnotes, but a bibliography of about 30 pages.
“The Homecoming”: You can go home again, but you’ll pay…
International Herald Tribune - Dec 18, 2007
But you soon start to sense a disquieting familiarity in the patterns of domestic friction. Come on, don't tell me that when you go home, or when relatives visit you, there aren't clashes over who does the dishes, who ate the last snack, who goes to bed first, who sits in the most comfortable chair, whose memories of your shared past are the truth. These small battles of one-upmanship are the fabric of existence for Max; his brother, Sam (Michael McKean); and Max's two grown sons who still live with him, Lenny ( Esparza) and Joey (Gareth Saxe). The stakes rise, as they will when a long-absent relative returns, when Teddy (James Frain), a professor of philosophy living in the States, shows up in the middle of the night with his wife, Ruth ( Best). Who's top dog now? The claim to that title is ultimately fought in ways I hope will never be visited upon your family. That doesn't mean that the play's uncomfortable universality goes away… But you soon start to sense a disquieting familiarity in the patterns of domestic friction. Come on, don't tell me that when you go home, or when relatives visit you, there aren't clashes over who does the dishes, who ate the last snack, who goes to bed first, who sits in the most comfortable chair, whose memories of your shared past are the truth. These small battles of one-upmanship are the fabric of existence for Max; his brother, Sam (Michael McKean); and Max's two grown sons who still live with him, Lenny ( Esparza) and Joey (Gareth Saxe). The stakes rise, as they will when a long-absent relative returns, when Teddy (James Frain), a professor of philosophy living in the States, shows up in the middle of the night with his wife, Ruth ( Best). Who's top dog now? The claim to that title is ultimately fought in ways I hope will never be visited upon your family. That doesn't mean that the play's uncomfortable universality goes away. Pinter's particular brilliance is in sliding imperceptibly from the ordinary surface to the primal darkness of what lies beneath.