The pair competed in Oslo, Norway on Thursday, with Bolt beating Powell to gold at the Diamond League meeting.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
London bus workers to strike over 2012 payments - ITV
Village evacuated over dam fears
North Wales Police say they're evacuating the village of Pennal, near Machynlleth, in Powys, after a breach in the dam of a local reservoir, which has allowed a small amount of water to escape.
Source: www.itv.com
Sacked Celtic coach Alan Thompson calls off divorce as he reunites with estranged wife - Daily Record
Jun 10 2012 Exclusive by Lynn McPherson and Steve Smith, Sunday Mail
Sunday Mail front page from 2011 when Alan Thompson and wife Joanne split
How the Sunday Mail broke the story last year
SACKED Celtic coach Alan Thompson has won back his estranged wife as he prepares to sue over his dismissal.
The former Hoops star has reunited with Joanne after she furiously accused him of a fling with a former Britney Spears lookalike.
We can reveal that the couple have now agreed to call off their divorce with Thompson concentrating on taking his proposed legal action against the Parkhead club.
His lawyers have already discussed the possibility of suing for unfair dismissal.
First team coach Thompson, 38, was dismissed by telephone on Sunday after refusing to meet with Parkhead boss and long-time friend Neil Lennon in his home town of Newcastle.
But speaking to the Sunday Mail yesterday, he said he “couldn’t be happier” after moving back in with his wife and three children.
He has told pals he is furious over claims that he was sacked over his lifestyle and claims that his drinking had become an issue for the club’s management.
Thompson said: “Things couldn’t be better.
“I’m off to Portugal and then Dubai and things are great.
“I’ve had the best week and I couldn’t be happier.
“I won’t be saying anything about the job and anything that is said will come from my solicitor.”
His 15-year marriage to Joanne hit the rocks in December 2010 and months later, she had divorce papers served on him at Celtic’s training complex at Lennoxtown.
At the time, it seemed likely there was no way back. But delighted Joanne told us: “We are back together. The divorce is off.
“I’m not at liberty to reveal anything about Alan’s job.”
One source said: “Alan is amazed that his lifestyle could be called into question when in fact he has been working quietly behind the scenes to get his marriage back on track.
“He and Jo have actually been quietly trying to repair things since January.”
“He enjoys going to the pub but it’s not as if he is going around causing trouble.”
Another source said: “There may have been tensions among the coaching staff at Celtic over wages and responsibilities.
“Everyone thinks of Thommo as the assistant manager but he isn’t – that’s Johan Mjallby.
“Alan had a higher profile and was a higher earner because he was already in a job with Newcastle United when Celtic hired him.
“Some people think there may have been tensions behind the scenes as a result.”
On Friday, Thompson and wife Joanne enjoyed a couple of drinks together in a pub near her new home in Ponteland, on the outskirts of Newcastle.
Blonde Joanne joined the sacked Celtic coach at the Diamond Inn – a favourite haunt of Newcastle United and Sunderland footballers.
The couple spent an hour standing at the bar with their young daughter before driving away.
An onlooker said: “Alan is a regular at the Diamond because it’s very discreet and there are always footballers in there – they don’t get any hassle.
“He was drinking lager, then his wife and daughter arrived just before 7pm and she had a glass of wine as they chatted at the bar for an hour.
“They were just like any other couple meeting for a teatime drink on a Friday. They seemed pretty relaxed.
“Alan was obviously still very upset about being sacked from Celtic because he kept talking about it and what Celtic said publicly about what happened.” Thompson, 38, played for the Glasgow side between 2000 and 2007, scoring 37 goals for the club.
He also helped Celtic win four Scottish Premier League titles and three Scottish Cups before returning to Parkhead in 2010 as a member of Lennon’s backroom staff.
When he took the post as first team coach, Thompson moved into a plush apartment in Glasgow’s west end, while Joanne and their three children remained at the family home in Morpeth, Northumberland.
He insisted the break-up was “amicable” when he confirmed the couple were divorcing last year – but former ballet dancer Joanne said their marriage foundered due to Alan’s “mid-life crisis”.
At the time, Joanne revealed: “We were idyllically married.
“I will never discredit my marriage. He is having a midlife crisis, so he can get on with it.”
She added: “I’m going to write a book about this and I want every single other footballer’s wife in the world that’s had it done to them to stand up and applaud me.”
Thompson was then spotted out with new girlfriend and mum-of-three Kirsty McLeod, a 34-year-old former model and one-time Britney Spears lookalike.
Joanne and the children moved out of the six-bedroom Morpeth home, which has been on the market for £1.3million since 2010 and now lies empty.
Kirsty declined to comment at her home in the west end of Glasgow.
The former Celtic coach’s two-bedroom Glasgow bachelor pad was also put on the market in April at offers over £340,000 and he has moved into his wife’s new home near Newcastle.
A statement earlier released from Thompson’s solicitors Bridge Litigation after his departure from the SPL champions said he was “profoundly disappointed” but hoped the situation could be resolved “amicably.”
Source: www.dailyrecord.co.uk
London Olympics politicization and human rights abusers - Presstv
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The British government has once again come under fire for politicizing the London Olympics, this time by handing over the Games’ security to a company accused of human rights abuses. British officials have been heavily criticized for their decisions ...Source: www.presstv.ir
London Theater Journal: Another Prisoner of Noble Title - New York Times Blogs
LONDON — What do you suppose she’s really thinking beneath the mask of majesty? All that nonstop pomp and pageantry must feel like a straitjacket. And surely she has disturbing things on her mind at the moment — worries about her husband, for one — as her reveling subjects pay such ostentatious tribute to her. Wouldn’t you just love to know what’s going on inside that serene head of hers?
No, not her. Not Queen Elizabeth II, though she has inspired many such questions in recent days. I arrived in London a few days too late to be a firsthand witness to the parades and parties and river flotillas that commemorated her 60 years on the throne. But I did manage to catch, just before she left town, another, livelier woman who could be said to be the prisoner of her title.
Her name? The Duchess of Malfi. And should the current queen of England have chosen to spend time with this entrapped creature, embodied with genuine tragic grandeur by Eve Best in John Webster’s 1613 play at the Old Vic Theater, she might have found a soul sister of sorts in a doomed Italian noblewoman of another age.
Or perhaps Queen Elizabeth’s thoughts would have turned to women in her family who were unlucky in love and paid a price, like her sister, Margaret, or her daughter-in-law Diana. Jamie Lloyd’s thrilling production of “The Duchess of Malfi,” which ended its limited run on Saturday, makes it all too clear that if you’re stuck on a world stage in a royal role, you had better keep your passions to yourself.
Is it only a coincidence that the Old Vic scheduled this production to coincide with the nationwide Diamond Jubilee celebrations? Written by Webster when memories of the first Queen Elizabeth and her sacrifices to the state were still fresh, “The Duchess of Malfi” achieves a thrilling new immediacy in Mr. Lloyd’s interpretation. (Can’t it please be reincarnated soon, ideally in New York?)
Not that this rising young director resorts to weary postmodernist tricks of dragging a centuries-old classic into a present of cellphones, tabloid journalism and television screens. On the contrary, as designed by Soutra Gilmour, this “Duchess” is set firmly in its period. The deep stage at the Old Vic has been transformed into a three-tiered set like a Gothic cathedral; like a tomb, it echoes with intimations of both eternity and decay.
The inhabitants of this sepulchral, candle-lighted world step out of shadows amid clouds of incense. And whether they be rough soldiers, stately churchmen or genteel ladies, they are all wearing Venetian-style masks as they advance toward us in ceremonial procession. They scarcely seem mortal, these exotic creatures.
But observe that one woman stands taller than the others in her handsome, floor-brushing gown. The strong light behind her reveals the silhouette of a woman’s naked body beneath the form-concealing dress. The lady is definitely made of flesh and blood. More’s the pity, for that will be the undoing of the Duchess of Malfi, who presumes to fall in love with her own steward (Tom Bateman, a worthy lust object) and to marry him in secret.
With these opening images, beautifully underscored by James Farncombe’s lighting and Ben and Max Ringham’s music, Mr. Lloyd establishes a visual vocabulary that matches Webster’s stark poetry of paradoxes. T.S. Eliot memorably wrote that Webster was always conscious of “the skull beneath the skin.” This “Duchess” expertly insists that we never forget its existence or that of the bodies beneath the robes and the faces behind the masks.
Indeed, I have never seen a production of any Jacobean tragedy that is so fully imbued, on so many levels, with a sense of duplicity, of doubleness. I mean not only the hypocrisy of state and church, embodied by the Duchess’s conniving brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal (Harry Lloyd and Finbar Lynch, in juicy and credible performances), but also the more far-reaching dichotomies of appearance and reality, of shadow and substance, of the spiritual and the physical, that are also always in play.
It seems appropriate that the plot’s major agent of change, the hired assassin Bosola, should be such an ambivalent figure. Portrayed with rough magic by Mark Bonnar, he is utterly of his corrupt world and also contemptuous of it. He lives as he must in this moment, in this place, but it sickens him to do so.
As with all well-told stories, this one doesn’t let you linger too much on its conceptual aspect while you’re watching. It’s only afterward that you realize how seamlessly its presentation has matched its theme. The production moves with such involving momentum that even its notoriously grisly coups de théâtre (severed hand and waxwork corpses) and far-fetched instances of mistaken identity seem not only feasible but also natural in this world of perfumed pestilence and intrigue.
As for Ms. Best, a great London stage star who has been seen on Broadway in revivals of “A Moon for the Misbegotten” and “The Homecoming,” her Duchess is the most compelling contradiction of all. She is clearly accustomed to command, and there’s arrogance in her carriage. Having to bend to seduce Mr. Bateman’s character doesn’t come easily to her. And living with the privileges of her title has made her cocky and careless; she believes that her stature is an all-concealing veil.
But what ultimately makes this Duchess more than human is, strangely enough, her great humanity. Subjected to some of the nastiest forms of psychological torture in literature, Ms. Best’s Duchess seems to shed her courtly mannerisms and become a figure of centered, radiant naturalness. And she brings to the acceptance of her death the grand, inspiring resignation we associate with Shakespeare’s tragic heroes.
Nonetheless she doesn’t die easily, as is evidenced by the graphic, protracted scene of her murder. On the edge of extinction, she blazes. Had Queen Elizabeth II seen Ms. Best’s performance she might well have approved of this triumph of the true majestic mettle that was always beneath the glitter.
Source: artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
Murder hunt after Sussex victim of Jubilee attack dies - BBC News
A murder investigation has begun after the death of a 21-year-old East Sussex man found collapsed in the street following a Jubilee party.
Father-of-three James Harris Durkin, of Eastbourne, was discovered in Court Road, Orpington, south-east London, in the early hours of Tuesday.
The Met Police said he was taken to Royal London Hospital but later died.
Post-mortem tests on Thursday showed he died from a "deep brain bleed linked to blunt force trauma".
The Met Police have set up an incident room at Lewisham police station and appealed for witnesses.
A spokesman for the force said: "There were a number of people at the party which is in an area of adjoining residential premises.
"There were also, despite the early hours of the assault, people in the area either going to or returning from work in a part of Orpington."
Mr Durkin initially travelled to Orpington from his home in Eastbourne to attend a funeral on Monday.
Officers said he then spent the evening celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee with family and friends in Court Road.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
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