23.10.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
A 19-year-old Norwegian is $20,580 (£12,200) richer – in real money – after sweeping the board at the World Monopoly Championships in Las Vegas.
Bjorn Halvard Knappskog, playing with the iron, beat rivals from 41 countries to take the prize money – equal to a game’s bank reserves.
It took him just over 40 minutes to beat the battleship brandished by Geoff Christopher of New Zealand.
He said he was “the most surprised you could ever be” after his victory.
“I think this was a really good final. It was the best game I played in the whole tournament,” Mr Knappskog told the Associated Press in the ballroom of the Caesar’s Palace hotel.
The players, using the Atlantic City version of the game, were all champions in their home countries.
Translators were on hand to help the competitors stick to the rules and negotiate property deals.
Additional rules and an extra “speed dice” meant the game was over rather more quickly than the average contest.
‘Nimble Thimble’
Oleg Korostelev, 24, from Russia was first out of the game, followed by Rick Marinaccio, shattering the 26-year-old US lawyer’s hopes of becoming the first US champion.
The tense final in Las Vegas lasted only 41 minutes
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After a series of swaps and purchases some of the hundreds of spectators considered risky, Mr Knappskog finally rendered his New Zealand rival bankrupt with a $1,600 rent demand on North Caroline Avenue.
Mr Christopher, known to his supporters as the “Nimble Thimble”, said his usual strategy of “accumulate, negotiate and dominate” had not worked this time.
“I thought I’d got myself into a really good position, but the dice didn’t really go my way,” he told Radio New Zealand.
“The guy that won it had a huge bankroll. I was just sitting there with a few houses on my orange set and he ended up finishing me off.”
Monopoly was first launched in 1935, with the championship running periodically since 1973.
Mr Knappskog said he would spend his prize money – equivalent to the total reserves of the Monopoly bank in each game – on a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon before returning home to Oslo.
23.10.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
Iran will respond to a proposed deal on its controversial nuclear programme by the middle of next week, it has told the UN’s atomic energy agency.
Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei said he hoped the answer would be “positive”.
The UN watchdog had suggested exporting most of Iran’s enriched uranium to Russia and France for further refining.
The proposal followed talks between the UN, Iran, France, Russia and the US. Friday was set as the deadline for a response from Tehran.
The draft deal, agreed by the US, France and Russia, was prompted by concern over Iran’s nuclear programme.
‘New conditions’
“Iran informed the Director General today that it is considering the proposal in depth and in a favourable light, but needs time until the middle of next week to provide a response,” the IAEA said in a statement.
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ANALYSIS
BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne
Iran is giving extremely mixed messages over this important deal and has missed a deadline from the UN to give its verdict. Either Tehran is playing for time or there are genuine differences within the Iranian government.
At one stage Iranian state TV said Tehran could not accept a key part of the agreement, shipping the nuclear material out of the country.
Later Iran told the UN nuclear watchdog that it was considering the plan favourably but needed more time to respond.
If the deal does go forward it would provide some evidence that negotiations with Iran can bear fruit, if not then the wider talks process would face a bleak future and new sanctions would once again be on the agenda.
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It said Mr ElBaradei hoped that Tehran’s response “will equally be positive, since approval of this agreement will signal a new era of co-operation”.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said: “We hope that they will next week provide a positive response.”
He added that “obviously we would have preferred to have a response today [Friday]. We approach this with a sense of urgency”.
Under the proposal, Iran would get the fuel it needs for its research reactor in Tehran, but this would not be sufficiently enriched to make a bomb.
However, Iranian media earlier on Friday raised new conditions for the deal.
State TV said Iran would prefer to buy uranium for its research reactor, rather than send its own stock abroad for enrichment, as proposed.
It quoted a member of Iran’s negotiating team as saying: “Iran is interested in buying fuel for the Tehran research reactor within the framework of a clear proposal… we are waiting for the other party’s constructive and trust-building response”.
Before the IAEA statement, France said Iran was not responding positively to the deal.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Lebanon: “I cannot say that the situation regarding Iran is very positive.
“Now, meetings are being held in Vienna (the IAEA headquarters). But via the indications we are receiving, matters are not very positive.”
Iran’s rejection of the deal would come as a disappointment to the US, Russia and France, and it could make the wider negotiation with Iran much more difficult – and the threat of sanctions more likely, says the BBC’s Bethany Bell in Vienna.
Enrichment in Russia
Russian nuclear industry insiders have told the BBC the proposed process would involve Iran sending its uranium to the IAEA, which would forward it to Russia for enriching.
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NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
Mined uranium ore is purified and reconstituted into solid form known as yellowcake
Yellowcake is converted into a gas by heating it to about 64C (147F)
Gas is fed through centrifuges, where its isotopes separate and process is repeated until uranium is enriched
Low-level enriched uranium is used for nuclear fuel
Highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear weapons
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The enriched uranium would then be returned to the IAEA and sent to France, which has the technology to add the “cell elements” needed for Iran’s reactor, they said.
This process would enable Iran to obtain enough enriched uranium for its research reactor and for medical use, but the uranium would not be sufficiently enriched to produce a weapon.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes and that it has the right to enrich uranium.
It revealed in September that it was building a second uranium enrichment site, in the city of Qom – much to the anger of world leaders who said Iran was building it in secret.
IAEA inspectors plan to visit the site on 25 October.
23.10.09 / Cricket / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
HYDERABAD: New South Wales were
crowned the inaugural Champions League Twenty20 winners after they snapped
Trinidad & Tobago’s fairytale campaign with a 41-run victory in a
high-voltage summit clash on Friday.
Scorecard
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In
Pics
In the title showdown featuring top two teams of the
tournament, it was a battle between Caribbean flair and Australian
professionalism and in the end, NSW had the last laugh with Brett Lee as their
star performer.
Put into bat, NSW fumbled and faltered in their
innings to slump to 83 for six in the 12th over before finding a messiah in Lee,
whose whirlwind 48 off 31 balls, along with Steven Smith’s 33, guided them to
159 for nine.
Trinidad & Tobago’s chase never gathered momentum
and Kieron Pollard’s (26 off 15 balls) last ditch attempt was not enough as the
Caribbeans side folded for 118 in 15.5 overs.
After his batting
heroics, Lee (2/10) was in the thick of action again, claiming two quick wickets
to reduce T&T to 21 for three in the first eventful 14 balls.
Lee’s second delivery castled the scoreless Wiliam Perkins and the
blond pacer returned to catch Lendl Simmons off his own bowling in the next
over.
In between, Adrian Barath hit Steve Smith’s first three balls
for successive fours followed it with a six before returning caught behind off
the last delivery.
For T&T, crisis further compounded as Dwayne
Bravo (17), and captain Daren Ganga (19) and Denesh Ramdin (16) fell when the
team needed them most.
Pollard (26) tried to replicate the form he
had shown in the league match against NSW but Nathan Hauritz had other ideas and
for T&T, the match was over when Pollard fell in the 15th over.
Earlier, New South Wales discovered a batting hero in Brett Lee
whose stunning 48, along with Steven Smith’s 33, took the Australians past the
150-mark after they had slumped to 83 for six inside 12 overs.
Put
into bat, NSW never really got going with Ravi Rampaul (3/20) and Dwayne Bravo
(2/27) polishing the top order before some poor shot selections did the middle
order in.
Down the order, Steven Smith, however, refused to throw in
the towel and Lee then came up with a 31-ball blitzkrieg, studded with four
fours and five sixes, before falling in the last ball of the innings.
David Warner and Phil Hughes have been key to New South Wales’
success in the tournament so far but the left-handed opening pair, for once,
proved they too had feet of clay.
Rampaul cleaned up Hughes (3) with
the first delivery of his second over and then Bravo combined with an airborne
Dave Mohammad to cut short Warner’s (19) stay just when the stocky left-hander
had started looking his ominous self.
Both the in-form NSW openers
back in the hut inside five overs with the score reading a mere 32, this was
clearly not the best of starts for the Australian side.
Simon Katich
(16) decided to punish Bravo, hitting him for two sixes — one miscued shot
soared over long-on ropes and another effortless pull cleared fine leg — in the
same over before the pacer returned to settle score.
Three balls
later, Moises Henriques (4) joined his captain in the hut, holing out in the
deep off Kieron Pollard, and NSW were clearly in a hole at 49 for four.
Dave Mohammad removed Ben Rohrer (16) with his first delivery and
Rampaul returned to disturb Daniel Smith’s timbers in the next over before Lee
joined Smith in the middle to steady the ship.
Even after Smith
returned, there was no containing Lee who swung his bat to good effect to help
the side cross the 150-mark that had looked a distant dream at one stage.
23.10.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
The trial of former French PM Dominique de Villepin, accused of conspiring to damage Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential bid, has ended.
Defence lawyers in Paris made their final arguments in the highly-charged case on Friday, and a verdict is due on 28 January, AFP news agency reported.
Mr de Villepin has denied orchestrating any plot, saying the case is part of a vendetta against him.
Prosecutors have called for him to receive an 18-month suspended sentence.
They have also asked judges to impose a fine of 45,000 euros (£41,000).
In his concluding arguments, Mr Sarkozy’s lawyer poked fun at the former prime minister’s elegancy and vanity, warning one can be handsome, tall and arrogant – and yet still lose the case.
‘Failed to act’
Prosecutors say Mr de Villepin tried to manipulate a judicial corruption investigation in 2004 in a bid to spoil Mr Sarkozy’s chances of winning the 2007 election.
The former prime minister is accused of having forged documents that wrongly implicated Mr Sarkozy in a major corruption scandal passed to a French magistrate.
It was alleged those named on the list had received bribes from international arms sales.
At the time of the alleged conspiracy, both men were rivals vying to succeed then-President Jacques Chirac.
The month long trial was dramatic from the start, says the BBC’s Emma-Jane Kirby in Paris, with President Sarkozy warning that whoever had tried to smear his name would hang on a butcher’s hook.
Mr Sarkozy, who claimed Mr de Villepin was the “primary instigator” behind the campaign to thwart his presidential bid, is one of 39 civil plaintiffs in the case.
In turn, Mr de Villepin testified last month that Mr Sarkozy had shown a “relentlessness to destroy a political adversary”.
Witnesses gave contradictory versions of events in three weeks of trial hearings, leaving 40 volumes of written evidence for judges to study, AFP reported.
Prosecutors argued that while Mr de Villepin had not deliberately taken part in the plot to defame Mr Sarkozy, he had failed to take action to stop the conspiracy and was an “accomplice through silence”.
They have also requested sentences for three other defendants.
The case, labelled by the French media as “the trial of the decade”, has been unfolding in the same Paris courtroom where Queen Marie Antoinette was sentenced to the guillotine in 1793 by France’s revolutionary tribunal.
23.10.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
Investigations are under way in the US to find out how a plane heading from San Diego to Minneapolis overshot its destination by 150 miles (240km).
Contact with the Northwest Airlines plane was lost for an hour as it flew at 37,000ft, sparking hijack fears.
Federal investigators are examining the plane’s data and voice recorders to establish why the pilots failed to answer calls from air traffic control.
The crew said they had been distracted by a “heated discussion”.
Flight 188, carrying 147 passengers, landed safely at Minneapolis after contact was resumed.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the cockpit voice and data recorders had been sent to Washington DC, where they are being analysed.
It is hoped the voice recordings will provide evidence of the conversations between the two pilots, who told the FBI that “they were in a heated discussion over airline policy and lost situational awareness”.
The data recorder could show if there was any manipulation of the controls on the flight deck.
The NTSB gave no indication of how long the analysis of the recorders could take.
Wrong path
Board spokesman Keith Holloway told the Associated Press news agency that reports in the media that the pilots may have fallen asleep were “speculative” but the investigation would look at “fatigue issues”.
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Passenger Andrea Allmon: ‘The plane was swarmed by police’
Questions have been raised about how the pilots could have missed any warning signals – including city lights and cockpit displays showing that they were no longer on the right path.
The NTSB’s former chief investigator into major accidents, Ben Berman said pilots learned to become instinctively aware of when they needed to start landing preparations and it would take a “fairly dramatic event” to distract them, AP reported.
The plane left San Diego at 1500 local time (2200 GMT) for what would normally be a three-hour journey.
Air traffic controllers lost radio contact with the plane approximately an hour before it was due to reach its destination of Minneapolis-St Paul International/Wold-Chamberlain Airport.
The plane missed its intended stop and continued on for a further 16 minutes before the airline managed to speak to the pilots.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contacted the military and two fighter jets were put on alert.
There were initial concerns the plane had been hijacked or had faced other problems and that was why the crew were not responding.
Northwest Airlines merged with Delta Air Lines in 2008.
In a statement, Delta Air Lines said the plane’s pilot and co-pilot had been “relieved from active flying”.
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MID-AIR MISHAPS
Oct 09: Police launch an inquiry after reports of Air India pilots and cabin crew coming to blows mid-air over sexual harassment claims
June 08: A Polish Boeing 737 narrowly misses hitting another aircraft over London after the wrong co-ordinates are entered into the flight computer
Feb 08: An internal Go! flight in Hawaii overshoots its landing by 15 miles after the two pilots fall asleep at the cockpit
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It said a decision would be made about them once its own internal investigation and one by the FAA and the safety board were over.
Brent Bjorlin, who was on the flight, told the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper that the passengers had not realised what had happened until they landed and security officials boarded the plane.
Fellow passenger Andrea Allmon said it was “unbelievable” that the pilots had allegedly not been paying attention.
“These guys are supposed to be paying attention to the flight. The safety of the passengers should be first and foremost,” she said.
Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers’ Association, told the Wall Street Journal controllers at the airport began worrying about terrorism as a factor when they could not reach the crew.
He said when the controllers eventually made contact, to allay their fears the crew had been threatened or overpowered, they made the pilots prove they were still in control of the plane.
Once they were satisfied, the plane made its way back to the airport.
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