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Friday, June 24, 2005

240,000 U2] fans are preparing for Ireland’s most successful band ever to return for a hometown gig in Dublin. The supergroup is playing Friday, Saturday and Monday in front of 80,000 people a night at Croke Park. Gardaí have put in place a massive traffic management plan to cope with the influx of people. Fans have been queing since Thursday morning when a group of fans from Holland, Italy and Canada started queuing outside the stadium.

The concert forms part of U2’s current “Vertigo” world tour. The support acts include emerging Irish bands Snow Patrol and The Thrills along with already very popular Paddy Casey. Ash and The Bravery will cap it off as warm up acts on Monday.

The gates for the gig will open at 4pm with the actual band not expected until around 8.30pm. Irish media has entered a frenzied anticipation of the concert all this week, with constant coverage on radio stations. The national broadcaster, RTÉ, is set to dedicated almost 3hr 30min to the band with an exclusive interview by Dave Fanning forming the centerpiece of the stations coverage of the “U2 weekend”. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who played in front of a sell out crowd in Dublin earlier this week told fans that U2 were “still the best band in the world”.

Croke Park is the fourth largest stadium in Europe, with an official capacity of 82,000 – bigger than both Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and Paris’ Stade de France. Croke Park is used to host GAA matches in sports such as hurling and Gaelic football and regularly attracts audiences of 60,000 or more in the summer months.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

A German shepherd who recovered the last survivor of the September 11, 2001 attacks is to be cloned. His owner, James Symington, a former police officer from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada entered an essay writing contest about why his dog should be cloned.

Trakr, the 15 year old German shepherd suffering from degenerative neurological disorder, was the subject of a contest-winning essay about why Trakr should be cloned that was written by Symington. Trakr and Symington received Humanitarian Service Awards from Jane Goodall for their heroics at Ground Zero. Symington is now an actor of film and television, sometimes credited as Peter James.

BioArts International sponsored the essay-writing contest. Five more dogs are to be cloned by its Best Friends Again program. While Trakr will receive free replication, the other dogs will have to participate in an auction with a starting bid of US$100,000.

BioArts is going to send the DNA of the 6 dogs to Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul, South Korea. A Sooam researcher said that the dog should be born in November.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last night HBO premiered I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA. Since its inception, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has made headlines and raised eyebrows. They are almost single-handedly responsible for the movement against animal testing and their efforts have raised the suffering animals experience in a broad spectrum of consumer goods production and food processing into a cause célèbre.

PETA first made headlines in the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Alex Pacheco, then a student at George Washington University, volunteered at a lab run by Edward Taub, who was testing neuroplasticity on live monkeys. Taub had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the monkeys’ fingers, hands, arms, legs; with some of the monkeys, he had severed the entire spinal column. He then tried to force the monkeys to use their limbs by exposing them to persistent electric shock, prolonged physical restraint of an intact arm or leg, and by withholding food. With footage obtained by Pacheco, Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty—largely as a result of the monkeys’ reported living conditions—making them “the most famous lab animals in history,” according to psychiatrist Norman Doidge. Taub’s conviction was later overturned on appeal and the monkeys were eventually euthanized.

PETA was born.

In the subsequent decades they ran the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty against Europe’s largest animal-testing facility (footage showed staff punching beagle puppies in the face, shouting at them, and simulating sex acts while taking blood samples); against Covance, the United State’s largest importer of primates for laboratory research (evidence was found that they were dissecting monkeys at its Vienna, Virginia laboratory while the animals were still alive); against General Motors for using live animals in crash tests; against L’Oreal for testing cosmetics on animals; against the use of fur for fashion and fur farms; against Smithfield Foods for torturing Butterball turkeys; and against fast food chains, most recently against KFC through the launch of their website kentuckyfriedcruelty.com.

They have launched campaigns and engaged in stunts that are designed for media attention. In 1996, PETA activists famously threw a dead raccoon onto the table of Anna Wintour, the fur supporting editor-in-chief of Vogue, while she was dining at the Four Seasons in New York, and left bloody paw prints and the words “Fur Hag” on the steps of her home. They ran a campaign entitled Holocaust on your Plate that consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. Photographs of concentration camp inmates in wooden bunks were shown next to photographs of caged chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. In 2003 in Jerusalem, after a donkey was loaded with explosives and blown up in a terrorist attack, Newkirk sent a letter to then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat to keep animals out of the conflict. As the film shows, they also took over Jean-Paul Gaultier‘s Paris boutique and smeared blood on the windows to protest his use of fur in his clothing.

The group’s tactics have been criticized. Co-founder Pacheco, who is no longer with PETA, called them “stupid human tricks.” Some feminists criticize their campaigns featuring the Lettuce Ladies and “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads as objectifying women. Of their Holocaust on a Plate campaign, Anti-Defamation League Chairman Abraham Foxman said “The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent.” (Newkirk later issued an apology for any hurt it caused). Perhaps most controversial amongst politicians, the public and even other animal rights organizations is PETA’s refusal to condemn the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, which in January 2005 was named as a terrorist threat by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

David Shankbone attended the pre-release screening of I Am An Animal at HBO’s offices in New York City on November 12, and the following day he sat down with Ingrid Newkirk to discuss her perspectives on PETA, animal rights, her responses to criticism lodged against her and to discuss her on-going life’s work to raise human awareness of animal suffering. Below is her interview.

Friday, August 4, 2017

Yesterday, French capital football club Paris Saint-Germain triggered a €222 million (about US$263m, £198m) buyout clause of Brazilian winger Neymar to sign him from FC Barcelona, making him the most expensive footballer of all time by breaking the previous fee record of Paul Pogba’s transfer from Juventus FC to Manchester United. Neymar signed a five year contract with Paris SG which runs until June 2022.

25-year-old Neymar made his professional debut for Santos FC in January 2009, netting 138 goals in 229 matches. He was signed by FC Barcelona in 2013. Since then, Neymar has scored 105 goals and provided 80 assists in 186 games for Barça. In four seasons at Camp Nou, Neymar won two LaLiga titles, three Copa del Rey trophies, and one each of Champions League trophy Supercopa de España. Neymar was part of Barcelona’s treble winning squad in 2014–15, and finished third in 2015’s FIFA Ballon d’Or. Neymar made an international debut at the age of eighteen. He has scored 52 goals in 77 games for Brazil.

Paris SG’s Qatari president Nasser Al-Khelaifi said, “Today, with the arrival of Neymar Jr, I am convinced that we will come even closer, with the support of our faithful fans, to realizing our greatest dreams”.

After penning a five-year contract, Neymar said, “I am extremely happy to join Paris Saint-Germain. Since I arrived in Europe, the club has always been one of the most competitive and most ambitious. And the biggest challenge, what most motivated me to join my new teammates, is to help the club to conquer the titles that their fans want.”

Neymar’s lawyer submitted a check of €222m to deposit Neymar’s buy-out clause at LaLiga’s headquarters, but it was rejected. LaLiga officials issued an official statement, which read, “We can confirm that the player’s lawyers came to the La Liga offices this morning to deposit the clause and that it has been rejected.[…] That’s all the information we are giving out at this moment.”

Later, Neymar’s legal representative delivered the check to FC Barcelona. A statement from Barcelona confirmed they received the payment and Neymar was no longer contracted to the club. The statement read, “On Thursday afternoon Neymar Jr’s legal representatives visited in person the Club’s offices and made the payment of 222 million euros in the player’s name with regards to the unilateral termination of the contract that united both parties.” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?Esta tarde, representantes legales de Neymar Jr. se han personado en las oficinas del Club y han hecho efectivo, en nombre del jugador, el pago de 222 millones de euros, en concepto de indemnización por la rescisión unilateral y sin causa del contrato que unía a ambas partes.} It also said, “the Club will pass on to UEFA the details of the above operation so that they can determine the disciplinary responsibilities that may arise from this case.” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?el Club trasladará a la UEFA los detalles de esta operación para que depuren las responsabilidades disciplinarias que puedan derivarse de este caso.} Financial fair play rules prevents European clubs from spending more than €30 million from their earnings. Paris SG was fined by UEFA in 2014 for violating financial fair play rules.

Manchester United’s manager José Mourinho, who spent about €105 million last season to sign Paul Pogba, and a reported fee of €75 million to sign Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku from Everton FC this season, said, “Expensive are the ones who get into a certain level without a certain quality. For £200m, I don’t think [Neymar] is expensive. […] I think he’s expensive in the fact that now you are going to have more players at £100m, you are going have more players at £80m and more players at £60m. And I think that’s the problem. […] So I think the problem is not Neymar, I think the problem is the consequences of Neymar.”

Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp said, “I thought Fair Play was made so that situations like that can’t happen. That’s more of a suggestion than a real rule.”

French club Lille director general Marc Ingla, who had once served as Barça’s vice-president said, “It’s a blow for Barcelona. Neymar is an accelerator to this bright future of Ligue 1. The young talent pool we have here is the best in Europe. For sure we can still compete with PSG. Once you get on the pitch it’s 11 v 11 and all the transfer fees and salaries narrow a bit.”

Before the official announcement of the agreement, yesterday, Arsenal’s manager Arsène Wenger also remarked about the financial fair play and said, “Once a country owns a club, everything is possible. It becomes very difficult to respect the financial fair play because you can have different ways or different interests for a country to have such a big player to represent [that] country. It can’t justify the investments and looks unusual for the game. That’s why I always [support] football living with its own resources. You don’t look at the numbers in their absolute value anymore. Football has been for a long time out of normal society and the numbers are like the NBA in basketball, so it’s not comparable to normal life anymore. Those are the numbers. It was already out of context of society, so after it just becomes a bit extra. You cannot calculate what it brings in anymore, it’s just a number.”

On Wednesday, Neymar’s Lionel Messi posted on Instagram: “It was a great pleasure to have shared all these years with you, friend @neymarjr [Neymar]. I wish you good luck in this new stage of your life. See you tomorrow” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?Fue un placer enorme haber compartido todos estos años con vos, amigo @neymarjr [Neymar]. Te deseo mucha suerte en esta nueva etapa de tu vida. Nos vemos Tkm}.

Barcelona’s striker Luis Suárez dedicated an Instagram post for Neymar after Lionel Messi, and said, ” My friend i wish you the best in everything that comes!!! Also thank you for your support, for everything that i learned with you and for the unique moments that we spent together!!!! Keep like this and never change love you little bro” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?Amigo desearte todo lo mejor en lo que viene!!! También agradecerte todo el cariño que me diste, por lo que aprendí contigo y por los momentos únicos que pasamos!!!! Seguí así y no cambies nunca te quiero hermanito}.

Neymar has been assigned number 10 jersey.