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Football: Villas-Boas confirms Soldado interest

HONG KONG: Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas said Tuesday Spurs are in talks to sign Valencia and Spain striker Roberto Soldado, but denied that a deal was imminent.

Press reports in Britain have suggested that the Londoners are close to snapping up the forward for a club record 18 million pounds ($28 million).

Speaking in Hong Kong, where Spurs face Sunderland on Wednesday in the Barclays Asia Trophy, Villas-Boas said: "At the moment, he's just one of the players we are interested in.

"It's not a lie to anybody that we've been looking for a striker to strengthen our squad and to have more strength in depth. Roberto is one of the players we have been following and his career speaks for itself. He's a great striker.

"But there isn't a deal being struck at the moment, it's just interest and conversations."

If Soldado, 28, does join it could spell the end at Spurs for one or both of the club's current forwards Jermain Defoe and Emmanuel Adebayor.

Villas-Boas refused to confirm or deny whether Spurs had received a bid for Gareth Bale, the winger who has been linked with a move to Manchester United and Real Madrid.

"He's a player that we are willing to continue to have and he is one of the most fantastic players in the world at the moment," Villas-Boas said.

Bale will not feature against Sunderland after picking up a knock in training, the manager said, but will play some part on Saturday, when Spurs will face Manchester City or local side South China.

Villas-Boas said that Premier League teams needed to be "more aggressive" in the transfer market and declared himself pleased that Spurs, who narrowly missed out on Champions League football last season, were doing that.

"Man City and Chelsea have certainly done that and we are (also) doing it in a different way right now (compared with before), which is extremely important bearing in mind the preparations for the season," he said.

A top-four place in the Premier League -- which usually means Champions League football -- was the aim for the season, said the former Chelsea coach.

"Chelsea and Man City are becoming extremely competitive. Man United are becoming extremely competitive.

"Teams that compete for the title usually are Man City and Man United and Chelsea, you can add Arsenal too.

"To aim high and have high ambitions is normal. To have over-ambitions is something in the end that will leave you extremely frustrated. We want to fight to be better than last year and achieve Champions League qualification."

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/sport/football-villas-boas/753444.html

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How to Save Detroit

Downtown Detroit's doing well, but it covers a small percentage of the city's land area.

Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

Detroit is filing for bankruptcy to get out from under crushing debts incurred to bondholders and pensioners during decades of economic decline and financial mismanagement. This should be seen as a fundamentally positive development that gives the city a chance to escape the errors of the past and build a better future for itself. But the city faces a dilemma far more serious than any specific policy error. The structural decline of American manufacturing has dealt a hammer blow to factory-dependent cities. Throw in a severe violent crime problem, and the stage has been set for a downward spiral of depopulation and declining service quality. The key to reviving Detroit is not just to get the finances in order and avoid mismanagement, but to break the spiral.

The political and legal barriers to doing so are enormous, but in principle the decline of Detroit could be slowed by literally making the city smaller and its population larger.

?I don?t think Detroit can fund its current operations without shrinking substantially,? David Schleicher, a George Mason University professor who studies urban law and economics issues, told me.? This raises ?really tricky legal-type questions? about the permissible scope of eminent domain law, but a fully empowered mayor could get the job done. Detroit famously can?t get 40 percent of its traffic lights to work, and its 58-minute 911 response time for major crimes is abysmal. Abandoning whole areas of the city and forcibly relocating families into currently vacant structures closer to the core would be a drastic step, but in a way, it wouldn?t be so different from a normal eminent domain process to build critical infrastructure. In this case, rather than creating new services, it would allow Detroit to provide much better services to a new, smaller city. And with over 20 percent of the existing housing units in the city vacant, it would be feasible to rehouse a large number of people.

Not only would a smaller city be more affordable to service, it would be friendlier to small-scale businesses. A denser neighborhood is better for local retailers, and more sales means more hiring and more tax revenue.?

Concentrating the population would also let Detroit take more advantage of a genuine urban revival taking place in the city?s historic core. In their book The Metropolitan Revolution, Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley point out that the Midtown and Downtown neighborhoods of the city have a 96 percent rental occupancy rate and the growing retail presence that comes from a growing population. But that development-ready swathe of the city makes up just 5.2 percent of the municipality?s land area. Shrinking borders and concentrating people closer to the vibrant center would let more of the city?s residents share in the benefits of a nascent downtown revival.

A perhaps even more radical, outside-the-box notion would be to repopulate Detroit with immigrants. People have been leaving Detroit in droves, but for all its problems, there are billions of people around the world living in worse places. Gallup surveys indicate that there are 165 million people in the world who?d like to move to the United States, far more than will be allowed in under any plausible immigration reform bill.

Brandon Fuller of NYU and Sean Rust of Temple University have been promoting the idea of region-based visa programs for some time now, and the idea could be particularly beneficial for Detroit. As economic consultant Adam Ozimek writes, Detroit had a much more immigrant-heavy population in happier times, with an immigrant share of the population that?s fallen from about 20 percent in 1940 to around 5 percent today. Immigrants, in other words, have been avoiding Detroit in even greater numbers than natives have been leaving. Currently America allows many foreigners to come here on employment-based visas that tie workers to a specific company in a way that greatly decreases their practical freedoms. Creating an alternative path in which workers are free to switch employers, but must stick to living and working in a particular city, could be appealing to many potential migrants.?

The 60,000 or so foreign-born workers it would take to bring Detroit back to its 1960 share of foreign-born residents would be a drop in the bucket compared with the tens of millions eager to come to America. That means we could be choosy, insisting that the majority of visa recipients be highly skilled and have some pending offer of employment. Potential access to a new crop of skilled workers would create a powerful incentive for existing companies to open a Detroit office, or for investors to finance Detroit-based startups. Detroit currently faces a paradoxical situation. Both skilled and unskilled workers benefit from living in a city with many skilled workers, but the generally low skill level of Detroit?s population means relatively weak economic opportunities for skilled workers.

In other words, a kid who grows up in Detroit and does well in school is likely to leave for greener pastures elsewhere. If skilled workers could earn even a fraction of the sixfold wage premium that exists for those who get H1-B visas by moving to Detroit, then city-specific visas could drive new business investment in the city. That would both benefit less educated Detroiters and provide an anchor for the upwardly mobile to rise up in their own community rather than moving elsewhere.

Both of these ideas are long shots, and would require changes in Michigan and federal law to implement. But it seems unlikely at this point that bankruptcy and cutbacks will be enough to pull Detroit out of its downward spiral, and the idea of a federal fiscal bailout for Detroit is wildly implausible. Empowering the city to physically shrink and opening its doors to migrants, by contrast, are essentially zero-cost ways outsiders can help the city save itself.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_to_save_detroit_shrink_the_city_and_add_more_people.html

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Valero posts decline in second-quarter profits as oil prices rise

Valero Energy Corp. posted a 44 percent decline in second-quarter net income.

San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp.?s second-quarter profits slipped 44 percent as the refiner grappled with higher costs for crude oil and natural gas.

Valero (NYSE: VLO) earned $466 million, or 85 cents per share, compared with $831 million, or $1.50 per share, a year ago. Revenue for the quarter declined 2 percent to $34.03 billion.

The earnings fell short of analyst estimates. On July 11, the company warned of lower second-quarter earnings and forecast a per-share profit of 80 cents to 90 cents.

Valero?s refining throughput margins dropped as it paid higher prices for crude and natural gas. It also faced higher costs for ethanol credits needed to comply with the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard.

Sanford Nowlin covers energy/utilities, transportation/aviation and manufacturing.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/blog/2013/07/valero-posts-decline-in-second-quarter.html?ana=RSS&s=article_search

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Portuguese President Backs Coalition

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Source: http://feeds.wsjonline.com/~r/wsj/xml/rss/3_7012/~3/1EPEG6L0Uh8/SB10001424127887324783204578620113339263412.html

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Palestinians say no peace talks without '67 borders agreement

By Ali Sawafta and Allyn Fisher-Ilan

RAMALLAH, West Bank/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Palestinians played down on Monday the significance of an imminent meeting in Washington of their top peace envoy with his Israeli counterpart, saying formal negotiation would not begin unless their opening terms were satisfied.

The Palestinian position seemed to run counter to U.S. hopes that bringing together Saeb Erekat and Israel's Tzipi Livni in the coming days would kick-start peacemaking stalled for almost three years over Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

In another setback to the negotiators' meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned first to seek cabinet-level approval for the prospective new talks, which were announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday.

At the time, Kerry, winding up months of intensive and discreet mediation, predicted Erekat and Livni would join him in Washington "to begin initial talks within the next week or so".

But that appeared unlikely as Netanyahu, facing skepticism within his rightist governing coalition at the diplomatic drive, wanted to await the next full sitting of his cabinet on July 28 or possibly an earlier session of the smaller security cabinet.

"It looks like negotiations will begin only next week, not this week," an Israeli official said late on Sunday, disclosing Netanyahu's plans to win over recalcitrant ministers.

Netanyahu says the new talks must be held without "preconditions", especially regarding the borders of the state Palestinians want to found in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Though it withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Israel deems all of Jerusalem its undivided capital - a status not accepted internationally - and wants to keep swathes of West Bank settlements under any eventual peace accord.

Yet the Palestinians insist no negotiations can be held until all sides agree the pre-1967 borders would be their basis.

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdaineh said Erekat had yet to be invited to Washington. When he goes, Abu Rdaineh said, it would be first to determine the framework of any future negotiations.

"If they reach an agreement over the details, in accordance to the Palestinian demands, then the launch of negotiations will be announced," Abu Rdaineh told Reuters on Monday.

PRISONERS, PLEBISCITES

He said that those demands, relayed by Abbas to Kerry, included Israel's recognition that the two-state solution was predicated on the 1967 borders, and clarifications about its planned release of Palestinian prisoners in a goodwill gesture.

Even the latter was dogged with dispute, however.

Israel said that, starting in September, it would free 82 Palestinians jailed before 1993, when the sides signed interim peace accords. But Qadoura Fares of the Palestinian Prisoners Club said Abbas wanted 103 long-serving inmates released.

Interviewed by Jordan's Al-Rai newspaper, Abbas said Kerry had "taken our proposal regarding the resumption of the peace process with him" to Washington.

Abbas held out the possibility that, should diplomacy remain mired, Palestinians, defying pressure by Israel and the Obama administration - would again appeal to the United Nations at its annual assembly in September to support their borders claim.

Denouncing the West Bank settlements as illegal - a view shared by most world powers - Abbas told Al-Rai that Israel should "get out of Palestinian land completely" though he voiced willingness to find a formula addressing its security concerns.

A major focus of these is Gaza, which is now under the control of armed Hamas Islamists who spurn coexistence with the Jewish state, question Abbas' authority, and enjoy grassroots support among some Palestinians in the West Bank.

Alluding to the risk of Abbas' U.S.-backed administration one day falling to Hamas, Netanyahu has said revived peacemaking could prevent the emergence of a West Bank "terror state".

Opinion polls suggest narrow majorities among Palestinians and Israelis for the two-state solution, and both Abbas and Netanyahu plans to put any eventual peace accord to referendums.

Even in the absence of a deal, Netanyahu sees value in the effort as "a strategic process to tighten relations with the United States", the Israeli official on condition of anonymity.

According to the official, Netanyahu would, in convening Israeli ministers on the talks, emphasize the importance of sticking close to Washington to cope with the overarching threats posed by Iran's disputed nuclear program and by spreading strife in Syria and Egypt.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Alison Williams)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/netanyahu-dogged-hardliners-put-kerry-peace-ideas-cabinet-001353169.html

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'Red 2' vs. 'R.I.P.D.': Which will win the weekend?

'Red 2' and 'R.I.P.D.' seem aimed towards a similar audience. What will happen when they face off at the box office?

By John Anderson,?Associated Press / July 20, 2013

'R.I.P.D.' stars Ryan Reynolds (r.) and Jeff Bridges (l.).

Scott Garfield/Universal Pictures/AP

Enlarge

Scheduling the release of a summer movie isn't exactly a science. It clearly isn't an art, either. It's more akin to a contact sport: Seize the advantageous position, sustain as little damage as possible, and score.

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All of which makes this weekend's opening of both "Red?2" and "R.I.P.D." a little like sacking your own quarterback. Both films are action-thrillers. Both are about over-age law enforcers (in "R.I.P.D.," some are so old, they're dead). And both make a virtue of their, shall we say, mature stars.

Those stars include Bruce Willis (58), Anthony Hopkins (75), John Malkovich (59) and Helen Mirren (67) in "Red?2" and Jeff Bridges (63) and Kevin Bacon (55) in "R.I.P.D.," which, by the way, stands for "Rest in Peace Department."

It may not make a huge difference at the box office, but both films also feature the less-than-prolific Mary-Louise Parker, who is best known for her work in cable TV's "Weeds."

Add to all this the fact that Robert Schwentke, the director of Universal's "R.I.P.D.," had directed the original "Red" of 2010 from Summit Entertainment and for whatever reason (Schwentke didn't want to talk about it) lost the sequel to director Dean Parisot.

True, "R.I.P.D." pairs Bridges with 36-year-old former Sexiest Man Alive Ryan Reynolds, but as summer films go, the movies share notable audience overlap ? and on two fronts, says box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

"These films skew older due to the presence of Jeff Bridges in "R.I.P.D." and the older cast of "Red?2," he said. "And the bigger similarity is that they are both action crime comedies."

Assuming there's no ill will involved, a lot of coincidences are in play here, said distribution consultant Richard Abramowitz, who teaches film production at New York University and runs the film company Abramorama. "It seems like too big a mistake to be a mistake."

But the "Red?2"/''R.I.P.D." collision may simply be a symptom of the state of Hollywood. There have been very few weekends since May that haven't been dominated by a big-budget, major-studio release ? a so-called "tent-pole" picture. There was "Iron Man 3" on May 2, "The Great Gatsby" on May 10, "Star Trek Into Darkness" on May 15, "Fast & Furious 6" on May 24, "After Earth" on May 31 and so on.

Tellingly, when studios chose to expand a debut weekend with a weekday opening ? "Iron Man 3" was on a Thursday; "Star Trek" was on a Wednesday ? a rash of movies seemed to rush in to fill the Friday void. In fact, the Fridays following "IM3" and "STID" were among the more crowded of the summer, with 15 and 11 openings, respectively.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/eW_ZV9f5V7I/Red-2-vs.-R.I.P.D.-Which-will-win-the-weekend

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