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Britain planning memorable Olympic return Posted: 26 Oct 2011 07:18 AM PDT The Olympic Stadium (bottom left) and the Aquatics Centre (bottom right), two of the venues for the 2012 London Olympics. — Reuters pic LONDON, Oct 26 — Britain is planning to mark its return to Olympic football after a 40-year absence with a gala double-header featuring both the women's and men's teams playing international friendlies at the same venue on the same day next July. The English FA, which is organising the Olympic teams on behalf of the British Olympic Association (BOA), is looking at staging the matches possibly at Villa Park, as Birmingham is not an Olympic venue city, shortly before the Games begin at the end of that month. Under IOC rules, the matches have to take place outside London and at a venue not being used for the Olympic tournament, which rules out Old Trafford, Hampden Park or the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. A British men's team last competed in the Olympic qualifiers as an amateur team for the 1972 Games but did not reach the finals in Munich. The women's team will be competing for the first time. The matches would be one of two pre-tournament friendlies for both sides, which are being managed by Stuart Pearce and Hope Powell respectively. The formation of the Olympic team has been problematic as the football associations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are reluctant to take part fearing the participation of their players could jeopardise their independent status within FIFA. The preliminary round of the Olympic tournament begins on July 25, two days before the opening ceremony, and conclude on August 11. — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS.

Villa suspend Bannan after motorway crash Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:30 AM PDT LONDON, Oct 26 — Scotland international midfielder Barry Bannan will miss Aston Villa's Premier League match at Sunderland on Saturday after being suspended by the club while they carry out an inquiry after he was involved in a motorway crash on Sunday. Bannan, 21, was arrested by police on suspicion of drink driving — along with Shrewsbury Town striker James Collins, a former Villa player — and was subsequently bailed. Villa boss Alex McLeish said in a statement issued to the media: "Barry Bannan has been suspended while the club carries out internal enquiries into allegations which arose last weekend. "He will not be available for this weekend's game at Sunderland." Bannan, who has played nine times for Scotland, was involved in the accident on the M1 motorway around 4.30am on Sunday. — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS.

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Winehouse had high alcohol levels in blood, inquest shows Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:54 AM PDT Winehouse's mother Janis (second left) leaves the inquest at St Pancras Coroner's Court in London. — Reuters pic LONDON, Oct 26 — British singer Amy Winehouse had more than five times the legal driving limit of alcohol in her blood when she died on July 23 aged 27, British media reported today. The "Rehab" and "Back to Black" singer had 416mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, according to the findings of an inquest into her death, compared with the legal driving limit of 80mg. A hearing in London also learned that Winehouse, who battled drug and alcohol addiction throughout her brief but successful career, had not drunk alcohol in July until the day before she died. The findings backed reports shortly after her death that the Grammy award-winning artist had been trying to deal with her addiction but ran the risk of complications from binge drinking. A security guard checked on Winehouse at 10am on the day she died at her house in Camden, north London, and thought she was asleep. He checked again at 3pm and called the emergency services. The inquest ruled that she had died of "misadventure". 'Great pain' Members of her family, including her father Mitch, were present at the inquest, but made no comment to awaiting media as they left. They later issued a statement saying it was "some relief" to find out what had happened to Winehouse. "We understand there was alcohol in her system when she passed away — it is likely a build-up of alcohol in her system over a number of days," the family said. "The court heard that Amy was battling hard to conquer her problems with alcohol and it is a source of great pain to us that she could not win in time. She had started drinking again that week after a period of abstinence." Mitch Winehouse is in the process of setting up a charity in his daughter's name to help young people battling addiction. "It underlines how important our work with the Amy Winehouse Foundation is to us, to help as many young people and children as we can in her name," the family statement said. "It means a lot to us and from the overwhelming messages of support we have had since Amy died, we know she meant a great deal to people all over the world." Winehouse's last filmed performance was in Serbia in June, when she was jeered by the crowd as she struggled to perform her songs and stay upright. Her management then cancelled all her scheduled performances. Results from toxicology tests released in August showed there were no illegal substances in Winehouse's system when she died. — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS.

A Minute With: Johnny Depp and his ‘Rum Diary’ Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:18 AM PDT Depp cannot get the Caribbean out of his system. — Reuters pic LOS ANGELES, Oct 26 — Taking a break from his blockbuster "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, Johnny Depp turns to a low-key role for his new project: starring in and producing "The Rum Diary". Due in US cinemas on Friday, it is based on his friend Hunter S. Thompson's book of the same name. After portraying a version of Thompson in the 1998 film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", Depp again becomes the gonzo journalist's alter ego in "Rum Diary", playing the fictional journalist Paul Kemp in Thompson's pre-gonzo years working in Puerto Rico. The film, set in the 1960s, tells the story of Kemp, an American journalist who travels to the Caribbean island to write for a local newspaper. While enjoying a rum-filled lifestyle, he falls for the attractive fiancee (Amber Heard) of a shady businessman (Aaron Eckhart). Depp spoke to Reuters about Thompson, who committed suicide in 2005, his own connection to the Caribbean, and his next role as Tonto in "The Lone Ranger". Q: You and Hunter were such good friends. Whose idea was it to turn "The Rum Diary" into a movie? A: "It was his idea to produce it as a film. I found the manuscript (in his home). We were reading it, sitting cross-legged on the floor and he said, 'We have to make this into a film and produce it together'. I said 'Sure', never knowing that we would full-on go through with it." Q: What was the next step? A: "Hunter and I had all these horrendous meetings. We weren't accustomed to doing a song-and-dance to try and drum up money. We'd be sitting with bottles of Chivas (Scotch whisky) and these (potential financiers) would arrive completely shocked and confused." Q: How did you keep Hunter's spirit alive on the set? A: "I wanted Hunter's spirit to permeate (the set) and I wanted everybody to know that Hunter was there. We had his chair with his name on it. We had his script with his name on it. We had a bottle of Chivas with a high ball glass, tumbler filled with ice. We had his cigarettes, his cigarette filters, his ashtray . . ." Q: Did you do anything with them? A: "(Director) Bruce (Robinson) and I would dip into the Chivas and put it behind our ears so we had Hunter with us. Two weeks in, everyone was dipping." Q: Does playing Hunter come naturally to you? A: "Yeah, almost too naturally!" Q: How did you and Hunter first meet and bond? A: "I first met him when he walked into the Woody Creek Tavern waving a giant cattle prod and a Taser gun . . . He invited me back to his place, and I was admiring a nickel-plated shotgun on his wall, 12 gauge. He says, 'Wanna shoot it?' Q: Did you? A: "Well, it was about 2.30 in the morning and then he said, 'Let's build a bomb!' So we built bombs out of propane tanks with nitroglycerin, took it out in the backyard and I shot it. It exploded into, like, an 80-foot fireball. "I think that was kind of my initiation. Had I potentially flubbed the shooting of the bomb, it might have been a different story. But I hit it dead on, square on and he was so happy. (laughs) From that moment on, it was non-stop." Q: You shot "Rum Diary" and the "Pirates" films in various Caribbean locations, and now you have your own island there too. Do you feel a special connection to the Caribbean? A: "I do. It's one of the most welcoming places in the world I've been to. The ultimate irony is that I was given an opportunity to do a pirate movie back in 2003 that even Disney thought was gonna crap out. That was the thing that allowed me to buy my dream, to buy the island — a pirate movie!" Q: Which changed everything for you on many levels. A: "It's nuts. It's really nuts. I took a left when everybody said 'take a right', and things happened somehow. I really didn't instigate any of it. It's pretty wild." Q: Now you're about to play Tonto in "The Lone Ranger". A: "I know the character pretty well so far. The main thing with Tonto is the fact that 60-plus years in Hollywood, the Indians have been treated like second- and third-class citizens. And I can't abide. So Tonto has to take the bull by the horns, in a way. But in his own way, a special way, and not the very obvious way." — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS.

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Taiwan to fine bloggers for false advertising Posted: 26 Oct 2011 01:18 AM PDT Taiwan plans to fine bloggers who make false claims or exaggerate on behalf of products and firms. – Szymon Apanowicz/shutterstock.com TAIPEI, Oct 26 – Taiwan plans to fine bloggers who make false claims or exaggerate on behalf of products and companies as the number of consumer disputes soars, authorities said yesterday. Parliament on Monday started revising a law to make it possible to fine bloggers and other reviewers up to ten times the payment they receive for false advertising, said the Fair Trade Commission. According to local media, some bloggers are paid up to Tw$70,000 (RM7,189) per review. Often the reviews are disguised as innocent journal entries, while in fact they talk up products and services to lure customers. One recent controversy involved a popular blogger with a daily average hit of 140,000 who fabricated photographs to exaggerate the effect of beauty products, local reports said. Legal disputes involving Internet commentaries have been on the rise in recent years, mostly caused by negative rather than positive assessments. Under a different law, a woman was recently ordered to pay a noodle shop Tw$200,000 for calling its food "really bad" on her blog. – AFP Full content generated by Get Full RSS.

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Let’s talk about (halal) sex Posted: 25 Oct 2011 04:49 PM PDT [unable to retrieve full-text content]OCT 26 — Of course this essay would have to be about the Obedient Wives Club. One can’t pass up the chance to write about the one very titillating piece of news in the media, though the recent Auditor-General’s Report comes close. And that is a painful read. Like many Malaysians, I was flabbergasted and speechless when I read online accounts of ...

What Malaysians can learn from theatre Posted: 25 Oct 2011 04:37 PM PDT OCT 26 — After spending the last few weeks directing a play for the Short + Sweet theatre festival, it got me thinking about theatre's place in our society. The play was in Cantonese. My actors were all Chinese, with varying fluency in the dialect. My Cantonese vocabulary doesn't extend much beyond numbers, food, swear words and phrases I learned from Hong Kong soaps like "chee seen" and "yao mao gao chou". Yet not once during the entire production was my lack of fluency in Cantonese and my obvious "non-Chineseness" ever brought up. What mattered, instead of my identity, was putting on a good show. Judging by audience reactions, I think we did all right. The funniest comment I got after the play was: "I thought you were a man!" Not a single "But you're not Chinese!" Not even a passing nod to my race. Outside the theatre, I find that my race and religion are often considered yardsticks of my performance. In school, I was my English teachers' pet not so much because of aptitude but because it seemed such a special thing to have a Bumi girl speak so well. A Malay man I went out with even asked me why I spoke well when, unlike him, I had never studied overseas. It's not that racial identities don't matter at all in theatre. Sometimes a role calls for a specific racial type and that's a given. Within the English-speaking theatre community particularly, race, religion and personal creeds don't come into the picture. Meritocracy is practised out of necessity. You hire a bad actor, you'll affect the entire production. If your lead actor is out-acted by a mop, you're in trouble. Theatre stems from the natural human instinct to tell, share and hear stories. What makes it an art is the technical difficulties that go into making a play work. A play is more than players on the stage, trading lines and making faces. It is a result of skilful coordination of things on stage and back stage. Even stage lighting is a craft in itself where good lighting is seen, but not noticed. When you start looking at the lights instead of the actor, the play obviously needs work. Our local theatre scene has its own problems. A while back, it was a small, incestuous scene. You would seem the same people over and over again, and for a long time, things were rather stagnant. Now, with festivals like Short+Sweet and more options for training in the performing arts, theatre's had a fresh injection of new blood and new opportunities. Theatre pays little but asks much. The rigours of acting on stage require stamina as well as honed acting chops. While Rosie Huntington-Whitely could get away with pouting through Transformers 3, she wouldn't be able to do it in theatre. Theatre is really the actor's medium; careful editing might save a film actor's performance but you can't hide poor acting on stage. To some, the arts seem nothing more than opium and escape from real life. But the thing about theatre, real theatre, is that it connects most when it relays the hard truths we often run away from. We admire actors most not for playing the unreal but the realistic. It is ironic, really, that you can find the truth on stage but in the lofty institution of Parliament, all I see are really bad actors. Every year, the Auditor-General's report is the traditional tragedy, with much anger, bombast and gnashing of teeth. Mummers from all parties, reciting dramatic monologues about hudud, apostasy and the evils of Elton John. And they couldn't even do us the favour of at least being entertaining. I wonder if those who bemoan the high prices of theatre show tickets ever think about what they pay for the farce advertised as a democracy. In my opinion, I think it's time we all ask for our money back. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. Full content generated by Get Full RSS.

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Piala Malaysia: Harga RM50 kekal, FAM tak layan desakan Posted: 26 Oct 2011 02:50 AM PDT KUALA LUMPUR, 26 Okt — Sekalipun berdepan dengan banyak bantahan Persatuan Bola Sepak Malaysia (FAM) tidak berganjak dari keputusannya menetapkan harga tiket RM50 bagi menyaksikan perlawanan akhir Piala Malaysia antara Negeri Sembilan dan Terengganu di Stadium Shah Alam, Sabtu ini. Setiausaha Kehormat FAM, Datuk Azzuddin Ahmad, berkata pihaknya tidak bercadang menurunkan harga tiket kerana selepas kajian, Jawatankuasa Pertandingan Tempatan mendapati harga tiket itu adalah wajar. "Harga tiket itu dianggap wajar kerana FAM terpaksa menanggung beberapa kos termasuk bayaran kepada pihak stadium, keselamatan dan beberapa faktor lain," katanya dipetik Bernama Online. Mengulas permintaan Menteri Belia dan Sukan Datuk Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek supaya FAM mengkaji semula harga tiket tersebut, beliau berkata FAM menghormati permintaan itu namun FAM tidak akan berganjak dari keputusan asal. Ketika menggesa demikian semalam, Ahmad Shabery berkata harga tiket itu membebankan peminat dan rakyat. Para penyokong kedua-dua pasukan turut membantah harga tiket itu bagi semua tempat duduk stadium. Beliau berkata Malaysia adalah sebuah negara demokrasi di mana penyokong bebas memilih untuk memulau perlawanan akhir nanti dan FAM tidak mempunyai sebarang kuasa bagi menyekat keputusan mereka itu. Sementara itu, Kelab penyokong Bola Sepak Terengganu (Peteh) turut membidas kenaikan harga tiket secara mendadak itu. Setiausaha Peteh, Wan Mohd Azmi Wan Ngah, berkata tindakan FAM disifatkan tidak profesional dan menyentap semangat penonton yang datang dari jauh bagi menyokong pasukan kesayangan. "Rata-rata penyokong bukannya dari golongan berada dan RM50 adalah jumlah yang besar buat kami," kata beliau. Wan Mohd Azmi turut mengucapkan terima kasih kepada kerajaan negeri Terengganu kerana prihatin memberi subsidi 30,000 tiket dengan harga RM25, namun jumlah tersebut masih belum mencukupi. Pada musim lepas, harga tiket perlawanan akhir Piala Malaysia dijual pada harga RM30 untuk tempat duduk biasa dan RM50 bagi tempat duduk "grandstand". Full content generated by Get Full RSS.

Rahim Noor samakan gerakan hak asasi dengan komunis, umpama ‘agama baru’ Posted: 26 Oct 2011 02:42 AM PDT KUALA LUMPUR, 26 Okt — Bekas ketua polis negara Tan Sri Rahim Noor menyamakan gerakan hak asasi manusia di Malaysia dengan fahaman komunis dan keadaan itu akan membawa kepada tindakan mempersoalkan perkara-perkara diterima semua kaum, antaranya kontrak sosial. "Setiap abad ada gelombangnya dan kita tidak boleh melanggar gelombang ini. "Sekarang ini gelombang hak asasi manusia. Sebelum ini gelombang Marxisme, Sosialisme," kata Rahim ketika berucap selepas perasmian Perhimpunan Agung Tahunan Kedua Perkasa di sini hari ini. Sambil melabel gerakan hak asasi manusia sebagai "agama baru", Rahim memberi amaran bahawa aktivis kebebasan sivil menganggap Amerika Syarikat dan United Kingdom sebagai "laman spiritual" mereka dan melebarkan pengaruh mereka. "Sekarang kita melihat banyak perkara dipersoalkan disebabkan gelombang hak asasi manusia," kata bekas pemimpin PDRM ini, yang menjadi tumpuan di sebalik isu mata lebam Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, sambil menambah kumpulan aktivis mula mempersoalkan kontrak sosial. MENYUSUL LAGI Full content generated by Get Full RSS.

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