Two a penny

.Italy scraped a draw against the Republic of Ireland to join Germany, Denmark and Serbia as the latest teams to secure 2010 World Cup places in a drama-laden penultimate batch of qualifiers earlier today (Australian time).
This quartet join already-qualified England, Spain and the Netherlands, leaving two automatic berths from the continent still up for grabs heading into Wednesday’s last throw of the South Africa dice.
Russia, beaten 1-0 by ten-man Germany in Moscow, and the Republic of Ireland, is among the teams assured of places in November’s two-leg play-offs.
The Irish came desperately close to pulling off a major upset in Dublin as Sean St Ledger headed them into a 2-1 lead with only three minutes to go, only for Alberto Gilardino to level on the whistle.
France, beaten on penalties in the 2006 final by Italy, are also in the play-offs after routing part-timers the Faroe Islands 5-0 to book second place in Group Seven behind Serbia, who trounced Romania by the same scoreline.
Italy coach Marcello Lippi praised the Azzurri’s “great performance”.
That put the world champions into an unassailable lead in Group Eight with Ireland as runners-up.
“If we had lost it would have been a big injustice because we played with passion, character and enthusiasm,” he added.
“We struggled but the result is even better for that.
Gilardino predicted Italy could go all the way again in 2010.
“We can hope to go all the way, the basis of this squad is the same as the one that won in 2006 but we’ve added some young players and some good players. At the end we deserved the draw,” the Fiorentina striker said.”
– Germany through –
Earlier, three-time world champion Germany ensured its participation in next year’s World Cup with a game to spare after a gritty defeat of Guus Hiddink’s Russia.
“Now we’ll go to South Africa in good spirits and with hope to win it again.
Miroslav Klose’s first-half goal booked Germany’s ticket with Joachim Loew’s team reduced to 10 men when Jerome Boateng was sent packing after receiving a second yellow card with 20 minutes remaining.
Miroslav Klose’s first-half goal booked Germany’s ticket with Joachim Loew’s team reduced to 10 men when Jerome Boateng was sent packing after receiving a second yellow card with 20 minutes remaining. We needed a bit of luck, but we have made sure of qualifying for the World Cup and you can’t ask for more,” Loew reflected.
“The team did well.”
Hiddink said his team can not be happy with the result. .
“We were not good enough at finishing our chances or on the counter-attack.
“But the team showed character in the second half,” he said.”
Denmark got the better of neighbour Sweden 1-0 to book its ticket as winners of Group One.
“But we still have a chance to qualify for the finals in November’s play-off.
Fabio Capello’s Group Six winners were reduced to ten men in the first quarter of an hour when goalkeeper Robert Green was sent off for a professional foul following a mistake by Rio Ferdinand.
– England’s streak ended –
Already-qualified England’s run of eight straight qualifying wins came to a sticky end in Dnipropetrovsk with Serhiy Nazarenko earning Ukraine a 1-0 win.
Spain, which had already guaranteed its place in South Africa as winners of Group Five, came through their trip to Armenia with a 2-1 win to extend their unbeaten run to nine from nine qualifiers.
Spain, which had already guaranteed its place in South Africa as winners of Group Five, came through their trip to Armenia with a 2-1 win to extend their unbeaten run to nine from nine qualifiers.
Bosnia-Herzegovina secured a play-off berth with a 2-0 win in Estonia to make sure of their position as runners-up to the Euro 2008 champions.
In other action, Switzerland boosted its prospects of making it to the finals with a 3-0 defeat of Luxembourg.
Ottmar Hitzfeld’s side are in pole position to qualify as Group Two winners, going into Wednesday three points clear of former European champions Greece.
Group Three is too close to call with Slovakia on 19 points, two ahead of Slovenia, with the same gap back to the Czech Republic.
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AFP – French agents have arrested an engineer working at the CERN nuclear research lab on suspicion of being in contact with the Al-Qaeda militant network and planning attacks, officials said Friday.

Perhaps we have avoided the worst, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux told journalists, adding that investigators were trying to establish which targets in France or elsewhere the suspect was hoping to strike. .

Security sources in Paris said the suspected Islamist, one of a pair of brothers detained on Thursday, worked at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research on the Franco-Swiss border just outside Geneva.

He had expressed a desire to carry out attacks, but had not got to the stage of carrying out material acts of preparation, one said.

According to officials, the engineer had made contact over the Internet with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a North African offshoot of Osama bin Laden’s loosely organised global Islamist militant movement.

He was not a CERN employee and performed his research under a contract with an outside institute.

CERN confirmed a physicist working at the site had been arrested under suspicion of links to terrorist organisations, and said it was helping the French police with their investigation.

According to a report on the newspaper Le Figaro’s website, the suspects are a 32-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin who has been the subject of a police inquiry for a year-and-a-half and his 25-year-old brother. His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism, it added in a statement.

Judicial sources told that investigators had come upon the pair while monitoring the Internet as part of a separate inquiry into the recruitment of would-be jihadists to send to Afghanistan as guerrillas.

The report, citing sources close to the inquiry, said the elder brother had had several Internet exchanges with figures considered close to Al-Qaeda and had provided a list of suggested French targets for attack. Two laptops, three hard drives and several USD memory sticks were seized from their home, they said.

Intelligence agents recorded several incriminating exchanges between the brothers and suspected Al-Qaeda contacts. We follow statements made by the leaders of certain organisations day by day.

We are in a situation of permanent alert. The danger is permanent, Hortefeux said. We never let our guard down.

Intelligence officials consider it one of the most serious threats to France, which has a large North African diaspora population.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was born in 2007 when a largely-Algerian militant group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, swore allegiance to Bin Laden and rebranded itself as his organisation’s local franchise. It operates particle accelerators to study the behaviour of atoms at high speed and learn about the basic laws of nature.

CERN is Europe’s leading laboratory for the study of the fundamentals of sub-atomic physics.

The lab said the suspect had been working on the LHCb experiment which its website says will help us to understand why we live in a universe that appears to be composed almost entirely of matter, but no antimatter.

It is a civilian organisation, backed by 20 member states, and is not connected to nuclear weapons technology.

al Qaeda – France – terrorism

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REUTERS – French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 23 year-old son is in line to head the development agency for La Defense business district in Paris, the agency’s outgoing boss said on Thursday, sparking opposition charges of nepotism.

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Jean Sarkozy is a candidate, he will be named director, representative of the board, and he can therefore become president, Devedjian, a government minister and a close associate of President Sarkozy told radio Europe 1.

He is now also be posed to take over as president of EPAD, the public agency in charge of developing La Defense, from Patrick Devedjian, who is leaving his post as he has reached the 65-year age ceiling for the job.

La Defense, a skyscraper-filled zone of banks and corporate headquarters just outside central Paris, is one of the main business areas of the French capital and the government hopes to develop it into a rival for the City of London financial district.

In souls nobly born valour does not depend upon age, Devedjian added, quoting the 17th century play, El Cid. .

Socialist parliamentarian Michele Delaunay decried the young Sarkozy’s candidature as a form of nepotism and provocation and pointed out that he had not even finished his degree.

French magazine Le Point reported on its website on Wednesday that Jean Sarkozy was likely to secure the board’s support on Thursday, paving the way for election to the board on December 4.

Jean Sarkozy – Nicolas Sarkozy – Paris

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The father of Lower Hutt schoolgirl Karla Cardno, who was brutally raped, tortured and murdered 20 years ago, is due to go on trial today on sex crimes against an underage girl.

Gary John Duffin and his wife Sharyn Lee Hills face five sex offence charges including sexual violation, and rape, as well as 10 counts of supplying a Class C drug to a minor.The offences are alleged to have happened between May 3 and December 31, 1991.Two of the sex charges allege indecent assault on a girl aged between 12 and 16.The pair appealed to have their names suppressed as a result of the risk their case would attract strong media attention due to Duffin being Karla Cardno’s natural father.Their trial is due to begin at the High Court in Wellington earlier today.However, Court of Appeal judge Justice David Baragwanath said in his ruling released in June, there was no basis in which name suppression could be justified and “since eventual publication was unavoidable there is no purpose in deferring it”.They also argued both were suffering medical conditions and name publication would result in significant stress. .Karla Cardno was 13 when she was kidnapped by Paul Joseph Dally in 1989.Dally was sentenced to life imprisonment and was denied parole last year, with the Parole Board ruling that he was a medium- to high-risk of reoffending.

.Irish champion Sea The Stars won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp overnight to complete a unique treble of the English 2000 Guineas, Epsom Derby and the Arc.
Ridden by Mick Kinane and trained by John Oxx – owned by Hong Kong club owner Christopher Tsui – he beat home Youmzain, ridden by Kieren Fallon while seven-time Arc winning trainer Andre Fabre’s Cavalryman, under Frankie Dettori, was third.
Youmzain created his own piece of history in becoming the first horse to finish second in three successive Arcs.
Seamus Levey’s Set Sail headed for home with a 15 length advantage entering the final straight but the wind was taken out of his sails as the more fancied runners swamped him.
Sea The Stars, who had been applauded into the ring prior to the race which is a rare occurrence in French racing, had come here as the 4/6 favourite but early on he had several problems settling down as the Aidan O’Brien-trained pacemakers Set Sail and Grand Ducal set a searing gallop.
Kinane found the gap he needed and once it was seized Sea The Stars seamlessly sauntered to the lead and although the gallant Youmzain and Calvaryman along with Breeders Cup Turf champion Conduit reduced the gap in the final furlong, there was to be no stopping the Irish horse from his moment of destiny.
Unbeaten French filly Stacelita hit the front but all eyes were trained on 50-year-old Kinane and Sea The Stars, and the old stager and his superstar horse did not fail.

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Labour says the Government is paying 39 of its Beehive staff more than $100,000 per year – close toly a quarter of the total 161 on the payroll.

Internal affairs spokesman Chris Hipkins said figures obtained under the Official Information Act showed that in June this year, annual salaries totalled $13,008,803. “In addition, over $165,000 has also been spent on temporary communications staff since November 2008. .”When you factor in the extra money the Government has spent on purchase advisors and communications consultants, it becomes quite clear they are spending more on staffing the Beehive than Labour did,” he said.”Mr Hipkins said the previous Labour government had 162 Beehive staff in June last year, for an annual cost of $13,319,768, but only 16 earned more than $100,000.”

.”This is yet another example of the National Party looking for loopholes to feather its own nest at the taxpayers’ expense

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&raquo Special Report on France&#039s trial of the decade
&raquo Who&#039s who in the trial
&raquo How a finance trial turned into a major political scandal
&raquo A glossary of terms in the Clearstream saga
&raquo From Ben Barka to Elf, justice turns a blind eye to political elites
A key defendant in the Clearstream affair trial, Imad Lahoud, will take the stand in the Paris criminal court this Tuesday after he was granted a one-day leave to attend the Jewish religious holiday of Yom Kippur. .

In last week hearing, the two defendants traded accusations about the list falsification.

Although the list appears to have transited on Lahoud computer, it remains unclear whether he forged it on his own initiative or at the request of Gergorin. Lahoud said he was only acting on behalf of his former employer, while Jean-Louis Gergorin claimed he was misled by the computer expert.

Dubbed France trial of the decade, the Clearstream affair has been cast as a showdown between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin, a former prime minister, who stands accused of plotting to discredit Sarkozy in the build-up to the 2007 presidential election.

After examining the origins of the list, the criminal court is set to hear the libellous accusation case.

On Monday, de Villepin fired the latest volley in an increasingly acrimonious dispute by filing a lawsuit against the French president for allegedly violating his right to the presumption of innocence.

Clearstream trial – Nicolas Sarkozy

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There will be no talks on climate change or nuclear Iran on the French president menu in Avignon on Tuesday.

In the old papal city, Nicolas Sarkozy will unveil a series of measures aimed at 16 to 25 year-olds, a segment of the population that has been particularly affected by the economic crisis.

The left-leaning National Union of Students (UNEF) says the situation is alarming: over the last year, unemployment among young people [ed: already almost three times that of the 25 - 49 year-old age group] has increased by 28%. These include steps to help with housing, training and employment.

At a recent press conference in 2001, the UNEF also denounced a continued increase in student expenses since 2001. For France’s largest student union, the young have been largely forgotten in the government anti-crisis measures.

Take them by the hand

Nicolas Sarkozy is widely expected to build on a Green Paper drawn up by Martin Hirsch, France secretary for youth. . The booklet, published in July, includes 57 proposals resulting from four months of intense committee discussions. The booklet, published in July, includes 57 proposals resulting from four months of intense committee discussions.

But he faces a tough task, as UNEF warned in a statement: Students are not stupid: the time for rhetoric and communication is over. In the second rounf of the 2007 presidential election, his Socialist rival S&eacutegol&egravene Royal had scooped 63% of votes among the under 25 year-olds.

Aurore Berg&eacute, a spokesperson for the UMP’s youth movement, remains optimistic: Maybe decisions in favour of students have been diluted, giving an impression that Nicolas Sarkozy was not interested in the young, she acknowledged. If the government does not have another perspective to offer the young apart from lack of qualifications, job insecurity and unemployment, it lays the foundations for a long-term rupture with the country’s youth. We are today the biggest youth movement in France, proving that the president image in France is changing. But the preconceived notion that young people are more inclined to the left, because we tend to see more of the minority unions on television, is being undermined.

Economic crisis – France – Nicolas Sarkozy – reforms – UMP – unemployment – Youth

.France centre Mathieu Bastareaud received a three-month suspension, commuted to community service, for having lied about an assault on himself while on tour in New Zealand.
The French Rugby Federation’s (FFR) disciplinary committee ruled that Bastareaud’s actions had harmed the wider interests of the sport.
The federation said the Stade Francais back would have to complete 18 activities related to amateur rugby before June 30, 2010, or face having the suspension enforced.
Federation chairman Pierre Camou referred the affair to the committee after Prime Minister Francois Fillon ended up apologising to New Zealand for the player’s claims.
Bastareaud, 21, admitted making up a story about being attacked in the street in Wellington following France’s 14-10 defeat by the All Blacks on June 20.
Wellington police found video evidence that the player had entered the team hotel on the Sunday morning uninjured and had gone to his room 25 minutes later. .
Bastareaud finally admitted he had not been assaulted but received a cut and bruised face after a drunken fall in his room.
France coach Marc Lievremont said Bastareaud would certainly not be part of the France team that plays three Test matches this November but that he would not be out of the equation in future.
He said he had invented the assault story to avoid being sent home by the French team management and upsetting his family. “With this sanction, he again becomes a player like any other, even if it seems complicated to pick him for the November Tests, as I have told him.
“He is available for selection,” Lievremont said.
“There’s a lot to say about Mathieu’s case, on the story and also how the media dealt with it.
“But I never envisaged that we’d be without him for the 2011 Rugby World Cup (in New Zealand).
“We always gave the truth as it was given to us by Mathieu,” he said, insisting that he did not consider the affair a ‘diplomatic’ incident.
“We always gave the truth as it was given to us by Mathieu,” he said, insisting that he did not consider the affair a ‘diplomatic’ incident.”
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.World surfing championship leader Joel Parkinson has been upset by a wildcard in round three of The Quiksilver Pro France.
Local entrant Patrick Beven grabbed a 6.87 to 13.87-point ride in the closing seconds to oust Parkinson 14.
Fellow Queenslander Mick Fanning, the current world number two, won his heat against Julian Wilson to threaten Parkinson’s points lead.07.
“I don’t really smell blood yet,” the American said, “I think I’m still in the forest trying to find him (Parkinson).
Reigning nine-time world champion and current number six Kelly Slater also moved into the fourth round of what is event seven in the ten-round WCT.
The best performer on a day of small waves was American Dane Reynolds with a score of 18.”
Other Australians progressing were Bede Durbidge, Ben Dunn, Dean Morrison, Taj Burrow and Kieren Perrow. .27 points to eliminate Hawaiian Roy Powers (11.
Reynolds will face Durbidge in the opening heat of round four when competition recommences, probably on Sunday.
– AAP