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Rangers crashed to a heavy 4-1 defeat to Sevilla in Champions League Group G amid controversy at Ibrox.
The Scottish champions were denied a penalty late in the first half before Abdoulay Konko, the player responsible for the foul, set the ball rolling on an emphatic win for the La Liga side.
He grabbed the opener shortly after the restart, before Adriano, Luis Fabiano and Frederic Kanoute all helped themselves to a goal apiece as Rangers collapsed in the second half. Substitute Nacho Novo did pull a goal back late on but it was scant consolation for Walter Smith's men.
The home fans were outraged when Naismith was denied a penalty but they almost had more to complain about four minutes from the break when stopper Madjid Bougherra was dispossessed by Adriano when he tried to walk the ball out his box.
The Brazilian fired in a shot which Allan McGregor did well to parry wide but only to Jesus Navas who drove over from 16 yards, to the relief of Bougherra.
In the 50th minute the visitors nudged ahead following a free-kick awarded when David Weir was adjudged to have fouled Fabiano 35 yards from goal. Manuel Lolo knocked the ball wide to the unmarked Jesus Navas and when he floated the ball in the box, with Kanoute arguably in an offside position, Konko rose highest to steer a header past the helpless McGregor.
But the home side's exertions began to take their toll and the game was over in the 63rd minute when Adriano converted from 12 yards after being set up by Luis Fabiano.
There was further misery in the 71st minute when Luis Fabiano headed in from four yards from Kanoute's deep cross from the right.
Ibrox was silenced again three minutes later, with the home side's defence in disarray, the roles were reversed when Luis Fabiano played Kanoute in and the big striker calmly slotted past McGregor for number four.
Two minutes from time, Novo smashed in from 25 yards to give the fans who had stayed behind some hope for the rest of the campaign.
In music circles they call it “retromania”. An endless recycling of old styles, inhibiting progress. It leads to things like a revival of “shoegaze” or prog rock.
To me it sometimes feels like retromania with the way there’s a periodic clamour (in some circles) for a return of capital punishment in the UK. Recently we’ve had that sprinkling of MPs and bloggers banging the drum over an e-petition that could lead to a parliamentary debate on it.
Hmm. It’s an e-petition, it’s democracy – and I’ve got no problem with that. But going back to the judge’s black cap and the noose? Really?
I’d urge anyone who’s hankering after the supposed “certainty” of an “eye-for-an-eye” punishments or the supposed “justice” of murderers themselves facing death to seriously consider the Troy Davis case in Georgia in the United States.
I’ve blogged about Troy Davis several times (here, here and here for example). Troy is a 42-year-old man who’s been on death row for 20 years (20 years). This week he’s received the news that the authorities intend to kill him with a lethal injection at 7pm (Atlanta time) on Wednesday 21 September.
See this detailed report for the full story, but in essence this is what happened. In the early hours of 19 August 1989 a police officer called Mark Allen McPhail was shot dead in a Burger King car park in Savannah, Georgia. In court Davis admitted he’d been at the scene of the shooting (as were several other people) but completely denied any involvement. There was never any physical evidence linking Davis to the crime and the prosecution relied entirely on eye-witness accounts.
Since the trial the case has unravelled. One “eye-witness” has admitted he’d hadn’t seen Davis kill the police officer but still signed a pre-prepared police statement incriminating him because he was under intense pressure from police interrogators. He didn’t even read his statement first (in fact he was actually illiterate). No less than seven out of nine prosecution witnesses have now recanted or changed their initial testimonies in sworn affidavits. Meanwhile, another man is widely suspected of the crime.
Troy Davis’ case is a perfect example of how deeply dubious the application of the death penalty can be. A high-profile crime, a shaky case that has fallen apart over the years, a rigid justice system that hasn’t fully reviewed all the new evidence and is pressing ahead regardless. Some pro-capital punishment types like to hold up the USA as a “democracy that has the death penalty” (partly so they don’t have to discuss the big players on the capital punishment scene – namely China, Iran and Saudi Arabia). Have they ever looked at the Troy Davis case?
It’s only fair to say that the family of McPhail remain convinced that Troy Davis murdered Mark. But would a jury now – after witness after witness has now recanted – be even close to finding Davis guilty of the policeman’s death? Surely not.
So now we have a totally unconscionable scenario. Namely, Georgia’s authorities are pressing ahead with their intention to judicially kill a prisoner in the face of very significant doubts. Quite simply, there is too much doubt even to think of executing Troy Davis. Over 300,000 people from all around the world have already petitioned the Georgia authorities to reconsider what they’re doing and Amnesty is sending urgent appeals to the state’s Board of Pardon and Paroles urging that they commute the sentence (which the board has the power to do). Please do the same.
Meanwhile, look out for our Twitter campaign on Troy Davis in the coming days. It’s hashtagged #tTooMuchDoubt and #TroyDavis.
A popular jazz saxophonist and pianist are the next artists performing at the weekly Bedford Arms jazz session on Monday October 17.
Teno sax player Lluis Mather is an award-winning UK instrumentalist and composer. He has won the Dave Holland Award, was recipient of a Yamaha Scholarship, is one of three 2013/14 Jerwood Fellows “expected to make a significant contribution to British Jazz”, a first class graduate of the Birmingham Conservatoire (course prize for outstanding achievement 2010) and most recently completed an MPhil at Cambridge University.
He has performed headline sets at Cheltenham, Harmonic, Mancheste and London, amongst other national jazz festivals, with his quintet.
Pianist Simpson is based in London playing a wide variety of music, and leads his own group playing original jazz music.
Rick is a regular performer at Ronnie Scot’ts, the 606 Jazz Club, Pizza Express Dean Street, The Vortex and The Bull’s Head, and he has appeared at larger UK venues such as the Royal Festival Hall and the Purcell Room.
In 2008, Rick won a Yamaha Scholarship Prize for Outstanding Jazz Musicians. A recording of Rick’s band was put on the front cover of Jazzwise magazine.
The music starts at 8.30pm, with suggested donations of £5 per person which pays the musicians and keeps the nights running on a weekly basis.
DAYTONA BEACH — They usually vacationed in the desert.
So when Asby Fulmer and his 19-year-old son, Barrett, came to Daytona Beach for a sports car show, the high school athlete wasn’t going to be kept out of the water — even by Monday’s roiling seas.
Nearly 24 hours after Barrett’s disappearance in the waves near the Boardwalk, his father refused to speak of him in the past tense and grew increasingly upset that no one was actively searching.
But by 3 p.m., when the tides had changed to make conditions more favorable for a search, a sheriff’s helicopter began circling over the water. By then, of course, hope for making a rescue — instead of a recovery — had dwindled.
“From the time he disappeared, to (Tuesday), he could be 200 yards from where he was originally or he could be a few miles away, ” Beach Patrol Capt. Scott Petersohn said.
Father and son had only been on the beach about 10 minutes Monday. And while Barrett Fulmer wasn’t a champion swimmer, his father said he’d been swimming for years at a swim club near their home. Barrett was in waist-deep water, but 3- to 5-foot waves pounded the shore Monday, helped along by an unyielding onshore wind that at times got up to 35 mph, Petersohn said.
Beach Patrol officials believe the younger Fulmer was probably pulled out by a rip current.
Petersohn said lifeguards warned beachgoers on Monday that if they did not swim directly in front a lifeguard tower, they would be swimming at their own risk.
The spot where Barrett Fulmer was swimming was un- guarded, Petersohn said; a tower was open just north of there near the Bandshell.
“When conditions are this rough, if you’re not immediately in front of the tower, there’s no way a lifeguard will be able to see you, ” Petersohn said.
The Fulmers, who live just outside Charleston, S.C., had come to Daytona Beach to attend a sports car convention and planned to stay at least until today, Asby Fulmer said.
Barrett Fulmer was a track star and lettered in rugby and baseball at Oak Ridge Military Academy in North Carolina, the same school attended by NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt Jr. in his middle-school years.
His father still held out hope.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on his followers on Thursday to remain calm after an explosion killed 18 people in his main stronghold in Baghdad just hours after parliament called for a recount of votes in an election his bloc won.
Sadr, a nationalist who tapped growing resentment with Iran, scored a surprise victory in the May 12 vote by promising to fight corruption and improve services. He said in a statement that a committee would be formed to investigate the blast, with findings presented to him within three days.
He called for “patience and self-control”, the statement from his office said.
At least 18 people were killed and more than 90 wounded in Sadr City, a blast the Interior Ministry said was the result of the detonation of an ammunitions cache. Security forces have opened their own investigation.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement storing ammunition in a residential area was a crime and ordered the Interior Ministry to investigate the incident and take legal action against those who had done so.
Some of Sadr’s political opponents had suggested on social media the ammunitions cache belonged to his Saraya al-Salam (Peace Companies) militia.
Sadr had suggested in December that the militia was ready to hand over its weapons to the government after the defeat of Islamic State militants.
Hours before the explosion, Iraq’s parliament passed a law on Wednesday ordering a nationwide manual recount of votes in the parliamentary election, lawmakers said, a day after Abadi said there had been serious violations.
The move could undermine Sadr, who has in the past mobilized tens of thousands of followers to protest against government policies he opposed, and pits the government and parliament against the country’s independent elections commission.
Sadr’s top aide, Dhiaa al-Asadi, said in a tweet that while any fraud or violations in the electoral process should be condemned, it should be handled by the Independent High Elections Commission and the Federal Court.
He also expressed concerns that some parties were trying to sabotage Sadr’s victory.
“Losers in the recent elections shouldn’t hijack or manipulate the parliament. Otherwise, it is a conflict of interests,” he said.
Sadr has always been seen as a wildcard in Iraq’s turbulent politics, which is often driven by sectarian interests.
His Mehdi Army militia staged two violent uprisings against United States occupation forces after the invasion and Iraqi and U.S. officials described him at the time as the biggest security threat in Iraq.
The defeat of Islamic State in December had raised hopes that the country could ease sectarian and political tensions and find a formula for stability, which has remained elusive since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
But tensions over the election raised the prospect of more turmoil in Iraq, which has close ties with the United States and Iran, who compete for power in Iraq, a major oil producer.
Iraq’s judiciary said in a statement on Thursday a high-ranking committee of judges had moved into the headquarters of the election commission to prepare to run it following parliament’s vote to suspend the commission’s leaders and replace them with judges.
The commission said it would appeal against the law passed by parliament ordering a recount and suspending its leadership.
“The board of commissioners will use its constitutional and legal right to appeal against the amendment to the election law because it contains violations and is not in harmony with the constitution,” the Independent High Elections Commission’s board of commissioners said in a statement.
Wilfredo Fernando Portillo, a 57-year-old Latino male, died Tuesday, March 22, after sustaining blunt force trauma in East Hollywood, according to Los Angeles County coroner's records.
Do you have information to share about the life of Wilfredo Fernando Portillo? The Homicide Report needs your help. E-mail us at homicidereport@latimes.com.
If smartphones were cars, the Sprint PCS Vision PPC-6601 ($629.99 list) would be an SUV. It's a whopper—more PDA than phone—with a big 3.5-inch screen and a built-in keyboard designed for serious e-mailing, which it does well.
The world of slab-style smartphones is a pretty small one, and the PPC-6601's only real current competition is the HP iPAQ h6315. These devices are really too big to be used primarily as phones, though they work well with headsets or in speakerphone mode. The PPC-6601 is quite uncomfortable when held up to your head, although the speaker and speakerphone are loud and clear. It's slightly longer, deeper, and heavier than the h6315. It's also considerably faster, and guzzles more juice (its battery lasted 4 hours 35 minutes on a charge, compared to over 10 hours for the h6315).
A spacious membrane keyboard slides out of the bottom. The keyboard is the PPC-6601's reason for being, and it's much better than the h6315's snap-on unit. Each key has a bump in the center, which gives the keyboard a good tactile feel and lets you type relatively quickly. One typing nuisance: If you hold down the Shift key, the letter after you let go also becomes capitalized, which led to a LOt of THis before we figured out to tap the Shift, let go, and then press a letter key.
The 6601's front panel is studded with buttons (eight, as opposed to the h6315's four). We like this approach, which gives you one-touch access not only to common applications but to Pocket PC menus and the "OK" option on most screens.
The 400-MHz Intel processor makes Pocket PC applications feel snappy; the 6601 did well on our CPU and application benchmark tests, although it didn't do as well on graphics and file system tests. We wouldn't play games on this device, but it's fine for office applications and e-mailing. Bluetooth headsets paired quickly and easily, and you can use the 6601 as a modem for your laptop. We got excellent average speeds of 110 Kbps on Sprint's PCS Vision network.
We were disappointed, though, by the 6601's lack of Wi-Fi, especially given the price. The problem, it seems, is power: The 6601's battery life is short enough already without Wi-Fi draining more juice. A GSM version with Wi-Fi, probably from Cingular, is rumored to be in the works.
Does the PPC-6601 work? Sure. Does it work well? Absolutely. But it's big, heavy, and expensive, and we're not convinced that the great keyboard and added power make it a more compelling buy than the HP iPAQ h6315, which has far better battery life, Wi-Fi, and a camera. You'll probably end up making the decision based on whether you prefer to go with Sprint or T-Mobile; that's as good an arbiter as any.
Bottom Line: The Sprint PPC-6601 smartphone works very well for what it's meant to do, but it's a bit big, heavy, and expensive. We're not convinced that the great keyboard and added power make it a more compelling buy than the HP iPAQ h6315, which has far better battery life, Wi-Fi, and a camera.
Aug. 25, 2015, 1:28 p.m.
Newsrooms large and small have hosted startup-like projects within their walls. Here are some ideas if you want to do the same.
By Freek Staps Aug. 25, 2015, 1:28 p.m.
On a gray day in the fall of 2013, a dozen department heads of the Dutch media company NRC huddled together in a room in Amsterdam. (Full disclosure: I was one of them.) Paintings of bygone editors of the esteemed daily NRC Handelsblad decorated the walls. That day, we made the decision to launch a startup within the newsroom in order to help ease the transition to a digital-focused company.
The resulting project, NRC Q, covers business, tech, and careers. NRC Q publishes forward-looking news stories, relies heavily on video and infographics (both created in-house by reporters), and repackages newspaper stories for an online audience (partly by limiting the word count and making the tone more conversational). We intended it to be a testing ground for a new kind of NRC journalism, where we’d address business questions like monetization.
Because we wanted to give the reader an active voice in the reporting process, we looked at data daily. Chartbeat, Google Analytics, and A/B testing were all terms that had been previously gone unheard at our 187-year-old organization. Reporters only knew a story had done well if a colleague patted them on the shoulder, or if they got a letter from a reader.
NRC Q has been a success: Our niche publication in a relatively small market has just shy of a million unique visitors per month, attracts a whole new audience for NRC, and continues to push boundaries in its search for a new kind of journalism. Startup-like platforms out of the newsrooms at, for instance, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Dallas Morning News have seen similar success.
Innovation may be stereotypically associated with starting in a garage, wearing hoodies and eating pizza while pulling all-nighters. We’ve sure had our share of that, humbly starting in the archive room of NRC’s otherwise glass-and-light-filled Amsterdam offices.
But real innovation isn’t about garages. I’ve come to see innovation as an organizational structure issue. How do we produce or repackage journalistic content? Who do we hire? Where are we located? How do we relate to the rest of the newsroom? What processes make it harder for us to innovate? And how should the leaders of legacy papers approach young upstarts within their newsrooms?
As a Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow this past spring, I set out to explore how other news organizations have become more digitally oriented — specifically, how they’ve used startups within the newsroom to enact transformation.
In the course of my research, I visited with America’s largest media brands (The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal), talked with regional bastions of quality journalism (the Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, The Boston Globe), included digital-only publications (BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, This.cm) and the outside view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and added to all that the expert opinions of professors and thinkers at Harvard Business School.
A lot is still being figured out. Even though we’re drawn to digital, print is still the main source of revenue for many newspapers. Digital subscriptions and ads haven’t yet offset print losses. And reporters can be wary of change.
My aim throughout my reporting was to provide a roadmap for other news organizations that might want to host a startup within their walls. Here’s what I learned.
Make sure the masthead and the publisher realize the need for drastic measures. Allocate budget accordingly and incentivize the sales team to attract online advertisements. Not every innovation has to be a blockbuster.
Change your day-to-day operations. In order to let the startup succeed, and your organization transform more easily, implement changes gradually but surely. Don’t waver. The head of the startup should have weekly meetings with representatives from departments outside of the newsroom. The journalists themselves shouldn’t pitch for the paper anymore — they should pitch for online, since that’s where the initial journalistic decisions have to be made. There should be no more talk of the front page in the main news meeting (see Case Study), since online is the way to go. The newsroom will adapt both in workflow and in state of mind.
Sree used to be a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, but two years ago the Metropolitan Museum of Art hired him to help digitize the museum. Many of his colleagues, surrounded by art, think in millennia-long business cycles. Many journalists, on the other hand, feel that the end is nigh.
Many newsrooms are trying something new. The newspaper, in this startup-based model, appoints a small group of people; gives them a wide mandate to invent new products, services, and ideas; and makes sure they feel free to operate outside the constraints of the legacy newspaper. “They should earn the right to run the whole paper,” Sree said, half-jokingly.
At The Wall Street Journal, executive editor Almar Latour has created several of these groups in the last year. Some worked to create newsletters, some to create new web sections. Others are working on newsroom reorganization and data journalism. When we met this spring, one team — including members from design, product, and the newsroom — was working on the redesign of the website. Another team was working on an Apple Watch app.
First, Latour said, an organization needs to ask what it can do to be best in class in, say, data journalism or visual journalism. It should follow that up with an assessment of what works in the present organization and establish how to reach its goal. There should be a sense of urgency: The group should aim for initial results in less than three months. Speed is of the essence.
Build a team with the mandate to innovate. The team should be no smaller than five and no larger than fifteen, and should have clear permission to operate without free from the constraints of the newsroom or other tight controls. A gag order to exclude the entire newsroom from weighing in might help. To prevent endless discussions, set a clear deadline (e.g., three months) for the project to be completed.
Staff the team as diversely as possible. Suspend hierarchy; don’t ask bureau chiefs for recommendations. Appoint knowledgeable and entrepreneurial and eager reporters, complemented by representatives from different departments like sales and product design. Don’t be afraid of new hires. Keep the masthead well-informed but keep them out of the operation itself to both make sure the mandate is still in place but so is the room to operate. Appoint a connector to spearhead the young upstart.
As soon as the startup is ready to go live, find a place in the newsroom. Visibility is key and change is the new norm. In order to have a lively conversation about journalism with reporters, designers and developers outside the startup, be present in the newsroom. Don’t hunker down and only talk to other members of your team.
This team may include the most unorthodox combination of coworkers that have ever shared a room in your company. The newsroom, sales, customer service, developers — every part of your business should get to have one representative on the team.
When the Journal’s Latour builds a new team to innovate in the newsroom, he aims to suspend hierarchy. “Someone could have a long, distinguished career at the paper, or may have just walked in the door — the only thing that counts is the level of interest in the project and the expertise and ideas they bring,” he said. Latour also suggests asking a few “happy and eager participants” to make it easier to get the job done.
There are two groups of people that should not be on the innovative team. One: People whose bosses think it’s time for them to be “rewarded with a project.” Two: The actual leaders in the newsroom, the masthead.
The more interesting the work of the online group gets, the more the masthead will probably want to get involved — and they should, of course, support the startup. But including them on the actual team carries the risk of counter-productiveness, said John Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita professor of leadership, emeritus at the Harvard Business School.
There’s a lot of academic research on how to fill these teams. The Harvard Business Review’s guide to innovation, for example, recommends filling at least a third of the team — and possibly more — with outside hires (as long as they’re the best in their field), because they are freer to operate and ask questions from an outside perspective.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune took such an approach: In the past year, following a buyout, it hired 32 new, mostly digitally-inclined reporters, Terry Sauer, assistant managing editor for digital, told me.
Many of the reporters at legacy papers are the best in their fields. But the newsroom does not necessarily contain all the right people to actually innovate, warned Blake Wilson, the Times editor who worked on the NYT Now app.
Not every great reporter is good at writing headlines for the web, or at making longer articles accessible to readers who only have limited time online, or at realizing that digital media can require a different tone of voice.