Friday, 24 June 2011
-
Grant approves Villas-Boas appointment
Former Chelsea manager Avram Grant believes new boss Andre Villas-Boas has what it take to succeed at Stamford Bridge.
|||London – Former Chelsea manager Avram Grant believes new boss Andre Villas-Boas has what it take to succeed at Stamford Bridge.
At 33, the Portuguese Villas-Boas will be the youngest manager in the English Premier League when he succeeds Italian Carlo Ancelotti as soon as his release from Porto is agreed.
Villas-Boas previously worked at Stamford Bridge as a scout under compatriot Jose Mourinho.
Grant, director of football at Chelsea before replacing Mourinho in 2007, said Villas-Boas's youth would not count against him.
“He is a very nice guy, is intelligent, a nice person and I enjoyed being with him, even if it was for only a short time,” Grant told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“Does he have the experience? No. But the authority? Time will say. I think yes,” the Israeli added.
“I know he is young, but Pep Guardiola when he went to Barcelona was young, without experience and he did a great job,” former Portsmouth manager Grant, sacked as boss of West Ham within hours of their relegation from the Premier League last seaon, explained.
“Football is a game of results, experience is important but more important is the quality and the authority to take a team and move it forwards.”
Last term saw Villas-Boas guide Porto, his hometown club, to a treble of the Portuguese league and cup titles, as well as the Europa League, and an impressed Grant said: “When I saw Porto and how the players behaved towards him, the players liked him and he had authority, so he can do it also here.
“At the end of the day, players are human beings and if they see that he has the quality to take them forwards, they will respect him.”
Meanwhile Grant, despite his own experience of being sacked by Chelsea after leading them to a penalty shoot-out Champions Legaue final defeat by English rivals Manchester United in Moscow three years ago, defended the Blues' Russian billionare owner Roman Abramovich against charges of excessive ruthlessness.
Many observers lamented the fact Ancelotti was dimissed just a season after overseeing a Chelsea league and FA Cup double, but Grant said: “Roman is a guy who says he wants results, and he gives you everything to achieve the results.
“He wants it as quick as you can, and you can expect it because he has put a lot of money in.
“At the end of the day, football is a game of results, especially Chelsea.”
Villas-Boas, who got his start in coaching under the late former England manager Sir Bobby Robson, worked under Mourinho at Inter Milan, as well as Chelsea, before taking the same route to the manager's chair at Stamford Bridge by previously being in charge of Porto.
However, Grant insisted: “Villas-Boas will be himself.
“As a young coach, he will take some things from here, some things from there, but as far as I have heard of him from last season, he likes to keep his own personality, his own way of how he looks at football – and you can see that his team plays a little different than Mourinho.” – Sapa-AFP
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/grant-approves-villas-boas-appointment-1.1087814
Art Amir Khan South Korea Global economy Supermarkets Mark Zuckerberg
-
First Three Images From 'The Hobbit'
Filed under: Movie News, Coming Soon
Many of us thought this day would never come, but now that we've got some physical proof on our hands, all us Ringers out there can finally rest easy. Folks, 'The Hobbit' is happening.
The latest of updates comes in the form of three images that director Peter Jackson recently shared with Entertainment Weekly. The first shows Jackson going over a scene with Martin Freeman in costume as Bilbo Baggins, the second shows Sir Ian McKellen looking exactly the same as pipe-smoking Gandalf the Grey, and the final image shows Freeman again with a company of what look to be dwarves sitting around in his home.
They're all gorgeous and they've got us giddy as sin, so hit the jump to see the images in full and Jackson's added commentary on them.
Continue ReadingSource: http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/06/23/the-hobbit-first-images/
Roberto Mancini JLS Protest Norway Alexander Litvinenko London
-
Brazil struggling with WC preparations
Brazil is lagging behind on their World Cup preparations with stadiums and transport being some of their biggest concerns.
|||Moscow – Brazil has fallen behind with its preparations for the 2014 World Cup and faces a battle to build new stadiums, airports and transport links in time for the event, Fifa Secretary General Jerome Valcke said on Friday.
“I won't say that Brazil started too late (but) we are not advanced in Brazil,” he told an audience in Russia, which will host the subsequent tournament in 2018.
“We don't have stadiums, we don't have airports, we don't have a national transportation system in place,” he said during a keynote address to a football forum in Moscow.
Brazil, the most successful World Cup nation with five victories, has been much-criticised for its preparations since winning the rights to host its first tournament since 1950.
A new stadium for largest city Sao Paulo has already been ruled out as a venue for 2013 dress rehearsal the Confederations Cup, while cost increases have hampered new building plans.
“To deliver stadiums is the most important part... it's a lot of work. The Sao Paulo stadium is definitely not a World Cup stadium and that is why it is closed,” Valcke said.
Valcke, effectively Fifa's number two and widely credited with the success of last year's tournament in South Africa, told the Moscow audience that Russia should aim to be ready by 2016 – two years before the tournament starts.
He declined to comment directly on the cash-for-votes scandal that surrounded Fifa's recent presidential election, adding only that it was “nice to talk about football” for a change.
Alexei Sorokin, chief executive of Russia's World Cup organising committee, told the forum the 2016 deadline was “absolutely realistic”, despite having to build or renovate every stadium.
“We have to build a lot. We have never hid the fact that we do not have a single stadium that is up to Fifa standards,” he said.
Russia has nominated 13 host cities for the event, a figure that will eventually be reduced, while estimating the total bill for new infrastructure at $10 billion.
Sorokin said the $10 billion would come from private investors as well as state funds, adding that a portion of the total had already been budgeted under existing government plans to improve Russian infrastructure.
“We are motivating stadium owners to attract as much private investment as possible. It is meant to be profitable,” he said.
He played down fears about racism in Russia as “not representative of the general mood” but admitted it was “difficult to control”.
Brazilian former World Cup winner Roberto Carlos, who signed for Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala in February, was the target of banana-throwing at a league match earlier this week.
And Zenit St Petersburg, the Russian league champions, were fined 300,000 roubles ($10,661.477) after a fan offered the same player a banana at a pre-match ceremony in April. – Reuters
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/brazil-struggling-with-wc-preparations-1.1088454
Iain Chambers Annuities US military Milan Baros Economic policy Environmental sustainability
-
Palestinian Refugees: The Right to Remain, the Right to Return
By Samah Sabawi
I was 12 years old when for the first time in my life I became a citizen of a country – Australia. Before that, I was a stateless Palestinian refugee. There were two laments my parents always repeated whenever they spoke of their place of origin Palestine: if only we could have stayed and if only we could return.
According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2009 there were more than 10 million refugees around the world in need of assistance. This number does not include the7 million Palestinian refugees, who make up the world’s largest refugee population and whose question is the longest standing at the UN.
The plight of Palestinian refugees began 63 years ago when they were forced out of their homes or fled in fear as the Israeli state established itself on the ruins of their villages and their towns and it has not ended. The fact their issue still stands today, unresolved, is a poignant reminder that states and governments will continue to fail the weak and disenfranchised for the sake of political gains and posturing.
Refugees are by definition powerless, in many cases they are either stateless or have lost the protection of their nation state. They depend on international bodies to rescue them. There are two norms which guide the way the international community deals with refugee issues under the UNHCR, the first is to provide protection and assistance to refugees, and the second is to not return individuals to their own countries against their will or if they are at risk of persecution. However, various human rights conventions have over the years created additional norms that work as guidelines to resolve refugee issues by providing preventative measures to make it possible for people to remain on their land and rather than focusing on resettlement alone, safeguarding the rights of refugees to return to their homes if they choose to.
The concept of ‘preventive protection’ is especially important in the case of Palestinian refugees. The right of individuals and communities to remain in their own country is a principle which rejects the expulsion of ethnic communities or what is now known as 'ethnic cleansing.' The U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities has affirmed “the right of persons to remain in peace in their own homes, on their own lands and in their own countries”. The Turku/Abo Declaration on Minimum Humanitarian Standards also provides in Article 7: 1 “All persons have right to remain in peace in their homes and their places of residence.”
Also Article 7 states : “No person shall be compelled to leave their own country”.
Some in Israel may argue that because Palestinian refugees are not citizens of the state, they have no right to refer to the land from which they come from as ‘their country’. This claim is refuted by a litany of legal and human rights experts, most important of all, it is refuted by the UNHCR which defines the Palestinian population as the indigenous people of the land.
Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation face sever measures aimed to uproot them. One example is the practice of revoking residency rights: Hamoked, an Israeli NGO filed a freedom of information request from the Israeli government and found that over 140,000 Palestinians who left to study or work had their residency rights revoked between 1967 and 1994. They wrote in a statement "The mass withdrawal of residency rights from tens of thousands of West Bank residents, tantamount to permanent exile from their homeland, remains an illegitimate demographic policy and a grave violation of international law."
Another example of an Israeli policy that is at the heart of the creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis is that of house demolition. An Israeli human rights group called the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) estimates at least 24,813 homes were demolished in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza since 1967, and that according to UN figures, during the 2009 Gaza bombing, more than 4,247 Palestinian homes were destroyed.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reports that Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and other buildings reached a record high in March of this year. According to UNRWA, 76 buildings were demolished leading to the displacement of 158 people, including 64 children. UNRWA put the total number of displaced persons in the last six months alone to 333, including 175 children. UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness described the policy as “discrimination against one ethnic group”. These actions are illegal under article 53 of the 4th Geneva Convention and have been roundly criticized by the UN and other international groups, as well as by human rights organisations.
There are various other policies that drive Palestinians out of their homes, especially in Jerusalem where Palestinian neighborhoods are targeted for evictions to make way for Jewish settlers to move in. Once exiled, Palestinians are denied the right to ever return. This is also illegal under international humanitarian law.
The right to return voluntarily and in safety to one’s country of origin or nationality is a right enshrined in the rules of traditional international law and also in Human rights law. The U.N. Security Council has affirmed “the right of refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes”. The Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities has affirmed “the right of refugees and displaced persons to return, in safety and dignity, to their country of origin and or within it, to their place of origin or choice”.
This right is a pillar of international humanitarian law simply because it acknowledges that human beings form attachments to their native land. This is not a case that is unique to Palestinian refugees; it is one shared by indigenous people everywhere. Attachment to the land of one’s origin is a natural human condition and is precisely why these sentiments and emotional ties are protected.
The Palestinian refugee population will continue to grow because we in the international community have failed to find informed appropriate responses to their cries for help. We must intensify our efforts to prevent the increase of the number of Palestinian refugees that Israel uproots from the land and to help the indigenous people maintain their right to remain on the land. We also need to pressure Israel to make a repatriation offer to all the Palestinian refugees and to allow them to practice the right to return to their homes should they so choose. Failing to do so will set a negative precedent and can have an adverse consequence for the millions of other refugees.
- Samah Sabawi is a Palestinian Australian writer, author of Journey to Peace in Palestine and public advocate of Australians for Palestine. She is a policy advisor for Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. She took part in Refugee Week's Hebron-Leichhardt Festival of Friendship in Sydney.
Source: http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16937
Floyd Mayweather Newspapers & magazines Food and drink Asia England rugby union team Clint Eastwood
-
Dominique releases new album
Lebanese singer Dominique Hourani has released a new
album under the title ?Dominique 2011?. The album is a production of the
company ?Musica?.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />Source: http://www.albawaba.com/star-news-and-gossip/dominique-releases-new-album-380016
Lee Cattermole Pakistan cricket team Vladimir Putin North and Central America JS Bach Beach holidays
