… rather than admonish the states for their failure to comply with the law or demonstrate a real reason they couldn’t comply with their electoral responsibilities, simply handed out the waivers two-a-penny candy.
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October Surprise? | Radio Vice Online
iPod docks are two a penny these days, but this one from Magicbox caught our eye. It’s available in four snazzy metallic colours, has DAB and FM radio and an alarm clock
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Magicbox Tower iPod dock – hi-fi news – whathifi.com
… and the two of them bring the first act to a rousing close with a sultrily choreographed dance. It’s not every day you see cabarets that feature dance so fully, but then talents like Halfpenny’s are hardly two-a-penny , either.
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The Stage / Reviews / Jill Halfpenny Celebrates the Great British …
Any half-way competent programmer could do it, and half-way competent programmers are two-a-penny in the modern world.
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Parkour!: Chapter 11 from Richard Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene''
.French police have arrested Agathe Habyarimana, the widow of Rwanda’s assassinated ex-president, who is wanted in her homeland as one of the alleged masterminds of the 1994 genocide.
The arrest came just five days after President Nicolas Sarkozy made the first trip by a French leader to Rwanda since the genocide.
French police – acting on an international arrest warrant issued by Rwanda – arrested Habyarimana at her home in Courcouronnes, south of Paris on Tuesday morning.
Habyarimana has lived in a Paris suburb for 12 years, having fled Rwanda after her husband Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down in April 1994 and his supporters launched a massacre of 800,000 civilians.
The Tutsi-led government in Kigali has accused the 67-year-old of being a member of the Hutu inner circle that planned the mass killings. .
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She has steadfastly denied the charge
.Unseeded Frenchman Michael Llodra has pulled off an upset at the ATP Open 13 tournament in Marseille, beating top seed and world number eight Robin Soderling of Sweden 7-6 (7-2), 6-4.
“Against this kind of player you have to seize every opportunity, which I think I managed to do,” the 29-year-old said after the quarter-final match. After winning the first set, I knew he would be nervous.
“I made a lot of effort to come back and win the tie-break.”
Llodra, who beat Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis in the previous round, will play Germany’s unseeded Mischa Zverev in the last four after he beat 19-year-old Frenchman Guillaume Rufin 7-5, 6-7 (4-/7), 6-3. So I took this opportunity to break in the second set.
That means a repeat of last year’s Tsonga-Llodra final remains very much a possibility.
World number 10 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga also came through his quarter-final against Ukraine’s Illya Marchenko, winning 6-3, 6-4.
The 24-year-old’s powerful serve was in full working order and after taking the first set 6-3 he sewed up victory in one hour and 34 minutes.
Current title-holder Tsonga broke Marchenko’s serve in the fourth game of the first set to lead 3-1.
“Even if I didn’t play well, I’m glad I won.
“Against him (Marchenko), you have to be focused all the time because as soon as you drop your game, he immediately takes advantage,” Tsonga said.”
In the other all-French quarter-final, eighth seed Julien Benneteau beat third-seeded world number 13 Gael Monfils 6-3, 7-5.
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.Yvo de Boer, head of the UN’s climate change convention, will resign as of July 1, his office announced.
De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will join the consultancy group KPMG as global adviser on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC secretariat said.
The announcement came nearly two months after the Copenhagen summit on climate change, seen even by its supporters as a disappointment and by its critics as a chaotic failure. .
The UNFCCC, an offshoot of the 1992 Rio summit, gathers 194 nations in the search for combating the causes of man-made climate change and easing its effects.
“I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia,” he said.
In a statement Mr de Boer said it had been a “difficult decision” to step down.
“Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming.”
A Dutch national, Mr de Boer was appointed the UNFCCC’s executive secretary in September 2006.
“This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen.
Instead, after nearly two weeks of talks, the summit was only able to yield a general agreement on limiting warming to two degrees Celsius.
He had pinned hopes on a breakthrough in Copenhagen that would unlock a new treaty on climate change that would take effect after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol’s current pledges expire.
The document did not gain approval at a plenary session of the UNFCCC, and it has so far failed to gain the official endorsement of major developing emitters which helped to craft it.
The accord did not spell out the means for achieving this goal, and the pledges made under it are only voluntary.
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.Yvo de Boer, head of the UN’s climate change convention, will resign as of July 1, his office announced.
De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will join the consultancy group KPMG as global adviser on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC secretariat said.
The announcement came nearly two months after the Copenhagen summit on climate change, seen even by its supporters as a disappointment and by its critics as a chaotic failure. .
The UNFCCC, an offshoot of the 1992 Rio summit, gathers 194 nations in the search for combating the causes of man-made climate change and easing its effects.
“I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia,” he said.
In a statement Mr de Boer said it had been a “difficult decision” to step down.
“Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming.”
A Dutch national, Mr de Boer was appointed the UNFCCC’s executive secretary in September 2006.
“This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen.
Instead, after nearly two weeks of talks, the summit was only able to yield a general agreement on limiting warming to two degrees Celsius.
He had pinned hopes on a breakthrough in Copenhagen that would unlock a new treaty on climate change that would take effect after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol’s current pledges expire.
The document did not gain approval at a plenary session of the UNFCCC, and it has so far failed to gain the official endorsement of major developing emitters which helped to craft it.
The accord did not spell out the means for achieving this goal, and the pledges made under it are only voluntary.
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.Leonardo Da Vinci’s remains are to be exhumed to allow scientists to establish whether the Mona Lisa is a disguised self-portrait.
Scientists and historians from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage have sought permission to open the artist’s tomb in France’s Loire Valley.
They hope to find his skull which they can use to reconstruct his face to discover whether his famed masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is in fact a self-portrait in disguise.
Scholars have suggested Da Vinci’s presumed homosexuality and love of riddles led him to paint himself as a woman.
Mystery has surrounded the identity of the Mona Lisa for centuries.
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Speculation on the sitter has also ranged from Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant, to Da Vinci’s mother
.New Manchester City recruit Patrick Vieira says he has a “100 per cent chance” of playing for France at next summer’s World Cup finals, despite having not represented his country since June 2009.
“As I’m an optimist, I’m going to say 100 per cent,” he said in response to a question about his chances of playing in South Africa on the Canal Football Club television show overnight.
“The desire is there, it’s my goal.”
Vieira, who has yet to play for his new club, admitted that he had received “no guarantees” from France coach Raymond Domenech, who he met shortly before Christmas, and conceded that the situation “is not as simple as that”. In my head, I don’t see myself missing the World Cup.
“You have to play, which is the important thing for me.
“But he said that as soon as I’m playing, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be selected,” said Vieira, whose last France appearance saw him captain Les Bleus to a 1-0 defeat against Nigeria in Saint-Etienne last June. I have five months.
He joined City from reigning Italian champion Inter Milan on January 8.”
Vieira, 33, was a member of the France team that won the 1998 World Cup and the 2000 European Championship and has 107 caps.
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