Two a penny

.France has comprehensively outmuscled world champion South Africa 20-13 to continue its 12-year home run of victories over the recently crowned Tri-Nations winners. .
Julien Dupuy kicked four penalites from six and Morgan Parra one, with winger Vincent Clerc bagging a try for the home side.
The Springboks repeatedly paid the price for ill-discipline, Morne Steyn and Ryan Kankowski both sin-binned as referee Wayne Barnes cracked down on collapsing the rolling maul and rucks.
“Everyone said you can’t play the Boks at their own game, in the same physical way,” France coach Marc Lievremont said.
Morne Steyn hit a penalty and drop-goal as well as converting an opportunist’s try by South African captain John Smit. We won the contest and had the extra physical edge to win the game.
“But we did.”
South Africa coach Peter de Villiers said: “You can’t play the game without the ball.
“It’s very satisfying. They were the strongest side.
“They won the contest on the floor and we lost too much ball in contact.
But Dupuy and Damien Traille both failed to find their range with box kicks into a strong wind, to grant a flustered-examining Boks side some relief.”
The French matched the physicality offered by the Springboks in the opening quarter, young centre pairing Yann David and Maxime Mermoz resulting in the visiting midfield some problems, with flanker Imanol Harinordoquy and hooker William Servat prominent around the field.
France: V Clerc try, J Dupuy 4 penalties, M Parra penalty
South Africa: J Smit try; M Steyn conversion, penalty, drop goal
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South Africa’s famed second row pairing of Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield had a torrid opening 20 minutes, the former conceding the first penalty, while both had to temporarily leave the field after heavy knocks to the head

.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.

.Sydney Roosters wing Sam Perrett bagged a hat-trick to help New Zealand ultimately thrash France 62-12 overnight as the Kiwis record their first Four Nations win.
New Zealand raced into a 10-point lead through skipper Benji Marshall and Perrett before France hit back thanks to Sebastien Martins’s maiden try.
But Perrett, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Frank-Paul Nuuausala led a succession of second-half tries to eventually put the underdogs to the sword as the world champions, held 20-20 by Australia last week, proved too strong.
World Cup hero Lance Hohaia and France’s Australian-born James Wynne exchanged scores either side of the break as the hosts kept their hopes alive.
Yet they started the brighter and when former Newcastle Knights man Wynne broke the tackle and fed the ball wide, Nicolas Piquemal came within inches of touching down. .
Within three minutes of the re-start Marshall was probing again and after Frank Pritchard and Fuifui Moimoi were denied, Nathan Fien chipped the ball into the corner for Perrett to collect and score.
But French hopes looked dashed in the first New Zealand attack when hooker Thomas Leuluai burst clear to lay-off for skipper Marshall to wander over and put the first points on the board.
Undeterred, Wynne, a former understudy to Australia half-back Andrew Johns, combined with New Zealand-born Kane Bentley to send Martins over for his first French try in the 23rd minute.
Bryson Goodwin dragged his first conversion attempt wide but managed to curl his second inside the posts to put the Kiwis 10-0 up.
The hosts produced three consecutive sets of six inside the New Zealand 22 but after Wynne was halted five-yards short of the line, Isaac Luke scampered clear and World Cup hero Hohaia grabbed his eighth Kiwi try.
Thomas Bosc converted to reduce the score further and after Perrett knocked-on over the line the French could smell an upset.
Yet any hopes they had of pulling away in the final 40 minutes appeared to be dashed when Bosc’s kick was fumbled in defence and Wynne downed the ball.
Goodwin made no mistake with the conversion to send the world champions in 16-6 up at the break.
New Zealand eventually turned up the heat and after a sustained period of pressure Hohaia and Fien combined to send Perrett in at the corner in the 53rd minute.
Bosc slotted over the extras from in front of the posts to peg the Kiwis back at 12-16.
With its hopes of a famous win snuffed out, France began to cave in and Nuuausala drove over before Hohaia sprinted the full length of the field to score on the hour.
Goodwin converted and after collecting the kick-off Perrett dug the ball out just short of the line to allow Waerea-Hargreaves to cross within two minutes.
Perrett did then grab his third try of the night before Goodwin and Waerea-Hargreaves rounded off the scoring.
Goodwin converted both tries before Perrett flicked the ball unselfishly out the back of his hand for Junior Sa’u to extend the lead.
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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

.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

.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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.Arsene Wenger has become the longest-serving manager in Arsenal’s history but neither that milestone nor the fact that he turns 60 next month have triggered any thoughts of retirement.
Wenger, whose arrival at Highbury in the autumn of 1996 was famously greeted with an “Arsene Who?” headline, eclipsed the reign of George Allison in the 1930s and 1940s by spending 4,749 days at the helm.
The Frenchman can look back with pride on 13 years which have transformed the ‘boring, boring Arsenal’ of old into a club synonymous with his own unique brand of pass-and-move football. .
Along the way, Wenger has delivered three Premier League titles, including the unbeaten campaign of his 2003/2004 Invincibles, four FA Cups and a place in the 2006 Champions League final.
But he readily admits that setbacks such as the defeat by Barcelona in Paris three years ago and lasts season’s Champions League semi-final loss to Manchester United still rankle and provide him with all the motivation he needs to carry on.
The Frenchman takes pride in those achievements, as he does in the fostering of young talents such as Cesc Fabregas and in the astute transfer market judgement that have helped put the club on such a sound financial footing.
“Losing the semi-final of the Champions League to Manchester United last year was the lowest point, because we did not play at our level,” he recalled.
“I have never had a day when I think I could live without football,” he said.
Asked if thoughts of retirement had entered his head, Wenger responded with a dismissive snort.
“You will know if you are not hungry enough any more, but other people will tell you if you are not good enough any more.
“I know one day it will happen, but you should not live every day knowing you are going to die – you live knowing that you want to live.
But none of them will dispute that he has earned the right to have a bronze statue of himself standing outside the Emirates, alongside one of Herbert Chapman, one of his legendary predecessors.”
Wenger is not without his critics among Arsenal fans, many of whom see his apparent reluctance to spend more freely as the reason why the club have not claimed any significant silverware since the 2005 FA Cup.
For Wenger himself, the achievement that gives the most satisfaction is the 2003/04 season, when Arsenal went through the entire Premier League campaign unbeaten.
For Wenger himself, the achievement that gives the most satisfaction is the 2003/04 season, when Arsenal went through the entire Premier League campaign unbeaten.
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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