World Cup clashing with McFadden wedding plans

Brian McFadden will tie the knot with Delta Goodrem this year – but only if they can find a date which doesn’t clash with the soccer World Cup.

The former Westlife star - who proposed to the former 'Neighbours' actress three years ago, a year after he divorced Kerry Katona – is ready to walk down the aisle but has revealed the couple are struggling to find a suitable date which doesn’t clash with the summer tournament taking place in South Africa.

Sports -mad Brian, 29, said: "We're trying to work out a date between the World Cup and the end of the Formula 1 season. It's messing all my plans up... I was going to produce another album but I won't get any work done with both events going on."

Delta – who was recently spotted meeting Britain's Prince William during his tour of Sydney – is fortunately a "huge sports fan" so has been understanding to Brian’s wishes.

The Australian actress-turned-singer – who was first rumoured to marry Brian in December 2009 – said: "I would love to go to the World Cup.”

Source:breakingnews.iol.ie/

Myners meets G7 to debate world banking reform

Lord Myners, the City minister, will on Monday meet representatives from the G7, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in London to discuss reform of the global banking system, including a possible tax on transactions to protect the taxpayer from future bail-out threats

The Treasury is also expected to call on banks to reduce the amount they pay out to staff as a proportion of revenue, so that more of the industry’s profits are used to build up capital.

Lord Myners has suggested that it is not right that banks are currently not required to pay a tax premium for the “implicit state guarantee” they benefit from. There has been widespread public and political opposition to the notion that banks will swiftly return to huge profits and bonuses despite the government support which pulled the system back from the brink of collapse
Commenting on today’s meeting, Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, said: “A financial transactions tax is by far the best way to raise serious money from the finance sector, not just to make good the damage they have already done, but to stop future deep cuts in spending.”

The debate over how to reform the global financial system intensified last week when President Barack Obama proposed sweeping reforms of the sector in the US, which would prevent banks from taking part in certain activities. Lord Myners said the ideas were very specific to the US: “The argument is that hedge funds, private equity and proprietary trading are a source of risk – that is not our general view”.

He added: “The US administration is taking action to address problems in its own system.”

In comments made over the weekend Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, suggested that the US proposals would not have prevented the financial crisis from happening. “You could end up dividing institutions and making them separate legal entities but that isn’t the point. The point is the connectivity between them in relation to their financial transactions,” he said.

The Chancellor also suggested that the US approach could threaten the G20’s progress on reform at an international level: “If everyone does their own thing it will achieve absolutely nothing. The banks are global – they are quite capable of organising themselves in such a way that if the regime is difficult in one country they will go to another one.”

Soutrce:telegraph.co.uk/

Deans the man for World Cup: O'Neill

Robbie Deans has been confirmed as Wallabies coach until the 2011 World Cup, with Australian Rugby Union boss John O'Neill boldly declaring the struggling code had turned the corner after confronting its demons.

Last year wasn't kind to rugby, with Australia winning just six of 14 Tests, no Australian team making the Super finals and concerns over declining attendances and television ratings.

There was speculation highly-regarded New Zealander Deans might struggle to retain his position after an indifferent year.

However, O'Neill revealed the ARU board had guaranteed his tenure through to the next World Cup after listening to a review of 2009 by Deans and the ARU's high performance manager David Nucifora.

"The board were very comfortable and confirmed Robbie in his position through to the World Cup in 2011," O'Neill said at the Wallabies jersey launch.

O'Neill said there would be no changes to Deans' assistant coaching line-up, but revealed that former Brumbies and Blues coach Nucifora would be more available and would help assistant coach Jim Williams in the lineout and breakdown areas.

With a new broadcasting rights deal which O'Neill said he was "pretty pleased with" to be announced over the next month, the ARU chief believed there was also on-field reasons to justify his belief Australian rugby had turned the corner.

He said the emergence of promising youngsters like flanker David Pocock, halfback Will Genia and inside back Quade Cooper potentially heralded "the making of another golden era".

O'Neill was also pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction of leading northern hemisphere administrators following Australia's 33-12 win over Wales in the final match of their spring tour.

"I was in Dublin for an IRB meeting and a number of northern hemisphere reps said the way we played in the first 20 to 30 minutes, we could be the team to beat at the World Cup," O'Neill said.

Although the World Cup looms next year, O'Neill said Australia's immediate objective was to win their first Tri-Nations tournament since 2001 and regain the Bledisloe Cup which was lost to New Zealand in 2003.

O'Neill was adamant he wasn't concerned about rival football codes, even though soccer stood to gain tremendous coverage this year from the World Cup.

"We are not concerned about competition, we will be cheering for the Socceroos as loudly as any other good Australian would," said the former Football Federation Australia chief executive.

"The reality is we've confronted our demons as a game.

"We were really open last year in talking about the state of the game, crowd figures, ratings et cetera.

"The response we've had from sponsors, corporate partners and broadcasters has been `that's great, that you aren't trying to hard from the truth and you've confronted it'.

"You don't want to be in the trough for too long and I think we're coming out of the trough and 2010 will be the year when we've turned the corner."

Source:news.smh.com.au/

World Bank aims to earn stripes

BANGKOK - An international campaign to save the tiger, one of Asia's iconic wild animals, has been chosen as the place for the World Bank to earn its stripes as an institution keen on joining the ranks of conservationists.

Senior officials from the international financial institution's Washington DC headquarters will be in Thailand to attend the Asia Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation, which runs from January 27-29 in Hua Hin, a beach resort town south of Bangkok.

The ministerial meeting in Thailand is the penultimate conference on the road to a heads of state meeting in Vladivostok in September. World Bank president Robert Zoellick is billed to co-chair the tiger summit with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
"We are witnessing the power of the World Bank to bring governments together through its involvement," Mike Baltzer, leader of the tiger initiative of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF - formerly the World Wildlife Fund), told journalists last week. "The bank has funded US$1.5 million to train officers in some tiger-range countries."

The bank's move into tiger territory was unveiled in June 2008 with the launch of the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), which pledges to place the concerns of tiger conservation on the international political agenda and to take a lead role in conservation efforts.

"The bank hopes to invest in high-priority conservation actions, ensure that its own infrastructure investments do not damage tiger populations, and support investigations and economic analyses of key issues such as poaching and habitat conversion," states the WWF, the world's largest conservation organization, in a background note ahead of the Hua Hin meeting. "This is believed to be the first time in the bank's history that it has undertaken such a major and focused initiative targeting a single species."

Last January, Thai police seized four decapitated tiger carcasses found in a truck passing through Hua Hin in Prachuap Kiri Khan province. Police said the dead tigers were believed to have come from Malaysia and were being transported to China.

The following month, Thai authorities discovered the butchered carcasses of two tigers and a panther when they stopped a truck further south in Pattani province.

Last May, the Thai navy seized two tiger carcasses and 45 pangolins and arrested eight traffickers who had planned to smuggle the animals across the Mekong River into Laos, TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, reported at the time.

Laos, one of the 13 Asian countries home to wild tigers, offers visible signs of the bank's new interest in the wild tiger. It is backing an awareness campaign featuring billboards with an image of the endangered animal at the international airport in Vientiane. A message to stop illegal wildlife trade appears on each sign.

The billboards and stickers with a similar message that appear on the ubiquitous three-wheeled taxis in the Lao capital were unveiled by the bank in November last year.

The World Bank office in Laos provides support to Laos through the Global Tiger Initiative, Victoria Minoian, a bank spokeswoman at the Vientiane office, said. The bank has also been co-sponsoring the Lao Campaign for Wildlife Conservation, which involves the government, non-governmental organizations and the private sector, she added. The GTI has allocated US$15,000 to support this wildlife campaign.

Yet the bank's aim to expand its portfolio by taking on the cause of the conservationists is drawing criticism from some environmentalists, given the financial institution's history in funding large projects in developing countries - such as mega-dams - that have seen wanton destruction of the environment and affected livelihoods of local residents.

"The World Bank's past record has left a trail of ecosystem destruction behind virtually every large project it has financed," charged Bittu Sahgal, editor of Sanctuary Asia, one of India's leading wildlife news magazines. "Today tigers [in India] survive largely in the precise areas where World Bank money has been kept at arm's length."

The bank's involvement to save the wild tiger is "worse than greenwashing", he told Inter Press Service in an e-mail interview. "They are looking to pull off a public opinion coup. While they say they want to help tigers, they are simultaneously cajoling the Indian government to accept loans in excess of $1 billion for highways and mines that will destroy tiger and wildlife habitats."

Conservationists supporting the tiger summit hope to draw mileage out of participants other than the bank.

The timing of this year's meetings has added symbolism for Asia, because February 14 marks the start of the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese lunar calendar. The current wild tiger population is estimated at 3,200, which is half the number, between 5,000 to 7,000 wild tigers, that conservationists estimated were around when the Year of the Tiger was last celebrated 12 years ago.

"It is now or never," said James Compton, Asia programs director of TRAFFIC. "I don't think there has ever before been similar international attention and signs of political will towards tiger conservation."

Among the expected goals to come out of this World Bank-led effort is for countries to implement strong enforcement programs that will "knock off the big illegal wildlife trader", Compton said in an IPS interview. "There has to be good law enforcement to detect and prosecute those involved in driving the trafficking trade."

Almost every part of the tiger feeds the global illegal wildlife trade, which is reported to be the third-largest illegal trade after arms and drugs. Interpol estimates the annual value of the trade to be between $10 billion and $20 billion.

"Illegal trade is not going away. It has remained persistent," said Compton. "If you look at the pattern of seizures [of wild tiger parts], all tiger-range countries are implicated. It has a long trade chain."

China and increasingly Vietnam are often fingered for driving the demand for tiger parts. Besides tiger skin often given as gifts, tiger bones are used for wines and powdered Chinese medicines, and tiger penis is sought as an aphrodisiac.

It explains the rapid drop in the wild tiger population in Southeast Asia, from Myanmar on one end to Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia at the other. The other tiger ranges are in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Russia.

A commitment to protect and expand these forest ranges that tigers inhabit is also a benchmark the tiger summit is expected to strike. "According to tiger experts, the wild tigers may disappear by the next Year of the Tiger in 2022 if no action is taken to stop the poaching and illegal hunting, and to enhance habitat protection," states the WWF.

Source:atimes.com/

World Stocks Extend Losses After Wall Street Slide

World stock markets extended their slide Monday after Wall Street suffered its biggest rout since the depths of last year's financial crisis.

Most Asian markets dropped less than 1 percent as the region posted its fourth day of losses, while European shares fell about 1 percent in early trade. Oil prices fell near $74 a barrel and the dollar was mixed against the yen and euro.

Investors continued to cut back their bets on stocks after U.S. markets tumbled Friday to their worst three-day showing since they hit bottom last March.

Uncertainty over the ultimate effects of U.S. President Barack Obama's bank reform plan was cause for more caution, analysts said, as were worries about earnings results from American companies and rising opposition to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's reappointment.

In Asia, investors already on edge about China's economy and moves to prevent its overheating were further unnerved after Bank of China said it would seek to raise billions of dollars by issuing new equity and bonds. The move, designed to help the country's third-biggest lender to replenish its capital and meet government standards, added to concerns about banks after a flood of lending to prop up the economy.

Clive McDonnell, head of Asia strategy at BNP Paribas Securities, said the markets could trade lower for now unless Chinese policymakers expressed new confidence in the country's growth or the U.S. clarified its banking proposal to calm investors. Still, he expected markets to bounce back.

"Sentiment is fairly poor at the moment," said McDonnell, who is based in Singapore. "But I don't see any of the fundamentals have changed whatsoever and I don't think (stock) valuations are overly expensive. In our view, the markets are going to remain strong in 2010."

As trading got under way in Europe, the Britain's FTSE 100 lost 1.1 percent, Germany's DAX fell 1 percent and France's CAC-40 was off 0.7 percent. U.S. futures, however, pointed to a turnaround on Wall Street Monday, with Dow futures gaining nearly 0.7 percent to 10,218 and Standard & Poor's 500 futures 0.7 percent at 1,098.

Source:abcnews.go.com/

World's filthiest hotels revealed

The survey, conducted by travel website TripAdvisor.com, revealed that a Blackpool hotel, the Grosvenor Hotel in the Lancashire resort has been named as Europe's dirtiest place to stay in.


Despite the hotel stating, "Your comfort is our priority, as is the cleanliness and standard of service", customers left comments on the travel website like, "Worst hotel I've ever stayed in! Don't go there!" and "Disgusting".

London has a world-class reputation for its five star hotels, but six budget hotels along with the Park Hotel, which was number three on the list, were voted the dirtiest in the capital.

One unhappy visitor to the Park described it as "Hell" on the website. Another said: "Sometimes a bargain is not a bargain."

The Minster Hotel in York was the only other northern hotel singled out - at Number 10.

But while one guest called it a "house of horror" another said it was "a very good hotel" and he'd had "a pleasant surprise".

According to Trip­Advisor, disappointing hotels still exist at the budget end.

"It's hard to believe these absurdly awful places exist, and the fact that these hotels stay in business shows how easily good people get ripped off," the Daily Express quoted it as stating.

Organisers said they sifted through more than 30 million evaluations to bring damning verdicts on hotels around the world.

But Gerrard Khajua, manager of the Grosvenor Hotel, hit back saying the listing was unfair.

"The hotel has had hundreds of satisfied customers," he said.

"We charge 25 pounds for a double room. This is very basic accommodation.

"Most of the reviews on Trip­Advisor come from people who have expected facilities at the hotel that were never promised, such as car parking when we do not advertise we have a car park here," he stated.

Patel, manager of the Blair Victoria and Tudor Inn Hotel in London, which came in ninth, denied the hotel was dirty.

He said it was divided into basic rooms "with a bit of wear and tear" costing 25 pounds to 40 pounds a night and more expensive en-suite rooms "of a much better standard".

"It is usually only people with a complaint that will leave a review," he added. (ANI)
Source:news.oneindia.in/

Snowboarder Anderson wins World Cup bronze

STONEHAM, Que. — The Canadian team’s run of gold medals in parallel giant slalom on the FIS World Cup snowboard tour this season came to an end at four Sunday, but the podium streak is still alive.


World champion Jasey Jay Anderson of Mont-Tremblant, Que., won the bronze medal, defeating Switzerland’s Marc Iselin. Austrians Benjamin Karl and Andreas Prommegger finished 1-2, respectively.


“The conditions were really difficult for me,” Anderson said in a news release. “The conditions were icy, and usually I like to do some nice turns with forgiving snow. This was technical riding with controlled skids. It was really intense, and I felt like in a battle field.”


Karl defeated Anderson in the semifinals and won for the first time since the season-opening event in Argentina in September. He leads the overall World Cup standings with 4,260 points, followed by Anderson with 3,800 and Prommegger with 3,280.


Toronto’s Michael Lambert, one of three different Canadians to win parallel giant slalom World Cup gold medals this season, finished seventh Sunday and fell to fourth in the standings with 2,940 points. Anderson has won two World Cup races this year and Matt Morison of Burketon, Ont., has won one.


Pat Farrell of Oakville, Ont., was 21st Sunday, Darren Gardner of Burlington, Ont., ended up 43rd, Richard Evanoff of Pickering, Ont., placed 45th, one spot ahead of Steve Barlow of Courtice, Ont., and Sebastien Beaulieu of Sherbrooke, Que., was 50th. Matthew Carter of Maryhill, Ont., was disqualified.


In the women’s event, Russians Svetlana Boldykova and Alena Zavarzina took the top two spots on the podium, with France’s Nathalie Desmares third.

Caroline Calve of Aylmer, Que., was seventh, her best result of the season.


“The conditions were a little bit rough throughout the course. The blue course was really icy. My board skipped a few times during the last four gates, and that where I lost the 0.01 seconds,” Calve said after quarter-final loss to Boldykova.


Ekaterina Zavialova of Calgary was 20th, Kimiko Zakreski of Calgary placed 24th, Zoe Rubin of Montreal finished 41st and Alexa Loo or Richmond, B.C., and Marianne Leeson of Burlington were both disqualified.

Source:montrealgazette.com/s

Diane Sawyer has immediate effect on ABC's 'World News'

Reporting from New York - When she took over anchoring ABC's evening newscast last month after 11 years of rising before dawn to host "Good Morning America," Diane Sawyer thought she would finally get to catch up on her sleep. Charles Gibson, Sawyer's predecessor on "World News" and her former co-host on "GMA," had promised her, "Oh, you won't believe the difference," she recalled.

So much for that.

Sawyer kicked off her tenure by traveling to Copenhagen to confront Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about his nuclear ambitions.

A few weeks later, she was in Afghanistan, where she shadowed U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and questioned President Hamid Karzai about corruption in his administration. As she prepared to leave Kabul, Sawyer got word about the deadly earthquake in Haiti and rushed to Port-au-Prince to cover the aftermath, a journey of 20 hours.

Today, she's in Washington to interview President Obama for an exclusive sitdown before the State of the Union.

"I want to write Charlie and say, 'You tricked me!' " Sawyer said with a laugh, back in her New York office Friday during a rare lull in the news.

But she's not complaining. After more than two decades at ABC, the 64-year-old anchor has finally secured the post that colleagues say it was clear she had long sought.

"I do think that I'm probably addicted, if anything, to stretching, and I love the idea of something that is challenging in a new way," she said. "That I love. It wasn't about a position for me.

"It is a thrilling vantage point," she said happily in her snug second-floor office. Dressed in an oversized zip-up cardigan over a fleece vest and black stretch pants, her eyes framed by magenta-colored glasses, she looked more like a college student than a network anchor. "It's a chance to think, plan and have a conversation that ripens all day long into what you collectively believe you are as a broadcast."

In her short time, Sawyer has already introduced some subtle changes -- most notably, adding more on-set conversations with correspondents about their stories.

And she's urged the staff to devote more resources to long-range pieces, though she refused to divulge topics. "I don't want anyone to do them until we do!" she said with a grin.

ABC took a purposefully low-key approach to Sawyer's arrival, putting her on the air right before Christmas without a significant marketing push. So newsroom executives are especially pleased that the audience already appears to be responding.

In her first four weeks as anchor, "World News" averaged 8.8 million viewers, a spike of 8% over its season-to-date average, though it still trails the top-rated "NBC Nightly News."

"Her curiosity, her energy, I think have really given a lift to the program," said executive producer Jon Banner.

Sawyer was known for her hands-on involvement at "GMA," taking an interest in details like video selection, and she's brought that approach to "World News."

"She knows, 'Let's put this picture here, let's do this story here,' " Banner said. "She's a huge contributor to the entire experience of the half hour, which is just great from my point of view."

When the quake hit Haiti, Sawyer and her team in Kabul scrambled to find the quickest way to Port-au-Prince. After traveling all day and night, they arrived in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and boarded a plane, only to be turned back from the Port-au-Prince airport. On the ground, they finagled a few spots on a private helicopter that finally got Sawyer into the country.

"It was the central story and I wanted to know when I came on the air at night what it felt like, how it was to breathe that air," Sawyer explained, calling the destruction there "inexpressible."

The anchor, who did two broadcasts of "World News" from Haiti and a one-hour prime-time special, slept in a chair at the airport amid jet fumes and the roar of planes.

Sawyer professes to have "negative vanity," calling it "bliss" not to have to get her hair and makeup done first thing in the morning now.

In a new daily feature dubbed “The Conversation” on ABCNews.com, a decidedly unglamorous Sawyer, wearing casual clothes and glasses, chats by webcam with correspondents about the news of the day. The segments show viewers a personal side of the anchor, who admitted to correspondent Jake Tapper in one that her eyes are so bad that she can't read the big E on eye charts, a condition she blames on reading "Gone With the Wind" by the dim light cast by an electric blanket.

Sawyer seems prepared to embrace more new media than Gibson, who posted little material online. Aside from doing "The Conversation," she said she will likely blog and tweet.

But she's still bullish on the power of her newscast, despite the fact that the network news programs have shed millions of viewers since she got her start in broadcasting in 1967 as a local television reporter in Louisville, Ky.

"We can still bring facts to the world that, like Archimedes' fulcrum, can move the whole political debate," Sawyer said. "The expectation that you're not there to entertain, you're there to inform and enrich, I think give these broadcasts enormous heft still."

Source:latimes.com/