Jenjie

Fed Up, Surfers Take on Paparrazi in Malibu By DEBRAH ROBERTS and LEE FERRAN June 23, 2008 The paparazzi know that they can sell candid pictures of stars for a big paycheck, but often they don't realize how much it might cost them to get that perfect shot. A photographer trying to snap shots of actor Matthew McConaughey surfing in Malibu, Calif., this weekend sparked a brawl between more than a dozen enraged surfers and several paparazzi, some of it caught on video. "They don't want you here," a surfer yelled at a photographer just before the brawl broke out. "Nobody wants you here." The video of the confrontations, which took place on two consecutive days, shows surfers surrounding the paparazzi and, then, when the paparazzi refused to leave, fists flying. Several photographers took punches to the face. "Let's draw a line and we'll fight for the beach," the surfer told the photographers. "If you win, you can have the beach." The beach brawl is the latest of several incidents involving the paparazzi in the tony beachside community that's home to a number of celebrities, according to Malibu Mayor Pamela Conley. "We're getting major complaints of people getting put in harm's way," Conley told ABC News. "We have reports from all over Malibu that people are feeling their public safety is at risk." Balancing Rights With Safety To address Malibu's safety concerns, including several instances of paparazzi taking pictures in elementary schools, a First Amendment conference was held last April. Attendees included representatives from the ACLU and Kenneth Starr, the lawyer and former judge who was the special prosecutor in the Clinton-Lewinsky case and is now the dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu. "We're hoping to get a task force together to help us address public safety issues around schools," Conley told ABC News. One of the main concerns for the conference was developing a way to guard against potentially dangerous situations caused by the paparazzi while at the same time balancing the freedom of the press granted by the First Amendment. "We're dealing with the most sacred part of the Constitution," Kimberly Guilfoyle, former prosecutor in Los Angeles and host and analyst with the Fox News Channel, said in an interview with "Good Morning America." "The right to speak your minds. It gets complicated to stop it." Guilfoyle said the creation of the task force signifies that more than just lip service is being paid to the problem. "When they're bringing in Ken Starr, you know they mean business," Guilfoyle said. "Someone like Kenneth Starr is going to come in as a constitutional law expert and he's going to be able to craft ordinances that will withstand legal scrutiny and within the bounds of the law." Stars' Resentment Grows Instead of capturing the headlines, paparazzi have been making headlines frequently since the death of Princess Diana in 1997, when several photographers failed to help the princess after a horrific car wreck in Paris that caused her death. Some celebrities are lashing out. In January, Coldplay front man Chris Martin wrestled a camera from a photographer who taunted wife Gwyneth Paltrow as she left the hospital. In interviews earlier this year with ABC News, actresses Sarah Jessica Parker and Salma Hayek described growing anger at the photographers' boldness. "They are parked outside of your house and they will not move for months," Hayek said. "I didn't leave my house for nearly three months." "And these guys just, they're enjoying it," "Sex and the City" star Parker told ABC News. "I just screamed. I'm like, 'leave me alone.'" Several lawmakers in the U.S. are now considering laws that would limit the rights of the paparazzi, similar to harsh restrictions against paparazzi found in many European countries. Regardless of whether the First Amendment is challenged by new ordinances or not, the paparazzi may have to deal with more scuffles with a public that is losing its patience. "I like this. There is a growing intolerance here for the paparazzi," Guilfoyle said. "Something has to be done. Enough is enough." http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5223977&page=1

don't forget to come straight back here as soon as you get home and write me some reviews :D when I get up in the morning, it'd be nice to have some to add to Wiki before i start work

that's not listening to it properly :P to do that you have to put it on the stereo really loud and bounce round the coffee table for the relevant tracks :D :laugh3:

grrrrrr @ pesky font changes. any ideas what the X&Y one is?

good question! is that the same font as for x&y era release, Mich?

don't panic. he already said in another thread he didn't take any pictures of Chris' house, only pictures of The Bakery, for the exact same reasons as have been discussed throughout the thread.

Viva La Vida is first British single to top the US charts in 10 years. Last one was Wannabe by Spice Girls in 1997 source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/showbiz/latest/2008/06/23/coldplay-first-band-to-top-us-singles-charts-in-10-years-89520-20618191/

:D

seems to be contagious, I posted an article in the 2008/2009 Premier League thread yesterday which was comparing Cristiano Ronaldo to Coldplay :stunned:

ick :angry:

I don't know :laugh3: I've thought about it long and hard but can't put my finger on the reason why

there is an official discussion thread here but people keep starting there own :rolleyes: my most used button at the moment is merge :laugh3:

I'd agree with a crush on Richard Hammond & Colin Firth but I wouldn't categorise either as a weird crush. I do have a crush on a fictional character. Jack Reacher is a character in Lee child's novels. and he is the only character in a book I have ever fancied. I kind of what him to be turned into a film, but I don't think any flesh & blood actor could do him justice. And my weird celebrity crush would have to be Simon Cowell.

people who use knives definitely steal them. the shop I used to work in had a Hobbycraft next door. we'd find the packaging from the knives in the hidey hole with the DVD tags after the thieves had been in.

it was number 11. and coldplay.com appear to have crashed with the excitement!!!

I like it :D

and Fudge gets the prize for most excited :P nice post (smily face here but its hit the smiley limit)

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oh come on

squuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee can't take the pressure

this is almost as exciting as listening to the chart when i was 14

Premier League - Transfer Talk: Look at the stars... Could Chris Martin be the key player in Cristiano Ronaldo's potential move to Real Madrid? Probably not, but it's worth investigating. Is Cristiano Ronaldo a fan of Coldplay? It's difficult to say for certain, but as this entire page is all about wild speculation based on little or no fact whatsoever, let's say that he is. Let's say that "Yellow" changed a young Cristiano's life. Not sure where is this all going? Well, Twisted Logic was the name of the tour of Coldplay's third album, X and Y. It is also the thought process behind Ronaldo's claim that Manchester United should allow him to leave for Real Madrid as a "reward for his loyalty," as claimed in the News of the World. Go figure that one out, Hawking. Meanwhile, United also risk losing Carlos Tevez, who is apparently upset that the club haven't attempted to turn his two-year loan into a permanent deal. He's in a "quandary", according to a "source close to the player." Don't worry; that's just a posh way of saying he's in a rhubarb of a pickle of a jam. Pity the fool who has an office next to Manchester City boss Mark Hughes this weekend; that phone has been in a state of almost constant use. Everton are keen on City's young midfielder Michael Johnson, while Portsmouth are still keen on club captain Richard Dunne and have offered the burly defender a whopping £55,000 to reunite him with former City colleague Sylvain Distin. Meanwhile, Cardiff could be set to test Hughes with a £3m bid for young Welsh starlet Ched Evans, and Serie A clubs Torino and Udinese are showing interest in Valeri Bojinov , who missed all-but two matches of last season with a knee injury. Plenty head-scratching ahead for Hughes. Apparently, Aston Villa have told Liverpool that dropping out of the race to sign David Bentley from Blackburn might help the Reds' bid to sign their own captain, Gareth Barry. More twists than a bag of pretzels in this one. Hull are in the Premier League. You'd be forgiven for forgetting that. It certainly seems to have slipped manager Phil Brown's mind, which is why he might be ready to spunk £3m on Rangers striker Kris Boyd and a similar amount on unwanted Spurs centre-back Anthony Gardner. "The lad's got a proven Premier League pedigree," Brown said of Gardner. He must have a long memory; in the last 18 months, appearances from Gardner have been as rare as rocking-horse poo. Bolton's quest to sign the worst strikers in Premier League continues. Keen to extend the series that brought us fat Brazilian Mario Jardel, immobile Mexican Jared Borgetti and honest-but-rubbish Henrik Pedersen, Gary Megson is chasing Lyon's headless chicken Milan Baros. Finally, Hamburg defender Guy Demel obviously doesn't pay much attention to happenings in the Premier League. If he did, he wouldn't claim to be "flattered" by a link to Newcastle . Alex Sharratt / Eurosport http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/22062008/58/premier-league-transfer-talk-look-stars.html

LIKE hundreds of thousands of American teenagers, Jennifer Babb went to summer camp last year. She learnt all about how to prime dynamite, stood close enough to a controlled explosion to feel its percussive blast and finally blew up a frozen chicken. Forget about swimming and barbecues: American children’s summer camps are increasingly turning to adult pursuits to entice a new generation of tech-savvy teenagers. In place of traditional summer fare such as canoeing and volley-ball, the camps are offering ever more sophisticated pursuits, from computer programming courses to espionage - otherwise known as “spy camp”. At the Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST), a summer course in handling explosives has proved so popular that the 2008 sessions sold out months ago. “A bunch of my friends were really jealous when they found out I was going to explosives camp,” said Babb. Sceptics might think this the ideal training ground for a budding terrorist, but the organisers emphasise that the $500 (£250) week-long course is limited to teenagers who express an interest in studying engineering. “You will have a behind-the-scenes look at how explosives are used in industry and entertainment,” says the MST brochure. “But the number one thing you will do at the explosives summer camp is have fun!” The university’s engineers use frozen chickens to demonstrate the dangers of mishandling explosives. According to Dr Paul Worsey, the British-born MST professor who runs the programme, the skin and bone structure of a chicken is similar to the composition of the human hand. For students who prefer more cerebral pursuits, the neuro-science camp run by Northwestern College in Iowa offers a different kind of treat. “Campers participate in electrophysiology and neuropharmacology experiments,” promises the camp prospectus. “They dissect a sheep brain [and] use computer simulation to dissect a human brain.” At spy camp on the shores of Lake Como, Pennsylvania, budding James Bonds are instructed in martial arts, code-breaking, surveillance techniques and undercover manoeuvres. It is all a far cry from the halcyon days when the children of America’s well-to-do would quietly while away their summers in the woods. Now those woods are likely to be filled with dynamite blasts and trainee spies. “Boy it’s cool,” said Babb. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4187569.ece

International Scout and Girl Guide jamborees are being exploited for illegal immigration. Six Scouts are still missing after attending the 21st World Scout Jamboree near Chelmsford, Essex, last summer. They are believed to have remained in the country illegally. Five Kenyan Girl Guides also vanished after attending an international jamboree in Ireland last July. There are even concerns they may subsequently have been trafficked into the UK. While immigration officers are trained to spot children who may plan to stay in the country illegally or who are being exploited by traffickers, the potential abuse of the respectability afforded by the Scout and Guide uniforms presents a new challenge. One of those missing from last summer’s events is Ossai Elvis, a 16-year-old Nigerian. He is pictured in his Scout uniform on Britain’s official police website for missing children. The Scout and Girl Guide movements are keen to emphasise that only a very small number of children have disappeared of the many thousands who attend events. Linda Peters, chief executive of the Irish Girl Guides, said: “We would be extremely concerned if we were being used as a conduit for child trafficking. “We are now in the summer season and parents are saying, ‘Is it safe to send our children to camp?’ We have to stress security is very tight.” In July last year, eight Girl Guides and five adult supervisors from Kenya arrived at Dublin airport to attend the Irish Girl Guides summer jamboree in County Meath. They were among about 1,000 Guides who attended the international camp. There is usually stiff competition to get to jamborees and the Kenyan girls made an impression with their dancing and singing. The girls left the camp for Dublin, but subsequently vanished and five have not been seen since. A woman who had been travelling with the girls, Polly Mbugua, 40, was arrested and later jailed after being found to have false documents for children that would have enabled them to travel to the UK. The five Guides listed on Ireland’s official missing children website are named as Caroline Njoki, 11, Jean Wanjiku, 14, Magdaline Nyagathi, 16, Alice Wanbui, 16, and Jane Nyambura, 17. Their disappearance received no publicity until last month when a worker at the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children went through missing-person files — and realised the children had all vanished after the jamboree. The case was then raised at a conference where it was claimed the girls may have been the victims of child traffickers. According to the United States Trafficking in Persons report, 400,000 children are trafficked across national borders each year and Kenya is one of the countries targeted by criminals. “Children are trafficked to the Middle East, Europe and North America for domestic servitude, enslavement in massage parlours and brothels, and forced manual labour,” it says. The Irish case may not have been publicised because immigration officials thought the girls were trying to enter the country illegally to join relatives in Ireland or England. Two of the girls are, however, reported since to have turned up in the care of social services in England and a third is also thought to have been traced. Kathleen Lynch, Labour spokeswoman on equality in Ireland, said: “There are huge concerns over what might have happened to these girls after they vanished.” The Irish case highlights how international events for children can be exploited to obtain visas. At last year’s World Scout Jamboree in Essex, attended by Prince William, 13 Scouts went missing and six are still unaccounted for. Essex police believe the missing Scouts, who came from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Uganda and Nigeria, may have wanted to stay in England illegally. “We do not have concerns about their health and welfare,” said a spokesman. Chris Beddoe, director of Ecpat, a coalition of children’s charities that campaigns to raise awareness about child trafficking, said: “There seems to be a second-class system for migrant children that go missing. There is an assumption that they will be reunited with relatives in this country. But any child can be a victim of trafficking, and it is very important they are found.” It emerged last April that more than 400 foreign children had gone missing from local authorities in the three years to July 2007. Anti-trafficking campaigners claim the children are often removed by criminal gangs who then exploit them for illegal enterprises. A spokesman for the Scout Association said all Scouts who attended jamborees have “support and sponsorship” from the Scout groups in their home country. He said he believed accreditation checks were satisfactory. A spokesman for the Garda, the Irish police, said the investigation into the five missing Girl Guides was still under way. Lost count — Each year in Britain an estimated 100,000 children go missing. Of these, 1,300 are still missing after two weeks — many of them likely to be trafficking victims — A study at Heathrow found 1,800 unaccompanied minors arriving in three months. — Last year 6,000 unaccompanied children seeking asylum were supported by councils — From July 2004 to July 2007, 408 foreign children disappeared from England’s 16 main air and sea ports http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4187837.ece

Eight matches at Wimbledon have been reported to the tennis authorities on suspicion that their results have been fixed by professional gambling syndicates. The matches are named in a dossier compiled by leading bookmaking companies, which monitor suspect betting patterns and players thought to be willing to throw games. Four of the matches are from last year’s men’s singles at Wimbledon and involve foreign players who each lost by three sets. The dossier identifies sudden spikes in the sums wagered. More than £450m was bet on Wimbledon matches last year through just one British internet site, Betfair. Many suspect matches show huge rises in the money pledged, compared with similar games. Match-fixers can exploit the odds to share out six-figure sums, leaving significant profits even after paying off a player the loss of prize money for throwing a match. One player has gone on record saying he turned down a £70,000 bung to lose in the first round at Wimbledon. The prize for losing in the first round this year is £10,250. It is believed Russian and eastern European gamblers are behind much of the illegal betting, although the dossier also names a gang of Austrian gamblers. An official with detailed knowledge of the dossier of 140 “suspect” matches from tournaments around the world said: “If you look at a tournament, you might see one match for £23,000 [in betting turnover], one for £27,000, one for £36,000 and one for £4.5m. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that something is going on in the last one.” All the losers singled out from last year’s Wimbledon are alleged to have been involved in suspect matches at other tournaments. One, who is ranked in the top 150, was the loser in eight games on the full list. The disclosure of suspected match fixing comes amid increased concern about the influence of criminal betting syndicates. The All England Club has tightened security this year to prevent players’ entourages from gaining access to insider information that could be used in gambling. Only the player and their coach will now be granted entry to the changing rooms. The club’s intervention followed a report last month commissioned by the ruling bodies of tennis, which concluded that “criminal elements” and possibly organised gangs were seeking to “corrupt” players or officials. The former police officers who compiled the report, Jeff Rees and Ben Gunn, had been given access to the match-fixing dossier. It is understood that the dossier was originally created as an internal guide for a group of British and overseas bookmakers so they could blacklist certain players’ matches and bets from suspicious accounts. The dossier identifies games involving male and female players since 2002 that are considered to be suspect because of betting patterns. A tennis source, who is familiar with its contents, said: “The result was decided before the players came onto court. They all conform to the same pattern. There is a very dramatic shift in the market and there are enormous volumes traded.” A number of Argentine, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Austrian players are named in the dossier, which covers events around the world including the four Grand Slams. Five of the losing players from the eight Wimbledon games listed in the dossier are in this year’s men’s singles competition, which begins tomorrow. A total of 18 players competing in this year’s tournament appear as losers in the dossier. The dossier makes repeated allegations that players “tanked”, or deliberately tried to lose, a match. “X tanked losing nine games in a row,” says one entry. It frequently refers to a network of Austrian gamblers with links in eastern Europe. One game was bought by “German fixers”, but their player’s opponent was so poor, he was forced to win. “\ apologises to the fixers and says he will get the money back in the future, most likely when he is a big favourite,” says the dossier. The potential gains of a match-fixer can far outweigh the loss of prize money in the early rounds of the biggest tournaments. A player at last year’s Wimbledon would earn £10,000 for competing in the first round, with extra prize money of only £6,325 for progressing to the second round. On the other hand, bets of £400,000 — a figure mentioned in the dossier for just one internet site — could net £80,000 or more, depending on the odds. Last September Gilles Elseneer, a Belgian player, said he turned down a locker-room offer of about £70,000 to lose a first-round match against Italy’s Potito Starace at Wimbledon in 2005. Andy Murray, the British men’s No 1, claimed last October that “everyone knows that match-fixing takes place” although he later said he had been misquoted. Corrado Tschabuschnig, an Italian players’ agent, said last week that players were being offered sums far greater than the prize money for getting through to the next round — “I think, like 10 times the money you would make the round after”. Tschabuschnig and senior tennis administrators argued the losing players could be innocent. They believe the players could be victims of leaks of inside information from members of their entourage to gamblers. It could be that the bookmakers are being overly suspicious about matches as they have to protect their business from large payouts. But the dossier provides a weight of evidence requiring further investigation. Betfair, a British-based internet exchange, closely monitors suspicious betting on tennis and sends reports to the sport’s governing bodies. A spokesman for the company said many bookmakers operated blacklists and refused to accept bets on particular players. He said this was not Betfair’s policy, but added: “We certainly monitor the market where certain players are involved far more closely than we would with others.” It was Betfair that prompted the latest inquiry into match-fixing when it declared void £3.4m of bets last August on a single match. Large sums had been placed on Martin Vassallo Arguello, a low-ranked Argentinian, to beat Nikolay Davydenko, the Russian ranked No 4 in the world. The spokesman said: “Davydenko was winning very, very easily. He had won the first set 6-1 and was a break up in the second but he was still not the favourite . . . and then he goes on to lose the second set and pull out \ in the third.” The inquiry into the match is continuing and both players deny any wrongdoing. The incident prompted the sport’s governing bodies — the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the ATP, the WTA Tour and the four Grand Slams — to commission the Rees and Gunn report. The bookmakers’ dossier was given to the ATP and the ITF last autumn. Last month, Rees and Gunn identified 45 matches between 2002 and 2007 in which the betting activity was suspicious and recommended further investigation. This weekend one player, who lost four of the matches highlighted in the dossier, said: “If they \ have suspicious activity, they should ask the people that bet, not me. They should have the names and account numbers of the people who bet and it would be easy to know if they have some relationship with the players.” An agent for another player also denied any involvement in match-fixing. “He’s not involved in nothing. I’m sure because I know the guy from when he was 14 years old.” Bill Babcock, a Grand Slam tournament co-ordinator, said: “We have systems to examine unusual betting activities and as soon as we receive notice we look at each case that has been brought to our attention.” An ATP statement said the Rees and Gunn report had “confirmed the sport is not institutionally or systematically corrupt”. An integrity unit is to be set up to tackle corruption and the tennis authorities are likely to announce penalties including three-year bans and fines of up to £50,000 for any player involved in match-fixing. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/tennis/article4187780.ece