Britain's Tasha Danvers, the bronze medallist in the 400m hurdles at the Beijing Olympics, has retired after conceding defeat in her battle to be fit for the London 2012 Games. The 34-year-old has suffered a series of injuries and ahead of the preliminary squad announcement for the Games this week Danvers, from south London, has quit.
"It's extremely disappointing not to be able to put myself into contention for selection for London 2012," she said. "Based on my training at different stages my coach and I believed we had a genuine chance of making it. But the setbacks have been too many to overcome.
"Since winning Olympic bronze in Beijing I have made so many sacrifices to fulfil my dream of competing in London. Making the decision to relocate back to the UK meant leaving my seven-year-old son behind in America, which is the hardest thing in the world to do. But we genuinely believed I could step on to that podium again and with the support of my family, [coach] Malcolm Arnold, UKA, the medical team and the National Lottery, I've done everything possible to try to achieve that. Sadly my body has had enough."
Danvers, who also won Commonwealth Games silver in 2006 – less than 18 months after giving birth to her son – has made every final she has contested since 2004.
Arnold said: "This is the worse possible news for Tasha but there is no doubt she has thrown everything at trying to make London. She is an Olympic medallist and that pedigree doesn't just disappear. I was confident that if we could get her to the Games she would have been very competitive.
"This is the flipside of the Olympic dream but career-ending injuries are a fact of life at this level of sport. Our medical team have worked incredibly hard but sometimes the body knows best."
Great Britain's head coach Charles van Commenee added: "We don't have too many current Olympic medallists in our team and in an ideal world they would all be with us in London. Tasha knows what it takes to be competitive and make the podium, which would have been a huge advantage. Retirement is a hard decision for any athlete but when the decision is taken out of your hands so close to an Olympic Games, it must be even tougher. I wish Tasha all the very best."
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Ruud Gullit's wife leaves him for a younger man after getting 'sick of his cheating' - Daily Mail
By Leon Watson
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The wife of football legend Ruud Gullit has left him for a younger man because she says she's sick of his cheating.
Estelle, 33, revealed the Sky Sports pundit was left 'angry and confused' after she told him she wanted a divorce.
Estelle has fallen in love with Moroccan-born world champion kickboxer Badr Hari, who at 28 is 21 years younger than Ruud.
Split: Former Holland star Ruud Gullit with his bride Estelle Cruyff on their wedding day in Amsterdam. She has now told him she wants a divorce
In an interview with Dutch paper De Telegraaf, she blamed her husband's infidelity for the end of their 12-year marriage.
Estelle, who is niece of Dutch legend Johan Cruyff, said: 'There is one thing Ruud needs to know. Badr has not stolen me from Ruud... Ruud gave me away.'
'Ruud is angry and confused,' she revealed. 'He can’t believe what is happening. He was really angry when I told him I was leaving him.
'I wanted us both to tell the children. We have a daughter Joelle and a son Maxim together. But I did not get the chance to discuss that.
'Ruud is so annoyed. He really did not see this coming. But that is what happens when you are so busy with your own things.'
Ruud played for AC Milan, Sampdoria, Chelsea and Holland in a glittering career before going on to manage Chelsea and Newcastle United.
Ruud Gullit, when he was manager of Chelsea, and his then-girlfriend, Estelle Cruyff at Fulham Town Hall in London, celebrating the club's 1997 FA Cup win over Middlesborough
Glamorous: Estelle Cruyff became the third Mrs Ruud Gullit when the couple married in Amsterdam. Ruud astounded guests by arriving with his trademark dreadlocks shorn off
Unfaithful: The couple attend the Golden Foot Ceremony Awards in Monaco in October last year
Estelle said she has fallen in love with Moroccan-born world heavyweight kickboxing champion Badr Hari (pictured right), who is 21 years younger than her husband
His wife said: 'Of course Ruud had affairs. He always did during our marriage. And of course I knew about them. And of course he would deny them all the time. My trust in him decreased over the years. In the end I didn’t trust him one bit.
'That was the moment I started to ask myself, what is this whole marriage actually based on?
'I put on a brave smile for a long time when I was with friends. It was a smile to hide my disappointment and hurt. As a woman you feel so much more than a man. I just knew his things weren’t incidents, but pure lust. The first time I confronted him with one of his affairs, we weren’t even married.'
Talented footballer: Ruud Gullit is tackled by Tottenham's Allan Nielsen in a match at Stamford Bridge in 1996
Ruud, with Dennis Wise and Gianfranco Zola after winning the FA Cup in 1997
Ruud announced his resignation as Newcastle United manager in August 1999, he blamed the media and a disastrous start to the Premiership season
Estelle met Ruud at a nightclub while she was aged 17 and still at school. The couple married four years later and have two children together.
She gave birth to their two-year-old daughter, Joelle, when she was 19 and the family lived in a flat on the outskirts of Amsterdam.
'Ruud does not realise that he has hurt me so much over the years,' she said. 'I wonder now if he was aware of how much pain he caused me.
'I wanted that pain to end,' she told De Telegraaf. 'I hope he finds somebody who can make him happy. It has become clear over the years that I could not make him happy. Well, not just me on my own.
'Ruud knows I know everything. He really is not a bad man, but he has one particularly bad habit.
'I was looking forward to a lovely, romantic life with Ruud. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. He was sweet, happy. I could not wait to start a family with him. I don’t want to forget the great moments, which we did have, otherwise this would not have lasted 16 years.'
Estelle said Ruud is 'an adorable father' which 'as a woman, that makes you melt at times'.
But she said being a good father is not enough. The former European Footballer of the Year was married twice before and has four children with his ex-wives.
Ruud told Dutch media this week that he was getting divorced, 'because of recent developments in his marriage'.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
London 2012: Sex Pistols on list for Olympics' opening ceremony - Daily Telegraph
Tracks by the elder statesmen of British pop music are included, such as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and David Bowie.
And there are classics such as London Calling by The Clash, Going Underground by The Jam, My Generation by The Who and Rudy by The Specials.
They come alongside more recent tunes such as the Sugababes, Push the Button, Amy Winehouse’s version of Valerie and Adele’s Rolling in the Deep.
Rock acts such as Radiohead, Coldplay, Muse, Oasis and Blur are on the list alongside rappers such as Rizzle Kicks, Tinie Tempa and Dizzee Rascal.
Classic TV and radio theme tunes include Eastenders, Coronation Street, the Archers and the BBC news and film theme tunes such as Chariots of Fire and the James Bond Theme.
Among the fun tunes listed are My Boy Lollipop and Tiger Feet, but there is no room for performers at the Diamond Jubilee Concert including Cliff Richard, Elton John, and Tom Jones.
The music will be mixed together by Underworld – DJs Karl Hyde and Rick Smith – at Abbey Road Studios and the pair have included their own dance music classic Born Slippy, which featured in Boyle’s film Trainspotting, as well as the Prodigy’s Firestarter.
Mr Boyle, 55, has already revealed that the spectacular will feature a Glastonbury-style “mosh pit” but an Olympics spokesman said: “We want the ceremony to be a fantastic surprise for the watching world, and we want the British public to be proud of it.
“There is endless speculation about the content – much of which is simply guesswork, as we are keeping the show under wraps.”
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
London to Brighton bike ride attracts 27,000 cyclists - BBC News
More than 27,000 cyclists are taking part in the 54-mile London to Brighton bike ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation.
Riders set off from Clapham Common from 06:00 BST, with the first arriving at the finish just before 09:00.
The toughest part of the ride is the climb up 813ft (247m) Ditchling Beacon just outside Brighton, which takes an average of 15 minutes to scale.
The event, which is now in its 37th year, has raised more than £50m.
Among the riders taking part was Toby Field from Eastbourne, also known as the Fat Cycle Rider, who has lost 8st 14lb in weight since taking up cycling.
His father died from a weight-related heart attack at the age of 55, and Mr Field said after his father's death he was in denial about his own health problems.
"I wanted a cheap bike so I could ride around the park with my kids. I was walking and they were leaving me behind. That's where it all started."
Road closures have been in place along the route out of London, through the boroughs of Reigate and Banstead and Tandridge in Surrey and through Sussex into Brighton.
Southern Railway and First Capital Connect do not allow bikes to be carried on trains on race day, but a park and ride service operates between Brighton Racecourse and Madeira Drive.
Bus services have been redirected and Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach company said the A23 into Brighton was gridlocked at about midday because of the race.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Essex Democratic party keeps control of Newark through street-level politics - NJ.com
ESSEX COUNTY — The machine is alive and well in Newark.
After months of hard fighting and high rhetoric over a battle for control of the party, the Essex County Democratic Committee still holds the reins in a city it has dominated for decades.
"We had the benefit of running with President Obama, Senator Menendez and Don Payne which are three very strong names," said Phil Alagia, chief of staff to County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo and one of the party’s top strategists. "We’re the Democratic party and we have great Democrats in Essex County."
A lot was at stake during the June 5 Democratic primary. On top of the 10th District Congressional seat, district leader races throughout the city threatened to upset the political status quo.
Factions of city Democrats complained the party had lost its core liberal principles and had grown unresponsive to the needs of the citizenry.
After the elections, each city ward remains under the control of the party machine, but insurgents did not leave the field empty-handed.
In the East and South Wards, independent democrats made significant inroads on June 5, picking up dozens of district leader seats. But in no ward did insurgents win enough races to elect new leadership.
In city politics, the party is organized on a three-tiered hierarchy. District leaders are the ground troops elected to represent a constituency often no bigger than a few city blocks. Those leaders then gather the week after election and choose the ward leaders. Ward representatives gather soon after and elect a chairman for the county party.
So coalitions seeking to oust party leaders at the top have to start at street level, fighting block by block to elect their own district leaders.
The Essex County Independent Democrats who fielded candidates county-wide, won 26 out of 80 seats in the South Ward, well shy of the 41 needed to hold a majority, but enough to gain a strong foothold for future races.
"This party wasn’t built in a day and you’re not going to be able to reform it in a day," said Rahaman Muhammad, a Newark union leader and strategist for the Independent Democrats. "We’ll be back in 2014."
The group, also backed by Councilman Ras Baraka scored an important symbolic victory: Ward chairman Lee Fisher lost his district leader seat.
But with the support of county democrats Fisher was re-elected as ward chairman last week — a move his opponents will fight.
The East Ward landscape underwent a similar shift.
NEWPAC, a well-organized group of insurgents took 16 of 46 seats, but needed 24 to take control. Again, ward chairman Angelo DiFrederico lost his district leader seat, but was re-elected ward chairman when NEWPAC boycotted the leadership vote.
"Due to the way that we were treated during the elections — some questionable methods were used against some of our candidates — our candidates didn’t feel they wanted to be part of the East Ward Democratic Committee," said Luis Barreira, a NEWPAC leader.
In a strange twist, there were two candidates of the same name running in the East Ward.
NEWPAC fielded Deputy Police Chief Anthony Campos for a district leader seat, which he won. Campos is a well-known figure in the city, especially in the East.
But when Councilman Augusto Amador decided not to run for his district leader seat, the party machine ran another Anthony Campos, who also won.
NEWPAC said it was a ploy.
"He could be a wonderful person but nobody seems to know who this kid is," Barreira said. "But he is a registered voter in the district."
Leaders from both insurgencies vowed to fight again in 2014.
"If somebody asked me what’s the rap line that’s hurt the community the most, I would say it’s ‘Line A all the way,’" said Muhammad, quoting the county party slogan.
Alagia, one of the top county Democrats, said he welcomed the fight.
"It’s always exciting to get more and more people involved in the democratic process," he said. "That’s what primaries are for."
Related coverage:
• Cory Booker again indicates interest in running for third term as mayor of Newark
• Donald Payne Jr. wins Democratic nomination for House seat in N.J.'s 10th District
Source: www.nj.com
No sexy outfits nuns told in 1,300-year-old 'rule' book - Daily Telegraph
Warning that both nuns and clergymen are dressing inappropriately, he adds: “It shames me to speak of the bold impudence of conceit and the fine insolence of stupidity which are found both among nuns who abide under the rule of a settlement, and among the men of the Church … With many-coloured vestments and with elegant adornments, the body is set off and the external form decked out limb by limb.”
As well as lifestyle advice, Aldhelm - an energetic evangelist and early supporter of women’s education - includes biographies of female saints famed for their virginity who he holds up as role models, including Scholastica, the patron saint of nuns and twin sister of St Benedict; Christina, tortured to death for her faith by her pagan father; and Dorothy, executed for her Christianity after turning down a marriage proposal.
Written in Latin in the seventh century, the book is the first known text from England to be aimed at a female readership. At the time, Barking was a country village outside London and its abbey, founded in 666AD, was home to generations of nuns for more than 800 years.
Whilst Aldhelm had no ecclesiastical authority over the abbey, his advice would have been heeded because he was a noted scholar of his day, of royal blood, who founded two monasteries and served as an abbot and a bishop.
The four pages up for auction at Sotheby’s next month are inscribed on vellum - high quality parchment made from sheep skin or calf hide – from a copy of the book produced in around 800AD, and believed to have been owned at one stage by St Dunstan, a tenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury. They are expected to fetch £500,000.
Timothy Bolton, a specialist in western medieval manuscripts at Sotheby’s, said: “Aldhelm’s work is remarkable because there simply aren’t any texts by English authors addressed to women before this.
"He expects the nuns to study and understand his sophisticated writings, raising the bar of education for women to the same level of men, becoming the first English feminist author.”
The extract forms part of an auction of 60 rare manuscripts, spanning more than five millennia, that are expected to fetch more than £2 million in total.
They include fragments of Homer’s The Iliad dating to the year of Christ’s birth which were used by the Egyptians to wrap around a mummy; a document belonging to the father of King Harold, the last Anglo Saxon king; and the earliest surviving text of one of the most important passages from the New Testament, St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.
They will be sold by Martin Schoyen, a Norwegian collector and heir to a shipping and transport business.
Dr Christopher de Hamel, the fellow librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and an expert on ancient manuscripts, said: “This sale is exceptional in telling the story of Western script from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. It contains the bare bone relics of the history of the English language.”
The sale includes The Godwine Charter, drawn up for Earl Godwine, the most powerful English lord in the decades before the Norman Conquest and the father of King Harold, who was defeated and killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Dated c. 1013 to 1020 and written on vellum in Anglo Saxon, the document details Earl Godwine’s sale of a swine pasture, believed to be in Kent, to one of his tenants, Leofwine the Red, for “forty pence and two pounds and an allowance of eight ambers of corn”.
Expected to fetch up to £250,000 at auction, it is one of the rarest surviving Anglo Saxon texts from before the Norman Conquest, after which Old English, replaced by Latin and French, ceased to be the language of officialdom.
The sale will also include the Wyman Fragment, the earliest surviving version of an excerpt from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, widely acknowledged as one of the most famous documents in the history of Christianity.
Dating from the late third century when Christianity was still an illegal cult in the Roman empire, the vellum fragment written in Greek comprises Romans 4:23-5:3 on one side, and on the other, Romans 5:8-13, including the crucial passage on the justification by faith which forms the core of the Epistle and of the theology of Christianity: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
For this passage of the Epistle, the Wyman Fragment is universally accepted as the earliest surviving version and is expected to fetch up to £200,000 at auction.
The fragment was reportedly found in the early 20th century by a group of Arabs at Fustât, in north-eastern Cairo, Egypt, near the site of the Roman fortress of Babylon.
Mr Schoyen acquired it in 1988 from the heirs of the American anthropologist, Dr Leland Wyman, who bought it from an antiquities dealer in Cairo in 1950.
Fragments from Homer’s The Iliad dating from c. 0 will also feature in the sale. Experts believe the papyrus fragments were once part of a scroll once used by the ancient Egyptians to wrap around a mummy, which survived in the sands of North Africa.
They were first acquired by the Austrian conservator, Dr Anton Fackelmann, in Cairo in 1969 as part of a mummy cartonage. Mr Schoyen acquired them from his heirs in 1998 and they are estimated to fetch £30,000 at auction.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
'World's largest wind farm' begins to take shape off the coast of Essex - Daily Mail
- When complete, the 1.7 billion project in the Thames Estuary will boast 217 turbines
- It will be able to generate enough electricity for 750,000 homes
- Set to be connected to the National Grid next spring
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When fully operational, it will be the world's largest offshore wind farm - and, as these pictures show, work on the project in the Thames Estuary is moving along at quite a pace.
The wind farm, which is being built in the shallow waters 12 miles off the coasts of Kent and Essex, which, when complete will feature 217 turbines that will be able to supply enough electricity to power a quarter of London's homes.
The 1.7 billion wind farm, known as the London Array, is owned by the utility companies E.ON, Dong Energy and Masdar and is expected to start sending energy to the National Grid next spring.
The first phase of the project will generate 630 megawatts of power - equivalent to a small gas or coal fired power station and enough to supply 470,000 homes.
Corridors of power: When complete, the London Array wind farm will be the largest in the world
Vast: The 1.7 billion London Array wind farm will feature 217 turbines when complete
The second phase will bring the total to 217 turbines, each towering 147 metres above the estuary, giving 1000 mw of power, enough for 750,000 homes.
Work on the project began in January.
It was originally given the go-ahead in May 2009.
At present, the world's largest offshore wind farm is the 102-turbine Walney project, located off the coast of Cumbria.
The Walney project is capable of providing sufficient electricity for about 320,000 homes.
Work in progress: Construction work takes place on one of the wind turbines in the Thames Estuary
Estuarine energy: The turbines, in the Thames Estuary, will eventually be able to generate enough electricity for 750,000 homes
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
Southend cheerleading squad fights for new home - echo-news.co.uk
Southend cheerleading squad fights for new home
9:20am Sunday 17th June 2012 in Local News
A CHEERLEADING squad with international hopefuls has vowed to fight for permission to open a specialist training school in Southend.
Four teams are set to travel to Bournemouth for the international cheerleading championships on June 29, and the Essex Stars expected to be rehearsing in the new centre, on the Temple Farm Industrial Estate, before then.
Instead, the 60 competing members have to train on a badminton court at Southend Leisure and Tennis Centre, in Garon Park, which is hired at an hourly fee.
Coach Rachel Blatch, 25, said: “We have four competing squads and more than 90 people who currently train with us.
“Our centre needs to be in an industrial building because we need height for all of our flips, and it needs to be in Southend so everyone can get to training easily.
“I don’t know what we will do if this gets rejected again. I just about make enough money to cover our rent at the moment.”
Southend Council rejected the Essex Stars’ plans to transform the empty unit into a training centre over parking concerns.
The council also said the loss of an industrial facility could be detrimental to the town’s economy.
But Miss Blatch says she will recruit ten full-time and six part-time staff and is now re-submitting her application.
They have already paid a holding fee to secure the building and are ready to sign the lease, but the problem with planning permission has set the scheme back two months.
Miss Blatch, of Hamlet Road, Southend, set up Essex Stars after graduating from the University of Essex, and quit her full-time job when the cheerleading classes grew in popularity.
She added: “I love what I do, but we really need to move into our own building.
“Other dance and martial arts groups are really interested in using the premises so it will be great for Southend.”
Anyone interested in joining Essex Stars should call 07816 909896 or visit www.essexstars. wordpress.com
Source: www.echo-news.co.uk
She is well rid he is UGLY
- Old England is dying, London, 17/6/2012 15:05
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