Details of the new terror alert system are out, and it looks like Twitter and Facebook are in. As previously reported , the government is replacing its color coding system: In its place will be a two-level system—”elevated” and “imminent”—and alerts might be sent to Americans via Facebook and…
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Boris Johnson and David Cameron have also given in to the helmet brigade, but there’s no legal requirement to do so It is generally accepted that politicians carry a greater responsibility than the average person to lead by example – whether it’s by not fiddling their expenses or not sleeping with their secretaries if they espouse family values. But does this responsibility really extend to adherence to a non-existent law? Before he became mayor of London, Boris Johnson wrote that he refused to wear a cycle helmet on the grounds that he didn’t like “to be lured into any false sense of security” – there are studies suggesting helmeted riders take more risks than those without. But after taking office in 2008 Johnson capitulated to the health and safety police and bought an “undignified plastic hat” . He could not live with himself, he said, if people started to copy his “helmetless insouciance” and thereby put themselves in danger. He was also fed up of people tutting at him at traffic lights – or in the Evening Standard. David Cameron, too, eventually learned that it’s easier to give in to the helmet brigade than rail against them. When he first became opposition leader – those honeyed days when he didn’t have to fill his panniers because his chauffeur was in pursuit – Cameron was occasionally photographed bare-headed, or with his helmet dangling from the handlebars (the cycling equivalent of carrying condoms but refusing to wear them because it “just doesn’t feel the same”). He wouldn’t dare these days. All of this is ridiculous. It is not a legal requirement to wear a helmet in Britain (though Northern Ireland is on the road to introducing such a law ). If Norman Baker was not wearing a seatbelt or had run a red light he could be rightly admonished. But to criticise him for exercising a personal, legal choice is like chiding Andrew Lansley for eating cake when he is health secretary – daft. Helen Pidd’s cycling guide, Bicycle, is published by Penguin. Cycling Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk
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Like Liverpool 45 years ago, Tottenham Hotspur found that pace means nothing without the ball The Champions League broadens horizons but it also sharpens perspectives. What may be laudable in domestic competitions can be a handicap on the bigger stage. Aspiring teams, confident of their abilities, are apt to find the Champions League a humbling experience. Wednesday’s opening leg of the quarter-final between Chelsea and Manchester United would have passed muster as a Premier League fixture. It was more entertaining than the series of clinches that are usually the case when these teams meet. The football was fast and eventful and there was plenty of goalmouth action. In Champions League terms, however, the standard of much of the play was indifferent. There were too many unforced errors and the ball was given away with depressing regularity. The one moment of genuine class was the superb touch with which Ryan Giggs met Michael Carrick’s crossfield pass before setting up Wayne Rooney for the winning goal. Perhaps we have all been spoiled by Barcelona. Teams of this quality come along once in a generation, if football is lucky, so everybody else is bound to suffer by comparison. Nevertheless, Barça are the ones to beat and, as Arsenal showed at the Emirates, they can be defeated. Last season, moreover, José Mourinho’s Internazionale found the organisation and the firepower to overcome Barcelona in the Champions League semi-finals and Chelsea and Manchester United have each beaten them in recent tournaments. But that was then. The likelihood of a team emerging from a generally fallow season in the Premier League to take on Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta, Xavi and the rest and emerge triumphant was always doubtful. Manchester United are now the only serious candidates. Chelsea are hard to take seriously with their coach, Carlo Ancelotti, who was compelled to play Fernando Torres ahead of Nicolas Anelka as Didier Drogba’s partner in a Champions League quarter-final. Watching Torres fumble his way through the match while TV cut away to Roman Abramovich viewing his £50m signing impassively from the back of the stand, was to be reminded of the moment in Citizen Kane when the great man’s protege is singing her little heart out and the camera pans up to two stage hands on a platform high above. One looks at the other and their eyes meet in silent disapproval. On Tuesday night, Tottenham Hotspur could be said to have joined Arsenal in suffering the Camp Nou experience, except that their conquerors were not Barcelona but Real Madrid at the Bernabéu. Spurs, like Arsenal, had a player, Peter Crouch, sent off. Yet, even if they had remained at full strength, it was difficult to see how they would have been able to retain possession long enough to get the ball up to the tall
Continue reading …The strange saga of former billionaire Patricia Kluge continues: Her winery was snapped up at a foreclosure auction yesterday by none other than Donald Trump. The 776-acre Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard “had a $28 million mortgage on it, and I bought it for $6.2 million,” Trump tells the…
Continue reading …Ashley Judd recently revealed in her memoir that she was sexually abused as a child—and now mother Naomi says the same thing happened to her, Radar reports. Yesterday on The View , Naomi says that she first revealed the abuse to her therapist two years ago, when he asked about…
Continue reading …It could be months or years before authorities have simply stabilized Japan’s nuclear crisis, but Japanese and American engineers are already teaming up to figure out how to dismantle the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant’s reactors. Toshiba and Westinghouse are among the firms planning the gargantuan task: Never before have four reactors…
Continue reading …With the exporting port of San Pedro under his control and Laurent Gbagbo squirreled away in an underground tunnel , Alassane Ouattara is asking the EU to lift its sanctions on the Ivory Coast, and let him restart the country’s lucrative cocoa trade, the BBC reports. But the situation in the…
Continue reading …As Donald Trump brings new media attention to the birther movement, the White House is keeping mum—but Joe Biden’s daughter isn’t. Ashley Biden slammed Trump on Facebook last night, saying he “makes me ill…bring it on!” She added that “this discussion or debate over whether or not President…
Continue reading …The US military is still detaining terror suspects in a network of around 20 secret prisons spread throughout Afghanistan, interrogating them without charge for weeks at a time, sources tell the AP . For a long time the Pentagon denied the existence of such facilities, even in the face of descriptions…
Continue reading …Snipers are gunning down children and other civilians in the Libyan city of Misrata, which is held by rebels but under siege from Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, UNICEF said today. “What we have are reliable and consistent reports of children being among the people targeted,” a spokesman for the UN’s children…
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