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Chuck Liddell Harrasses Group of Women at Club Shogun Rua VS Chuck Liddell Ron Kruck goes to MMA Referee School – Inside MMA awitinmusic says: I belong to me by Jessica Simpson in Unknown @ http://t.co/LKtvozsc # chuck liddell
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(ARLINGTON, Texas) – Hey, St. Louis, if your team loses the World Series this year, blame a bad phone connection. World Series goats are usually human. Back in 1985, for example, umpire Don Denkinger blew a call at first base that allowed the Kansas City Royals to stay alive against the Cardinals in Game 6;
Continue reading …Rick Perry has rolled out a flat tax plan to rival Herman Cain’s “9-9-9″ plan. The Texan’s “20-20″ plan—or, as he calls it, “Cut, Balance and Grow”—cuts the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% and allows individuals to choose between paying either 20% or their current income…
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Use of two commentators to cover live football matches described as an ‘anachronism’ in climate of cost cutting The BBC is to end the historic mismatch between its TV and radio football coverage by axing the second commentator’s role on Radio 5 Live. It has long been a quirk of the BBC that it sends two commentators to cover a game on Radio 5 Live but only one when it is being broadcast on TV. The changes will begin next season and all live matches will have a single commentator by the 2014 season as part of plans to save almost £5m from Radio 5 Live’s budget. Radio 5 Live insiders described the use of two commentators as an “anachronism”. But it remains to be seen how the change will be greeted by the station’s lineup of big name commentators including Alan Green, John Murray and Conor McNamara. “There is no reason why one person cannot commentate for the whole game,” said a Radio 5 Live source. “It’s a historic thing – the way the BBC has always done it – but it is also expensive, especially if the game is coming from Moscow.” Radio 5 Live has used two commentators – they currently swap over in the middle of each half alongside a summariser who covers the entire match – since it began broadcasting in 1990. Dual commentators were also used before that when the BBC’s live football coverage was broadcast on Radio 2. Previous BBC management attempts to axe the second commentator’s role met with resistance from inside the corporation, but the scale of the latest round of cost cutting meant change has become inevitable. An extra commentator was thought to add extra texture and objectivity to its coverage but has come to be regarded as an expensive indulgence. The cutbacks are part of BBC director general Mark Thompson’s Delivering Quality First (DQF) proposals to save £700m a year . As part of the savings being made across the corporation, Radio 5 Live is having to cut its content budget by 7.5% – or £4.7m – over the next five years. The DQF proposals, published earlier this month, said Radio 5 Live would maintain sport output at “approximately current levels” but would “reduce the cost of sports presentation including using smaller teams at many events”. The corporation will also have less money to spend on sports rights. Radio 5 Live already broadcasts fewer live football matches than it once did, having lost a third of its live Premier League commentaries to rival stations TalkSport and Absolute Radio. Radio 5 Live also broadcasts live Uefa Champions League and Europa League games, as well as England internationals and the European Championships and World Cup. Both TalkSport and Absolute Radio use only one commentator, alongside a match summariser. Radio 5 Live is currently in the process of moving from its London home to the BBC’s new northern headquarters in Salford . A number of programmes, including Richard Bacon’s afternoon show and drivetime, already broadcast from BBC North. The breakfast programme is due to switch next month. A Radio 5 Live spokesman said: “Radio 5 Live plans to phase out the use of two football commentators on football matches as part of its Delivering Quality First savings. The changes will begin next season and be fully implemented by 2014. “The use of two commentators has for long been something which has helped define BBC radio’s football coverage but we believe the savings achieved by making this change will enable us to continue to offer the high quality coverage 5 Live listeners expect, using an outstanding team of commentators and pundits.” • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . Radio 5 Live BBC Radio industry John Plunkett guardian.co.uk
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Inquest shown photos taken by investigator of broken brackets, empty boltholes and vital bars missing altogether The broken points that caused the fatal Grayrigg train crash were found to be faulty within two hours of the accident, an inquest has been told. A specialist engineer working by torchlight as emergency crews evacuated 86 injured passengers from the wrecked London-Glasgow express, realised the cause as soon as he checked the mechanism. “The points should not have been in the state they were,” said Keith Vernon, a track engineer for Network Rail trained in the investigation of derailments. “There were defects throughout them.” He told the second day of the inquest at Kendal, which is investigating the cause of the death of the only person killed in the crash, 84-year-old Peggy Masson, that he had focused straight away on the Lambrigg 2 points, which allow trains on the West Coast main line to change tracks. An inquiry by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) has already blamed defects in the points for derailing the eight coach train. The points had been due for an inspection five days before the crash, but it was never carried out. Vernon said the points were clearly faulty. “The first thing was, it was apparent there was some damage and something did not look right,” he said. The inquest jury, sitting with south and east Cumbria Coroner Ian Smith, were shown photos taken by Vernon at the time of broken brackets, bolts out of their holes and vital stretcher bars that separate moving rails at the junction missing altogether. Some damage was almost certainly done by the train, but Vernon found no other faults on the stretch of track, deep in the Cumbrian countryside near the village of Grayrigg. He had the points covered with a tarpaulin for a closer inspection in daylight. The state of the points was described in more detail by Simon Kay, an accident inspector for the RAIB, who was part of a team that spent more than a week analysing the area of the crash, which took place on the evening of 23 February 2007. He said that they realised early on that the points were to blame. Explaining the principle of the junctions, which must be able to change the direction of heavy trains moving at high speed, he showed the jury photos and diagrams of what had gone wrong. Three stretcher bars had failed, he said, which meant that the weight of the Virgin Pendolino forced the switching rail to move and the bogies, or wheel sets, on the lead coach slid between the lines, derailing the train. Nuts and bolts had become detached and all three stretcher bars had snapped. The driver of the train, Iain Black, whom Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson called a hero after the crash, said he had no chance of regaining control of the train. He told the inquest earlier how it had “leapt into the air” at 95mph , and although he had throttled back from 125mph shortly before the accident, there was no time to reduce speed further. Black, who is 50 and had been a driver for seven years at the time of the crash, broke his neck as he was flung into the ceiling of his cab. He used his mobile phone to alert colleagues as he drifted in and out of consciousness after the train had slid down an embankment with some coaches jack-knifing through 190 degrees. “You can only see 15ft [4.6m] in front of you,” he told the inquest. “Had I noticed the points out of synch, I could not stop the train. With 300 tonnes of metal at 95mph it is going to go wherever it wants. I had no control. “We stopped at 300m (984ft) that night because we were hitting stuff.” An automatic braking system was triggered within seconds of the derailment but even under normal conditions, a train at that speed would need half a mile of track to stop. The inquest continues. Rail transport Transport Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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Inquest shown photos taken by investigator of broken brackets, empty boltholes and vital bars missing altogether The broken points that caused the fatal Grayrigg train crash were found to be faulty within two hours of the accident, an inquest has been told. A specialist engineer working by torchlight as emergency crews evacuated 86 injured passengers from the wrecked London-Glasgow express, realised the cause as soon as he checked the mechanism. “The points should not have been in the state they were,” said Keith Vernon, a track engineer for Network Rail trained in the investigation of derailments. “There were defects throughout them.” He told the second day of the inquest at Kendal, which is investigating the cause of the death of the only person killed in the crash, 84-year-old Peggy Masson, that he had focused straight away on the Lambrigg 2 points, which allow trains on the West Coast main line to change tracks. An inquiry by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) has already blamed defects in the points for derailing the eight coach train. The points had been due for an inspection five days before the crash, but it was never carried out. Vernon said the points were clearly faulty. “The first thing was, it was apparent there was some damage and something did not look right,” he said. The inquest jury, sitting with south and east Cumbria Coroner Ian Smith, were shown photos taken by Vernon at the time of broken brackets, bolts out of their holes and vital stretcher bars that separate moving rails at the junction missing altogether. Some damage was almost certainly done by the train, but Vernon found no other faults on the stretch of track, deep in the Cumbrian countryside near the village of Grayrigg. He had the points covered with a tarpaulin for a closer inspection in daylight. The state of the points was described in more detail by Simon Kay, an accident inspector for the RAIB, who was part of a team that spent more than a week analysing the area of the crash, which took place on the evening of 23 February 2007. He said that they realised early on that the points were to blame. Explaining the principle of the junctions, which must be able to change the direction of heavy trains moving at high speed, he showed the jury photos and diagrams of what had gone wrong. Three stretcher bars had failed, he said, which meant that the weight of the Virgin Pendolino forced the switching rail to move and the bogies, or wheel sets, on the lead coach slid between the lines, derailing the train. Nuts and bolts had become detached and all three stretcher bars had snapped. The driver of the train, Iain Black, whom Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson called a hero after the crash, said he had no chance of regaining control of the train. He told the inquest earlier how it had “leapt into the air” at 95mph , and although he had throttled back from 125mph shortly before the accident, there was no time to reduce speed further. Black, who is 50 and had been a driver for seven years at the time of the crash, broke his neck as he was flung into the ceiling of his cab. He used his mobile phone to alert colleagues as he drifted in and out of consciousness after the train had slid down an embankment with some coaches jack-knifing through 190 degrees. “You can only see 15ft [4.6m] in front of you,” he told the inquest. “Had I noticed the points out of synch, I could not stop the train. With 300 tonnes of metal at 95mph it is going to go wherever it wants. I had no control. “We stopped at 300m (984ft) that night because we were hitting stuff.” An automatic braking system was triggered within seconds of the derailment but even under normal conditions, a train at that speed would need half a mile of track to stop. The inquest continues. Rail transport Transport Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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Nguyen Thu Tram and Nguyen Ngoc Quang threatened with imprisonment after collaborating with the Guardian on a story about harassment of pro-democracy activists Two Vietnamese dissidents have fled the country under the threat of imprisonment or worse after collaborating with the Guardian on an article that highlighted a mounting crackdown in the country . In addition, the correspondent who wrote the story, freelancer Dustin Roasa, was detained as he tried to return to Vietnam recently and held overnight at Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat airport before being put on a flight out of the country the next day. “You are not welcome in Vietnam for security reasons,” Roasa was told. The article published in January exposed how dozens of pro-democracy activists were monitored, harassed, arrested, beaten and imprisoned for challenging the authority of the Communist party. Two dissidents quoted, Nguyen Thu Tram and Nguyen Ngoc Quang, were forced to flee Vietnam under threat of arrest and now live uncertain lives as refugees, all for speaking to a foreign reporter. Roasa set up a series of meetings during a two-day trip to Vietnam in January. His rendezvous with Nguyen Thu Tram in a cafe passed off without incident. But when Nguyen Thu Tram returned to her mother-in-law’s house, she found the police waiting for her. They returned several times that day to question her about meeting with Roasa. The next day, she moved to a church to protect her family, but the authorities found her there. A group of police showed up, beat a female pastor in the head with a baton until she collapsed bleeding, and threatened to arrest Nguyen Thu Tram. “I knew I could not stay in Vietnam, because I wasn’t safe,” she said. “I had no other option. I had to go.” The authorities began harassing her relatives, such that her mother and youngest sister decided to leave Vietnam, too, despite having no involvement in political activism. Roasa said that when he returned to the hotel, he was pulled to one side by a receptionist. She told him the security police had come to ask about him. “You must have done very bad things,” she said. “Run, before they come back for you.” Roasa told the Guardian: “I didn’t want to endanger anyone, so I called them on Skype to let them know what had happened. No one was surprised, as they were all accustomed to being monitored regularly. Two of them agreed with me that it was too dangerous to meet.” But Nguyen Ngoc Quang insisted that the meeting go ahead. He brought along two friends: a dissident lawyer who often challenges the authorities on human rights violations in the government-controlled courts, and an English-speaking friend to interpret. After the interview, Nguyen Ngoc Quang and his lawyer friend prepared to drive away on a motorbike. They were immediately surrounded by plainclothes agents, also on motorbikes. A high-speed chase ensued, before Nguyen Ngoc Quang’s lawyer friend managed to drop him at a large apartment block. There, he took off a layer of clothes and covered his face with a surgical mask commonly used in south-east Asia to fend off dust. He slipped out past the 30 or so agents he estimates were in the vicinity. “It was audacious for me to leave like that, but they weren’t expecting it,” he said later. Upon hearing from a well-placed friend that he faced substantial prison time, he left the country that day with the help of the country’s dissident network. Nguyen Ngoc Quang has been granted refugee status by the UN and awaits settlement in a third country. Nguyen Thu Tram’s case is still being processed, but there is reason to be hopeful that she, too, will be granted refugee status. • Comment, Dustin Roasa: Communist party ratchets up the pressure Vietnam Communism Asia Pacific guardian.co.uk
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