Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Up in the Air George Clooney takes moody in deleted scene

George Clooney dons a suit, a spacesuit, in a lost stage from "Up in the Air."Nominated for 6 Academy Awards, "Up in the Air" hits DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday, Mar 9. If you come in to Zap2its "Up in the Air" giveaway, you have a possibility at winning your own DVD, between alternative prizes.& The movie centers on Ryan Bingham (Clooney), a office worker whose pursuit is to fly around the nation and glow people. The forward immature Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) at his office, however, finds a approach to belligerent him. The movie additionally stars Vera Farmiga. All 3 actors were nominated for Oscars for this film.In this deleted scene, we see Clooney receiving a opposite sort of flight:"Up in the Air" was additionally nominated for most appropriate picture, most appropriate executive Jason Reitman and most appropriate blending screenplay.Follow&&on Twitter and Facebook and Zap2itHanh on Twitter for the ultimate movies, TV and celeb newsRelated:Zap2its "Up in the Air" giveawayOscars 2010: Winners and nomineesBest & Worst of Oscars 2010Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

Sunday, August 29, 2010

PowerSecure buys LED stakes

PowerSecure International, the Wake Forest appetite services company, is jumping in to the burgeoning margin of LED lighting in a big approach with dual acquisitions.

The association voiced Tuesday that it paid $4.4 million for a infancy interest in Innovative Electronic Solutions Lighting, a 19-employee association in Morrisville, with the choice to buy all of IES for about $10 million.

PowerSecure is additionally presumption a full interest in EfficientLights, the South Carolina lighting subsidiary. PowerSecure had acquired a infancy interest in the association in 2007.

Both LED companies rise travel lights, security lights, parking lot lights and identical applications, utilizing energy-efficient light-emitting diode chips done by Durham-based Cree and alternative suppliers. EfficientLights additionally sells LED lighting for refrigerated arrangement cases in grocery stores and preference stores.

LEDs are increasingly seen as the destiny of electric lighting that will describe illuminated and fluorescent bulbs obsolete. LED lights can last some-more than dual decades and are up to 90 percent some-more fit than required lights.

"The direct for LED lighting is robust," PowerSecure CEO Sidney Hinton told analysts Tuesday sunrise in a discussion call. "The event for LED lighting is staggering."

According to industry estimates, LEDs paint a intensity $30 billion to $50 billion in annual sales as the cost comes down and peculiarity goes up.

For PowerSecure, the acquisitions on all sides the association to move forward with a three-prong commercial operation strategy: lighting services, application services and distributed generation.

Distributed generationthe multiplication that provides backup motor fuel energy generators to supermarkets, universities and alternative institutional customersaccounted for $33 million in sales last year. Utility servicesmaintenance and upgrades to application energy linesbrought in $20 million in income last year.

PowerSecure has 350 employees, together with 100 in the Triangle. It plans to issue $10 million in batch to buy the superb one-third interest in EfficientLights, a 35-employee multiplication whose sales rocketed to $22 million last year, flourishing 726 percent in one year.

With the inclusion of IES, PowerSecures revenues from lighting would have been $27 million last year. The plan at the back of the IES merger is to mix IES record and growth with PowerSecures sales channels to existent and destiny customers.

"PowerSecure is characterized as being rather of an incubator," pronounced Richard Hoss, an researcher with Roth Capital Partners in Newport Beach, Calif. PowerSecures batch has risen 145 percent in the past year and sealed Tuesday at $8.52, up 59 cents a share.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Haiti assist bid injured by delayed U.N. reply

Tom Brown PORT-AU-PRINCE Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:13pm EST Related News Haiti preserve puncture as sleet turns camps to mudThu, Feb eighteen 2010U.N. assist arch chides agencies on Haiti reliefThu, Feb eighteen 2010Sarkozy visits Haiti, unveils vital assist packageWed, Feb seventeen 2010Tarps, toilets are priorities for quake-hit Haiti: U.N.Mon, Feb fifteen 2010One month after quake, Haitians stick on to weep deadFri, Feb twelve 2010 < 1 / 7 > People travel at a temporary tent stay in Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince Feb 26, 2010. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Clutching involuntary attack rifles, truckloads of U.N. infantry patrolled the streets of Haiti"s cracked collateral on the day after the trembler strike last month, clearly preoccupied to the wretchedness around them.

World&&&&Natural Disasters

Cries for assistance from people digging for survivors in collapsed buildings were drowned out by the bark of heavy-duty engines as the infantry plowed by Port-au-Prince but interlude to stick on rescue efforts, majority less lead them.

A usual steer since they were deployed in 2004, the U.N. infantry huddled in the shade of their canopied vehicles.

There were about 9,000 uniformed U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Haiti when the upheaval struck on Jan twelve and they were the judicious "first responders" to the mess in the bankrupt Caribbean country, whose notoriously diseased executive supervision was impressed by the scale of the tragedy.

Initially, however, nothing of the peacekeepers appeared to be concerned in hands-on charitable service in what puncture healing experts report as the vicious initial 72 hours after a harmful trembler strikes.

Their reply to the abominable pang was singular to you do security and seeking for looters after the bulk 7.0 upheaval intended majority of the collateral and took what Haitian President Rene Preval says could be as majority as 300,000 lives.

There was looting in the capital, but it paled in some-more aged with the astringency of the charitable crisis.

Horribly-injured patients flooded overstretched hospitals, forcing healing staff to confirm that patients to yield and that were already as well far left to try saving.

"Doctors played God," pronounced Tyler Marshall, a maestro former Los Angeles Times match operative with an general assist organisation that helped out in a tent city erected at the tallness of the destruction on the drift of Port-au-Prince"s University Hospital, the country"s largest.

Scores of U.N. crew died in the quake, together with Hedi Annabi, head of the U.N. mission that was set up in 2004. That helps insist what majority have criticized as a glacially delayed kickoff of service operations after one of history"s misfortune healthy disasters.

But in the days and weeks that followed it mostly seemed that lessons from alternative disasters were abandoned in Haiti as fears of rioting or anarchy overshadowed concerns about removing assist out quickly.

The U.N."s tip charitable assist official, John Holmes, is between those who have chided service agencies, together with the United Nations itself, for you do as well small to assistance Haiti.

"We cannot ... wait for for for the subsequent puncture for these lessons to be learned," Holmes wrote in a trusted email initial published on the website of the biography Foreign Policy.

"There is an obligatory need to progress significantly genius on the ground, to urge coordination, vital formulation and sustenance of aid," pronounced Holmes.

Edmond Mulet, behaving head of the U.N. mission, concurred in an talk that it played a singular charitable purpose in the initial couple of days after the trembler since the operations were effectively decapitated.

"At the unequivocally commencement it was unequivocally formidable since all the domicile was utterly broken and all the care of the mission was killed," Mulet told Reuters.

"CRIMINALS AND BANDITS"

Mulet gained prominence for wielding an iron fist during a prior army as head of the U.N. mission when he led mostly Brazilian "blue helmet" infantry in a successful crackdown on Haiti"s heavily armed gangs.

And he has finished no tip about sophistry the competing needs of service operations with law enforcement, in his bid to lane down the some-more than 3,000 inmates who took value of the trembler to shun from the main prison.

"We are here additionally to yield security," he pronounced when asked about the mess of convoys of rifle-wielding U.N. infantry to poke for people trapped in the rubble of the busted capital.

"I still have to patrol, I still have to go after all these criminals and bandits that transient from the inhabitant penitentiary, the squad leaders, the criminals, the killers, the kidnappers. I cannot unequivocally confuse myself from you do that."

The service mission shifted in to higher rigging after U.S. infantry deployed in large numbers and set up a supply sequence to get food and disinfectant in to areas great out for aid.

But there were still majority bottlenecks and setbacks, mostly involving U.N.-linked food distributions hobbled by unsound organization, reserve and throng control.

Unfortunately, U.N. infantry in Haiti have over the years gained a repute for toughness and abuse some-more than for easing pang in the lowest nation in the Americas.

"The usually time I"ve seen one of these U.N. infantry burst out of the behind of a lorry was to kick up on somebody or take a shot at them," pronounced a piece of the U.S. Army"s 82nd Airborne Division, as he worked security during a new assist handout.

"These guys have since all of us in unvaried a bad repute here," he said, asking not to be identified.

Haiti"s wrecked infrastructure and bad ride links finished it formidable to get assist out and keep it flowing, but that frequency finished the incident opposite from that in alternative new disasters around the globe.

"POOREST AND MOST VULNERABLE"

"The lowest and the majority exposed people lend towards to live in the regions that are strike the majority by healthy disasters," pronounced Solomon Kuah, an puncture healing medicine formed in New York who outlayed 4 weeks in Port-au-Prince after the quake.

There are no arguable estimates for the series of survivors who died from injuries due to unsound healing supplies.

But Henriette Chamouillet, the World Health Organization"s deputy in Haiti, pronounced all from staff shortages to bureaucracy and a miss of make-up lists embroiled the smoothness of containers full of medicines from Port-au-Prince"s airfield to doctors on the ground.

Port-au-Prince sits usually 700 miles off the seashore of Miami, that is home to a large Haitian-American community, and it seemed ludicrous that so couple of the U.S. infantry rushed there spoke French or were accompanied by translators.

One retaining picture of pell-mell food distributions came when U.S. helicopters offloaded boxes of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) at a site in the capital. Many Haitians non-stop them up usually to toss them afar in offend since no French or Creole-language instructions were enclosed with the assumingly invalid packets of dust, explaining that they indispensable to be churned with H2O as piece of their preparation.

Rajiv Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has touted the Haiti service mission as "the largest and majority successful general poke and rescue bid ever fabricated in history."

But some-more than 6 weeks after the upheaval hit, the mission is still mostly in an puncture reply mode. The U.N."s World Food Program is tying the food rations to 55-pound (25 kg) bags of rice and the Haitian supervision estimates that a million upheaval survivors are still vital in the streets in temporary encampments with no using H2O or toilets.

Doctors are roughly finished traffic with dire injuries but reconstruction for a little 40,000 amputees and rebuilding Haiti"s health infrastructure are between long-term challenges.

"This is unequivocally a mess of Biblical proportions," pronounced Lewis Lucke, who was the USAID executive in Iraq prior to entrance to Haiti as U.S. ambassador.

U.N. and alternative officials have pronounced the tellurian reply to Haiti"s upheaval was quicker and some-more in effect than in alternative new disasters, together with the Asian tsunami that killed 226,000 people in thirteen countries in Dec 2004.

But experts contend the United Nations has a lot to sense from smaller, some-more nimble healing groups similar to International Medical Corps, or IMC, and Paris-based Medicins Sans Frontieres, along with charities some-more experienced in distributing aid, such as CARE and Catholic Relief Services.

Kuah, who concurrent service efforts for IMC, a California-based organisation that had rarely learned doctors treating patients in Haiti twenty-three hours after the trembler struck, stressed the "need for speed" when it comes to saving lives.

"When you ask yourself if there were ways you could have prevented some-more mortalities or discontinued additional mortality, with earthquakes, in particular, it"s some-more timing than anything else," pronounced Kuah.

(Additional stating by Catherine Bremer, Jackie Frank, Patricia Zengerle, Mica Rosenberg and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kieran Murray)

World Natural Disasters lampshade for acne to phone help this mulls

Friday, August 27, 2010

Premier League: how the movement unfolded Football

Carrie Dunn & ,}

See how all today"s Premier League movement unfolded with the Match Tracker.

Premier League (3pm unless stated)

Birmingham 1 Arsenal 1 - how it happened - compare report

Chelsea 7 Aston Villa 1 - how it happened - compare report

Related LinksPremier League previews: Torres raring to goChelsea face exam of resolve, says AncelottiFerguson ready for a shaken last day

Hull 2 Fulham 0 - how it happened - compare report

Tottenham 2 Portsmouth 0 - how it happened - compare report

West Ham 0 Stoke 1 - how it happened - compare report

Wolves 0 Everton 0 - how it happened - compare report

Bolton v Man Utd (5.30pm) - how it happened - compare report

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Losing the conflict to keep womanlike strength off Afghan TV

Sayed Salahuddin KABUL Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:24pm EDT < 1 / 2 > An Afghan man walks past a case offered VCDs and CDs in a marketplace in Kabul Mar 19, 2010. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

KABUL (Reuters) - Eight years after the tumble of the Taliban, who criminialized radio and barred women from looming in open but an all-enveloping burqa, the Afghan supervision is fighting a losing conflict to keep womanlike strength off TV.

Entertainment&&&&World&&&&Television&&&&Lifestyle&&&&Media

In a nation that stays deeply regressive and male-dominated, the supervision has the energy to levy fines or close down broadcasters for display images of women deemed racy. Yet the discipline crop up to be noticed mostly in the breach.

Urban Afghans are right away marred for preference with a in couple of instances colourful form of TV stations. At any since moment, viewers can flip in between news, in progress shows, cartoons, Turkish soap operas, Iranian dramas and hugely renouned Indian films, with their gyrating sari-clad heroines.

To get around supervision restrictions on display womanlike flesh, TV stations occupy full-time pixilators, charged with adding becloud blotches over unclothed arms, legs, necklines and midriffs. But if you watch prolonged enough, you can simply mark a moving elbow, a unprotected ankle or even an unprotected frame of waist.

The new report and enlightenment minister, Sayed Makhdoom Raheen, summoned the heads of a small twenty in isolation broadcasters and wire operators last month, perfectionist they correct their programs and follow supervision restrictions.

"I told them that in further to your personal interests ... you should not dont think about your amicable and Islamic obligations and action responsibly with courtesy to the ethics of the new generation," Raheen told Reuters in an interview.

"There were lots of complaints from the public, generally between families, that a small of the TV stations were not watching Islamic informative traditions, that they called damaging for the immature generation.

"It is a critical make a difference for us. The method believes in raising and deliberating the issue by understanding, and if that does not succeed, afterwards stairs will be taken underneath the law."

IGNORING RESTRICTIONS

Some TV stations crop up to have abided by such restrictions usually for a couple of days. Cable operators, that reach a small share of households, crop up to compensate the discipline small mind at all.

Female lawmaker Fawzia Kufi caused a overwhelm followed by delight between a organisation of parliamentarians last month when she interrupted a discuss on banning womanlike dancing on TV with the idea that authorities additionally anathema risque images of men.

Still, the work of the pixilators goes on. Saad Mohseni, Director of Tolo TV, Afghanistan"s greatest in isolation TV network that mixes strange programing and renouned alien fare, pronounced his hire has an complete pixilation department.

"They pixilate most things, together with "too most flesh" and any thing (that) might deny the religious, informative and amicable norms," he pronounced in an e-mailed reply to questions.

"It of course creates things a bit some-more complicated, but we accept that we need to have this procession in place for Afghanistan."

(Editing by Peter Graff and Sanjeev Miglani)

Entertainment World Television Lifestyle Media

Monday, August 23, 2010

Magnetic beat service for migraines

A hand-held device that fires a captivating beat to the behind of the head might suggest new goal to migraine sufferers, investigate suggests.

In tests, the machine, a single-pulse transcranial captivating kick (sTMS), delivered suffering service for up to 48 hours with no conspicuous side effects.

It was used on patients with "aura" neurological goods that convey the headache, such as lights or lines in front of the eyes, visible "blank spots", and rawness or numbness. It affects about twenty per cent to thirty per cent of patients.

A organisation of 201 patients were incidentally reserved possibly to embrace diagnosis or a "sham" appurtenance that constructed no captivating pulse.

They applyied dual pulses thirty seconds detached as shortly as probable after the conflict of aura symptoms.

Of the 164 patients who treated with colour with colour at slightest one attack, 39 per cent from the sTMS organisation were suffering free after dual hours compared with twenty-two per cent of the "sham" group. Patients rated the device an normal eight out of 10 for "user friendliness".

TMS functions by becoming different the settlement of banishment of neurons in the brain. Since the find in 1985, it has been used for fundamental brain mapping and evidence and healing purposes.

Findings from the new study, led by Dr Richard Lipton, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, are reported in the biography the Lancet Neurology.

The researchers wrote it could be "a earnest strident treatment".

Migraine is mostly treated with colour with colour with drug called triptans, but these are not in effect or authorized during the aura proviso of an attack.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Children and teenagers less expected than immature adults to die of non-Hodgkins lymphoma

Eric Tai, M.D., and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, assessed presence report from cancer registries from 1992 to 2001 for 2,442 cases of non-Hodgkinlymphoma (one of the majority usual cancers between immature adults, inspiring the white red blood cells). This enclosed 987 immature kids and teenagers age nineteen or younger and 1,455 immature adults age twenty to 29.

Even after accounting for the subtype of the disease and the theatre at diagnosis, immature adults were some-more expected to die compared with immature kids and adolescents. A sum of 87 percent of immature kids and teenagers survived twenty-four months compared with 79 percent of immature adults, and five-year presence rates were 85 percent for immature kids and teenagers and 75 percent for immature adults.

Overall, the investigate showed that non-Hodgkinlymphoma presence has augmenting over time, with not as big gains done by immature adults compared with immature kids and adolescents, the authors conclude. Increased presence between patients with non-Hodgkinlymphoma is contingent on timely and suitable cancer therapy. Therefore, efforts to residence presence should embody augmenting the series of clinical trials for immature adults, enlivening them to enroll in these trials and compelling softened entrance to caring for this population.

The investigate appears in Archives of Pediatrics Adolescent Medicine.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Starting diagnosis early doubles possibility of success for people with diabetes



The earlier people with diabetes begin receiving metformin, the longer the drug stays effective, according to a Kaiser Permanente investigate published in the Mar issue of Diabetes Care, a biography of the American Diabetes Association.

The investigate found that metformin, an inexpensive, general drug that helps patients forestall dangerously high red red red red red blood sugarine levels, worked scarcely twice as prolonged for people who began receiving it inside of 3 months of their diabetes diagnosis. This is the initial investigate to review metformin disaster rates in a real-world, clinical use setting. Other studies compared disaster rates of metformin usually in clinical trials.

Metformin is endorsed as a first-line representative in the diagnosis of sort 2 diabetes, but in majority patients it in the destiny stops working, forcing them to take one some-more medications to carry out their red red red red red blood sugar. Each one some-more drug adds additional costs and the probability of some-more side goods together with weight gain, so this investigate is acquire headlines for newly diagnosed patients, researchers said.

"This is an critical anticipating for the thirty million people world-wide who are diagnosed with sort 2 diabetes each year. The earlier they begin receiving metformin, the improved and longer it seems to work," pronounced the study"s lead writer Jonathan B. Brown, PhD, an questioner with the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore. "This investigate suggests that to good full good from metformin, patients should begin receiving it as shortly as they find out they have diabetes."

Researchers used electronic health annals to follow scarcely 1,800 people with diabetes in Kaiser Permanente"s health plan in Washington and Oregon for up to five years. Metformin unsuccessful at a rate of usually twelve percent a year for the patients who began receiving it inside of 3 months of diagnosis. That compares to a disaster rate of 21.4 percent per year for patients who proposed receiving metformin one to dual years after diagnosis, and 21.9 percent per year for those who didn"t begin receiving the drug until 3 years after they were diagnosed.

"We hold that starting the drug early preserves the body"s own capability to carry out red red red red red blood sugar, that in spin prevents the long-term complications of diabetes similar to heart disease, kidney failure, and blindness," pronounced investigate co-author Gregory A. Nichols, PhD, an questioner with the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research. "The American Diabetes Association recommends that patients begin receiving metformin and have lifestyle changes as shortly as they are diagnosed. This investigate provides some-more justification to behind up that recommendation."

In the study, patients were deliberate to have unsuccessful metformin when their hemoglobin A1C -- a exam that monitors glucose carry out -- went on top of 7.5 percent or when they proposed receiving a second anti-hyperglycemic agent. Only patients who primarily tranquil red red red red red blood sugarine (to less than 7 percent on the A1C test) with metformin were enclosed in the study.

To revoke the probability that factors alternative than check in starting metformin shabby the formula of the study, researchers tranquil for age, gender, and how well red red red red red blood sugarine was tranquil before to treatment. After determining for these factors, an even stronger attribute emerged in between the time a studious proposed on the drug, and the volume of time it remained effective. Still, the authors counsel that alternative unrestrained factors could have shabby the results.

The investigate was saved by Novo Nordisk, Inc., a association that does not have or sell metformin and has no monetary seductiveness in, or tie to, Kaiser Permanente.

Study authors include: Jonathan B. Brown, PhD, MPP, and Gregory A. Nichols, PhD, from the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., and Christopher Conner, PharmD, PhD, from Novo Nordisk, Inc., Seattle.

Click here to review the full study:http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2009/12/29/dc09-1749.full.pdf+html

About the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research (http://www.kpchr.org):

Kaiser Permanente"s Center for Health Research, founded in 1964, is a nonprofit investigate establishment dedicated to some-more advanced believe to urge health. It has investigate sites in Portland, Ore., Honolulu and Atlanta.

About Kaiser Permanente:

Kaiser Permanente is committed to assisting figure the destiny of health care. We are famous as one of America"s heading health caring providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, the mission is to yield high-quality, affordable health caring services and to urge the health of the members and the communities we serve. We now offer 8.6 million members in 9 states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their sum health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and group of caregivers. Our consultant and caring healing teams are empowered and upheld by industry-leading record advances and collection for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the art caring smoothness and world-class ongoing disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to caring innovations, clinical research, health preparation and the await of village health. For some-more information, go to: www.kp.org/newscenter.

&

http://www.golinharris.com

Bit Defender

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Corey Haims Girlfriend on His Drug Abuse

Was Corey Haim abusing drugs before he died?& The late star"s former girlfriend Tiffany Shepis speaks exclusively with Chris Jacobs of "The Insider."

"I don"t know. I wasn"t there," says Shepis. "From what I"ve heard, he had still been taking, but that"s all hearsay."

Asked what she thinks killed Corey, the actress responds simply, "Drugs. I think years and years of abuse on your body, inevitably, whether it"s the pills that actually took his life or his body just shutting down because it was so tired of being abused for all those years, I would have to say drugs."

Watch "The Insider" Friday for more of the interview.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Nigerias absolute state governors behind behaving personality

Felix Onuah and Camillus Eboh ABUJA Tue Mar 2, 2010 5:51pm EST

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria"s powerful state governors pledged their support for Acting President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday, saying he should continue to lead Africa"s most populous nation while its ailing leader recuperates.

World

The public support of Nigeria"s 36 state governors is the latest sign that Jonathan is asserting his authority after the surprise return of Yar"Adua almost a week ago raised fears of a power struggle.

"We congratulated the Acting President for stabilizing the polity in the country at the moment," Bukola Saraki, chairman of the Governors" Forum, told reporters after a meeting with Jonathan in the capital Abuja.

"We encouraged him and said he is doing a good job and that he has the full support of the Governors" Forum in this exercise," Saraki said.

Nigeria"s state governors are highly influential figures, some controlling budgets larger than those of neighboring countries, and are key players in party conventions at which presidential candidates are chosen.

Yar"Adua was flown back to Nigeria last Wednesday after three months in a Saudi hospital but is still too frail to govern, raising fears his return was motivated by a circle led by his wife Turai seeking to maintain their influence.

The 58-year-old leader has not been seen in public since he left Nigeria in November to get treatment for a heart ailment. Presidency sources say he is in a mobile intensive care unit.

LEGAL CASE

A Nigerian lawyer launched legal action against his aides on Tuesday in an attempt to force the ailing leader to appear before the media and prove the state of his health.

Abuja-based lawyer Kayode Ajulo launched the legal action against Turai and five other aides including the chief of army staff and national security adviser, asking a Federal High Court to rule on whether their actions were against the constitution.

Ajulo is seeking a court order directing the aides to allow Nigerian newspaper owners, editors and journalists "to have access to ascertain the existence of President Umaru Yar"Adua," according to court papers seen by Reuters.

Yar"Adua"s critics have called on him to resign if he is unable to govern.

"For us the issue of his resignation is not an issue for now. For us, what is important is to be compassionate," Godswill Akpabio, governor of Akwa Ibom state, said after the meeting.

Jonathan assumed executive powers on February 9, ending months of state paralysis and allowing him to set priorities such as implementing an amnesty for rebels in the oil-producing Niger Delta, restoring power supplies and preparing for elections.

But Yar"Adua"s return came just two weeks later and threatened to again put policy-making on hold in the OPEC member state of more than 140 million people.

Analysts say those around Jonathan appear to have gained the upper hand over the circle loyal to Yar"Adua. He set up three new advisory committees on Monday, including one on the Niger Delta, in a sign he is taking firm control of state affairs.

(For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: af.reuters.com/ )

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Andrew Roche)

World

Sunday, August 1, 2010

WORLD CUP 2010: Darren Bent dynamic to be piece of Fabio Capellos England plans

Sunderland striker Darren Bent is refusing to give up on his World Cup finals dream.

The 26-year-old frontman has plundered 16 goals to date for the Black Cats to fire himself to the fringes of the race to board the England plane for South Africa.

However, with Fabio Capello due to announce his squad for the friendly clash with Egypt at the weekend as Bent goes head to head with surprise contender Bobby Zamora at club level, time is running out for him to prove to the Italian that he has a role to play.

darren bent

Consistent: Bent has been banging them in this season but he was frustrated by Arsenal keeper Manuel Almunia at the weekend

But, as he has done ever since his form for Sunderland put the 10million man in the international frame, he is simply concentrating on his job on Wearside and allowing the rest to take care of itself.

Bent told the Journal: "It would be nice to be involved. I don"t think I have done my chances any harm this season.

"There are only Wayne Rooney and maybe Jermain Defoe who have scored more goals than I have as an out-and-out front man.

"All I can do is keep working hard, keeping doing well for Sunderland - there"s no more that I can do.

"If it doesn"t happen, I will move on."

Stats Zone

Bent"s desperation to be involved is all the more acute because he believes England have a genuine chance of returning with the trophy after being drawn in Group C along with the United States, Algeria and Slovenia.

He said: "England have got a great chance of winning the World Cup. If we can play as a team and maintain the form that we are in, there"s no reason we can"t win the World Cup.

"It was a good draw for England. It"s there for us, but it will be tough. There is a long way to go before then - anything could happen.

"We have always had some of the best players in the world but it"s just been a case of them playing as a team and getting everything together.

"You can never really talk about anyone being favourites because there is danger all over. Brazil are strong, Spain are a good team and you can never, ever write off the Germans.

wayne rooney

Head of the queue: Manchester United"s Wayne Rooney is way out in front as England"s best striker this season

"Before ever major tournament, they get battered in the lead up to it but, as soon as the finals come around, are always in the semi-finals or final."

In the meantime, Bent"s focus will be on Sunday"s Barclays Premier League clash with Fulham and the Black Cats" efforts to end their 13-game run without a league victory.

He said: "Sunderland comes first - I would put the club before anything. Getting them out of trouble and us having a good season is before anything."

More...England boss Fabio Capello facing big problems ahead of finalsSunderland boss Bruce fined after comments about referee MarrinerSunderland boss Bruce targets 3.5m Portsmouth defender Marc Wilson THE LIST: Top 50 English players who should be on Fabio Capello"s radarArsenal 2 Sunderland 0: Where"s Walcott? Capello ponders Theo call-upSUNDERLAND FC NEWS FROM ACROSS THE NET