Two a penny

.World road cycling champion Cadel Evans is confident a combination of his rainbow jersey and several high-profile team-mates will be enough to earn his new BMC Racing Team a wildcard to next year’s Tour de France.
Evans, who today confirmed he will compete at next January’s Tour Down Under, shocked the racing fraternity earlier this week when he quit powerhouse Belgian outfit Silence-Lotto to join second-tier US team BMC.
But the 32-year-old says the move will better his chances of future success on the Tour and says Tour de France organisers should give his team a wildcard to next year’s race.

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BREAKING NEWS:
A man who shot his friend dead at a dinner party has been found not guilty of murder or manslaughter.

Sobbing and screaming was heard in theHigh Court at Aucklandwhen the jury found Alan Christopher Paul Gundry, 30,not guilty of the murder or manslaughter of Gene Patrick Atkins, 28.

Earlier, the jury heardthat Gundry,terrified for his young family, had only seconds to decide whether to shoot his friend with a pig-hunting rifle.

The jury had acceptedGundry’s defence that he killed Atkins in self-defence.

Both men had been friends for years and had spent January 12 this year eating and drinking at Gundry’s home.

Atkinshad goneberserk atGundry’s home after a fight with his girlfriend, Sarah Jane Dean, the court heard. They had gone home and he had thrown her belongings out of his house.

But during the evening Mr Atkins had become upset with his girlfriend.

Gundry’s lawyer, Graeme Newell, told the High Court at Auckland his client had been forced to shoot Mr Atkins in an act of self-defence. She then fled to Gundry’s, and Mr Atkins followed, intending to confront her.

One partygoer had been left semi-conscious in a pool of blood after being assaulted by Mr Atkins, while Gundry’s partner, Nicole MacDonald, was held over the top of a set of stairs.

Mr Newell said five people, including Gundry’s partner, had been attacked in the accused’s house that night, all in a short space of time.

“Should a person who has been attacked or seen others attacked wait until they too are the victim of a serious assault?

“If he wasn’t acting defensively, why would he let off two rounds in his own home when his nine-month-old, his five-year-old and his partner were upstairs?

“He didn’t want to do that, he didn’t want to fire shots into his own house.

Gundry was confronted by a dire threat and had to take “instant and decisive” action to protect himself and his family, Mr Newell said.

The court was told Mr Atkins had a history of violence, including several assaults on his girlfriend and a road-rage incident.”

Gundry was a peaceful man with no history of violence and no reason to kill his friend, Mr Newell said. The charge came after Mr Atkins allegedly glassed a man in the face at an Auckland nightclub.

Mr Newell told the court that at the time of his death Mr Atkins had also been awaiting trial on a charge of grievous bodily harm.

But Crown prosecutor Kevin Glubb said Gundry’s decision to shoot Mr Atkins was unacceptable and completely excessive. The injuries were so severe the man lost sight in one eye.

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.The United Nations nuclear watchdog is reporting positive steps at the start of new talks about Iran’s nuclear program. .
The negotiations between Iran, Russia, France and the US build on progress already made at a meeting early this month to end the stand-off over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Western powers fear Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb, although Iran insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.
Iran had tentatively agreed to ship enriched uranium to France or Russia for processing as a way of increasing international scrutiny of its enrichment activities, although state television is now reporting that Iran will not deal directly with France because it had failed to deliver nuclear materials in the past.

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The meeting will continue today

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One of the worst yearly economic turnarounds in New Zealand’s history will take 20 years to recover from, Finance Minister Bill English said.

The final government accounts for the year ended June showed a dramatic $12.9 billion annual decline in the headline operating balance – to a $10.3 billion surplus in 2008.5 billion deficit at the end of 2009 compared to $2.

Treasury said it was the worst budget turnaround since comparable statistics began in the 1990s with the move to accrual accounting.

This was due both to the recession and decisions by both the former Labour government and the incoming National Government.

The books showed two rounds of tax cuts reduced revenue by $3 billion with extra spending announced in the 2008 budget on health and education added $2 billion to expenditure, while the lengthening dole queue and indexation of benefit increased welfare spending by $1.

Revenue would have been a lot lower except that Treasury booked $1.5 billion.

These are still open to further appeal.4 billion in back taxes due from major banks after Inland Re venue favourably challenged their structured finance deals in the courts.3 billion with investment losses and asset impairments costing another $4. .1 billion.1 billion.7 percent of GDP in 2008 to 9.6 billion compared to the $2 billion surplus in the previous financial year, which led to a dramatic rise in net debt from 5.

Around July last year was still predicting an operating surplus of $2.5 percent at the end of 2009.

The signs of gaping holes in the Government books were beginning to appear in July 2008 with Treasury predicting cash surpluses would be a thing of the past for the foreseeable future.56 billion would be revealed in today’s accounts, this was already down from the $7 billion forecast in December 2007.

This rubbed salt in the wounds of the New Zealand economy which had already been shrinking since the beginning of 2008.

Then the world was hit by the credit crisis and the collapse of many major international financial institutions which brought on a global recession.

Government debt could increase to around $70 billion meaning the cost of servicing the debt would rise from around $2.

Finance Minister Bill English said the gaps in the books would have to be met by borrowing and this combined with the harm to the economy meant it could be 20 years before the Government books regained the ground lost in the last 20 months.

Net debt would rise from below 10 percent of GDP to more than 30 percent over the next 10 years even if the economy grew at fairly robust levels in the coming years.

Net debt would rise from below 10 percent of GDP to more than 30 percent over the next 10 years even if the economy grew at fairly robust levels in the coming years.

.French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand has won the backing of fellow politicians amid calls for his resignation for having written about having sex with young male prostitutes in Thailand.
Government spokesperson Luc Chatel, immigration minister Eric Besson and Left Party founder Jean-Luc Melenchon spoke out in support of the nephew of former president Francois Mitterrand, who has threatened legal action to protect his reputation..
“Enough of this man-hunt. The private life of Frederic Mitterrand is none of my business,” Mr Chatel told BFM TV..
Mr Mitterrand was compelled to defend himself on television last week, saying he had only been with consenting adults and had committed no crime.
Revelations that Mr Mitterrand made in a 2005 book re-surfaced when he strongly defended Roman Polanski, who was arrested in Switzerland the previous month and faces extradition to the United States for having had sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
The row was further stoked on Friday when the Quotidien de la Reunion newspaper published a letter sent by Mr Mitterrand, when he was director of the French Academy in Rome, in support of the family of two boys accused, and later convicted, of rape. He added that he condemned both sex tourism and paedophilia. It’s vile.
“I no longer tolerate these attacks.
“I bore witness to the morality of a family, that of my former make-up artist on France 2 [TV]. It’s a simple thing that I can very easily explain,” Mr Mitterrand told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper in response.”
Mr Melenchon told Europe 1 that the continuing attacks on Mr Mitterrand were “unacceptable” and criticised those who would “cast stones” at the minister. .
“In no way is it an apology of sex tourism.
In the television interview, Mr Mitterrand described the book as “not totally autobiographical” and was evasive about the precise nature of his experiences in Thailand…
Throughout the TF1 interview, he referred to his partners as ‘boys’. even if one of the chapters is a journey through that hell, with the fascination that hell can provoke,” said Mr Mitterrand.
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The affair appears to have provoked a split in the government, with Labour Minister Xavier Darcos saying Mr Mitterrand needed to explain his behaviour, and Mr Sarkozy’s adviser Henri Guaino defending him

.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 Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand was in the spotlight Saturday for standing as character reference for two rapists after a row over his admission of paying boys for sex.

Mitterrand, an urbane television personality and a nephew of former Socialist president Francois Mitterrand adopted a pugnacious tone and threatened legal action over what he said was a new orchestrated campaign of insensitive calumny.

The latest scandal emerged just after Mitterrand managed to retain his job following a fresh furore over his 2005 autobiographical novel La Mauvaise Vie (The Bad Life) in which the hero describes paying Asian boys for sex.

The minister will launch legal action against those who are complicit in the latest ignominy he has suffered, a statement read out at a news conference in the southwestern town of Bordeaux quoted Mitterrand as saying.

I absolutely condemn sexual tourism (and) I condemn paedophilia in which I have never in any way participated, and all the people who accuse me of that type of thing should be ashamed, the 62 year old told TF1 television.

Mitterrand had angrily denied having ever engaged in paedophile acts or condoning sex tourism.

The minister on Saturday said he was godfather to one of the youths, whose mother is a former make-up artist, and underlined that his letter attesting to their good moral character was a gesture of compassion and generosity to a modest family in great distress.

The latest controversy emerged after a French newspaper said Mitterrand had testified to the good character of two youths in the French overseas territory of La Reunion charged with the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl.

Is it not a shame that this letter has found its way in all the Internet networks? he said, calling it an ignominy, a shame, and manipulation.

He underlined that he had met one of the youths three times in (my) life.

The three youths were charged with rape and sentenced to between eight and 15 years in prison.

Le Quotidien de la Reunion newspaper on Friday published a letter that Mitterrand, who was then director of the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, had written to the court.

The controversy over Mitterrand’s book erupted this week after his staunch defence of fugitive film-maker Roman Polanski, arrested in Switzerland on a US warrant on child sex charges.

Said Larifou, one of the lawyers for the boys’ families, told he was filing a suit against the leaking of the letter, saying it should never have appeared in the public domain.

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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

.Britain’s The Independent newspaper says Gulf Arab states are in secret talks with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the US dollar with a basket of currencies in the trading of oil.
The US dollar eased after the report, written by veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk and posted on The Independent’s website. It cited unidentified sources in Gulf Arab states and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong.
“Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars,” said the report. .
The article said the plans may help to explain the sudden rise in the price of gold, which is commonly seen as a safe haven in troubled economic times. It added that France had also been involved in the talks.
The Independent said US authorities were aware that the meetings had taken place but had not discovered the details and were “sure to fight this international cabal”.
“I don’t think we will see much concrete actions coming out of such discussions because even when the dollar is weak, it doesn’t mean that commodities are undervalued,” said David Moore, commodities analyst at the Commonwealth Bank.
The issue of shifting oil trade away from the US dollar has been raised occasionally in recent years, but analysts and experts say it is unlikely to occur any time soon.”
Iran began settling most of its crude oil exports in non-dollar currencies – primarily the euro – several years ago, but the actual price for its oil is still set in dollar terms.
“In fact, when the dollar weakens, commodities prices tend to increase by a higher ratio.
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.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.