“When one is afraid of making the same mistakes, he halts and deviate from his intended will & course of movement to avoid any mistakes, and that thought by itself, is a HUGE MISTAKE!” – Alvin

AFP – Sunday, August 30LONDON (AFP) – - Sir Alex Ferguson believes Manchester United’s 2-1 victory over Arsenal should send a warning to his side’s Premier League title rivals.

Although United won the English league last season, they struggled in their showdowns with Liverpool and Arsenal.

Liverpool defeated Ferguson’s men twice, while Arsenal took four points off the champions.

With that record in mind, Ferguson was delighted to see his side fight back from a goal down to beat the Gunners at Old Trafford on Saturday.

“When you are 1-0 down to a team of Arsenal’s class it’s an uphill task,” Ferguson said. “We had to dig deep but we played really well in the second half and deserved to win.

“The players know winning big games is important. Last season we lost four points to Arsenal and six to Liverpool. Now we’ve got off to a better start against the bigger teams. That can make a difference.”

Arsene Wenger’s side were well on top after taking the lead through Andrey Arshavin’s superb strike late in the first half.

But the champions were handed a lifeline soon after half-time when Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia needlessly conceded a penalty that Wayne Rooney converted.

It got worse for Arsenal as French midfielder Abou Diaby headed a Ryan Giggs free-kick into his own net five minutes later to give United their third win in four games.

Robin van Persie thought he had equalised in the last minute of stoppage time but the Arsenal striker’s effort was ruled out for offside, leading Wenger to be sent to the stands as he kicked a water bottle in frustration.

Elsewhere, leaders Chelsea maintained their blistering form with a 3-0 victory over Burnley, while Liverpool came from behind to beat 10-man Bolton 3-2.

Nicolas Anelka broke Burnley’s stubborn resistance at Stamford Bridge when he slid in to convert Didier Drogba’s cross just before half-time.

Promoted Burnley, who had claimed famous victories over Manchester United and Everton in their previous two matches, were then swept aside.

Michael Ballack added Chelsea’s second goal soon after the break when he headed in Frank Lampard’s cross and Ashley Cole smashed in the third five minutes later to give Carlo Ancelotti’s team a fourth successive victory under their new Italian manager.

At Bolton, Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool showed they have the stomach to fight for the title.

The Reds had made a spluttering start to the campaign, with defeats against Tottenham and Aston Villa raising questions about their ability to win the league for the first time since 1990.

They fell behind to Bolton in the 33rd minute when Kevin Davies punished poor marking to drive home from close-range.

Glen Johnson equalised with a powerful strike from the edge of the penalty area in the 41st minute.

Tamir Cohen restored Bolton’s lead two minutes into the second half. But Bolton’s Sean Davis was harshly shown a second yellow card for a foul on Lucas in the 55th minute.

The visitors took full advantage as Dirk Kuyt found Fernando Torres and the Spain striker finished smartly.

Steven Gerrard, criticised in the week by Benitez for his poor form, hit the winner with a perfectly-struck shot in the 83rd minute.

“It was the perfect response from the players,” Benitez said. “You could see all the players, from the first minute, played with a lot of determination to win. It’s important to have this mentality.”

Tottenham, in second place on goal difference, kept pace with Chelsea as Aaron Lennon’s last-gasp goal sealed a 2-1 victory over Birmingham at White Hart Lane.

Dave Kitson’s first league goal for Stoke clinched a 1-0 victory over Sunderland at the Britannia Stadium.

Wolverhampton are still waiting for their first home win of the season as Hull ground out a 1-1 draw at Molineux.

Blackburn and West Ham played out a dour goalless draw at Ewood Park.

AFP – Saturday, August 29LOS ANGELES (AFP) – - Michael Jackson’s death was declared a homicide by Los Angeles coroners on Friday as they revealed the singer had a lethal cocktail of six different drugs in his body when he died.

Ending several weeks of feverish speculation following Jackson’s sudden death in Los Angeles on June 25, the county coroner’s office issued a brief statement ruling that the superstar’s death was unlawful.

The statement said that while “acute intoxication” from the powerful anesthetic propofol was the primary cause of death, Jackson, 50, had also suffered from the effects of other drugs in his system.

As well as propofol, powerful drugs including lorazepam, midazolam, diazepam, lidocaine and ephedrine were found in Jackson’s body.

The coroner’s statement said police investigators and public prosecutors had ordered that the full toxicology report concerning Jackson be withheld until further notice.

Jackson’s family welcomed the findings.

“The Jackson family again wishes to commend the actions of the coroner, the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies, and looks forward to the day that justice can be served,” the family said in a statement.

The coroner’s announcement will fuel speculation that authorities are likely to charge Jackson’s personal physician Conrad Murray in connection with the death. Cardiologist Murray was the last person to see Jackson alive.

A lawyer for Murray issued a barbed statement to Friday’s announcement, saying the coroner’s release “contains nothing new.”

“For two months we have been hearing the same information, usually from leaks out of the coroner’s office,” attorney Ed Chernoff said in a statement.

“One has to wonder why the coroner felt compelled to release anything at all if the police investigation is not yet complete.”

According to court documents unsealed in Houston, Texas, on Monday, multiple drugs were administered to Jackson by Murray in the hours before his death.

Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran “reviewed the preliminary toxicology results and his preliminary assessment of Jackson’s cause of death was due to lethal levels of propofol.”

Murray administered propofol and other drugs to Jackson — at the star’s insistence — to treat his insomnia, but was worried Jackson had developed an addiction and “tried to wean Jackson off of the drug,” the affidavit said.

Propofol is a powerful anesthetic used to induce unconsciousness in patients undergoing major surgery in hospital. Medical professionals say it should never be used by private individuals at home.

The affidavit unsealed on Monday revealed that Murray confessed to investigators two days after the star died that he had been giving Jackson 50 milligrams of propofol nightly during the six weeks prior to the event.

As part of their investigation, police and federal agents have already raided Murray’s offices in Las Vegas, Nevada and Houston, Texas, as well as a Las Vegas pharmacy that provided the drugs.

Murray told investigators he was not the first doctor to administer propofol to the King of Pop, who referred to the drug as his “milk,” LAPD detective Orlando Martinez wrote in the affidavit, citing the cardiologist.

Medical experts said the cocktail of drugs apparently given to Jackson was extremely dangerous and police would need to determine whether administering it was tantamount to medical negligence.

“If all of these drugs… are also shown, this would be a classical case of acute combined drug toxicity,” forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht told CNN.

Jackson is to be buried at a cemetery in Glendale, California on September 3, his family announced last week. They had originally planned to bury him on Saturday — the day he would have turned 51.

AFP – Friday, August 28LONDON(AFP) – - Britain’s financial watchdog on Thursday waded into an international row over bank bonuses ahead of a G20 summit, saying it would support moves to impose extra taxes in an attempt to curb excessive pay.

“If you want to stop excessive pay in a swollen financial sector you have to reduce the size of that sector or apply special taxes,” Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), told Prospect magazine.

“Higher capital requirements against trading activities will be our most powerful tool to eliminate excessive activity and profits.

“And if increased capital requirements are insufficient I am happy to consider taxes on financial transactions,” Turner added.

Excessive risk-taking, resulting in massive bonuses for bankers, has been blamed for helping spark the global financial crisis that led to multi-billion dollar government bailouts of world banks.

A meeting of G20 finance ministers next week, before a summit of the world’s biggest economies in September, will discuss the issue of bankers’ bonuses.

“G20 Finance Ministers will be discussing bonuses which put the banking system at risk in London next week,” a Treasury spokesperson told AFP, but would not be drawn on Turner’s comments on taxation.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday said he would call for limits on bonuses after winning a commitment from French bankers for a system of performance-related pay for traders.

Elsewhere, a forum of bank supervisory authorities on Thursday released principles for new bank accounting standards ahead of the G20 summit.

In Britain, Turner criticised some activities of London’s financial sector as “socially useless” and questioned whether it has grown too large.

He told Prospect that so-called Tobin taxes would cut banks’ profits and reduce the pool of money available for bonuses.

A Tobin tax is a small tax on foreign exchange transactions, originally proposed by US economist James Tobin in the 1970s to discourage speculative trading.

Turner said the level of pay in the sector may be caused by “over-simplistic financial deregulation”, describing this as the “really fundamental question”.

“This is not a question that any of the politicians have focused on but I think it’s an important and legitimate issue of public concern,” he said.

The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) hit out at Turner’s comments, saying “the wrong kind of regulation or the wrong kind of taxes” would drive business abroad.

“That would mean the UK would receive less revenue through taxes and there would be job losses, not just in the banking industry, but also in all those other businesses, large and small, that provide services to banks.

“On so many occasions in the past the country has lost chunks of industry through making the wrong decisions. Let’s not do that again,” the BBA added in a statement.

Turner’s comments were published Thursday in current affairs magazine Prospect.

The Guardian newspaper said such plans were recently put forward by anti-poverty campaigners, with tax revenue channelled to helping support developing nations.

The comments come after the FSA earlier this month outlined new rules on bonuses for banking executives, unveiling a new code of practice that begins in 2010.

Analysts argue that large bonuses — particularly in Europe and the United States — damaged the ability of leading bank executives to take well-judged business risks in the run-up to the meltdown.

AFP – Thursday, August 27TOKYO, Aug 27, 2009 (AFP) – - Japan’s Nissan Motor and Chrysler of the United States have scrapped a plan to supply vehicles to each other because of the ongoing turmoil in the industry, the two companies said.

Nissan had announced last year it would provide to Chrysler a compact sedan for the South American market beginning this year and a small vehicle for global markets from 2010.

Chrysler, which has since partnered with Italy’s Fiat as part of its bankruptcy plan, had been due to supply a pickup truck to Nissan from 2011.

But the two companies decided to end the project “in light of significant changes in business conditions since the projects were announced,” according to a joint statement released late on Wednesday.

The move comes after Chrysler and Fiat sealed a deal in June to create a new auto giant after the Italian maker stepped in to salvage the bankrupt US firm.

Fiat will at first hold 20 percent of Chrysler Group, with its equity stake rising to 35 percent and eventually to a majority stake as long as certain targets are achieved and US government funds are repaid.

Nissan, Japan’s third largest automaker, is 44-percent owned by France’s Renault. The Japanese maker is axing 20,000 jobs in an effort to recover from its first annual loss in almost a decade.

Channel NewsAsia – Thursday, August 27SINGAPORE: As part of the Singapore Changi Airport’s Changi GP Festival in September, a Porsche 911 GT3 Carrera will race against a Boeing 747 aircraft in what is touted to be “the race of a lifetime”.

Come September 5, the first—ever jetliner versus car race in Asia will determine who is the speed king of the tarmac at Changi Airport’s Terminal 3.

The race car and the cargo freight will start from a stationary point and compete over a distance of 1.7 kilometres.

The Porsche can hit a maximum of 275—280 kilometres per hour but will it be fast enough?

Peter Leo, vice—president and acting head of safety, Jett8 Airlines Cargo, said: “He (the race car driver) is the one who is going to have to cater to our speed. Of course during the initial acceleration, he is going to overtake us. But as we gather momentum and a bit of time, we should (be able to) give it a pretty close competition.”

And what can spectators expect from the race?

Yuey Tan, driver, Porsche Carrera Cup Asia, said: “One exciting thing is to have all these vehicles on the runway, to have race cars and helicopters and planes and all that sort of things. It is every boy’s dream. But more importantly, I think it’s a great promotion for motorsport in Singapore. We have the Formula 1 Grand Prix all we need now is some local drivers to compete in our Grand Prix.”

Organisers said preparations for the event started several months back and technical trials have been conducted.

Jean Hung, Terminal 3 division head, Changi Airport Group, said: “Obviously the logistics is rather massive, but we’re all very excited about the race, so we’ve done a technical trial on August 1 to see the car and the plane race. Subsequently leading up to September 5, we’ll also be holding a few more rehearsals.”

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Malaysia’s government has barred Muslims from a concert by U.S. hip-hop stars the Black Eyed Peas next month because the event is organized by Irish beer giant Guinness, an official said Thursday.

The prohibition comes amid a clampdown on alcohol consumption among Malaysia’s Muslim majority. A Muslim woman who drank beer in public was sentenced to caning by an Islamic court last month, though authorities this week agreed to review the penalty. Officials also recently curbed retail sales of liquor in a central state.

In family and personal matters, Muslims in Malaysia are governed by Shariah or Islamic law, which forbids the consumption of alcohol.

The Black Eyed Peas will perform at a theme park near Kuala Lumpur on Sept. 25 as part of worldwide celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of Guinness’ flagship brewery in Dublin. Malaysia’s largest city is one of five places hosting Guinness’ concerts.

The Malaysian show’s official Web site said “the party is only open to non-Muslims aged 18 years and above.” Previous major pop concerts in Malaysia, including one by the Black Eyed Peas in 2007, have always been open to Muslims.

“Muslims cannot attend. Non-Muslims can go and have fun,” an official at the Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture told The Associated Press.

She said the concert would not have been permitted at all under normal circumstances because government regulations forbid alcohol companies from organizing concerts. But authorities made an exception on the hopes the event would boost tourism, the official said on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to make public statements. Guinness must not use its logo in concert publicity material, she said.

It was not immediately clear how the ban on Muslims will be enforced. Concert organizers did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Ethnic Malays comprise nearly 60 percent of Malaysia’s 28 million people and are all legally considered Muslim, while the rest of the country is mainly ethnic Chinese and Indians, most of whom are Buddhist, Christian or Hindu.

The Black Eyed Peas have enjoyed phenomenal success this year. The foursome has topped Billboard’s Hot 100 singles charts for the past 20 consecutive weeks, the most ever by an act.

Their performance next month is the latest to be hit by restrictions in Malaysia. Shows by Gwen Stefani and Avril Lavigne in recent years faced protests by conservative Muslim Malaysians over immodest clothes, forcing the artists to don attire that revealed little skin.

AFP – Wednesday, August 26LOS ANGELES (AFP) – - Lethal levels of a powerful anesthetic killed Michael Jackson, according to court documents that placed the pop star’s personal physician under mounting police scrutiny.

The documents, which shed light on one of the last remaining questions about Jackson’s sudden death two months ago, raised the possibility that the death will be ruled a homicide and that criminal charges will be brought against the singer’s personal physician, who was with the star the morning he died.

Cardiologist Conrad Murray has been the target of a manslaughter investigation for weeks, but the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office on Monday would not confirm or deny that the death was ruled a homicide.

“We have not released the findings and the case is still under a security hold,” said Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

Responding to reports that the coroner had declared Jackson’s death a homicide, Winter told AFP: “We have not said that.”

A fatal cocktail of drugs, including the anesthetic propofol, whose trade name is Diprivan, was administered to the pop icon hours before he died, according to the documents unsealed Monday in Houston, Texas and tied to the investigation into Jackson’s death on June 25 at age 50.

Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran “reviewed the preliminary toxicology results and his preliminary assessment of Jackson’s cause of death was due to lethal levels of propofol,” according to the Los Angeles search warrant affidavit.

Murray administered propofol and other drugs to Jackson — at the star’s insistence — to treat his insomnia, but was worried Jackson had developed an addiction and “tried to wean Jackson off of the drug,” the affidavit said.

The Jackson family issued a brief statement, saying it “looks forward to the day that justice can be served,” but noting it has “full confidence in the legal process.”

La Toya Jackson — the star’s sister — told ABC News that she is “thankful to the investigators for uncovering the truth to the world.”

ABC television said La Toya would sit down for an interview with talkshow host Barbara Walters on September 11 to explain why she believes her brother was murdered.

The affidavit revealed that Murray confessed to investigators two days after the star died that he had been giving Jackson 50 milligrams of propofol nightly during the six weeks prior to the event that sent shockwaves throughout the world.

On June 22, he halved Jackson’s propofol dose to wean him off the drug and also gave two other sedatives — lorazepam and midazolam.

The following night, he administered the latter two drugs but withheld propofol, and the star was able to sleep. But throughout the next night, Jackson stayed awake.

“Jackson remained awake and at approximately 1040 hours, Murray finally administered 25 milligrams of propofol, diluted with lidocaine via IV drip to keep Jackson sedated, after repeated demands/requests from Jackson,” according to the affidavit.

Murray was monitoring Jackson closely, it stated, but then stepped away from his bedside to use the bathroom. When he returned two minutes later, Jackson had stopped breathing.

His attempts to revive him were unsuccessful and the singer was declared dead at about 2:00 pm local time (2100 GMT).

As part of their investigation, police and federal agents raided Murray’s offices in Las Vegas, Nevada and Houston, Texas, as well as a Las Vegas pharmacy that provided the drugs.

Murray told investigators he was not the first doctor to administer propofol to the King of Pop, who referred to the drug as his “milk,” LAPD detective Orlando Martinez wrote in the affidavit, citing the cardiologist.

Medical experts said the cocktail of drugs apparently given to Jackson was extremely dangerous and police would need to determine whether administering it was tantamount to medical negligence.

“If all of these drugs… are also shown, this would be a classical case of acute combined drug toxicity,” forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht told CNN.

Jackson is due to be buried at a cemetery in Glendale, California on September 3, his family announced last week. They had originally planned to bury him on August 29 — the day he would have turned 51.

AFP – Monday, August 24PARIS (AFP) – - More than two dozen pharmaceutical companies are racing against the clock to test, produce and ship more than a billion doses of swine flu vaccines to anxious populations worldwide bracing for a second wave of infection.

But even if things proceed smoothly, delivery will not keep up with demand as the northern hemisphere enters the autumn and winter flu season, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned.

“We know that supplies will be extremely limited for some months to come,” WHO chief Margaret Chan said on Friday.

Initial estimates that big pharma could crank out 94 million doses a week beginning in October have been slashed by 50 to 75 percent due to poorer than expected yields from the so-called “seed virus” strains developed by WHO-approved laboratories.

According to the global health authority, 25 drug companies have announced their intention to make the vaccines.

Five of those firms will account for more than 80 percent of production: Sanofi-Pasteur in France, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Britain, Baxter in the United States, and the Swiss group Novartis.

Significant numbers of vaccines should start to arrive within five to six weeks, they say.

Baxter — with orders for only 80 million doses — has already finished several batches of its cell-based brand Celvapan, and said it will begin delivery while waiting for approval from national health authorities.

GSK plans to start shipments in late September, while Novartis has said it will deliver in the fall. Sanofi-Pasteur has set targets for November and December.

Never in history has there been an attempt to vaccinate so many people in so short a period of time.

Immune-boosting drugs did not even exist in 1918, when a far more virulent progenitor of the 2009 A(H1N1) virus claimed upward of 40 million lives.

And during the 20th century’s other two influenza pandemics, in 1957 and 1968, vaccines arrived too late to be of much use.

The picture could improve over the coming weeks, health officials say.

If new strains under development at two WHO-partner labs — New York Medical College and the National Institute of Biological Standards in Britain — prove safe and more efficient, they could be slotted into the production process with only a minimal delay.

“We have indications that the yield of those newer strains is much better than the first one sent out to manufacturers,” WHO spokeswoman Melinda Henry said last week, though she later told AFP that at least one has proved disappointing.

Two of the big five pharma companies, Baxter and Novartis, have applied for approval to market vaccines made from cell-based cultures, which produce far greater yields that the traditional method of growing viruses in chicken eggs.

Sinovac, a Chinese firm, announced last week that clinical trials had shown its new vaccine to be effective in single doses, potentially a major breakthrough as most experts had assumed that two doses per person would be needed.

Compounds called adjuvants that make it possible to use smaller amounts of active ingredient in each vaccine dose, already widely used in Europe, are now under consideration by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States.

But the rush to get a vaccine to market, marked by fast-track clinical trials for new strains and techniques, has prompted some experts to sound a note of caution.

They point, in particular, to an outbreak of H1N1 swine flu in 1976 at a US military base in the state of New Jersey in which 13 soldiers died. Fearing a pandemic like 1918, the government immunized more than 40 million people with a hastily-made vaccine.

“The swine flu in that case never occurred with the pathogenicity that might have been expected,” said David Miller, an epidemiologist at the US National Institutes of Health.

“Instead there were cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome,” a neurological disorder that causes paralysis in the legs and can lead to severe pulmonary complications, he told AFP. “It became a rather unfortunate risk-benefit equation.”