London Irish reconsider their priorities - Reading Evening Post
London Irish reconsider their priorities
By Alan ManicomJune 06, 2012
London Irish are considering prioritising the Aviva Premiership over both cup competitions next season.
Exiles failed to qualify for the Heineken Cup and will instead go straight into Europe’s second-tier competition the Amlin Cup, while the club traditionally use the Anglo-Welsh LV= Cup to rest first-teamers and develop younger players in the squad.
Director of rugby Brian Smith has already consulted with the board and plans to speak his players when they return to pre-season training later this month.
He said: “As a club we all need to agree the philosophy.
“We can go one of two ways. We can say we’re going all out to win any competition we’re involved in or we may decide to prioritise the league in front of the LV= Cup and Amlin Cup.
“Those decisions need to be taken in consultation with the players and the board.
“I’ve got my views but I want to seek counsel before making a call on how we go about it.
“There is certainly a lot of merit in both models.
“Philosophically whenever you’re in a competition you would want to win it.
“But you’ve got to find out whether you’ve got the resources to fight on more than one front.”
Shakespeare's first theatre discovered in London - Daily Telegraph
Experts conducting the archaeological dig are confident of finding more as the site is cleared. The MoLA excavators said the site remains very well preserved.
Legend goes that the famous actor-manager James Burbage dismantled The Theatre overnight after a dispute with the landlord and set about building the Globe theatre across the river.
Until the Globe was built, Burbage and his troop used the Curtain theatre to perform in from 1597 for two years. This is the period in which Henry V and Romeo and Juliet were first staged.
The lines from Shakespeare's Henry V 'Can this cock-Pit hold within this Woodden O', may have first been spoken in the Curtain theatre, which was created in a wooden O shape, much like the Globe.
Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the Globe theatre, said: "I love the fact that we are excavating London, and slowly clearing away the miserable piles of Victoriana and Empire, and revealing the wild, anarchic and joyous London which is lurking beneath."
The site is owned by Plough Yard Developments, which plan to feature the remains as part of a new office, retail and residential space.
UPDATE: Two men and two women killed in A39 collision in Cannington - bridgwatermercury.co.uk
Breaking news UPDATE: Condolences offered after four die in A39 collision in Cannington
1:20pm Wednesday 6th June 2012 in News By Newsdesk
CONDOLENCES have been offered to families of the four victims who died in a crash on the A39 in Cannington yesterday afternoon (June 5).
A fourth victim has died following a collision involving a VW Passat and a Vauxhall Astra at around 2.30pm yesterday.
Somerset County Council Leader, John Osman, said: “This is a dreadful tragedy and my heartfelt condolences go to the family and friends of all those involved.
“I would also like to pass on my thanks to those members of the emergency services who have worked so hard over the last 24 hours.”
Five people were travelling in the vehicles. A 68-year-old man travelling in the Passat has died. A 73-year-old woman, a 59-year-old woman and a 76-year-old man travelling in the Astra have also died.
Two people died at the scene with three others taken to hospital, two of which later died. One casualty was airlifted.
Police confirmed the third fatality shortly after 5pm yesterday.
The road has now re-opened after being closed for around six hours while police carried out an investigation.
Officers closed the road both ways between Blackmore Lane and the main road and traffic mounted as drivers have been diverted between Charlynch.
Six ambulances, a doctor, police and firefighters were called to the scene.
Resident Nicola Puddy, who lives near the A39, said she and her neighbours were shocked and upset by the crash.
She said: “I’ve never seen so many emergency vehicles. There is a massive amount of police presence and we’ve seen an RAF helicopter at the scene. Things have quietened down now, but I think it will be some time before the roads will be open.
“My neighbours and I are shocked by it. It’s fairly upsetting to think there have been deaths near your house. My thoughts are with their families. It’s awful.”
Charlynch Road resident Alli Baldwin said she had been stuck in traffic for over an hour and had to walk home with her two dogs while her husband stayed behind. She suggested drivers take alternative routes. She said: “It’s complete gridlock. I was stuck for about an hour, despite living in Charlynch Road.
She said some motorists were becoming angry and recommended people turned off at Splatt Lane to go through Spaxton.
Leathea Stephenson, joint landlady at The Globe Inn, said: “People said they’d seen a helicopter and lots of police and ambulance vehicles in the area.
“The roads have become gridlocked because the main road is closed. People are saying even the back roads are getting very busy."
For further information, keep checking this website.
Did you witness the accident? Call our newsdesk on the out of hours mobile on 07816-169323 or the newsroom on 01278-727960.
Officers are appealing for anyone who was in the area at the time and witnessed the collision to contact the collision investigation unit on 101. Alternatively, call the charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800-555111 or via www.crimestoppers-uk.org
London 2012: Team GB athletes will learn anthem - head coach - BBC News
British athletes will definitely know the words to the national anthem before the London Games, says UK Athletics head coach Charles van Commenee.
The Dutchman believes the step is necessary to head off potential criticism over "plastic Brits" - or athletes who have switched allegiance to represent Team GB at the Olympics.
"They know the words, or they will," said Van Commenee.
"If they don't, somebody will make an issue of it."
Asked if it should matter whether athletes know the words to the national anthem, he added: "That's a different question.
"I'm not going to rehearse everybody because we have 90 athletes, but people that matter... let's say the relevant ones, the ones on your radar (will rehearse the anthem)."
Van Commenee's choice of United States-born Tiffany Porter as team captain for the World Indoor Championships in March sparked the "Plastic Brits" row after she declined to sing God Save the Queen at a news conference ahead of that meeting.
Porter, who qualifies for Britain through her London-born mother and has held a British passport since birth, said she knew the words but questioned her singing ability.
Charles van Commenee“This is nothing compared to what football managers have to go through, but at least it tells me that athletics is worth talking about”
"I do know the first lines," she said at the time. "I know the whole of God Save the Queen."
Van Commenee, who insists he would only know the first two lines of his own national anthem, believes the "Plastic Brits" row is not important in the scheme of things.
"I know in Olympic year all sorts of rubbish comes up," he said.
The 53-year-old claims he had far more important matters to deal with when he was technical director of the Dutch Olympic Committee for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
"In the lead up to Beijing, there were lots of issues around Taiwan, Tibet, smog, human rights, not having the ability to express yourself in public, child labour," he said. "All these things had to be addressed by me.
"The issues I deal with now are partly not serious, but it comes with the job. This is nothing compared to what football managers have to go through, but at least it tells me that athletics is worth talking about.
"When you are in the spotlight then yes, you get issues to talk about."
London 2012: torchbearers picked by sponsors keep flame of commerce alive - The Guardian
Throughout their descriptions of the 70-day Olympic torch relay, the London 2012 organisers talked of having tracked down "8,000 truly inspirational people from across the UK". But while most of the torchbearers were picked through this process, some people – including one of the world's richest men – managed to get on the torch relay through a back door: working for, or being affiliated with, one of the London 2012 sponsors.
More than 1,200 spaces were allocated to the International Olympic Committee, the British Olympics Association, and to staff working for Games sponsors – whose picks included company directors, Russian newspaper editors, and even an official at the US's Food and Drug Administration.
Help Me Investigate the Olympics, a crowdsourced news coverage site dedicated to London 2012, looked into torchbearer slots handed out by one particular sponsor, Adidas.
While, generally, slots had been given to junior or mid-level employees, Adidas had also selected Christos Angelides, the £900,000-a-year senior director at Next, which has a retail partnership with Adidas covering the Olympics. Other Adidas slots went to people in the marketing team who had worked on the company's sponsorship.
The group's findings, posted by Paul Bradshaw, also noted descriptions mentioning staff's work performance in their nominating stories, mentioning that one torchbearer had "made a fantastic contribution to the adidas group business". Another "breathes adidas … Her positive attitude and 'money in [t]he till' approach is legendary" and a third mentioned "achieving my sales targets in every market I have worked in".
A spokesman for Adidas said the company was restricted by Locog rules and could only hand out its torchbearer slots to employees or those in its network. He added that due to the low average age of the company's staff, not many children were old enough to carry the torch.
Other sponsors struck further afield for their choices: among Coca-Cola's selections were Las Vegas resident Dr Debra Toney, who among other roles sits on a committee of the US's Food and Drug Administration.
Coca-Cola also selected Evgeny Faktorovich, the deputy editor-in-chief of a Russian paper that "supports all social initiative held by Coca-Cola" and Vonta Vontobel, the president of the Brazilian Bottlers Association of Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola, as an official torchbearer partner, was able to allocate places to members of the public – it was responsible for allocating 1,350 slots.
"Over 90% of our allocation has gone to members of the public through our Future Flames campaign, which celebrates inspirational people by giving them the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to carry the Olympic flame," said a spokesman. "A small number of our allocation has been given to some of our employees through a nomination campaign, and to our campaign ambassadors who have helped to find our Future Flames. Our remaining places have been given to our partner organisations and their affiliates."
ArcelorMittal, another organisation supporting the Olympics, was given six torchbearer slots. Two of these went to the company's founder Lakshmi Mittal, the world's 21st-richest man according to Forbes magazine, and his son Aditya, the group's chief financial officer. Among the others, however, were US technician Angel Alvarez, who donated his kidney to a fellow worker, and Polish employee Filip Kuzniak, who cycled 600km to raise money for a colleague's daughter.
Among 50 torchbearers selected by BP were Gillian James, a member of the company's North Sea leadership team, and Carl Halksworth, the creative director of Landor, BP's design agency partner for the Olympics. As BP sponsored a particular section of the route, near Aberdeen, the remainder of its picks were made up predominantly of "onshore and offshore BP staff, young relatives of staff, business partners, and nominees from local schools, universities and charities".
Electricity giant EDF, meanwhile, included the group's former director of HR and communications among the 71 staff members chosen to carry the torch on the company's behalf.
A London 2012 spokesman said: "Staging the Olympic Games is a huge undertaking and we couldn't do it without the support from our commercial partners. The rights packages for some partners include a small number of torchbearer places that had to be filled through internal campaigns.
"The same torchbearer selection criteria applied across the whole relay – ie personal bests and/or contribution to the community."
New Opel/Vauxhall Astra saloon revealed - AUTOCAR.co.uk
Opel/Vauxhall has revealed this new Astra saloon – but the four-door is not destined for sale in the UK. The Opel Astra saloon will instead be sold in select western European markets, including Germany and Spain, where 'notchbacks' are popular, as well as Eastern Europe, Russia and Turkey.
The Astra saloon is offered with four petrol and three diesel engines. The most powerful engine is a 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol unit with 177bhp. The most frugal is a 94bhp 1.3-litre oil-burner with CO2 emissions of 99g/km and 76.3mpg.
Opel has also confirmed its new family of turbocharged four-cylinder 1.6-litre petrol engines will be launched in the new Astra four-door from early 2013.
The Astra saloon, sister car to the Buick Verano, is 4658mm long, 1814mm wide and 1476mm high. That makes it 239mm longer than a standard Astra five-door. The four and five-door models share the same 2685mm wheelbase, but the extra length allows for an increase of 90 litres in boot capacity. The 460-litre volume can be increased to 1010 litres by folding the 60:40 split rear bench flat.
Visually, the Astra four-door is identical to the five-door from the rear doors forward. The rear screen has a sharp rake to better integrate the boot. There’s also an integrated rear spoiler and an ‘inner wing’ shape for the rear lamps, an Opel hallmark.
The new model is set to make its public debut at the Moscow motor show in August.
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