Wayne Rooney right to call time on his England career, says Henry Winter
Of the innumerable miserable images capturing England’s years of anguish, one of the most poignant is the picture of Wayne Rooney lying by the side of the pitch in Lisbon at Euro 2004. England’s medical man, Gary Lewin, holds Rooney’s right foot, gently touching the snapped fifth metatarsal, but the No 9’s focus is elsewhere, looking ruefully back towards the quarter-final against Portugal continuing without him. The look on the 18-year-old’s face is as though his world has ended, not just his Euros. This was his stage, his moment, and he was now a figure of total frustration, excised from the excitement, the adrenaline serving only to dull the pain, and unable to help his team-mates. Rooney watched and watched until assisted down the tunnel,…
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Winds of change hit WPP
Sir Martin Sorrell slashed growth forecasts at WPP, his advertising company often seen as a global bellwether Simon Dawson/GettyA combination of economic volatility and political uncertainty was blamed by Sir Martin Sorrell as he cut growth forecasts at WPP, the world’s biggest advertising group. The FTSE 100 company reduced its outlook for the second time in five months, warning that revenue growth for this year would be between zero and 1 per cent. That is down from 2 per cent in March and 3 per cent at the start of the year. Group revenue in the six months to the end of June was £7.4 billion, up 13.3 per cent from £6.5 billion and pre-tax profits were £779.2 million, up 52 per cent, but they were below market expectations. It was the speed and scale of the slowdown during the period, particularly in…
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Profit and revenue fall amid wrangle at Independent News
Leslie Buckley, the company chairman, was not backed by the Independent News & Media chief executive BRYAN MEADE/THE TIMESThe chief executive of Independent News & Media abstained from a vote to re-elect the company chairman after a boardroom bust-up. At the annual meeting in Dublin, Robert Pitt failed to back Leslie Buckley’s reappointment in an unprecedented move for an Irish public listed company. Newstalk is owned by Denis O’Brien, who is also a majority shareholder in INM and a close business associate of Mr Buckley. The chairman backed the acquisition but Mr Pitt objected that the price was too high. The sale was abandoned after Mr Pitt obtained a far lower valuation.
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Gareth Southgate sets restrictions on agents in England hotel
England players will have to give notice to Gareth Southgate if they want to meet their agents to discuss a transfer while they are on international duty next week. Southgate, the England manager, will name his squad for the World Cup qualifiers against Malta and Slovakia at 2pm today. They will meet at St George’s Park to begin preparations on Sunday, four days before the deadline. Some potential members of the squad, such as Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, the Arsenal midfielder, Ben Gibson, the Middlesbrough centre back, and Ryan Bertrand, the Southampton full back, could be the subject of transfer bids before Thursday’s 11pm deadline, but Southgate wants to ensure that his players’ focus is on the important matches ahead, so players must tell him if they…
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Laura Ashley seeks help to bloom again
The steepest decline was in the company’s fashion division, which reported a 10.4 per cent drop Laura AshleyLaura Ashley has hired a head of fashion to try to turn around its struggling clothing division after poor sales contributed to a 72 per cent collapse in profits. The homewares and clothing retailer also blamed the weaker pound after reporting that pre-tax profits fell to £6.3 million for the year to the end of June. That compared with £22.8 million in the 74 weeks to June last year, as the company changed its reporting period. Revenues fell from £400.9 million to £277 million and were also affected by the closure of 22 concession outlets within Homebase stores after the DIY group was taken over by Australia’s Wesfarmers. The steepest decline was in its fashion division, which reported a…
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Diafra Sakho and André Ayew ease pressure on West Ham manager Slaven Bilic
Instead, Slaven Bilic’s team were sufficiently clinical against Cheltenham Town to emerge victorious, with first-half goals from Diafra Sakho and André Ayew. “We are dying for this kind of competition,” he said. It wasn’t easy but we didn’t expect it to be easy. It’s not a cliché but we are serious about this competition. We put out a strong team and we treated…
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Denny Solomona: I made a mistake. I’ll cop it on the chin
Over the course of a highly eventful year, Denny Solomona must have thought he had seen it all. His controversial cross-code move to Sale Sharks from Castleford Tigers had made him a pariah to the rugby league community and his first season in rugby union was played out against the backdrop of an acrimonious court case. He made a prolific start to his union career, though, and was fast-tracked into the England squad, stomaching further criticism for declaring his allegiance to his adopted country as soon as he had qualified on residency grounds, and promptly scored a match-winning try on his debut against Argentina in June. Then he went out for a few too many late-night drinks with Manu Tuilagi during an England training camp…
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Adjudicator claims pub owners try to sidestep new code
Brigid Simmonds, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said a report by the the pubs code adjudicator was one-sidedThe government’s pub watchdog has prompted a row with the industry after claiming that landlords were circumventing the law brought in to protect pubs that are obliged to buy drinks from their landlord. Paul Newby, the pubs code adjudicator, said tenants had complained “almost without exception” that pub-owning companies did not act within the spirit of the code and were using technicalities to block tenants moving to a “market rent only” relationship where supplies are bought freely. The comments, branded one-sided and anecdotal by the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), came after a fact-finding mission on tenants’ experience of the market rent only (MRO) option. “I commissioned the verification exercise because I have had concerns brought to me and I wanted the detailed evidence…
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Robson knocked out of US Open
Robson lost in the first round of qualifying JACK HILL/THE TIMESLaura Robson, the former British No 1, is out of next week’s US Open after she lost 6-2, 6-4 to Alla Kudryavtseva, Russia’s world No 313, in the first round of qualifying. There was better news for 21-year-old Katie Boulter, who beat American Danielle Collins 6-4, 6-0, while Naomi Broady, the British No 3, enjoyed a 6-2, 4-6, 6-1 win over Jil Teichmann, of Switzerland. The British No 2 Kyle Edmund is through to the Winston-Salem Open quarter-finals after beating Marton Fucsovics 6-2, 6-1.
Source:The Times
August 23, 2017 23:03 UTC
Food and drink industry says EU staff exodus will damage economy
The food and drink industry has issued a warning of significant disruption and economic damage if the government fails to stem the flow of EU nationals leaving the UK. Nearly a third of British food and drink businesses have had non-UK EU workers leave their employment since last summer’s Brexit vote, according to a survey of more than 600 businesses representing nearly a quarter of the food chain’s 4 million workforce. The latest warnings from the food industry came as British businesses faced their biggest challenge in recruiting skilled labour in a decade. High employment has combined with a fall in the value of the pound and uncertainty about the future for EU nationals in the UK to reduce the pool of available staff. It blamed the lack of clarity on the future for EU workers and a drop in the value of sterling.
Source:The Guardian
August 23, 2017 22:52 UTC
Science envoy resigns over Trump – with a letter spelling out 'impeach'
Ex-intelligence chief: Trump's access to nuclear codes is 'pretty damn scary' Read moreDaniel M Kammen (@dan_kammen) Mr. President, I am resigning as Science Envoy. The science envoys serve as unpaid volunteers and engage with government and non-government science officials around the world. In his letter, Kammen also criticized Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Climate Accord. Science envoys typically serve for one year. Margaret Leinen, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist at George Mason University in Virginia, still serve as state department science envoys, Mason said.
Source:The Guardian
August 23, 2017 22:30 UTC
Australian spy chief criticised for 'fist bump' gesture with Philippines leader Duterte
Philippine police kill 32 in bloodiest night of Duterte’s war on drugs Read moreNick Warner, the director general of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, met the leader, nicked named “the Punisher”, at Malacañang palace in Manila on Tuesday. Rights groups say many of the dead are alleged addicts or suspected dealers among the urban poor. “But of course the Australian Secret Intelligence Service is called a secret intelligence service for a reason – preferably the work that Asis does is below the surface but there are instances where it comes public. Political opponents of Duterte have attempted to bring him to the international criminal court in the Netherlands, accusing the president of crimes against humanity. The Department of Education recently indicated that at least 14 schools in the city had been destroyed, burnt or looted.
Source:The Guardian
August 23, 2017 21:47 UTC
Morning mail: not much to stop Trump going nuclear
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton has told how she considered telling Trump to “back up, you creep!” during one of the presidential debates. The campaign group GetUp has developed a website to coordinate groups campaigning for marriage equality that could be launched as early as Friday. For all the background to the marriage equality vote, check out the Guardian’s definitive briefing here. With the pace of coal plants shutting down meaning that Australia’s coal fleet could be gone before 2040, the transformation underway, Morton says, is enormous – and inevitable. Sign upIf you would like to receive the Guardian Australia morning mail to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here.
Source:The Guardian
August 23, 2017 20:48 UTC
Another US agency deletes references to climate change on government website
The term ‘climate change’ was changed to simply ‘climate’ on website of the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading public health research bodyThe National Institutes of Health deleted multiple references to climate change on its website over the summer, continuing a trend that began when the Trump administration took charge of the dot.gov domain. EDGI counted five instances in which the term “climate change” was changed to simply “climate” on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) site. “No other language changes were made and the term ‘climate change’ continues to be used in the body text of the page,” EDGI reported. For example, on the first edited page cited in the report, originally called “Climate Change and Human Health” before the word “change” was removed, the term “climate change” still appears 35 times. In May, the Guardian reported that the Trump administration was systematically cutting references to climate change from government websites, scrapping an entire section from the White House page on climate change, and replacing it with a brief treatise entitled “An America first energy plan” that made no mention of the empirically uncontroversial reality of climate change.
Source:The Guardian
August 23, 2017 20:23 UTC