• No4 seed wins 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 • Scot will play winner of Rafael Nadal v Mardy Fish next Andy Murray reached the Wimbledon semi-finals for the third successive year with a routine 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory over the unseeded Spaniard Feliciano López. The first two sets were as comfortable as the No4 seed could possibly have expected at this stage of a grand slam, with Murray playing very well but receiving a significant amount of help from his opponent. Murray wrapped up the first set comfortably, piling the pressure on Lopez and taking the set 6-3. López is a talented player on grass and making his third appearance in the Wimbledon quarter-finals – and he had been hugely impressive in a straight-sets win over Andy Roddick in the third round but few were predicting another upset here. The only surprise was that it took Murray until the sixth game to engineer a break point. And then he needed three before he did finally move ahead, López netting an attempted drop shot. The Scot was on cruise control, and he could even afford to miss three set points in López’s next service game before clinching it on his fifth chance when his spanked a forehand into the net. Murray remained totally focused and a superb passing shot brought up another break point in the third game of the second set but López, who has served more aces in the tournament than anyone else, quickly shut the door. The Spaniard was bound to be feeling the effects of a lengthy five-set match against Lukasz Kubot in round four, where he had fought back from two sets down, and his right thigh was heavily taped up. A forehand volley dumped into the net gave Murray a break for 3-2, and from there he was utterly untroubled, clinching the set 6-4 courtesy of yet another unforced error from López The Spaniard finally made a game of it in the third set, forcing his first deuce and then his only break points, but the Scot held firm to stay on course for a first grand slam title. Murray had lost only eight points on his serve in the first two sets, and never more than two in a single game, but there were signs at the start of the third that things might be changing. López took his opponent to deuce for the first time in game three, finally stringing a series of good shots together, but his revival was quickly curtailed by another Murray break. It took the 24-year-old at his best, with a forehand winner down the line followed by a stunning pass on the run. Murray held to make it 4-2 without too many problems, but he began to grimace and struggle a little with his movement. He did not summon the trainer but in the eighth game he found himself facing his first break points of the match. López, though, could not take advantage, and three successive aces helped Murray wrap up a simple victory. Murray will face the winner of the quarter-final between Rafael Nadal and Mardy Fish for a place in the final Andy Murray Wimbledon 2011 Wimbledon Tennis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Rumors of Hugo Chavez’s pending death have been greatly exaggerated—or at least somewhat exaggerated—as new video aired on Cuban television yesterday shows a healthy looking Chavez talking with Fidel Castro, reports the BBC . Reports have swirled that the Venezuelan president is in critical condition in a Cuban hospital,…
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Grade II-listed attraction formerly known as Palace Pier placed on market for first time in more than 25 years One of Britain’s most famous seaside attractions, Brighton Pier, has been put up for sale for the first time in more than 25 years. Its owner, Noble Group, has not revealed a guide price for the Grade II*-listed landmark but the company handling its sale, GVA Humberts Leisure, reported strong interest from potential buyers. Noble, which has owned the structure since 1984, has invested £35m in the 112-year-old pier, formerly known as the Palace Pier. Brighton Pier is regarded as one of Britain’s most visited places, with 18 themed attractions and rides and two amusement arcades. Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee have all paid a visit, as have more recent celebrities such as the Who and Arctic Monkeys. Two Carry On films, Carry On At Your Convenience and Carry On Girls, were partly shot on location there. Along the coast in Brighton is another landmark, the Grade I-listed West Pier, which remains a twisted shell after being destroyed by fires and storms. As Brighton Pier became one of the UK’s trending topics on Twitter, many users urged a new owner to change its name back to the Palace Pier. Brighton and Hove council leader Bill Randall said new owners would bring the opportunity for new ideas for the structure. David Biesterfield, Noble’s development director, said: “Brighton Pier is unique, a dynamic, modern business based on and sustaining our heritage. Since 1984, Brighton Pier has re-established itself as one of the UK’s leading attractions in one of the country’s most popular and forward-looking city resorts.” Travel & leisure Brighton guardian.co.uk
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France 3 television reporter and cameraman freed by Taliban after 547 days in captivity east of Kabul Two French television journalists held hostage in Afghanistan since December 2009 have been freed, the Elysée has confirmed. Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier who worked for French state TV channel France 3 were kidnapped with three Afghan associates in the mountains of Kapisa east of Kabul while working on a documentary about the protection and reconstruction of a road in the troubled region towards the Pakistan border. Held for 18 months by the Taliban, their detention was the longest hostage saga involving French journalists since the 1980s Lebanon hostage crisis. Ghesquière, 47, and cameraman Taponier, 46 are experienced war journalists whose work had ranged from the Balkans conflict and West Sahara to Afghanistan. The campaign to secure their freedom had become an important cause in France, with their faces draped from massive banners on public buildings, a major stadium concert in their support and their names mentioned nightly at the end of the evening TV news. They were released along with an Afghan interpreter, the other two Afghans had been freed months before. Their families and supporters were gathered at a protest in the centre of Paris today to mark 18 months of their detention when a call came from Nicolas Sarkozy to family members saying they had been freed. The French parliament gave a standing ovation when the news was announced by the prime minister, François Fillon, who said the men were in “good health” and would be back in France “within a few hours”. The last proof of life was a video of the two men dated November 2010. In January, an audio tape attributed to Osama bin Laden had demanded French withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Taliban had earlier made a series of demands in exchange for the journalists, including the liberation of prisoners held by France. France has around 4,000 troops in Afghanistan, mainly east of Kabul. It is the fourth largest contingent in Nato’s Afghan mission. Gradual withdrawal of French troops will begin this year, in line with the US. The exact circumstances of the men’s release after 547 days were not clear. The Elysée denied that a ransom had been paid. Le Monde reported that conditions for the release were met months ago but it had been delayed because of a difference of opinion between local Taliban and their senior hierarchy. The French president publicly thanked “everyone who took part in freeing the hostages” and praised Afghan President Hamid Karzai for his handling of the situation. France Europe Afghanistan Taliban Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Anti-monarchists in Britain are wondering why public spending on Prince Charles and his household shot up 18% at a time when most government departments are grappling with major cutbacks. The prince’s annual accounts show that government grants to cover things like his official travel and the upkeep of his residence…
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Landslide at sea likely cause of surging wave along south coast and hair-raising static electricity An underwater landslide is thought to have caused a small tsunami that sent holidaymakers and anglers scattering in Cornwall. Witnesses reported the sea being sucked out, or receding, before a wave struck the coast on Monday morning. No damage was caused by the wave, thought to have been about 40cm (16in) high and causing a surge up to 90cm (3ft) by the time the seawater pushed into the Yealm estuary, 70 miles up the coast near Plymouth, Devon, but many people, along the south coast, up to Hampshire, were left baffled by the phenomenon. There were reports that static electricity in the air at the time made people’s hair stand on end. Simon Evans, who was digging for bait on the shore at Marazion, near Penzance, described the event as akin to a horror film. He said: “It was really eerie … the weather was really foggy but extremely warm and close, and the sea was as calm as a millpond. “One minute I was stood at the water’s edge then when I turned around the water had retreated around 50 yards. “It was surreal, I couldn’t believe what had happened. I had no idea what caused it, but I didn’t really want to hang about and find out.” He said that having heard about tsunamis, he “jumped in the car and got out of there”. Experts attributed the tsunami to a submarine landslide perhaps a couple of hundred miles out to sea. According to the Tidal Gauge Anomaly measure, which records the difference between the forecast tide and actual tide, the wave was higher by 20cm in Newlyn, 30cm in Plymouth and 40cm in Portsmouth. Bob Hunt, the head guide for St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, said day-trippers were caught out as they walked across the causeway to the island. “One minute they were happily walking across the walkway, the next they were knee-deep in water. It was bizarre. “Ordinarily, the water slowly trickles across the walkway and the tide comes in over a matter of hours but it happened in a flash.” There was also a feeling of lots of static in the air. “People’s hair suddenly stood on end,” Hunt said. Further east, at the border of Cornwall and Devon, sailor Roland Stuart said his vessel was rocked by the wave. “My boat was moving around with the speed of the water rushing in. I wondered what the hell was going on. All sorts of things crossed my mind. Within 15 minutes it was all over.” Film footage taken by one witness showed the tsunami moving up the river Yealm against the natural tidal flow. Bob Brown was launching his dinghy at the mouth of the estuary at about 10.30am on Monday. He said: “The tide was coming in from left to right. All of a sudden it stopped coming in from the sea and went back the other way. It came back at quite a force, all the boats were bobbing around. “To see a tide suddenly stop and go back the other way at four times the speed was unbelievable.” Mark Davidson, associate professor in coastal processes at the University of Plymouth, said people had reported seeing the sea being “sucked out” before a series of waves charged in. He believed it was a tsunami, probably caused not by an earthquake but by a landslide out at sea. Such a landslide might have occurred at a place where the seabed sloped steeply down, such as at the edge of the continental shelf, about 250 miles off Land’s End. However, had it taken place there, Davidson said, the tsunami probably would have been reported elsewhere, not just along the south coast. Oceans Sea level Rivers Geology Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Prospect of a nuclear conflict in the Middle East is raised by senior diplomat and member of the Saudi ruling family A senior Saudi Arabian diplomat and member of the ruling royal family has raised the spectre of nuclear conflict in the Middle East if Iran comes close to developing a nuclear weapon. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington, warned senior Nato military officials that the existence of such a device “would compel Saudi Arabia … to pursue policies which could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences”. He did not state explicitly what these policies would be, but a senior official in Riyadh who is close to the prince said yesterday his message was clear. “We cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don’t. It’s as simple as that,” the official said. “If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, that will be unacceptable to us and we will have to follow suit.” Officials in Riyadh said that Saudi Arabia would reluctantly push ahead with its own civilian nuclear programme. Peaceful use of nuclear power, Turki said, was the right of all nations. Turki was speaking earlier this month at an unpublicised meeting at RAF Molesworth, the airbase in Cambridgeshire used by Nato as a centre for gathering and collating intelligence on the Middle East and the Mediterranean. According to a transcript of his speech obtained by the Guardian, Turki told his audience that Iran was a “paper tiger with steel claws” that was “meddling and destabilising” across the region. “Iran … is very sensitive about other countries meddling in its affairs. But it should treat others like it expects to be treated. The kingdom expects Iran to practise what it preaches,” Turki said. Turki holds no official post in Saudi Arabia but is seen as an ambassador at large for the kingdom and a potential future foreign minister, Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and published by the Guardian last year revealed that King Abdullah, who has ruled Saudi Arabia since 2005, had privately warned Washington in 2008 that if Iran developed nuclear weapons “everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia”. Saudi Arabian diplomats and officials have launched a serious campaign in recent weeks to rally global and regional powers against Iran, fearful that their country’s larger but poorer regional rival is exploiting the Arab Spring to gain influence in the region and within the kingdom itself. Turki also accused Iran of interfering in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and in the Gulf state of Bahrain, where Saudi troops were deployed this year as part of a Gulf Co-operation Council force following widespread protests from those calling for greater democratic rights. Though there has previously been little public comment from Riyadh on developments in Syria, Turki told his audience at Molesworth that President Bashar al-Assad “will cling to power till the last Syrian is killed”. Syria presents a dilemma for Saudi policymakers: although they would prefer not to see popular protest unseat another regime in the region, they view the Damascus regime, which is dominated by members of Syria’s Shia minority, as a proxy for Iran. “The loss of life [in Syria] in the present internal struggle is deplorable. The government is woefully deficient in its handling of the situation,” Turki said at the Molesworth meeting, which took place on 8 June. Though analysts say demonstrations in Bahrain were not sectarian in nature, two senior Saudi officials in Riyadh said this week that Tehran had mobilised the largely Shia protesters against the Sunni rulers of the Gulf state. Iran has a predominantly Shia population. Around 15% of Saudis are Shia. The officials described this minority, which suffers extensive discrimination despite recent attempts at reform, as “vulnerable to external influence”. Though there has been negligible unrest internally, Saudi Arabia has been shaken by the events across the Arab world in recent months and has watched anxiously as a number of allies – such as President Hosni Mubarak – have been ousted or have found themselves in grave difficulties. President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen is being treated in a Saudi Arabian hospital for wounds caused by a mysterious blast that forced him to leave his country this month. The former Tunisian ruler Zine al-Abedine ben Ali, whose relations with Riyadh were complex, is reported to have been housed in a luxurious villa in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah after he fled his homeland for Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials admitted that decision-makers in Saudi Arabia were “not keen” on demonstrators ousting governments, but said they were “even less keen on killing and massacres”. Turki also warned that al-Qaida has been able to create “a sanctuary not unlike Pakistan’s tribal areas” in Yemen. Saudi Arabian foreign policy historically has been pro-western, although differences have emerged with the United States in recent years. The Arab Spring has also caused some tension, with the deployment of troops in Bahrain opposed by Washington. There has also been conflict following western charges that the kingdom has exported radical strands of Islam around the Muslim world.Turki said that “in all areas, Islam must play a central yet development role” and insisted that “closer monitoring” now ensured that funds raised in the kingdom “were not misused”. Internally, Saudi Arabia faced problems because of the youthfulness of its population, radicalism and different sectarian identities, Turki said. Senior officials at the ministry of interior in Riyadh said that Iran was using ideology to “penetrate” the Arabian peninsula “in the same way al-Qaida did”. Turki also reiterated a long-standing Saudi call for a nuclear free zone in the Middle East, which would include both Iran and Israel and would be enforced by the United Nations security council. The prince said sanctions against Iran were working. He welcomed the consensus in Washington that military strikes against Tehran would be counterproductive. Analysts said that Turki’s words about developing nuclear arms may have been intended to focus western attention on Saudi concerns about their regional rival rather than to indicate any kind of definite decision by Riyadh because the practical and diplomatic obstacles of doing so would be immense. William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary said that Iran has recently conducted covert tests of ballistic missiles as well as at least three secret tests of medium-range ballistic missiles since October. Iran and the west remain in dispute over its nuclear programme. The US and its allies insist Tehran aims to develop atomic weapons, a charge that Iran rejects. Saudi Arabia Iran Nuclear weapons Arab and Middle East unrest Syria Middle East Jason Burke guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Someday my prince will come … and have me tracked down at the airport as I try to flee my upcoming marriage to him. That just might be the thought running through the head of South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock—the intended of Monaco’s Prince Albert—who was stopped last…
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Experts brand as unreliable the key evidence that Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was found on victim Meredith Kercher’s bra The appeal by Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend against their convictions for the killing of British student Meredith Kercher took a sensational turn on Wednesday when independent, court-appointed experts dismissed as unreliable forensic evidence crucial to the prosecution case. Two Rome university professors said there was no certainty that traces of DNA found on the alleged murder weapon belonged to Kercher. They added that the vital piece of evidence which linked Knox’s ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, to the scene of the murder – a trace of his DNA on Kercher’s bra clip – could have got there by contamination, as the defence maintained at the trial. The breakthrough for the appellants came just two days after their case suffered a hefty setback. On Monday, Rudy Guede, who has also been convicted and jailed for the murder, repeated his claim that Knox and Sollecito had carried out the killing. What sealed the case against them at their trial, however, was not so much Guede’s changed story as testimony from a string of police scientific experts that appeared to support the prosecutors’ claim that Kercher died in a bizarre sex game involving all three defendants. However, the appeal court’s experts were scathing in their criticism of the reliability of that evidence. “The international procedures for the inspection [of the scene of a crime] were not followed,” professors Stefano Conti and Carla Vecciotti said in their report. Nor had the police respected international standards for the collection and bagging of exhibits. The DNA traces on the knife “appear unreliable in as much as [they were] not supported by scientifically validated analytic procedures”. Knox and Sollecito are currently serving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively for the murder. Guede was given a reduced, 16-year sentence after a plea bargain. Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy United States Europe John Hooper guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Four Oklahomans accused of kidnapping a man and tattooing “RAPEST” on his forehead and “I like little boys” on his chest before beating him unconscious and leaving him for dead have pleaded guilty and been sent to prison. The two male defendants were sentenced to 10 years each and the…
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