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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Man United under pressure to perform in Basel
Associated Press Sports
updated 1:21 p.m. ET Dec. 6, 2011
BASEL, Switzerland (AP) -Manchester United is under rare pressure to reach the knockout stage of the Champions League when it faces surprise club FC Basel on Wednesday.
The English champion needs at least a draw at St. Jakob Park to avoid just its second group-stage elimination in the past 16 years.
A victory for Basel would see it progress to the last 16 with Benfica. The Portuguese club has already qualified and is favored to win the group by completing its program with victory at home to last-place Romanian club Otelul Galati.
"The only advantage is (Basel) do need to win and they have to try to beat us," Man United manager Alex Ferguson said. "We've always kept good possession of the ball and made that a dominating factor of our game. It can take the temperature out of the game."
Ferguson laughed off suggestions last month that his team has struggled this season in a competition which it has won and been runner-up twice since 2008.
Still, although undefeated in five group matches, United has beaten only Galati while drawing the other three against its main rivals.
The expected balance of power was upset when Basel recovered from a two-goal deficit to draw 3-3 at Old Trafford in September. Only Ashley Young's 90th-minute equalizer saved United from defeat.
"At 2-0, it seemed to me they didn't take us seriously," Basel captain Marco Streller said. "But after that, I know they will not underestimate us again."
One week after that match, Basel's spirited Champions League start seemed under threat when coach Thorsten Fink left, returning to Germany to lead Hamburger SV. But interim coach Heiko Vogel, who was not born when Ferguson began his managerial career in Scotland in 1974, has outperformed expectations.
Basel now leads the Swiss League by six points, has advanced to the Swiss Cup quarterfinals and could deny Man United a place in the knockout rounds for the first time since 2005-06.
The visitors are without forward Javier Hernandez, who was injured in a Premier League win at Aston Villa on Saturday, but defender Nemanja Vidic is back after a two-game Champions League ban for his red card during a 2-0 win in Romania.
Wayne Rooney also will return to the stadium where he starred under extreme pressure last season.
Rooney shrugged off tabloid newspaper accusations about his private life to score in England's 3-1 win over Switzerland early in its successful 2012 European Championship campaign.
Rooney will stay in Switzerland on Thursday to help present his appeal at UEFA against a three-match ban which currently rules him out of the entire Euro 2012 group stage.
Benfica also advanced from Man United's group in the 2005-06 campaign.
The Lisbon club hosts Otelul Galati having surrendered its season-long unbeaten record last weekend, losing 2-1 against Maritimo in the Portuguese Cup.
The team is also unbeaten in the Champions League but hasn't won at home, with Man United and Basel both drawing 1-1 with Benfica at Estadio da Luz.
Coach Jorge Jesus is unable to select suspended right back Maxi Pereira. He has also three key players - goalkeeper Artur, playmaker Pablo Aimar and center back Ezequiel Garay - who will be banned from the first leg of the last-16 match if they are shown a yellow card Wednesday.
? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsGalaxy wins Beck's possible finale
David Beckham lifted a trophy in what could be his final game for the Los Angeles Galaxy, an exhibition victory over Australian A-League team Melbourne Victory on penalty shots Tuesday.
AFP - Getty ImagesMessi, Ronaldo, Xavi nominated
Barcelona teammates Lionel Messi and Xavi Hernandez will be up against Real Madrid winger Cristiano Ronaldo for the FIFA world player of the year award.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45564874/ns/sports-soccer/
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EU in antitrust probe of e-book publishers, Apple (AP)
BRUSSELS ? The European Union's antitrust watchdog is probing whether Apple and five major publishing houses have colluded to restrict competition in the market for e-books.
The European Commission probe announced Tuesday focuses on potentially anticompetitive practices by publishers Hachette Livre, a unit of France's Lagardere Publishing; Harper Collins, owned by Rupert Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp.; CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster; Penguin, which is owned by U.K. publishing house Pearson Group; and Germany's Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holzbrinck.
"The Commission will in particular investigate whether these publishing groups and Apple have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or the effect of restricting competition" in Europe, it said in a statement.
It is also looking into "agency agreements" between the publishers and the e-book retailers. In those agreements, publishers set a price for their e-books, with retailers taking a cut of the profits.
Apple Inc. runs the iBook online store, in which consumers can buy and download e-books onto the company's devices, including the popular iPad tablet and the iPhone. It is a competitor of Amazon.com Inc.
The announcement from the Commission follows raids in the offices of several publishers in March and a related probe launched by the U.K. Office of Fair Trading. The Commission said Tuesday that the British agency OFT had suspended its investigation since the Commission had taken over the case, but the two regulators were working closely together.
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Monday, December 5, 2011
Filipino gays march against discrimination
MANILA, Philippines?? More than 1,000 gays, lesbians and transgenders have marched in the Philippine capital to demand equal rights and an end to discrimination, and more support for an AIDS program.
The marchers carried a large rainbow flag during the annual Pride parade around Manila's Malate district Saturday, some dancing to the beat of drums played by a band.
Progressive Organization of Gays in the Philippines spokesman Goya Candelario says they're pushing Congress to pass a law against discrimination that they say denies them jobs and social services.
Jessie Dimaisip of the Akbayan political party, which supports gay rights, says they're also seeking more funds for HIV-AIDS testing and a support program. The Health Department says 7,884 people have been infected with HIV since 1984, including 937 AIDS cases.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45533721/ns/health/
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Maoist rebels kill 11 in attacks in eastern India (AP)
PATNA, India ? Maoist rebels have killed 11 people in attacks across an eastern Indian state after their leader died in a gunbattle with security forces, police said.
The rebels blew up railway tracks at two points in Jharkhand before dawn Sunday, hours after attacking a police convoy traveling with a state lawmaker with explosives and gunfire that left 10 officers and a young boy dead, police Superintendent D.V. Sharma said.
Another officer was hospitalized with injuries. Former Jharkhand Speaker Inder Singh Namdhari escaped unharmed.
The rebels also set fire Sunday to a cellphone tower in southwest Bihar state, on the border with Jharkhand, and vowed to continue their agitation through Monday as they protest the Nov. 24 killing of Koteshwar Rao, known as Kishanji, in the neighboring state of West Bengal.
The rebels, inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have been fighting for more than three decades in several Indian states to demand land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor.
Referred to as Naxalites, after the West Bengal village of Naxalbari, where the movement began in 1967, they frequently target police and government workers.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called the rebels the biggest internal threat to India's security.
Last month, security forces launched a hunt for Kishanji and other rebel leaders in the jungles of West Bengal, eventually killing the top rebel in a gunbattle and seizing large stocks of arms and ammunition.
The rebels have vowed to avenge his death.
Left-wing politicians have protested the killing as well, saying the rebel leader could have been made to surrender.
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Sunday, December 4, 2011
After uproar, Ky. church revisits interracial ban
FILE - In this November 2010 file photo provided by Stella Harville, Stella Harville and her fianc?, Ticha Chikuni, pose for a picture in Richmond, Ky. Stella?s childhood church in Pike County, Kentucky, the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church, voted to ban interracial couples from becoming members at the church after the pair sang a song during a visit to the church over the summer. The pastor at the church now says that the decision is unlikely to stand. (AP Photo/Stella Harville, File)
FILE - In this November 2010 file photo provided by Stella Harville, Stella Harville and her fianc?, Ticha Chikuni, pose for a picture in Richmond, Ky. Stella?s childhood church in Pike County, Kentucky, the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church, voted to ban interracial couples from becoming members at the church after the pair sang a song during a visit to the church over the summer. The pastor at the church now says that the decision is unlikely to stand. (AP Photo/Stella Harville, File)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) ? When Stella Harville brought her black boyfriend to her family's all-white church in rural Kentucky, she thought nothing of it. She and Ticha Chikuni worshipped there whenever they were in town, and he even sang before the congregation during one service.
Then in August, a member of Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church told Harville's father that Chikuni couldn't sing there anymore. And last Sunday, in a moment that seems from another time, church members voted 9-6 to bar mixed-race couples from joining the congregation.
The policy has drawn a firestorm of criticism in just a few days and sent church leaders scrambling to overturn it, perhaps as early as Sunday. The executive secretary of the church's national organization said he has been inundated with angry phone calls, and had an inch-high stack of emails printed out on his desk.
"We are not a group of racist people," said Keith Burden of the National Association of Free Will Baptists. "We have been labeled that obviously because of the actions of nine people."
The resolution approved by the Gulnare church says it does not condone interracial marriage and "parties of such marriages will not be received as members, nor will they be used in worship services and other church functions, with the exception being funerals."
Ballots were cast after the service, attended by about 35 to 40 people, but it wasn't clear why so few people voted.
The church member and former pastor who pushed for the vote, Melvin Thompson, wouldn't tell The Associated Press why he did it.
"I am not racist. I will tell you that. I am not prejudiced against any race of people, have never in my lifetime spoke evil" about a race, Thompson said earlier this week in a brief interview. "That's what this is being portrayed as, but it is not."
Thompson stepped down as pastor earlier this year for health reasons, according to Harville's dad, Dean Harville. He said it was Thompson who told him that Chikuni couldn't sing at the church, a small, one-story red brick building with few windows and a white steeple.
After giving interviews earlier this week, the church's current pastor, Stacy Stepp, and several other church members did not return phone calls Friday. One of the members said they were shocked. Stepp said he voted against the measure and would work to overturn it.
The national group distanced itself from the resolution in a statement Thursday, saying it "neither condemns nor disallows" interracial marriage.
It said the church was working to reverse its policy and added, "We encourage the church to follow through with this action."
Harville, who is now engaged to Chikuni, said earlier this week that she felt betrayed by the church.
"Whether they keep the vote or overturn it, it's going to be hard for me go back there," she told AP.
Gulnare is a small town in Pike County, in eastern Kentucky. The county celebrates its Appalachian heritage in the spring with the Hillbilly Days Festival in downtown Pikeville, the county seat, and the Apple Blossom Festival in Elkhorn City, according to a tourism website.
Harville is working on her master's degree in optical engineering at an Indiana college. She met Chikuni, who is from Zimbabwe, at Georgetown College in central Kentucky.
"It's like we were kind of blindsided," Harville said of the church's action.
More than 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a Virginia statute barring whites from marrying nonwhites, overturning bans in 15 other states. But while interracial marriages have soared since then, many churches remain largely segregated.
Curtiss Paul DeYoung, a professor at Bethel College who has studied interracial churches, said church members opposed to a more diverse church usually just go somewhere else.
"Rarely today do you see it so blatantly come to a vote. Usually people just leave but they don't say much about it," DeYoung said. "I think this is still one of the last hurdles around race for a lot of folks in this country. It's just rarely stated this bluntly."
The Free Will Baptists trace their history to the 18th century. They emphasized the Arminian doctrine of free will, free grace, and free salvation, in contrast to most Baptists, who were Calvinists and believed Christ died only for those predestined to be saved.
There are some 4,200 churches worldwide. The National Association of Free Will Baptists organized in Nashville, Tenn., in 1935 and is now based in Antioch, Tenn.
The group said in its statement that the denomination has no official policy regarding interracial couples "because it has not been an issue."
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