London 2012 Olympics: Chelsea Star in Brazil Squad - ibtimes.co.uk
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Meanwhile, Napoli are preparing a move for Chelsea midfielder Raul Meireles, according to reports.
Napoli boss Walter Mazzarri, who is resigned to losing forward Ezequiel Lavezzi to Paris Saint Germain, has made the Portuguese star one of his top transfer targets for the summer, reports ESPN. The Daily Mirror claims that the Italian club's president, Aurelio De Laurentiis, has made contact with Meireles' agent regarding a potential £8mn deal.
The 29 year old, who joined the Blues from Liverpool last summer, is presently on national duty at Euro 2012 and has refused to be drawn on the speculation, insisting that he is concentrating only on Wednesday's semi final encounter between Portugal and defending champions Spain.
"I am focused on the Euros and cannot think about my future now," the reports quote Meireles as saying.
In other Chelsea news, England manager Roy Hodgson has praised the professionalism shown by John Terry at the Euros.
Hodgson selected Terry over Manchester United veteran Rio Ferdinand and the Blues skipper repaid the former Liverpool manager's belief with some solid performances in Ukraine.
"As a coach you have to be very careful taking on board these rumours, fears and suggestions. It is so important you choose the players you think are the right ones, that you work with them and get the experience for yourself. I can only talk about John and the four or five weeks I have been working with him. He has been a top-class professional and very good off the field as well," Daily Mail quoted Hodgson as saying.
London 2012 Olympics trials: Michael Phelps mastered by Ryan Lochte again - The Guardian
Beating Michael Phelps does not surprise Ryan Lochte any more. What was once regarded as mission impossible has suddenly become second nature to the American. After spending most of his career swimming in Phelps's backwash, Lochte is now the pacesetter, regularly beating his rival in a range of events.
At last year's world championships, Lochte defeated Phelps in the 200m freestyle and 200 individual medley, events that Phelps once ruled supreme. At the US Olympic trials on Monday, Lochte beat him again, in the 400m individual medley, to book his place in the American team for London.
By finishing second Phelps also qualified and will get another chance to race Lochte for the Olympic gold, but Lochte no longer holds any fears about racing him. "It's a rivalry that we have had for almost eight years now and we just have been switching back and forth," Lochte said. "It's hard to say who is the best swimmer, because we're both great racers, and we have been going back and forth for so long."
Perhaps the most surprising part of Monday's race was that it was hardly a surprise at all. As expected, Phelps led Lochte after the opening butterfly leg, but was overtaken on the backstroke leg and trailed for the rest of the race. Lochte even slowed down at the end and glided into the wall to win in 4min 7.06sec. Phelps was second in 4:07.89, more than four seconds outside the world record he set at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. "That's about what we expected," said Phelps' coach Bob Bowman. "He just kicked our ass."
Lochte was less impressed by his own performance, knowing that his best is yet to come. He has been trained to peak at the London Olympics. "That time was not good at all, I know I'm capable of going way faster," he said. "There is definitely a lot of places during that race where I knew I could go as faster, I just didn't.
"But, I had to do what I had to do to get on the wall, and hopefully that will change in a month."
Inspired by watching Phelps win eight gold medals in Beijing, Lochte is targeting a similar haul in London, although he is yet to confirm exactly how many races he will swim. He entered 11 individual events for the trials but has already pulled out of one, the 400m freestyle, leaving him with 10, plus the three relays.
"We're just taking it day by day," said his coach Gregg Troy. "We'll see how he goes and how his body is. Our plan is very fluid."
Johnson back to club business after England exit as defender hits London nightspot - Daily Mail
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Glen Johnson wasted no time getting over England's Euro 2012 disappointment by hitting a London club just hours after arriving back from Poland and Ukraine.
Defender Johnson was at celebrity favourite Mahiki in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
The right-back and his England team-mates were dumped out of the tournament after losing to Italy on penalties on Sunday night.
Club man: Glen Johnson leaves Mahiki in the early hours of Tuesday
Roy Hodgson's side were lucky to get as far as the shootout after the Italians bossed the game and Johnson believes England will never be contenders at a major event unless they learn to keep the ball better.
'We allowed Italy too much possession and when you haven't got the ball you are always working harder than the opposition,' said the Liverpool defender.
'As a result, when we did get the ball, we weren't fresh enough to cause as much damage as we would have liked.
'It's disappointing to be going home like this. The way we were set out and worked so hard for each other meant we were always going to be hard to beat. But as a team, you will only go so far with defending all the time.
'There were times when we gave the ball away cheaply instead of keeping possession and making them work that bit more.
Late night: Johnson was in Mahiki after arriving back from Euro 2012
'We definitely need to hold on to the ball better so when we do go forward we will be a bit fresher to cause them more problems.
'A lot of the lads were quite tired, especially in the second half, so there were lapses of concentration.
'The positive is that even though we didn't have much of the ball, it didn't feel as if they were going to score.
'It is a credit to the lads the way we dug in and stayed together when things weren't going our way. But anything can happen once it goes to penalties. It's just unfortunate it didn't go our way again.
'Anyone can score penalties in training but the lads who stepped up to take them in the match showed real character.'
Hard to take: Johnson after England lost to Italy on penalties
England's bid to reach the World Cup in 2014 starts in September and Johnson is optimistic despite Sunday's quarter-final exit.
He added: 'There are far more positives than negatives. Not many people thought we were even going to get out of our first-round group, let alone win it.
'So to come so close to reaching the semi-finals has to be a positive. We're confident now for the World Cup qualifiers.
'As long as we continue to defend like this and make ourselves hard to beat, we'll be a tough game for anyone.'
England face Montenegro, Ukraine, Poland, San Marino and Moldova in qualifying for Brazil 2014.
Leyton stabbing Good Samaritan sought by police - BBC News
Police are trying to trace a man who came to the aid of a 28-year-old fatally stabbed in east London.
Marvin Hogan was stabbed in the chest in Thornhill Gardens, Leyton, on 4 June. He died in hospital in the early hours of the next day.
Officers want to trace a white man carrying a rucksack which he placed under the victim's head until help arrived.
The victim, from Leyton, was in his car on Windsor Road when he was confronted.
During the incident the victim's keyring was taken and police hope to find it.
It had a Vauxhall Astra car key, an electronic fob for entry into the victim's flat, a red piece of plastic and a silver cross which is black on one side.
The first suspect was a black man in his early 20s, about 5ft 9ins tall.
He was wearing a red baseball cap with a logo on the front and a black body-warmer with a six-inch red band on the front.
The second suspect was a black man in his early 20s, about 5ft 9ins tall with a oval-shaped, chubby face and hair in cane rows.
Answer 'in community'He wore a quilted Barbour-style jacket with silver on it.
The third attacker was a black man in his early 20s, who was wearing dark clothing.
Det Ch Insp Graeme Gwyn said: "We are appealing for any witness or anyone with information to please contact us as soon as possible.
"The answer to solving this murder lies within the local community and we would ask people to come forward.
"Do you recognise the description of the suspects? Are you the man with the rucksack who came to the victim's aid?"
Four men arrested over the killing have been bailed.
Three London hospitals put into a form of administration as another 20 NHS trusts face serious financial difficulties - The Independent
South London Healthcare NHS Trust, which was losing £1 million a week, yesterday became the first in the country to be put under the control of a special administrator tasked with putting it on a viable footing.
The trust which runs Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich and the Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley is likely to face severe cuts to services and jobs in an attempt to reduce costs.
Department Health sources suggested the other hospitals could follow South London into administration and face similar cutbacks.
They are believe to include at least three more hospital trusts in London: West Middlesex University Hospital Trust, Barking, Havering & Redbridge Hospitals University NHS Trust and Barnet & Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust.
Barking has received a total of £140 million in bailouts in the past five years, including £30 million in 2010-11.
At Chase Farm plans have already been approved to shut at A&E department but further cuts could prove necessary.
Outside London other trust facing financial difficulties include Epsom & St. Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare Trust.
These pose potentially trickier problems for the Government as there are not necessarily alternative services nearby to compensate for any service closures to cut costs.
Last year managers in Scarborough proposed cutting specialist services prompting protests while the health regulator has also warned of “serious concerns” about standards, mainly related to staffing shortages and the quality of its infrastructure.
One possibility is that the Government might look to subcontract the running of failing hospitals to the private sector.
Earlier this year the private healthcare group Circle took over
Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire which had historic debts of more that £40 million.
Circle says it is confident that it can turn the trust around and is known to be keen to take on other NHS operations.
The chief executive of South London was informed last night that the trust is likely to be put into the “unsustainable providers regime” which was introduced by the last Labour government but never before used.
Mr Lansley sent a letter as the first step in the legal process towards installing a special administrator using the powers.
The administrator will take over the board and recommend measures to the Health Secretary to put the trust's finances on a sustainable basis.
Sources close to Mr Lansley said long-standing difficulties had been made worse by Labour's merger of the three hospitals' smaller trusts in April 2009 and by two PFI deals that are now costing £61 million a year in interest.
They said the hospital's deficit last year - covered by money from elsewhere in the NHS budget - was equivalent to the salaries of 1,200 nurses or 200 hip replacements a week.
In his letter Mr Lansley wrote: “I recognise that South London Healthcare NHS Trust faces deep and long-standing challenges, some of which are not of its own making.
“Nonetheless, there must be a point when these problems, however they have arisen, are tackled. I believe we are almost at this point.
“I have sought to provide NHS organisations with the help and support they need to provide these high quality, sustainable services to their patients, which South London Healthcare NHS Trust stands to benefit from.
“However, even after this support has been provided, your organisation still expects to be in need of significant financial resources from other parts of the NHS and I cannot permit this to continue. That is why I am considering using these powers.”
He acknowledged the move would be "unsettling for staff" but said the measures were necessary to ensure hospital services in south east London had "a sustainable future".
The source close to Mr Lansley said Labour took the south London trust to "the brink of bankruptcy".
"Labour turned a blind eye to these problems for years. They burdened it with two unaffordable PFIs worth £61 million a year and they crippled the organisation with debt from the beginning," the source said.
"The standard of care that patients receive at the hospital trust is not good enough, although there have been some improvements in recent months.
"It is crucial that those improvements are not put at risk by the challenge of finding the huge savings that the trust needs to make."
The trust pointed out that it had one of the lowest mortality rates in England and infection rates three times lower than the national average.
In a statement, it said: "We have entered into discussions with the Department of Health and NHS London on the best future for the trust and our priority, and that of others involved, is to make sure that our longstanding and well-known financial issues are resolved.
“We expect these discussions to come to a conclusion in the second week in July when a decision will be taken by the Secretary of State.
“In the meantime we can reassure local patients and the public that our staff will continue to provide services as normal.”
NHS Confederation deputy chief executive David Stout said: “NHS leaders have made it clear that short term fixes for struggling trusts are no longer possible. More decisive action is going to be needed to help the NHS maintain services and stay in financial balance during this unprecedented spending squeeze.
“We welcome the secretary of state's actions as a sign that the Government is beginning to grasp the nettle on some of these difficult issues.”
The King's Fund chief executive Chris Ham told the BBC: “South London Healthcare NHS Trust is one of a small number of hospitals facing serious financial challenges. For some of these hospitals, the usual solutions, such as appointing a new management team or merging with another provider, will not solve their problems.
“Governments have ducked these issues for too long so this announcement is an important signal of intent from ministers.”
South London Healthcare faces being broken up - BBC News
An NHS hospital trust has been formally warned it could be declared bust - in the first case of its kind.
South London Healthcare, a merger of three hospital trusts, has only been kept afloat thanks to £150m of bailouts in the last three years.
The health secretary has told the trust an administrator could be brought in within weeks, which could see the trust dissolved and some services closed.
The move raises the prospect that other trusts could follow suit.
There are another 20 trusts that are considered financially unsustainable in their current form.
Work has already started to rectify their problems and therefore wholesale dissolving is considered unlikely.
However, the move over South London Healthcare does act as a warning that the government is prepared to use the measure, which was made possible by legislation Labour introduced in 2009.
'Deep challenges'South London Healthcare amalgamated the Princess Royal University Hospital in Orpington, Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup, and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich in 2009.
When the three hospitals became one organisation they inherited a large debt - mainly from the private finance initiative (PFI) that had been used for the buildings at Orpington and Woolwich.
“Start Quote
End Quote NHS Confederation head Mike FarrarWe welcome this decision. The NHS can't go on with short-term fixes to financial problems”
Last year it finished £69m in deficit on a turnover of £424m.
As well as struggling financially, the trust also has some of the longest waiting times for operations, and longer-than-average waits in A&E. However, it does have low infection and death rates.
If a decision was made to break up the trust, it would not necessarily mean the closure of all services. Another more successful NHS organisation or private provider could end up taking on some.
But for that to happen, there would need to be a formal process of review and consultation.
Any decision would then need to be signed off by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley and reported to Parliament.
In a letter to the trust, Mr Lansley said: "A central objective for all providers is to ensure they deliver high-quality services to patients that are clinically and financially sustainable for the long term.
"I recognise that South London Healthcare NHS Trust faces deep and long-standing challenges, some of which are not of its own making.
"Nonetheless, there must be a point when these problems, however they have arisen, are tackled. I believe we are almost at this point."
Mike Farrar, head of the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, said: "We welcome this decision. The NHS can't go on with short-term fixes to financial problems.
"That might mean some tough decisions, but hopefully will deliver financial sustainability in the long term."
Chris Streather, chief executive of South London Healthcare, said patients could be assured that services would continue as normal during this process.
He added: "There is a huge gap in our financial plan in order for us to become viable in the long term and this intervention if it solves that problem which it is designed to do is absolutely welcome and will be helpful."
The trust expects the discussions to come to a conclusion in the second week of July, when a decision on whether to put it in administration will be taken by the secretary of state. However, it will probably be October by the time the review is completed.
But Labour accused the government of "losing its grip" on NHS finances.
"After many years of neglect by the Tories, Labour used PFI to deliver the biggest hospital-building programme in the history of the NHS, benefiting millions of patients," a spokesman said.
"In contrast, this government has lost its grip on NHS finances and is wasting billions of pounds on a NHS reorganisation which is opposed by patients and health professionals."
Along with South London Healthcare, the other 20 trusts identified by the government as facing financial difficulties are: Newham University Hospital, Barking, Havering and Redbridge, North Cumbria Hospital, Surrey and Sussex Healthcare, Epson and St Helier Hospitals, Trafford Healthcare, Scarborough and North East Yorkshire, Winchester and Eastleigh, George Eliot Hospital, Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford Learning Disability Trust, Whipps Cross Hospital, North Middlesex Hospital, Ealing Hospital, Hinchingbrooke Hospital, North West London Hospitals, Weston Area Health, Great Western Ambulance Service, Dartford and Gravesham and Suffolk Mental Health Partnership.
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Come on England. Footballs coming home
- power, stoke on Trent, 26/6/2012 11:42
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