Fabio Capello offers hope with ¡®fit and proper¡¯ test

Posted at 6:55 PM, Oct. 15, 2009

Sporting convention has it that form is temporary and class is permanent. It is a nice thought, one that has been embraced by every top-class sportsman who has endured a wobble, but, when it comes to discussing his England squad for the World Cup finals next summer, Fabio Capello swears by what he calls “the moment”.

It is not enough, he says, to be in the form of your life in autumn, eight months before the carnival in South Africa gets under way. It is about hitting form at the right time and showing that you have enough in your tank to get through what he hopes will be a long tournament. It is an idea that will give Michael Owen a spring in his step and leave Jermain Defoe, among others, wondering whether a flying start to the season may ultimately count for nothing.

These were the messages that Capello delivered on Wednesday evening to his players — those he had selected in the squad to face Ukraine and Belarus and those, like Owen, who had accepted his invitation to come to Wembley as guests of the FA, wondering if this was as close as they would come to a recall to the squad. The “See you in pearl jewelry South Africa” toast, as Capello raised a glass to the throng in the dressing room after the 3-0 win over Belarus, may have sounded disingenuous at first, but a carrot has been dangled in front of Owen and others: stay fit, play well and you will get your chance.

It may, of course, be wishful thinking or  mere kidology on Capello’s part. For all his claims about picking only those players who are playing well for their clubs, the Italian has, over the past two matches, found places in his starting line-up for Ben Foster, Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Bridge, Michael Carrick and Emile Heskey, none of whom could claim to have hit the ground running at club level this season, but he is adamant that players struggling for form and fitness will not be on the flight to South Africa.
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“I will decide after the last game that we play and I will choose only the players who are fit,” Capello said. “I have my ideas, but I have to check next April what the situation is. Sometimes at the start of the season the players are good, but at the end of the season they are tired. When you play against the really important countries, you need to be fit. I hope the players that I have in my mind are fit and also psychologically well. They have to be in a really good situation.”

Under previous regimes, England have gone to World Cups with their hopes pinned on players who are fatigued, after a long season, or, worse still, injured. In 1982, there was Kevin Keegan and Trevor Brooking, the pair of them laid low for most of the pearl jewelry wholesale tournament. In 1986 and 1990, the luckless Bryan Robson was in no condition to defy medical advice. More recently it has been the curse of the metatarsal, with neither David Beckham in 2002 nor Wayne Rooney in 2006 able to dispel the perception that they would have been better off staying at home.

It will be fascinating to see if Capello sticks to his word if faced with a dilemma over a key player. Even if history tells us that Sven-Göran Eriksson’s decision to take Rooney to Germany in 2006 was the wrong one, it seemed like the right one at the time. The mistake was to pluck a terribly raw Theo Walcott from obscurity in what remains the most baffling squad an England manager has taken to a leading tournament.

There will be no rash selections this time. As much as he talks up his confidence in Aaron Lennon, Walcott, James Milner and Gabriel Agbonlahor, Capello is not one to invest his faith in raw young talent. When he was asked whether Kieran Gibbs, the 20-year-old Arsenal full back, was a contender to be Ashley Cole’s understudy, his facial expression was not encouraging.

Goalkeepers Capello claimed in August, before the friendly against Holland, that he already knew who would be his goalkeeper in the World Cup. He said last Friday that his opinion had not changed, which appeared to make it a vote of confidence in David James, even if the 39-year-old, who was unsettled by the upheaval at Portsmouth over the summer, has not started any of England’s past seven matches.

Robert Green, in starting six of those matches, appears to wholesale pearl jewelry have established himself as James’s understudy and the third goalkeeping spot will be between Foster, Paul Robinson, Scott Carson, Chris Kirkland and Joe Hart. Foster’s stock has fallen during his run of first-team matches at Manchester United, but he responded well when called upon against Belarus. If he is still in United’s first team, Foster will get the call — but that remains a big if.

Leaked document reveals Royal Mail¡¯s plans for union-free future

Posted at 6:51 PM, Oct. 15, 2009

The Royal Mail is preparing to impose changes on its staff with the full backing of the Government, a leaked document revealed last night.

The disclosure came as the Communication Workers Union (CWU) confirmed that it was calling out 120,000 Royal Mail employees on a two-day strike, which it said was aimed at maximising disruption.

About 42,000 network drivers and mail centre staff are due to hold a 24-hour strike on Thursday, while on Friday 78,000 delivery and collection staff will walk out for 24 hours.

The CWU said that the Royal Mail’s refusal to negotiate over its modernisation plans and proposals to reform pay and working conditions had left it little choice. Dave Ward, the CWU deputy general secretary, said that it was “unbelievable” that the Government was not intervening in the long-running dispute. But an internal Royal Mail document suggests that it has full government support for implementing its plans without union agreement. The report also implies that if the CWU does not agree to the modernisation plans the Royal Mail will “serve notice” on pearl jewelry its existing agreements with the union.
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Dispute: Strategic Overview, obtained by the BBC Newsnight programme, said that if the CWU refused to agree a deal on Royal Mail’s terms the company had “positioned things in such a way as there is shareholder, customer and internal support for implementation of changes without agreement”.

Government support for sidelining the union would be controversial. On Wednesday more than 60 MPs signed an early day motion urging the Government “to do all in its power to ensure that Royal Mail responds positively to the union’s proposal”. Earlier this year the Government was forced to abandon its plan to part-privatise the Royal Mail because of opposition from its back benches.

Many Labour MPs are nervous about a long-running postal strike creating a “winter of discontent” atmosphere before next year’s general election.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, hinted yesterday that Royal Mail might target the union’s finances by abolishing paid time off to do union work and retracting free use of premises for meetings.

A Royal Mail spokesman denied that it was planning to wholesale pearl jewelry sideline the union. He said: “The Royal Mail policy and strategy in relation to the current dispute with the CWU is to reach agreement so that the CWU calls off its damaging and irresponsible strikes.”

If talks between the CWU and Royal Mail do not produce a settlement, next week’s strike, which follows a series of regional walkouts, would be the first national stoppage since 2007. An estimated backlog of 30 million letters and parcels has already built up in Royal Mail sorting offices as a result of the regional strikes.

According to the leaked document, the Royal Mail is pearl jewelry wholesale considering suspending some services to limit the size of the backlog. This could include sealing up postboxes. Royal Mail managers will also deliver some post themselves.

An increasing number of companies are considering using other delivery services, although they were warned yesterday that rival providers were running at close to capacity.

Hermes, one of Royal Mail’s rivals, said that it had seen post volume rise by 25 per cent during the past week and warned that a prolonged strike could force it to close its services to new customers.

Ed Miliband calls on Barack Obama to save Copenhagen climate summit

Posted at 6:45 PM, Oct. 15, 2009

President Obama must intervene personally to rescue a proposed global deal on climate change that is hanging in the balance, the British Energy and Climate Change Secretary has told The Times.

Ed Miliband said that there was a much greater chance of a successful deal being agreed in December if Mr Obama travelled to Copenhagen to lead the US delegation to the UN conference.

Gordon Brown has said that he will attend the pearl jewelry conference but Mr Obama and most other world leaders have yet to commit themselves to going. White House officials offered no new assurances yesterday, saying only that the Administration would be represented at the “appropriate level”.

The British challenge will add to the pressure on Mr Obama to attend, but the case for staying in Washington to shepherd his healthcare reforms into law may prove irresistible.
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The President would also risk a second embarrassment in the Danish capital, where his efforts to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago faltered this month, if his likely failure to sign a domestic climate change Bill by December became the story of the summit.

Asked by The Times if Mr Obama’s presence in Copenhagen would increase the chances of a successful outcome, Mr Miliband said: “Yes. This only works if leaders engage. It’s a very interesting lesson that in July the leaders met in L’Aquila in Italy and agreed that they should commit to avoiding dangerous climate change above two degrees [centigrade]. If they had left it to negotiators it wouldn’t have happened. And Obama was there.”

He called on the US to make a binding and ambitious commitment to cutting its carbon dioxide emissions.

“We do need significant cuts in emissions from the US. We want as much action from America as we can get,” Mr Miliband said. “America and China are the two biggest emitters. They are very key to this. I think a deal without America would be a very bad deal.”

As a presidential candidate, Mr Obama promised to end US isolation on climate change. A cap-and-trade Bill that would allocate carbon emissions permits to major polluters was narrowly passed by the House of Representatives in June but has since been mired in Senate committees.

Senior advisers to the White House have said that alternative carboncutting strategies are being considered in case support for the cap-and-trade Bill, drafted by the Democratic congressmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, slips on its way to pearl jewelry wholesale a final vote. They include limiting mandatory carbon cuts to power plants.

Another proposal involves handing responsibility for America’s carbon footprint to the US Environmental Protection Agency instead of Congress. Both scenarios would all but rule out full US participation in a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions, which is the goal of the Copenhagen summit.

The US never signed the protocol and its failure to do so continued to hamper negotiations, Mr Miliband said: “The biggest difficulty we face is that Kyoto was a partial deal because it didn’t have America in it.” Leaders of other countries are waiting to see what Mr Obama will do before making their own announcements.

Mr Miliband said the proposal in the Waxman Markey Bill to cut US emissions by 17 per cent between 2005 and 2020 “would be a very good start”. He said: “If you compare what America is planning to do from now until 2020 under Waxman Markey, it’s about the same as what we are doing, possibly more depending on how you calculate it. If you look back to 1990 it’s less but they are starting 20 years later.”

Britain has agreed to cut its emissions by 34 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 and by 80 per cent by 2050.

Mr Miliband said that Mr Obama’s election was part of an “alignment of the stars” that made Copenhagen a unique opportunity to secure a deal.

Carbon target

— 190 nations will meet on December 7-18 to try to agree a global deal on cutting CO2 emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012

— The objective is to keep global warming within 2C (3.6F) of the pre-industrial average. The world currently emits 50 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent a year

— Lord Stern of Brentford, former World Bank chief economist, says that emissions must fall to 44 gigatonnes by 2020 and 20 gigatonnes by 2050 to meet the 2C target

— Voluntary commitments by countries so far amount to a cut of two gigatonnes by 2020 — four gigatonnes short of the target

— Gordon Brown has proposed a global fund of $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries to adapt to climate change and develop wholesale pearl jewelry low-carbon economies

— The EU wants the Copenhagen deal to include a commitment to end the destruction of rainforests by 2030

Source: Times database

Sufficient evidence¡¯ to charge Libyans over Yvonne Fletcher

Posted at 6:35 PM, Oct. 15, 2009

Two Libyan officials could be charged with involvement in the shooting dead of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, according to a legal assessment of evidence which has been seen by police and prosecutors.

The 150-page review names the men, who were attached to the pearl jewelry Libyan People’s Bureau in London in 1984 at the time WPC Fletcher was killed in a burst of automatic gunfire from inside the building.

They did not have diplomatic immunity when the shooting happened at the Libyan Embassy in St James’s Square, and had evidence existed at the time they could have been tried in a British court. They were deported along with diplomats soon after the shooting.

Scotland Yard detectives have visited Libya at least three times since diplomatic relations were re-established in 1999 and initially received co-operation from the authorities in their efforts to investigate the murder. Libya has accepted “general responsibility” for WPC Fletcher’s death but since 2007 Tripoli has refused British police officers visas to pearl jewelry wholesale continue their work.
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Britain trains Libyan police officers and the Scottish Executive recently released Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

In 2007 Scotland Yard sought interim advice from the Crown Prosecution Service on its evidence file on WPC Fletcher’s death and it is believed that it was at this stage that the report was presented.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the document states that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute the men for conspiracy to cause death or grievous bodily harm to demonstrators gathered outside the building. Neither man fired the fatal shots but both are said to have helped to orchestrate the series of events, in conjunction with contacts in Tripoli, which led to the shooting of the policewoman.

Last night the CPS said: “The investigation into the freshwater pearl death of Yvonne Fletcher is ongoing and there is still evidence to be gathered. So the CPS has yet to receive a file containing the admissible evidence from a completed investigation. It would only be at that point that we could give final advice on prosecution. These further investigations still continue.

Scotland Yard said: “The Met remains committed to identifying those people responsible for killing WPC Fletcher.”

David Wilshire to stand down over £100,000 allowances paid to own company

Posted at 6:31 PM, Oct. 15, 2009

A Conservative MP who is facing questions over why he paid more than £100,000 of public money to his own company will not stand at the next general election.

David Wilshire made the decision after being summoned by the Tory Chief Whip to explain the claim. He said he was confident that a parliamentary inquiry would clear him but had “reluctantly concluded” that he should not contest his Spelthorne seat in Surrey for the pearl jewelry sake of his family and party.

The announcement eased the pressure on Gordon Brown whose attempts to stifle the renewed crisis over parliamentary allowances were undermined by two of his own MPs.They rounded on the Prime Minister for his response to the audit by Sir Thomas Legg, accusing him of being “cowed” because he had had to repay £12,000 claimed for cleaning.

Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, further damaged Mr Brown’s authority by encouraging MPs to challenge any “arbitrary” demands for repayment.
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Francis Elliott
Opening quote David Cameron will shed no tears over Wilshire's fall Closing quote
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Mr Wilshire’s decision not to fight the election demonstrates that the controversy is still capable of terminating political careers.

The MP had referred himself to John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, after it emerged that he paid up to £3,250 a month in office allowances to Moorlands Research Services between 2005 and 2008. Extra invoices were also submitted and the total paid to the company, which he owns jointly with his partner, Ann Palmer, was £105,500.

Mr Wilshire denied any wrong-doing, insisting that the arrangement had been formally approved by the Commons Fees Office. But when it became clear that he lacked support from David Cameron, he announced that he was standing down.

According to Mark Warburton, a tax specialist at Grant Thornton, the MP may have been seeking to top up either his own salary or that paid to Ms Palmer.

“There are no obvious tax advantages in pearl jewelry wholesale routing expenses payments through a partnership for himself or his lady friend,” said Mr Warburton.

“I expect the Standards Commissioner and the Conservative whips to focus on whether Mr Wilshire was trying to find ways of paying more money to her without exceeding his staffing allowance.”

As MPs’ allowances continued to dominate Westminster, John Bercow, the Speaker, and Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, became the latest politicians to repay money. Mr Bercow returned an “accidental overclaim” of £978 for mortgage interest, while Mr Johnson paid £1,266 that he claimed for council tax while an MP.

Mr Wilshire’s announcement helped to draw attention from the significant damage sustained by Mr Brown as fury in his party increased. Claire Curtis-Thomas, MP for Crosby, said that MPs felt “bitterly let down” by Mr Brown. “The lack of unequivocal support for the vast majority of people in our party, I think, has been really disappointing,” she said.

“Colleagues are pretty damning. But the reality is Gordon has been caught up in this as well. He is a fine, upstanding, decent chap and he’s had to pay back a considerable amount.”

He appeared, she said, to have been “cowed by it, made smaller by it because it affects him personally, it assaults him personally”.

David Drew, Labour MP for Stroud, was also critical of Mr Brown’s handling of the inquiry, which he said had been an “own goal”.

Sir Thomas has angered many MPs by imposing a backdated cap of £2,000 a year for cleaning and £1,000 for gardening at their second homes. But Mr Bercow backed his approach, saying that he believed limits were “implicit” at the time of the claims.

Ms Harman told MPs that it would be “arbitrary” to apply different rules and standards than those that fixed at the time. She said: “There is a three-week period in wholesale pearl jewelry which members can respond to Sir Thomas. If they think there is an inaccuracy in his proposal or they think he is not judging them by the rules and standards that obtained at the time, no doubt they will point that out. Obviously we have to judge things by the rules and standards that obtained at the time. ”

Mr Brown’s spokesman denied that there was a difference of opinion between the Prime Minister and Ms Harman.

Italians bribed the Taleban all over Afghanistan, say officials

Posted at 6:20 PM, Oct. 15, 2009

A Taleban commander and two senior Afghan officials confirmed yesterday that Italian forces paid protection money to prevent attacks on their troops.

After furious denials in Rome of a Times report that the Italian authorities had paid the bribes, the Afghans gave further details of the practice. Mohammed Ishmayel, a Taleban commander, said that a deal was struck last year so that Italian forces in the pearl jewelry Salobi area, east of Kabul, were not attacked by local insurgents.

The payment of protection money was revealed after the death of ten French soldiers in August 2008 at the hands of large Taleban force in Sarobi. French forces had taken over the district from Italian troops, but were unaware of secret Italian payments to local commanders to stop attacks on their forces and consequently misjudged local threat levels.

Mr Ishmayel said that under the deal it was agreed that “neither side should attack one another. That is why we were informed at that time, that we should not attack the Nato troops.” The insurgents were not informed when the Italian forces left the area and assumed they had broken the deal. Afghan officials also said they were aware of the practice by Italian forces in other areas of Afghanistan.
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A senior Afghan government official told The Times that US special forces killed a Taleban leader in western Herat province a week ago. He was said to be one of the commanders who received money from the Italian Government. A senior Afghan army officer also repeated the allegation, adding that agreements had been made in both Sarobi and Herat.

The report prompted the French Opposition to demand an urgent explanation to parliament, describing the details as “very serious”. The Defence Ministry said that it was aware of “rumours” that linked bribery to the ambush but claimed that the reports had no basis.

In Rome, Ignazio La Russa, the pearl jewelry wholesale Defence Minister, insisted the allegations were “absolute rubbish”. He said: “I had been minister for a short time [in the summer of 2008], I’ve never received news from the secret services of payment to the chiefs of the Taleban.”

The minister added that a benevolent attitude toward the Italians who serve in Afghanistan had nothing to do with alleged bribes, but was due, instead, to “the behaviour of our military, which is very different compared to that of other contingents”.

A statement released by the office of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, also denied the claims. “The Berlusconi Government has never authorised nor has it allowed any form of payment toward members of the Taleban insurgency,” it said.

Neither, the statement continued, did it know of any such payment by the previous Government.

Mr Berlusconi was elected for a third non-consecutive term in April 2008, replacing the centre-left Government headed by Romano Prodi.

The statement pointed out that in the first half of last year the Italian contingent suffered “several attacks”, including in the Sarobi district where one soldier, Francesco Pezzulo, was killed in February 2008.

The US Embassy in Rome declined to confirm or to deny the report that US officials issued a démarche, an official complaint, to the Italian Government over alleged payments to insurgents in June 2008.

A spokesman said that the embassy “does not comment on internal diplomatic conversations that may or may not have occurred”.

The Italian Defence Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that the US Government had raised the issue of payments to insurgents, but said that it was not a formal protest, but rather an “informal request for information” about such payments.

Mr Prodi also denied knowledge of the alleged payments to wholesale pearl jewelry local insurgents.

He told The Times: “This is the first time I have ever heard such accusations and I can say that there is no base for them. I know absolutely nothing of this.”

Fabio Evangelisti, of the opposition Italy of Values party, said: “The details of the case, charged by The Times, appear per se to be serious and worthy of maximum attention and assessment by our Government. The ready denials of Ministers La Russa and Rotondi are not sufficient to dissipate the doubts and insinuations about our military operations.”