• Hit the auto-update button for the latest posts • Send your thoughts to paul.doyle@guardian.co.uk • Follow minute-by-minute coverage of Inter v Schalke • And keep up to speed with all of tonight’s live scores 7:42pm: “My god, I thought the San Siro was the best football stadium on the planet but having walked out here a moment ago – my god, this is the best football stadium on the planet,” exults Ray Wilkins on Sky. 7:35pm: Either the noise in the Bernabeu is incredibly loud, or Sky are using some canned cheers to drown out the analysis of Glenn Hoddle … Mr ‘Arry Redknapp, live from the tunnel: “The plan is to make sure we stay in the game tonight. We’re going to make sure we use the pace we have in the wide positions and attack them at every opportunity.” The Special One on Spurs: “They are the team that has improved the most since I left England. I like the way they play, they can mix an English style and a continental style.” 7:25pm: “Hey Paul, why do you have a press photo from Two and a Half Men at the top of this report?” jabbers Phil West. “Charlie Sheen looks remarkably well but Jon Cryer doesn’t appear to have taken the cancellation so well. and how about 3-2 to Spurs for a prediction? OK, the first bit was funnier ….” Preamble: Tonight we go some way to finding out who Spurs are: are they this season’s Monaco or Valencia, the unheralded side who win the admiration of neutrals by striding fearlessly all the way to the Champions League final? Or are they basically streakers, a band of amusing interlopers who briefly entertain the crowd before being put back in their place with a colossal kick up their scrawny backsides? Spurs are sure to attack tonight, or at least try to. But how effectively can they do that? Their forwards have let them down in the Premier League this season, which is why Everton, Bolton, Newcastle and Blackpool have all scored more goals than them, but in Europe they have tended to be more clinical: they may have mustered fewer shots and corners than any of the other quarter-finalists, yet they are the tournament’s joint top-scorers … along with Real. The home side will certainly go for the kill tonight – and the stony-paced Corluka is in for a severe trial at the hands of Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcelo – but the presence of Lennon and Bale means they have the wherewithal to punish Real rampaging full-backs on the counter, especially Sergio Ramos. If Peter Crouch and Rafa Van der Vaart have their shooting boots on, Spurs could get an away goal or two to set up a gigantic return match at White Hart Lane. Prediction? How about 3-1 to Real, with Bale to pull up injured after 20 minutes, Van der Vaart to do likewise after about 50 minutes, Gallas and Adebayor to be red-carded for an almighty strop-off, and Jose Mourinho to hijack the headlines by cartwheeling across the pitch around the 88-minute mark and/or jumping into the stands to nut Joe Jordan. Teams: Real: Casillas; Sergio Ramos, Pepe, Carvahlo, Marcelo; Di Maria, Xabi Alonso, Ozil, Khedira; Adebayor, Cristiano Ronaldo Subs: Adan, Kaka, Diarra, Granero, Arbeloa, Garay, Higuain Spurs: Gomes; Corluka, Gallas, Dawson, Assou-Ekotto; Lennon, Sandro, Modric, Bale; Van der Vaart; Crouch Subs: Cudicini, Huddlestone, Jenas, Pavlyuchenko, Defoe, Bassong, Kranjcar Referee (and also a banker, so altogether a very popular man, no doubt): F Brych (Germany) Champions League Real Madrid Tottenham Hotspur Paul Doyle guardian.co.uk
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Search is on for two Tennessee plant workers after 12m litres of sewage leak from holding tank, contaminating local river Two workers are missing after a sewage treatment plant in Tennessee spilled millions of litres of sewage. The Tennessee emergency management agency (Tema) said a holding tank at the plant had given way, leaking sewage into the Little Pigeon river. Up to 12m litres (2.6m gallons) of sewage spilled, according to Tema spokesman Jeremy Heidt. Some of the spill entered the small river that flows through Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Both cities are top destinations for tourists visiting the Great Smoky Mountains national park. Eric Brakins, the assistant city manager for Pigeon Forge, said his city was helping to look for the two workers. The cause of the failure has not yet been determined, state officials said. The Mountain Press newspaper in Sevierville reported there had been a mudslide or rockslide in the area after heavy rains. It said the breach was accompanied by what sounded like an explosion and that water began rushing out. “There was a catastrophic failure of a holding tank at the plant,” said Bob Miller, a spokesman for the national park. The national park service has gone to the scene because the sewage flowed into the river, which is on park land. Tisha Calabrese-Benton, spokeswoman for the Tennessee department of environment and conservation, said its officials were on the way to the accident site. People are being warned not to come in contact with the river until more is known about the accident, she said. “Obviously, we are not going to want people to have contact with the water until we know what is going on, until we can sample and determine what cleanup is needed.” United States Waste Pollution guardian.co.uk
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Campaigners call for the US soldier, whose mother is Welsh, to get consular access in the military prison where he is held Campaigners on behalf of Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking classified cables to WikiLeaks, have welcomed assurances that the British government will restate its “concerns” to Washington over the soldier’s treatment. Manning, whose mother is Welsh, is being held in a military prison in Virginia, after being arrested in May 2010 on suspicion of leaking data including 250,000 diplomatic cables to the site. His supporters argue that the conditions of his imprisonment – he is held in solitary confinement, stripped of his clothes every night and subjected to continual checks because he is deemed a suicide risk – are punitive and unduly harsh. The UN has launched an inquiry into whether his conditions amount to torture. In a parliamentary debate late on Monday, the Foreign Office minister Henry Bellingham said staff at the British embassy in Washington had expressed concerns to the state department on 29 March about the treatment of Manning, who has not been tried or convicted. In response to the debate, he said, “we will instruct our officials at our embassy in Washington again to report our concerns to officials in the state department”. While acknowledging that Manning’s lawyer has stated that he does not hold a British passport or consider himself to be British, the minister stressed that the soldier “is British by descent” despite being born in the US, thanks to his mother’s nationality. Naomi Colvin, from the UK Friends of Bradley Manning, welcomed the sympathetic approach of British ministers, adding: “We want Bradley to be given consular access. The British government should now support his family here in Wales, and somebody from the embassy should be visiting Bradley to report back.” The question of the 23-year-old soldier’s conditions of detention was becoming a “strongly-felt issue” in Wales, said Colvin, “and Welsh nationalists in Plaid Cymru are keen to take this on”. Manning’s father Brian, now divorced from his mother, met and married her when he was himself in the US military and stationed at Brawdy, near Haverfordwest. Manning was born in Oklahoma but spent some of his teenage years in Wales. The case was raised in parliament by the Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on human rights. She said Manning’s treatment was “cruel and unnecessary and we should be saying so”. In response, Bellingham acknowledged that the US president, Barack Obama, had received assurances from the US military that Manning’s treatment was “appropriate” and met “basic standards”, but restated the government’s commitment to “a foreign policy that will always have support for human rights … at its irreducible core.” “As far as Her Majesty’s government are concerned, the conditions in which an individual is detained must meet international standards,” he said. “Conditions that fail to meet this standard may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This is particularly important for an individual in pre-trial detention.” Bradley Manning WikiLeaks Foreign policy Esther Addley David Leigh guardian.co.uk
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Total number of victims up to eight as authorities scour several square miles of sand dunes and thick undergrowth Police have returned to an overgrown stretch of land off Long Island a day after three more bodies were found, taking the number of victims of a suspected serial killer in the New York city area to eight. It is a huge crime scene – several square miles of windswept sand dunes and thick undergrowth – that has been scoured several times by police searchers, but more bodies keep turning up. All of the corpses identified so far are young, white women who worked as prostitutes, and police believe they are dealing with a serial killer, or killers. The victims found their clients on Craig’s List or other similar websites and police believe some of them, perhaps all, were killed elsewhere and then dumped on Oak Island, a narrow barrier island an hour’s drive from Manhattan. The grisly harvest of bodies has come in several batches. In December, police began to search for a missing prostitute, Shannan Gilbert, 24. She had fled a client’s beachside house early one morning in May, screaming for help then disappearing into the dunes. They never found her. The client was cleared from being a suspect after police searched his home and vehicle. While looking for Gilbert, they found four bodies hidden in and around Gilgo Beach. All were wrapped in hessian sacks and appeared to have been deposited during the past three years. None were Gilbert. More than three months later and with no one caught for the crimes, police have made yet more grim findings. At the end of last month and about a mile from the original dumping ground, a policeman passing Oak Beach in his patrol car noticed an object. It turned out to be yet another body of a young woman. Immediately a mini-army of police and firefighters, helicopters and dog handling teams, sealed off the huge area with police tape, scouring the tick-infested scrub. They later found three more bodies. The authorities are working 12-hour days, searching the area again and again. None of the new bodies has yet been officially identified, but police are working on the assumption that they fit the pattern of the earlier victims. Investigators are appealing for information from people involved in the local sex trade. “They certainly must have some information. Anything that they may deem to be significant or even insiginificant may be significant to us,” said Thomas Spota, the Suffolk County district attorney. Forensic experts are trying to identify the latest remains and see if they include Gilbert. Her disappearance might harbour key clues. She was last seen running from a client’s house and shouting: “They’re trying to kill me.” She banged on a neighbour’s door but ran off before the police were called. Police spoke to her later on her mobile phone but she was disorientated and told them she was on a different beach. She was never heard of or seen again. The victims identified so far are Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25; Melissa Barthelmy, 24; Megan Waterman, 22; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27. Police insist that they have devoted huge resources and they continue to appeal to the public not to be prejudiced by the fact that at least some of the victims so far have been sex workers. “What activities these victims may have engaged in prior to their murder does not matter. They were young women whose lives were cut tragically short,” said Richard Dormer, Suffolk County’s police commissioner. New York United States Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media You know, there are just some things that look and sound ridiculous, even if you’re obviously opinionated and obviously trying to make a point. This is one of them. John King looks like a fool with his touchy-feely screen while fantasizing about what one billion dollars could do. His reference to one billion dollars goes to the current meme about what the Obama campaign 2012 might end up spending. Of course, he forgets to note a few things, like the absence of corporate cash funneled through anonymous 501(c)(4) associations, and the DNC’s announcement that they won’t accept corporate funds for the convention. I also thought it was interesting that King chose red states’ deficits as his comparison point for what that billion could do. Poor red states. They won’t see much of that money. But you know, one billion dollars is an insane amount of money to have to raise to keep ahead of the TeaBirchers’ funding paths. As I write, I’m busily tracking over $5 million funneled through one public donor-advised fund to right-wing “policy” organizations. So while the Republicos want to make a big stinking deal out of the money spent by Obama’s side of things, just remember they’ll end up spending more between their secret money tunnels, their anonymous corporate donors’ ad buys, and the inevitable stirring-up of the “angry base” by the Tea Party. Reuters has a more cynical take : Aides note the huge number of individual donors who gave to Obama’s campaign — a record 4 million. But only 25 percent of the money came from small donors who gave $200 or less, according to the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute in Washington. My response: True, but 68% gave $2,300 or less . Not exactly the big money, high-rolling donor base, is it? Reuters continues: Obama will inevitably lose many of the individual donors who backed him four years ago, said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College and expert on campaign fundraising. “That’s something that we’re not going to see this time around, that level of excitement about the Obama candidacy that we saw last time, from people who are not traditional donors or traditional Democratic primary voters,” he said. Maybe. Maybe not. I think these folks are a little bit quick to write off the Democratic base, which may not be starry-eyed about their President but who might be white-hot furious over the Republicans’ overreach since November, 2010. We know what’s at stake here. Whether President Obama has disappointed us or met expectations, he’s a far sight better than the alternative. I don’t know about you, but the idea of President Pawlenty gives me the heebie-jeebies. Vice-President TeaBircher doesn’t do much for me either. Let’s just see how it all rolls out. In the meantime, John King’s fantasy life is really best left off my TV screen.
Continue reading …NYT’s Paul Krugman Bashes Rep. Paul Ryan’s Budget, but Lays Off the ‘Flim-Flam Sauce’
April 5, 2011 No Comment
Respectable economist turned partisan New York Times columnist Paul Krugman weighed in at his nytimes.com blog Tuesday morning on the ambitious budget proposal for Fiscal Year '12, released by the chairman of the House Budget Committee, the formerly flim-flam-sauce-drenched Rep. Paul Ryan. In his post, headlined “ The Threat Within ,” Krugman at least held off the childish insults this time, perhaps because it backfired in his face back in August 2010, when the source he used in his column to “prove” Ryan was a flim-flammer acting in bad faith actually wrote a defense of him in response. Krugman feared Obama would not sufficiently demagogue the issue like brave Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi did when Bush tried to save Social Security through a partial privatization in 2005. In 2005, the de facto Democratic leader was Nancy Pelosi. And she never bought into either the crisis-mongering or the Beltway desire to prove oneself “serious” by courageously agreeing to hurt ordinary Americans to make the nation safe for high-end tax cuts. She maintained a steely resolve: this privatization shall not pass. Pelosi is still there. But Barack Obama is now the party’s leader. And let’s be frank: Obama still, after all that has happened, seems devoted to the dream of transcending partisanship, a dream he tries to serve by being nice to Republican ideas no matter how terrible those ideas are. (I did warn about this during the primaries — just saying.)
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Unlikely to ever appear in a giant egg, Adele’s everyday universality has let her talent translate into phenomenal sales Last week Adele’s second album, 21, sold 257,000 copies in the UK , a sales figure that would look incredible as an opening sales week for any album by any global superstar. The fact that the album was celebrating its 10th week at No 1, and that each of the previous nine weeks it had sold over 100,000 copies, makes what Adele has achieved look miraculous. The last female singer to spend that long at No 1 in the UK was Madonna in 1990 with her greatest hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection. For Adele, the success of 21 is part of a perfect storm of talent, timing and a connection that’s transcended gender, age and credibility. But what does it say about the state of the music industry? Does Adele’s success signal a return to the mid-noughties musical depression, when the likes of James Blunt dominated the charts? Her success may well lead to a glut of similar acts aiming for an MOR audience, but that’s more the fault of an industry desperate to recreate any kind of success by creating poor facsimiles until the world shouts “stop now”. What seems to have set Adele apart is her apparent ordinariness, bar that incredible voice. While Gaga parades around in a dress made of meat and Beyoncé orbits a world out of touch to the majority of most human beings, Adele’s chain-smoking, girl-you’d-like-to-go-to-the-pub-with persona stands out. Even for a British act, her unstarriness goes against trend, with fellow Brit school alumnus Jessie J adopting a very American habit of over-emoting, talking about a ” journey ” and making the idea of being a pop star seem fairly arduous. It’s this universality and broad appeal that’s helped her translate talent into sales. While the first single from 21, Rolling in the Deep, appealed to Radio 1 listeners and bloggers with production by Paul Epworth and a remix by Jamie from the xx, the second single, Someone Like You, is a Radio 2 staple, a stripped-back, piano-augmented ballad that silenced the cavernous O2 Arena during this year’s Brit Awards . The broadsheet press can write pages and pages on her safe in the knowledge that there’s enough of a muso connection – Rick Rubin worked on the album, there’s a cover of the Cure, Mumford & Sons were an influence – while the gossip magazines have latched onto the fact that the album is one long break-up record, eager to find the ex. In 1990, Madonna was a global superstar with a back catalogue of era-defining hits to her name. She was untouchable and, tellingly, unknowable. She was (and still is) a megastar, but a megastar of a different age. These days, we want to know a bit more about our artists; that they have relationship problems, walk their dog. Her selling point and appeal is precisely the fact that she exists at the point between everyday ordinariness and pop star. She’s not boring, but at the same time she’s probably unlikely to arrive at the Grammys in a giant egg. Her success is testament to the power of good songs and the fact that if you can create a buzz (as she did in November with a stark reading of Someone Like You on Jools Holland) and harness that buzz through a solid album, then it can still translate to sales. For now, Adele’s success should be celebrated, not least for becoming an unlikely global star on her own terms. The danger is that we’re headed for a glut of fairly “beige” pop, a situation that led to the “birth” of Gaga a few years back. Pop goes in cycles and it feels like we’re headed back towards the very middle of MOR. Adele Pop and rock Celebrity Michael Cragg guardian.co.uk
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British Council celebrates 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s orbit of the Earth with an exhibition and statue in the Mall Yuri Gagarin, the son of peasant farmworkers who instantly became the most famous man on Earth when he went into space and orbited the planet 50 years ago, is to be celebrated with a statue on the Mall in London. The British Council announced that it is going to mark the achievements of the great Russian explorer by placing him opposite the statue of a great British explorer, Captain Cook. Andrea Rose, the council’s visual arts director and driving force behind the project, said the cosmonaut’s successful mission in Vostok 1 was “a story that is of importance to all of us”. She added: “The fragility and the daring and the bravery of the missions are something beyond recognition and are reasons why we wanted to celebrate Gagarin as a symbol of aspiration, as well as intellectual curiosity.” Rose said there was an imbalance in western knowledge of space history. We know the story of Apollo and Neil Armstrong but fewer of us now know the incredible story of Gagarin. As well as the statue, the British Council will host an exhibition on his life which will include rare and intimate photographs lent by the Gagarin family as well as artefacts such as an ejector seat and the first space suit, SK-1. The project partly stemmed from Rose’s professional connection with Gagarin’s daughter, Elena Gagarina, director of the Kremlin museums where, next year, a Henry Moore exhibition will be held. Rose had been talking to Gagarina about lending Moore’s double-edged sculpture – which has for the past 40 years been outside the Houses of Parliament – to Russia to display in the Kremlin gardens. Rose then began thinking about what could be brought from Russia as a possible replacement for Moore’s sculpture and so began the hunt for a suitable Gagarin statue. The one chosen is a copy of the Gagarin statue which stands outside the cosmonaut’s former school – Lyubertsy Vocational School No 10. The authorities there were reluctant to give up the original so the Russian space agency offered to have a cast made from the original moulds. It will be installed on the Mall on 14 July for a year. The date and spot were chosen to mark the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s trip to London where he met the prime minister Harold Macmillan. The statue will be made from zinc alloy and stand on a white Portland stone plinth. “We don’t want kids swinging from the orbit,” said Rose. There are lots of more formal statues of Gagarin but this jaunty one was praised by the cosmonaut’s biographer, Piers Bizony. “It is a reflection of the man,” he said. “Yuri Gagarin was charming, funny, sweet-natured and kind.” The statue is also a way of fostering good relations between the UK and Russia. Vitaly Davydov, state secretary and deputy head of the Russian space agency, said: “Gagarin belongs not only to Russia but to all countries and nations, and it’s important to us that the statue of Yuri Gagarin will be shown in London – one of the world’s most international and intercultural cities – to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight. “Russia and the UK have much in common, not only as allies during the second world war and victory gained through sacrifice, but as nations which have always been eager to travel to the unknown and to discover new space. Gagarin symbolises this aspiration.” Yuri Gagarin London Russia Space Sculpture Mark Brown guardian.co.uk
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Foreign minister declares Heather Hodges ‘persona non grata’ after leaked cables signed by her office allege police corruption The US ambassador to Ecuador has been asked to leave the country over leaked diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks that allege police corruption. The foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, told reporters he had not received a satisfactory explanation from the ambassador, Heather Hodges, about cables previously released by WikiLeaks and signed by her office. “Ecuador’s government has decided to consider this woman as a persona non grata … we have asked her to leave the country in the shortest time possible,” he said. Patino said the decision did not mean Ecuador was breaking off relations with the United States. WikiLeaks has caused an international uproar by handing sensitive US diplomatic documents to the media. The US ambassador to Mexico resigned last month after a public spat with President Felipe Calderón. Tensions were fueled by WikiLeaks reports of comments made by the envoy about Mexico’s lack of co-ordination in battling drug cartels. Late last year, Ecuador offered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the possibility of working and seeking residency in the Andean country. But President Rafael Correa later withdrew the offer saying Assange had broken US laws. Ecuador US foreign policy The US embassy cables US national security WikiLeaks United States guardian.co.uk
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PC Simon Harwood says he gave newspaper seller ‘a very poor push’ to move him away from police line during G20 protests The police officer who struck and pushed Ian Tomlinson shortly before he died was “amazed” to see the newspaper vendor fall to the ground after what he termed “a pretty poor push”, an inquest has heard. PC Simon Harwood told the central London jury that he had decided to tackle Tomlinson because he thought he was refusing to move away from a police line during the G20 protests in London in April 2009. “I felt at the time he was obstructing the police line moving forward,” he said. However, asked whether he had believed the 47-year-old posed a threat to either himself or anyone else, Harwood repied: “No, I don’t believe he did.” Harwood said he stepped out from behind a pair of police dog handlers to “engage” Tomlinson after he failed to move away. “I thought it was proportional to do so, because he was still not moving away from the police line,” he said. “I then struck Mr Tomlinson around the upper half of his left leg – to his thigh – with my baton. I didn’t get any immediate reacton from Mr Tomlinson … as [a] reaction, I pushed him in the top part of his right shoulder. I pushed him with my right palm. Once I had pushed Mr Tomlinson across the shoulder, he tended to fall forward and as he fell forwards I was then, was amazed, as he fell forwards, and once he had fallen over [I] was then looking around to make sure of any other threat that may be in front of me as well, and then retraced back behind the dogs.” Asked by Alison Hewitt, counsel for the inquest, why he had been amazed to see Tomlinson fall, Harwood replied: “The push that I had used wasn’t that much force in my mind to have caused that to happen.” Pressed on how much force he had used, Harwood said: “It was reasonable, but it was quite a poor push, from my recollection, it was a very poor push … usually [the blow] will go into the back of someone, but I actually pushed across Mr Tomlinson, it went across his shoulder, rather than into his shoulder … contact was made, but it glanced rather than pushed through. It wasn’t pushed through.” Asked if he agreed with witnesses who said he had fallen hard, the police officer said: “No I was more shocked [by] the fact that he actually fell forward, I couldn’t explain, from my memory whether he fell hard or not.” He told the jury he had moved away from the scene after judging Tomlinson to be OK as he had started to talk and gesticulate to other officers. He then walked away and did not see Tomlinson again. He heard what had happened to Tomlinson about a week later after watching a report on the news. The inquest continues. Ian Tomlinson G20 London Sam Jones Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk
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