* C$ slightly up at 94.86 U.S. cents * Bonds edge higher across the curve By Claire Sibonney TORONTO, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar edgedhigher against its U.S. counterpart on Wednesday, with sometraders hopeful that U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman BenBernanke"s congressional testimony will revive risk appetite. Any clues suggesting U.S. central bank will not rush tohike rates could offset risk aversion that sent markets loweron Tuesday after an unexpected drop in U.S. home prices andconsumer confidence. "The market will likely put that in the rearview mirror andfocus on Bernanke today," said Jack Spitz, managing director offoreign exchange at National Bank Financial. "If he"s somewhat upbeat and the market looks to reliefrally and to equities, it could contribute to Canadian dollarbuying today." As oil prices slipped, Spitz said market players will alsobe watching for data later this morning on U.S. crudeinventories and imports for more indications on the shape ofthe global recovery. [O/R] At 9:06 a.m. (1406 GMT) The Canadian dollar was atC$1.0542, or 94.86 U.S. cents, slightly up from Tuesday"s closeat C$1.0566 to the U.S. dollar, or 94.64 U.S. cents. Canadian bond prices were also little changed to slightlyhigher ahead of Bernanke"s testimony and a report on new homesales. The two-year Canadian government bond CA2YT=RR was flatat C$100.335 to yield 1.331 percent, while the 10-year bondCA10YT=RR gained 5 Canadian cents to C$102.550 to yield 3.426percent. (Reporting by Claire Sibonney; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson)
CurrenciesSaturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Robinho sells up for good: �32.5m wave has no enterprise to lapse to Manchester City after loan spell in Braziil
Manchester City forward Robinho has cleared his house, sold his car, shipped his possessions back to Brazil and told his representatives to find him a new club.
Robinho is currently on loan at Santos in his home country and scored twice during a 6-3 defeat of Bragantino on Thursday.
A kiss goodbye: Robinho has now cleared out his English home
City boss Roberto Mancini has said in recent weeks that he expects the 26-year-old to return to the club after the World Cup this summer, and senior figures at Eastlands have certainly been hoping that their 32.5million record signing will be back when his six-month loan runs out in early August.
But Sportsmail can reveal that Robinho has already had his house cleared in the city and has flown all his possessions to South America. His white Lamborghini sports car has also been sold.
Robinho has said to his representatives that he has no desire to move back to City and asked them to arrange a permanent move away from England in the summer. He has also said that he would rather stay at Santos - who are top of the Sao Paulo state championship with a four-point cushion - for an extended spell than return to City.
Robinho scored his first goal from close range against Bragantino while his second - a cheeky lob - sent the crowd into raptures.
"I dedicate the goal to my son, who loves football just like me," said Robinho. "It is still a great thrill to play here. I grew up here. My home is near here. This stadium is my second home."
Feeling the pain: Robinho endured a miserable spell at Eastlands
Robinho was not a huge fan of Mancini"s training methods while he was at City and Craig Bellamy is also taking some convincing, with the issue coming to a head on Wednesday.
Under previous manager Mark Hughes, Bellamy was given leeway about training because of his troublesome knees.
It is understood, however, that Mancini prefers all his squad to join in every session - sometimes even twice a day. Bellamy was not happy at what was being asked of him and Sportsmail understands he remains unconvinced that his long-term future remains at City, or even in this country.
Mancini confirmed that an argument had taken place in his office, but denied Bellamy had been banished from the club, insisting they had reached a compromise.
Indeed, the Wales striker may yet be passed fit to face his old club Liverpool at Eastlands tomorrow.
"I have only spoken to him face to face, player and manager," said Mancini. "I haven"t shouted at him. "He wanted to work in one mode with his knee, I preferred to work in another mode. It"s just one problem a manager can have with players."
However, City will again be without Carlos Tevez, who is on compassionate leave in Argentina where his new baby daughter Katie, who was born six weeks premature, has been in intensive care.
More...VIDEO SPECIAL: Craig Bellamy"s replacement? Smiling Robinho in no mood for Manchester City return as he hits Santos doubleRobinho: In Europe, the coach sends you out to run. Here in Brazil, I play...The making of Manchester City"s Adam Johnson: How the skinny kid they feared was too small to make it became a flying winger at the richest club in the worldAndy Townsend"s boot room: The best guide to this weekend"s action in the Premier League Man City eye 24m Yaya... but Barcelona use star to lure Arsenal jewel Fabregas
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Video: supernatural shun as truck pushes car up the M1
She was pinned to the front of a juggernaut in the fast line of a main road but someway the motorist of this family hatchback transient unharmed.
Mobile phone footage has been posted on YouTube assumingly capturing the impulse when a Renault Clio was trapped on the front fender of a haulage truck as it sped along the A1 (M) in Yorkshire.
A West Yorkshire Police orator told The Times: As far as were wakeful the footage is real. This is an situation we attended in January.
It is believed both drivers emerged but any injuries once both vehicles had come to a stop. A motorist from Arclid haulage organisation was clearly preoccupied to the car in front.
Related LinksState assist to assistance carmakers to go immature Scrappage intrigue stalls as money starts to run dryFixed cars still accelerating on their ownA masculine voice can be listened on the video shouting: He hasnt even seen it.
A orator for Arclid Transport, a Cheshire-based haulage company, pronounced that an review in to the situation had started. All I can contend is that we are wakeful there was an situation on that widen of the main road in January. The military attended, there were no injuries and no arrests.
In the video, the truck travelling is available for twenty-two seconds in the fast lane. If it was pushing at 60mph the car would have been pushed for some-more than a third of a mile during the clip.
hair wigParking in New York proves a ambuscade nonetheless again for Jerry Seinfeld
James Bone, New York & , : {} Nobody knows some-more about the parking problems in New York than Jerry Seinfeld. The radio comic done the necessity of parking spaces a long-lived subject on his eponymous 1990s sitcom about nothing.
The issue, he once observed, is that the vehicle industry keeps on cranking out new cars when what is unequivocally indispensable is some-more spaces.
Everybody in New York knows theres approach some-more cars than parking spaces, Seinfeld once said. Its similar to low-pitched chairs, solely everyone sat down around 1964.
Now Seinfeld has been held up in a parking liaison of his own that seems right out of his show. Arriving to jot down his new series, The Marriage Ref, Seinfelds car pulled in to a parking space in front of the college of music on West 57th Street utilizing an lapsed military parking permit.An rapt radio contributor speckled the cherished military poster on the dashboard and asked the mayor since Seinfeld had it. I have positively no idea, Michael Bloomberg confessed.
Related LinksThe luminosity of Larry David and Curb Your EnthusiasmThe 50 most appropriate US radio showsMicrosoft drops Seinfeld in new ad debateNew Yorkers continually voice snub about the abuse of military parking permits by celebrities and open officials. Police not long ago betrothed to crack down after a New Years Eve explosve shock in Times Square caused by a outpost left neglected for dual days since it had a poster from a military association.
The New York Police Department fast called an review in to Seinfelds parking privileges. A mouthpiece for the stand up comic insisted that he had no believe of the military assent in his car. She pronounced that it belonged to his driver, a late New York narcotics military officer identified as Sergeant Timothy Gallagher.
In fact, the parking poster was released to a womanlike anti-narcotics investigator operative in the Bronx and should have been incited in when it lapsed in 2007. The investigator reportedly told investigators that the usually thing she knew about Seinfeld was from examination his show.
Elizabeth Clark Zoia, Seinfelds spokeswoman, pronounced that his motorist became endangered for his reserve when they were met by a throng of fans outward the TV college of music so he placed the assent in the car window so he could chaperon the stand up comic inside. She pronounced Seinfeld felt that his motorist was only perplexing to assistance him and so will not be dismissed. She betrothed that the parking poster would not be used again.
It is not the initial time that the stand up comic has been held up in difficulties over parking. He once outlayed $2 million to modify a construction in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in to a in isolation climate-controlled garage for his pick up of twenty Porsches, inspiring conflict from neighbours.
In one part of his show, called The Parking Space, the impression George Costanza vows to find a free parking mark instead of profitable for a car park. Its similar to going to a prostitute, George explains to his crony Elaine. Why should I compensate when, if I request myself, may be I can get it for free?
hair wigMonday, July 26, 2010
Get Shorty: Mexico still acid for El Chapo the 5ft 6in drug lord
In the remote, severe territory of the Sierra Madre plateau in the state of Sinaloa, Mexicos majority wanted, majority feared and majority fugitive drug duke is hiding.
Protected by a worldly reconnoitering operation with low roots in the internal population, he has been transient Mexican and US authorities since his shun from prison in 2001. Those who watch out for him are well well well known as rats: cab drivers, travel sellers, shoe shiners, smoothness men any one versed with a phone who wants to consequence a couple of dollars by informing on infantry or infantry activity, says Jos Ramón Salinas Frias, arch orator for the Public Security Secretariat.
The plateau are pleasing but scarcely unfit to navigate. The forests are fast disintegrating in to the mills of bootleg loggers, and with them vanish the wild wild pig that the internal people hunt. Many of them have turn drug farmers, flourishing pot or opium. They are well armed and they do not similar to outsiders.
Trying to constraint the narco-king has been likened to the office of severe guerrillas in the Colombian jungle and positively he has acquired an component of the renegades mystique. Immortalised in the ballads of the narco-corridos musicians who specialise in the exploits of drug gangsters he has turn embedded in renouned fable as a 5ft 6in Houdini with guns.
Related LinksThe narco-barons of MexicoMexican drug duke killed in raidANALYSIS: poisonous bubbly beverage in a "failing state"Amid the ire and assault of President Calderóns fight on the cartels, a small strong kingpins have been toppled, but one man stands out as the flay of posterior forces: Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, head of the absolute Sinaloa cartel.
Occasionally he is sighted. Local gossip has it that he once went to a restaurant, confiscated all the diners mobile phones whilst he enjoyed a beef and afterwards left after returning each phone to the scold owner. The diners after detected that their bills had been paid.
In 2007 he tied together his third wife, a internal beauty black called Emma Coronel Aispuro, on her 18th birthday, in a intemperate marriage that could have graced the pages of the glossiest multitude magazine. Despite the high levels of security and protection, internal politicians and infantry officers were reported to have attended.
Since afterwards his mother has mostly been seen in beauty salons in Culiacán, surrounded by high security. But, as the enthusiasm to catch El Chapo increases, he becomes an ever rarer steer perhaps, in part, as he is pronounced to have had estimable facial reformation surgery.
Despite a $5 million (�3.3 million) annuity offering by the United States and an additional $2 million by Mexico, El Chapo or Shorty has since agents from both sides of the limit the trip for 9 years, since his shun in a washing basket from the maximum-security Puente Grande jail.
As a kid he sole oranges to get sufficient income to eat. Now, at 52, Guzmán is No 701 on the Forbes list of the worlds billionaires, with an estimated $1.1 billion happening garnered from using Mexicos majority heartless and essential business. In further to the drug that done his name, Guzmán specialises in human trafficking, income laundering and multiform alternative sorts of crime, with general networks swelling their tentacles via the world.
He goes about his commercial operation with impunity, afforded by a manly reduction of money, ruthlessness and trickery. Protected by feet soldiers who decapitate or woe any one who competence poise a threat, and with roughly vast monetary power, Guzmán operates with relations leisure in his home state of Sinaloa.
US drug officials hold that crime inside of the Mexican authorities is a key cause in his capability to hedge capture.
Last March, in an talk with the reputable Proceso magazine, Anthony P. Placido, comprehension arch for the Drugs Enforcement Agency, pronounced that zero of the kingpins of the drug cartels felt severely in jeopardy by Mr Calderón since they have extended powers of crime that give them a kind of immunity, we say, guaranteed.
He lifted specific concerns over rumoured links in between close associates of Genaro García Luna, the Public Security Secretary, and rapist groups.
A comparison US law coercion central in Mexico, vocalization to The Times on condition of anonymity, concurred concerns that Guzmán mostly slipped by the authorities hands since of tip-offs from hurtful officials.
There is open crime and they will utilize it, possibly the bribery, danger or the hazard of murdering people, he said. The Public Security Secretariat had had cases of corruption, the central concurred but it was formidable to contend that it was worse than any one else ... the a regard everywhere.
An orchestrated change of fright and apply oneself additionally plays the part. On the one hand, terrorising rivals with kidnapping, killings and tortures the conglomeration is pronounced to disintegrate victims bodies in poison and on the alternative construction faithfulness in his communities by appropriation new schools and churches, Guzmán has turn part-monster, part-hero; a absolute multiple that keeps his locale hidden in silence.
In Mar last year Archbishop Hector González Martínez of Durango, the state adjacent Sinaloa, claimed to know Guzmáns location. El Chapo lives a bit over the locale of Guanaceví. Everyone knows that well, everybody solely the authorities, he said. Four days after the bodies of dual passed lieutenants were found outward Guanaceví with a note: Nobody can catch El Chapo not the authorities, not the priests. The Archbishop after retracted his statement, observant that he had usually been repeating rumours.
Guzmán is the usually drug trainer that has built his association similar to a government, pronounced Raúl Benítez Manaut, a inhabitant security and drug trafficking consultant at the National University of Mexico.
He has infantry protection, an armed forces of administrators, majority authorised companies to refine income and majority houses in and outward Mexico assumingly he has skill in Central America. In Sinaloa he controls a lot of the mercantile activity. He is a pitch of the expansion of organized crime in Mexico and the Governments disaster to enclose it so, as with Osama bin Laden, an additional towering fugitive, Guzmáns constraint would be a stately feat for possibly US or Mexican forces.
But whilst it would send an critical message, a small contend that it would do zero to idle the Sinaloa cartel. You wouldnt fall short them usually by incarcerating El Chapo Guzmán, pronounced Edgardo Buscaglia, an organized crime consultant at ITAM University. The Sinaloa conglomeration is a business. It has a house of twelve members usually 4 of whom are well well well well known and all twelve are next to in power. Guzmán could be transposed in a couple of weeks.
US investigators take a opposite view. They determine with the Mexican research that energy is strong in the hands of Guzmán and his partner-in-crime, Ismael Zambada García, and that Zambada could still run the cartel, but the symbolism of Guzmáns detain should not be underestimated.
In Mexico there was a open notice that men such as Guzmán had the sort of reach that would regularly concede him to kick the system. If El Chapo fell out [of the drug business] it would be huge, pronounced the US official.
He gave the e.g. of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, a former Sinaloa personality who shaped a breakaway cartel. His genocide in Dec at the hands of Mexican agents dispelled the apparition of invincibility surrounding such figures, he said, demonstrating that Calderón is not messing around.
Mexican and US forces hold that they are progressively shutting the net. There have been alternative new successes: last week Jos Velázquez Villagrana, an critical trafficker inside of the Sinaloa cartel, was arrested; the scandalous hitman Teodoro García Simental, well well well known as El Teo, was prisoner last month. The detain of each of these principal pieces will at a small point lead to the detain of the head, pronounced Mr Salinas Frias.
As Mexicos drug fight drags on, however, Mr Calderón faces critics who contend that his deployment of the armed forces has been catastrophic 18,000 people opposite Mexico have been killed in drug-related assault since late 2006 and a small who lay that the Government protects the Sinaloa leadership.
More have died not long ago as Guzmán fights a territory fight with Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, personality of the Juárez cartel, in Ciudad Juárez, where some-more than 4,600 people have been killed over the past dual years.
For majority Mexicans, drug are everywhere, sole not-so-secretly in markets, by cab drivers and pointless moustachioed men in Hawaiian shirts. It equates to drivers and train passengers being stopped and searched and regularly being surrounded by infantry and soldiers in the streets, disposition out of big trucks or appearing from helicopters with guns pointing, preventing drug crime.
Up in the Sierra Madre home to the narco-corridor or mezzanine of parole are 9,000 Mexican troops. Despite their aircraft, helicopters and sport dogs they have small success navigating the mountains; most of the narco-corridor, the main drug track from Latin America to the US, is thick jungle. The inland people traditionally lived in caves and El Chapo is mostly pronounced to be vital in one himself.
American and Mexican officials are presaging Guzmáns approaching capture. One not long ago late head of the DEA has since him until April. We are hopeful, pronounced the US central in Mexico earlier or later.
Ballad of a short man
Del infierno se escapa
Y se persigna en la iglesia
Y aveces las residencias aveces casa campaña los raídos y las metrallas durmiendo al piso en la cama
de techo aveces las cuevas
Joaquín el chapo le llaman
Song by The Vultures of Culicán
***
He transient from ruin
And crossed himself in church
Sleeping infrequently in homes
Sometimes in tents
Radios and rifles
At the feet of the bed
As a roof tiles infrequently caves
Joaquín the Short they call him
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Lebedev nearby Independent understanding as box put to OFT
Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB spy, changed inside of in contact with area of shopping the Independent titles yesterday when he and the newspapers publishing house lodged a acquiescence with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).
Today outlines the deadline for talks in between Mr Lebedev and Independent News & Media after the Dublin-based organisation entered in to an disdainful non-binding agreement with the Russian billionaire in December. The deadline has already been lengthened on Feb 15.
The acquiescence to the OFT is a pointer that the parties competence have reached an agreement already over The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, media analysts said.
Theres a great possibility theyve essentially finished a deal, Douglas McCabe, an researcher for Enders Analysis, said. You dont go to the OFT until youre there or positively on the cusp.
Related LinksParadoxical billionaire "happy to lend a hand"Russias new chosen grabs a bit of LondonThe OFT acquiescence refers to the expected merger of The Independent and Independent on Sunday by Lebedev Holdings Limited.
Any intensity foe concerns lifted by the merger contingency be submitted by Mar 11. The OFT could technically impute the box to the Competition Commission, nonetheless Mr McCabe and alternative analysts can see no foe issues outset from the squeeze of the newspapers by Mr Lebedev.
Lebedev Holdings, that owns the Evening Standard, is owned by Evgeny Lebedev, Mr Lebedevs 29-year-old son, according to Companies House records. Lebedev Holdings not long ago set up a subsidiary, Independent Print, at Companies House.
If Independent Print is used to buy the Independent titles, Evegny Lebedev would turn the immature Russian owners of dual British inhabitant newspapers.
Progress is being done on the deal, industry insiders pronounced last night. Theres each clarity a understanding will be done, but it competence not be tomorrow, one chairman close to the understanding said. It could be subsequent week.
A key aspect of negotiations will be The Independents copy stipulate with Trinity Mirror, that is reported to be value �19 million.
Total sales of The Independent were down thirteen per cent year on year at usually underneath 186,000, according to ABC total expelled last week.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
IVF might lift risk of diabetes, hypertension and cancer in after hold up Science
IVF babies are some-more expected to have a low birthweight, ensuing in a higher risk of obesity, diabetes and hypertension by 50. Photograph: ZEPHYR/SPL/Getty Images
People recognised by IVF diagnosis should be monitored for the early conflict of high red blood pressure, diabetes and sure cancers prior to the age of 50, according to a flood specialist.
While IVF is in all deliberate to furnish full of health babies, doctors have identified pointed genetic changes that might lift the risk of sold healing conditions in after life.
Since the bieing innate of the initial exam blood vessel baby, Louise Brown, on twenty-five Jul 1978, some-more than 3 million babies have been innate by flood diagnosis around the world. The immeasurable infancy are still underneath the age of 30.
The border to that IVF babies rise some-more hypertension, diabetes and cancer will proceed to arise over the subsequent dual decades as they come in center age, doctors said.
"By and large these young kids are usually fine, it"s not similar to they have additional arms or additional heads, but they have a small risk of unattractive outcomes. What"s going to occur to them down the line? Bear in mind nothing is comparison than 31 years old," pronounced Carmen Sapienza, highbrow of pathology at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
"They have a majority higher magnitude of being low birthweight and this formula in a higher bent to be obese, a higher risk of sort 2 diabetes and hypertension when you reach 50 years old," Sapienza told the annual assembly of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego yesterday.
In 2006, the Department of Health warned that Britain was confronting a new call of cancer on the behind of augmenting plumpness in the population. Obesity plays a purpose in 4% of cancers, together with breast and womb cancer, and has additionally been associated to the disease in the bowel and kidney. In majority cases, hormones expelled from fat are to blame.
"It creates clarity for IVF young kids to watch out for hypertension, plumpness and associated diabetes and cancers as they reach their fifties," Sapienza said. "It will be engaging to guard these children."
Unlike of course recognised babies, those who are combined by IVF outlay their initial 3 days after source in a Petri plate and are unprotected to some-more oxygen than is accessible in the womb. The changed oxygen levels and the enlightenment media used to keep embryos alive are thought to change how genes are voiced in IVF embryos.
Sapienza"s group analysed levels of gene countenance in 75 young kids innate by IVF and compared this with 100 of course innate babies. They found differences in 6-10% of the genes studied.
Some of the genes that differed are well known to fool around a purpose in normal growth and growth, whilst others are associated to metabolic rate and the arrangement of fat in the body.
The commentary come as the contriver of one of the majority usual flood treatments in make make make make use of of of of in Britain warned that the technique, in that spermatazoa are injected without delay in to eggs, is being overused, exposing patients to unnecessary risk and expense.
Dr Andre outpost Steirteghem at the Brussels University Centre for Reproductive Medicine co-invented intracytoplasmic spermatazoa injection or ICSI in the 1990s, a procession that accounted for 48% of all IVF diagnosis in the UK in 2007. The procession tends to be used some-more in in isolation clinics than in the NHS. The Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre in London, that has Britain"s top success rates, uses ICSI in 78% of diagnosis cycles.
ICSI costs up to £2,000 some-more than customary IVF and carries a somewhat higher risk of producing babies with bieing innate defects. It was grown privately to provide masculine infertility, but most clinics right away make make make make use of of of of it for all patients, since it is some-more expected to lead to viable embryos.
"Several clinics make make make make use of of of of ICSI for everybody. I don"t think it"s required when you have a process similar to required IVF that is positively less invasive," pronounced Dr outpost Steirteghem. "ICSI has been overused. The critical thing is we have to see what will come out in the future, so long-term follow-up is important."
In the UK, the make make make make use of of of of of ICSI as a suit of all flood diagnosis rose from 15% in 1995 to 43% in 2005. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority recommends that ICSI be used usually when problems have been identified with a man"s sperm, or when prior IVF diagnosis has failed.
Allan Pacey, comparison techer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "There is a genuine risk that ICSI is being stale in a little tools of the universe and I think this is out of fright of patients experiencing "failed fertilisation" utilizing required IVF. The complaint with overusing ICSI is that there is a really small but statistically poignant increasing risk that a little of the babies innate from the technique crop up to have health problems."