Liverpool consider Chinese takeover bid

Liverpool could be bought by a Chinese business tycoon within days, according to a source close to the deal.

Kenny Huang, head of Hong Kong-based investment company QSL Sports Ltd, wants to take full control of the Reds, who have been up for sale since April.

"A deal has to be done before the transfer window closes [on 31 August]," a source close to Huang told BBC Sport.

"Huang has made a firm proposal. The club's board has to sanction the sale and it could be sewn up in days."

Huang has been talking for several weeks to representatives of the Royal Bank of Scotland, with the aim of taking full control of the Premier League club.

RBS are Liverpool's main creditors, owed about £237m by American co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

"Kenny is the only serious bidder interested in the club and he's optimistic," added the source.

Huang is offering to clear Liverpool's debt to RBS and hand new manager Roy Hodgson funds to do business in the transfer window.

The tycoon also plans to build the club a new stadium as soon as possible.

Huang was reported to have turned down the chance to buy Liverpool in 2008 because he felt a valuation of £650m was too high. BBC Sport understands he now values the club at about £350m.

Hicks and Gillett bought the Reds in March 2007 in a deal that valued the club at £218.9m.

But the American duo have endured a difficult time at Anfield, with supporters regularly voicing their dissatisfaction at the level of debt taken on by the club after their buyout.

Last October, several hundred Liverpool fans staged a protest march against the owners ahead of their Premier League match against Manchester United.

The board's popularity with the fans disintegrated further when Hicks' son, Tom Hicks Jr, became embroiled in a row with a supporter who alleged the American had sent him abusive emails.

As a result, Hicks Jr resigned as a director of the club and parent company Kop Holdings, leading to a restructure of the board.

Gillett and Hicks have also endured a fractious relationship with each other, which early on in their reign threatened to undermine their ownership with the former revealing the partnership had become "unworkable".

In 2008, Hicks blocked Gillett's moves to sell his 50% share to Dubai International Capital group as the pair feuded over future plans for the club.

An outright £500m takeover bid by the DIC group was also rebuffed, with Hicks hinting he would attempt an outright takeover bid himself.

They subsequently patched up their differences but took the decision less than four months ago to put the club up for sale, insisting there had been numerous expressions of interest in a buyout.

British Airways boss Martin Broughton was brought in as Liverpool chairman in April to facilitate the sale of the club and along with Hicks and Gillett is part of a five-man board at Liverpool that also includes chief executive Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre. 

Dan Roan  @'BBC'

Four Deformations of the Apocalypse

WikiLeaks reveals Australian weapons found in hands of Taliban

Australian weapons and equipment have repeatedly been discovered among Taliban stockpiles, raising fears that Afghan troops trained by Diggers have been pilfering military supplies.

Documents released by the WikiLeaks website show that in the past six years International Security Assistance Force troops have uncovered Australian mortar shells, a hand-grenade and other equipment when defusing roadside bombs and capturing Taliban weapons stores.

Australian soldiers have trained hundreds of Afghan army soldiers, and work alongside Afghan police.

Last December a NATO patrol found Australian equipment in a Taliban weapons cache, alongside AK-47 rifles and materials to make roadside bombs. The equipment found is used by Australian soldiers to ensure their safety during offensives, and if used by insurgents it could disrupt the distinct advantage held by NATO troops.

The Defence Department has asked the Herald not to publish any details identifying this equipment. The department is reviewing the tens of thousands of WikiLeaks documents and did not respond directly to the reports about Australian weapons, other than saying ''an important part of this review will be determining whether there are force protection implications for our personnel''.

Last year the US found there were incomplete records for about a third of $US4 billion ($4.4 billion) worth of US-purchased weapons used by the Afghan military.

US soldiers training Afghan forces have repeatedly complained about pilfering, with one US officer reported as saying: ''It's not, 'Let me teach you your job'. It's more like, 'How much did you steal from the American government today?' ''

Defence sources with experience of training in Oruzgan province doubted that Australian weapons were going missing. Such reports are ''probably a load of crap'', said one source. ''There may be a misunderstanding about what is being reported.''

Sources said Afghans usually use their own weapons, not Australian munitions, when trained by Australian troops.

The Taliban have been found to have used rifles, mortars and other weapons made in the US, Russia and China.

Rafael Epstein @'SMH'

Peres sparks U.K. backlash after labeling England anti-Semitic

4 добровольца едва не сгорели в лес. пожаре под Выксой

I think there was a reason that road was closed!

Do That Dance! Australian Post Punk 1977-1983

The years 1977 to 1983 saw an explosion of musical creativity in inner city Sydney and Melbourne. Following the do-it-yourself revolution of punk, young Australians were inspired to make challenging music without boundaries, to form bands, start independent labels, and to run live music venues, all outside the commercially driven confines of the mainstream industry. This groundbreaking activity laid the foundation for contemporary music in Australia. The vital output from Australian post punk has gained an international reputation.

Sydney's inner city post punk music scene revolves around a social set based in the terrace houses and industrial spaces of then run-down Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. Bands shared living spaces, rehearsal rooms, equipment, and band members, forging sounds without precedence. And for the first time, women were taking their place as equal and integral players. Inner city pubs and clubs, faced with a dwindling clientele of working men, opened their doors to the art-punk bands and an enthusiastic audience soon followed. Iconic venues included the Sussex Hotel and the Trade Union Club. By 1980, the burgeoning scene also gave rise to the independent labels M Squared and Terse Tapes.

Melbourne's post punk scene is defined by distinct locations, and ideologies - the North Fitzroy Beat; St Kilda's Crystal Ballroom; and the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre. Led by Melbourne's most infamous band the Primitive Calculators, the North Fitzroy Beat gave rise to the anarchic Little Bands movement, with the Calculators inviting anyone to step up and use their music equipment. Meanwhile 'south of the river', St Kilda was the decadent playground of larger-than-life groups such as the Birthday Party, the Moodists, and the touring Go-Betweens. The Clifton Hill Community Music Centre was an experimental space for a strange mix of Melbourne intelligentsia, music academics, and precocious post-punks, giving rise to the groups Tsk Tsk Tsk and Essendon Airport.

Part 1 (Sydney) - Download Audio

Part 2 (Melbourne)  - Download Audio 

(Right click/save as)  

@'ABC' 

DISCOGRAPHY

Clifton Hill Community Music Centre

Breast milk assault deemed "biohazard" by law enforcement officer

On March 4, 31-year-old Toni Tramel was arrested for public drunkenness and taken to the Daviess County Detention Center in Owensboro. Officer Lula Brown reports that she instructed Tramel to change into a jail uniform, but that Tramel was "too intoxicated to complete the task on her own."

Brown instructed Tramel that she "needed to take her shirt and bra off," at which point, according to the police officer, Tramel "took off her bra, grabbed her breast and squirted breast milk, hitting me in the face and neck region."

The officer then forced Tramel against the wall and requested a smock from other jail personnel.

"Inmate Toni Tramel attempted to squirt breast milk again but was unsuccessful," Brown reported.

Brown's report and a police department press release both note that after the incident, Brown was able to "clean the bio-hazard off her."

In addition to public drunkenness, a misdemeanor, Tramel was then charged with third-degree assault, a felony, and is being held on $10,000 bond.

The police use of the term "biohazard" to describe breast milk has sparked a furor, with bloggers and commentators questioning whether the severity of the assault charges truly corresponds to the alleged offense. Other commentators have questioned the police account that Tramel squirted Brown deliberately, noting that it is not uncommon for milk to squirt from lactating women's breasts by accident, sometimes reaching across long distances.

"While lactating I have had breast milk 'squirt' out of my breast in a stream that hit clothes hanging in my closet while trying to find something to wear," one anonymous Web poster said. "It could have been an accident."

David Gutierrez @'Natural News'

Whistleblowers won't find a better place to spill the beans than WikiLeaks

Kiss This War Goodbye

Selling Music Through Packaging

A short piece on how the limited edition art pieces for the new Matthew Dear album Black City were made by artisan sculptors. Designed by Boym Partners, the MDBC Totem were cast in bonded aluminum with a hand-finished gun metal patina.
Each totem is inscribed with a short code that allows the owner to access/download the album from matthewdear.com. You get the album and the you get the art without the media getting in the way.
The song is "Monkey" taken from the upcoming album Black City.
(P.S. Sesame Street deserves some credit for the video inspiration: youtube.com/watch?v=8bzq81Und4M )

Making Gaza a 'European ghetto'

Targeted Killing Is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan

Spiritualized @ Radio City Music Hall New York

INTERVIEW
REVIEW
PHOTOGRAPHS

WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.”

The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site.

WikiLeaks, on Sunday, posted several files containing the 77,000 Afghan war documents in a single “dump” file and in several other files containing versions of the documents in various searchable formats.

Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the new file added days later may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization’s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it.

It’s not known what the file contains but it could include the balance of data that U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning claimed to have leaked to Assange before he was arrested in May.

In chats with former hacker Adrian Lamo, Manning disclosed that he had provided Assange with a different war log cache than the one that WikiLeaks already published. This one was said to contain 500,000 events from the Iraq War between 2004 and 2009. WikiLeaks has never commented on whether it received that cache.

Additionally, Manning said he sent Assange video showing a deadly 2009 U.S. firefight near the Garani village in Afghanistan that local authorities say killed 100 civilians, most of them children, as well as 260,000 U.S. State Department cables.

Manning never mentioned leaking the Afghan War log to WikiLeaks in his chats with Lamo, but Defense Department officials told The Wall Street Journal that investigators had found evidence on Manning’s Army computer that tied him to that leak.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen strongly condemned WikiLeaks’ publication of the Afghan War log at a Pentagon press briefing on Thursday.

Gates said the leak was “potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and our Afghan partners” and said that “tactics, techniques and procedures will become known to our adversaries” as a result.

Mullen was even more direct and said that WikiLeaks “might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier” or an Afghan informant who aided the United States.

Several media outlets have found the names of Afghan informants in the documents WikiLeaks published, as well as information identifying their location in some instances. A Taliban spokesman told Britain’s Channel 4 news that the group was sifting through the WikiLeaks documents to get the names of suspected informants and would punish anyone found to have collaborated with the United States and its allies.

Wired.com has sent a message to WikiLeaks inquiring about the file.

Kim Zetter @'Wired'