Three youths to be charged after fatal soccer attack ? Sports ...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands ? Richard Nieuwenhuizen was doing what he loved: watching his son play soccer and volunteering as a linesman.

On Monday, the 41-year-old father?s passion for the sport cost him his life.

Prosecutors announced Tuesday they are charging three players, two 15-year-olds and a 16-year-old, in the attack on Nieuwenhuizen after a youth match between local clubs ? Buitenboys and Nieuw Sloten.

The players, whose identities have not been released, are to be charged with manslaughter, assault and public violence. They will be arraigned Thursday at a closed hearing.

Prosecutors have released no details of a possible motive, and Buitenboys club chairman Marcel Oost said the reason for the attack was not certain.

?We still don?t have a clear picture yet,? prosecution spokeswoman Brigit Haan told The Associated Press.

The deadly assault sent shock waves through the Netherlands, a country where soccer is king. The sports minister, soccer federation and coach of the nation?s most storied club, Ajax, expressed disbelief.

The Royal Netherlands Football Association on Tuesday said it was canceling all amateur soccer games this weekend as a mark of respect for Nieuwenhuizen. Professional matches will proceed, but players and officials will wear black armbands and observe a minute?s silence before kickoff.

The attack hit at one of the foundations of Dutch youth sport ? the participation of parents.

?It is unbelievable that something like this could happen on a football pitch,? said Bert van Oostveen, the association?s director of professional soccer. ?These are the volunteers on which our sport is built. Without them we cannot go on.?

On any given weekend, at thousands of games across the Netherlands, parents are the engine powering youth soccer. They volunteer for everything from brewing tea to marking out lines on fields and wielding whistles and flags as referees and linesmen.

In the overwhelming majority of matches, players and parents enjoy the game and then have a drink together in the clubhouse.

But sometimes frustrations boil over into violence after the final whistle.

Amsterdam alderman Eric van der Burg, whose responsibilities in the city cover sports, said the team from Nieuw Sloten had been in trouble twice before, once for verbally abusing a referee and once when a player fought with a spectator. The player involved in the fight was suspended by the club, Van der Burg told the AP in an email.

He said the city already has an agreement from four-time European champion Ajax at the top all the way down to small local clubs to prevent aggression on and around fields.

?It?s important that parents but also the professional players give good examples how to behave,? Van der Burg said. ?Sports should be fun.?

FIFA President Sepp Blatter weighed in on the national debate about how such an attack could happen.

?Football is a mirror of society and sadly, the same ills that afflict society ? in this case violence ? also manifest themselves in our game,? Blatter said Tuesday in a statement. ?Nevertheless, I remain convinced that football ? through the example set by the tireless efforts of people like Mr. Nieuwenhuizen ? is a force for good, and we must continue to use its positive example to educate people against these wrongs.?

Prosecutors say a group of Nieuw Sloten players surrounded Nieuwenhuizen after the match Sunday, kicking and punching him.

Nieuwenhuizen initially appeared to have recovered from the assault at the club whose fields are squeezed into an industrial neighborhood of Almere, a fast-growing commuter city just outside Amsterdam. He went home and lay down, but returned later to watch another game. It was then that he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

A day later, with his family surrounding his hospital bed, he died.

A few hours later, decorations marking Wednesday?s St. Nicholas day ? a national celebration similar to Christmas ? were still hanging at the Buitenboys clubhouse as team members wept and consoled one another.

Nieuw Sloten immediately banned the players involved and scrapped their team from the league as well as canceling all matches for the coming weekend.

As a wave of grief swept over the soccer community, another Amsterdam club, TOS-Actief, said on its website it was canceling all matches for the weekend.

?By doing this, TOS-Actief is taking a clear stance against excesses in football,? the club said. ?We say stop violence on and around the pitch.?

Van der Burg proposed calling off all amateur matches nationwide for the weekend.

A delegation from the Royal Netherlands Football Association visited Buitenboys on Tuesday to discuss a ?fitting way to pay tribute? to Nieuwenhuizen and express support for the club.

Nieuwenhuizen?s death came almost exactly a year after a Dutch amateur soccer player fatally kicked a 77-year-old fan following a match.

Amsterdam District Court last week sentenced the player, identified only as Silvester M. in line with Dutch privacy law, to three years in prison for kicking the fan so hard in the chest his spleen ruptured. He died of his injuries a month later.

Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2012/12/04/sports/three-youths-to-be-charged-after-fatal-soccer-attack/

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The Times offers subsidized Nexus 7 with subscription

British newspaper The Times is looking to expand its digital subscriber-base with subsidized tablet hardware. The paper, which has its online content guarded by paywalls, is offering subscribers a 32GB Nexus 7 for £50, down from the standard retail price of £199, as part of its "Digital Pack" offer. The pack includes a 18-month subscription to The Times, which can be purchased for £299 up-front, or charged as monthly fee of £17.33, following an initial payment of £67.33, which includes the £50 price of the tablet.

As well as a 32GB Nexus 7, subscribers get access to The Times' paywalled content, including mobile and tablet app versions across multiple platforms. It's a unique spin on the digital subscription model for news content, and it'll be interesting to see whether other paywalled newspapers follow suit in the future.

Today's offer comes just 24 hours after Times owner News Corporation announced the closure of its iPad-only outlet, The Daily.

Source: The Times; via: The Verge, The Wall

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/ieX3Lx7QTB4/story01.htm

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Bobby Cannavale and Rose Byrne: New Couple Alert!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/12/bobby-cannavale-and-rose-byrne-new-couple-alert/

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Japan candidates hit streets in first national vote since Fukushima disaster

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - Candidates hit the streets on Tuesday at the official start of a campaign for a parliamentary election that is expected to return the opposition Liberal Democrats to power but risks furthering the policy stalemate plaguing the world's third-biggest economy.

In a sign that last year's nuclear crisis still weighs on Japan's national psyche, both former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader, and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda kicked off the campaign in the northeastern prefecture of Fukushima, site of the world's worst radiation disaster in a quarter century.

The role of nuclear power is one hot topic in the first national poll since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing meltdowns, forcing 160,000 people to flee and destroying a myth that atomic power is safe, cheap and clean.

Voters are also focused on how rival parties plan to rescue Japan's economy from what looks like its fourth recession since 2000 and cope with a rising China, ties with which have been chilled by a territorial feud that is feeding nationalist sentiment in both countries.

"Our mission is to protect the safety of our children and the public, to protect our territory and beautiful waters," Abe told a crowd in a city square in Fukushima City under cloudy skies. "We are determined to win a majority with (LDP ally) the New Komeito party and take back power.

"We just cannot afford to lose," he said to applause, though one listener carried a placard targeting the LDP's decades-long promotion of nuclear power saying, "It is the LDP that built nuclear plants in Fukushima".

Media opinion polls suggest that of the 12 parties running some 1,500 candidates, the LDP will win the biggest number of seats in parliament's powerful lower house.

POSSIBLE PARTNERS

That would give Abe, who quit suddenly in 2007 after a troubled year in office, the best shot at forming the next government, probably with long-term ally, the New Komeito.

But surveys published on Monday also show that the LDP's lead over Noda's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has narrowed, increasing the possibility that the main conservative opposition party will need a third partner to form a government.

If so, the LDP would be eyeing potential post-election allies. Options include the newly launched, right-leaning Japan Restoration Party founded by popular Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto in a bid to woo voters fed up with the two main established parties, or other small groups, or even a chastened DPJ.

"Our economic policy is simple," Hashimoto told a crowd in Osaka, western Japan. "We will destroy the vested interests who until now have skimmed off all the cream."

Abe insists he will give no ground in a row with China over rival claims to tiny, uninhabited isles in the South China Sea and wants to spend more on defense and loosen the limits of Japan's pacifist constitution on the military.

He wants to pressure the Bank of Japan to ease its already hyper-loose monetary policy and to gear up public works spending to rescue the economy, steps Noda has criticized as irresponsible given Japan's mammoth public debt, already the worst among advanced nations at twice the size of the economy.

The pro-nuclear LDP says it will gradually restart off-line reactors judged safe, while thinking about Japan's best energy mix over the next decade. The Democrats aim to exit atomic power by the 2030s, although some skeptics doubt their commitment.

How any of the parties would secure lasting growth while reining in a ballooning social security bill in Japan's fast-ageing society remains unclear.

The Democrats surged to power for the first time in 2009, promising to put politicians, not bureaucrats, in charge of governing and to pay more heed to the interests of consumers than corporations in designing policies. Critics say the fractious party honored its pledges mostly in the breach.

"This election is about whether we will move forward with what we must do, or turn back the clock to the politics of the past," Noda told a crowd in Iwaki, also in Fukushima prefecture.

Noda, the party's third premier in three years, enacted - with opposition help - a sales tax rise to curb public debt. But that step sparked a stream of defections from the party.

Many voters have yet to decide how to vote.

"The LDP looks set to assume power. But I don't think things will change drastically under LDP rule," said a 62-year-old public servant after listening to Abe's speech.

"If you live in Fukushima, you would want quicker reconstruction and decontamination rather than constitutional amendments and military buildup."

(Additional reporting by Yoshiyuki Osada in Osaka; Writing by Linda Sieg in Tokyo; Editing by Ken Wills)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japan-candidates-hit-streets-first-national-vote-since-024753929--business.html

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Maine's venture capital fund hires well-known entrepreneur to ...

BRUNSWICK, Maine ? A well-known Maine entrepreneur from the midcoast has joined the state?s venture capital fund to help mentor and grow its portfolio companies.

Des FitzGerald, best known for founding Ducktrap River Fish Farm Inc. in 1977 and growing it into a multimillion-dollar business, has joined the Small Enterprise Growth Fund as entrepreneur-in-residence.

The position is a new one, created to help the fund evaluate promising investment opportunities and provide a mentor who will be more heavily involved in helping portfolio companies grow their businesses, according to a media release. The fund has invested $13.4 million in approximately 45 companies since its inception in 1995.

After founding Ducktrap in 1977, FitzGerald led the company through significant growth through 1999, when he was named CEO of ContiSea, the holding company that merged Ducktrap and Atlantic Salmon of Maine to create an enterprise with more than 300 employees and more than $50 million in annual sales. ContiSea was sold to Continental Grain in 2002, according to the release.

FitzGerald has founded or co-founded three additional companies and been active as an adjunct professor in the University of Maine?s MBA program. Additionally, he was a founding member of Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility, now known as Maine Businesses for Sustainability; past president of the Natural Resources Council of Maine; and past board member of The Camden Conference, among other civic and private company board positions, according to the release.

John Burns, the fund?s manager, said FitzGerald?s ?extensive experience? as an entrepreneur and ?demonstrated leadership? make him ?ideally suited to assist our portfolio companies in achieving their full potential, and to help identify and groom prospective portfolio companies.?

FitzGerald said he is looking forward to his new role.

?SEGF is an important facilitator in helping Maine?s emerging businesses gain their stride,? he said in a statement. ?It?s not just about the money invested. A critical ingredient for sustained success is execution built on a commitment to functional leadership and a coordinated team with a shared vision. My role at SEGF will be to give the portfolio companies an additional in-house resource and give the team more capacity on the ground to identify and prescreen new opportunities to enhance the portfolio.?

The Maine Legislature created the Small Enterprise Growth Fund in 1995 as an investment vehicle to provide ?patient sources of venture capital? to high-growth Maine companies. Its current portfolio of companies includes AIKO Biotechnology, Bar Harbor Biotechnology, Cerahelix Inc., and Looks Gourmet Food Co.

Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2012/12/03/business/maines-venture-capital-fund-hires-well-known-entrepreneur-to-mentor-companies/

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NKorea says it will launch long-range rocket soon

FILE - In this April 8, 2012 file photo, a North Korean soldier stands in front of the country's Unha-3 rocket, slated for liftoff between April 12-16, at Sohae Satellite Station in Tongchang-ri, North Korea. Rocket sections are apparently being trucked into North Korea's northwest launch site, but some analysts are asking whether it's just a calculated bluff meant to jangle the Obama administration and influence South Korean voters ahead of Dec. 19 presidential elections in three weeks. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

FILE - In this April 8, 2012 file photo, a North Korean soldier stands in front of the country's Unha-3 rocket, slated for liftoff between April 12-16, at Sohae Satellite Station in Tongchang-ri, North Korea. Rocket sections are apparently being trucked into North Korea's northwest launch site, but some analysts are asking whether it's just a calculated bluff meant to jangle the Obama administration and influence South Korean voters ahead of Dec. 19 presidential elections in three weeks. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

FILE - In this April 8, 2012 file photo, North Korea's Unha-3 rocket stands at Sohae Satellite Station in Tongchang-ri, North Korea. North Korea said Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012 it will launch a long-range rocket between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22. The launch will heighten already strained tensions with South Korean ahead of its presidential election on Dec. 19. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, April 8, 2012 file photo, North Korea's Unha-3 rocket, slated for liftoff between April 12-16, stands at Sohae Satellite Station in Tongchang-ri, North Korea. North Korea said Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012 it will launch a long-range rocket between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22. The launch will heighten already strained tensions with South Korean ahead of its presidential election on Dec. 19. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

FILE - This Monday Nov. 26, 2012 file satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe and annotated by 38 North, the website of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, shows the Sohae Satellite Launch Station in Cholsan County, North Pyongan Province, North Korea. North Korea said Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012 it will launch a long-range rocket between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22, a move likely to heighten already strained tensions with Washington and Seoul ahead of South Korean presidential elections Dec. 19. (AP Photo/DigitalGlobe via 38 North, File)

FILE - In this April 8, 2012 file photo, a group of journalists walk down a road in front of North Korea's Unha-3 rocket at Sohae Satellite Station in Tongchang-ri, North Korea. April 8, 2012. North Korea said Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012 it will launch a long-range rocket between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22. The launch will heighten already strained tensions with South Korean ahead of its presidential election on Dec. 19. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? North Korea is gearing up to fire a long-range rocket this month in a defiant move expected to raise the stakes of a global standoff over its missile and nuclear programs.

The planned launch window ? Dec 10 - 22 ? comes as President Barack Obama prepares for his second term and as South Korea holds presidential elections Dec. 19.

It would be North Korea's second launch attempt under leader Kim Jong Un, who took power following his father Kim Jong Il's death nearly a year ago. Some analysts have expressed skepticism that North Korea has corrected whatever caused the embarrassing misfire of its last rocket eight months ago. That launch earned the country widespread international condemnation.

A spokesman for North Korea's Korean Committee for Space Technology, however, said scientists have "analyzed the mistakes" made in the failed April launch and improved the precision of its Unha rocket and Kwangmyongsong satellite, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

The statement said the launch was a request of late leader Kim Jong Il. He died on Dec. 17, 2011, and North Koreans are expected to mark that date this year with some fanfare. The space agency said the rocket would be mounted with a polar-orbiting Earth observation satellite, and maintained its right to develop a peaceful space program.

Washington considers North Korea's rocket launches to be veiled covers for tests of technology for long-range missiles designed to strike the United States, and such tests are banned by the United Nations.

"A North Korean 'satellite' launch would be a highly provocative act," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington, D.C. "Any North Korean launch using ballistic missile technology is in direct violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions."

In 2009, North Korea conducted rocket and nuclear tests within months of Obama taking office.

North Korea has capable short- and medium-range missiles, but long-range launches in 1998, 2006, 2009 and in April of this year ended in failure. North Korea is not known to have succeeded in mounting an atomic bomb on a missile but is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least half a dozen bombs, according to U.S. experts. In 2010 it revealed a uranium enrichment program that could provide a second source of material for nuclear weapons.

Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid fell apart in early 2009.

There has been some skepticism about whether North Korea will succeed.

"Preparing for a launch less than a year after a failure calls into question whether the North could have analyzed and fixed whatever went wrong," David Wright, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote on the organization's website this week.

In Seoul, South Korean officials have accused North Korea of trying to influence its presidential election with what they consider provocations meant to put pressure on voters and on the United States as the North seeks concessions. Conservative Park Geun-hye, the daughter of late President Park Chung-hee, is facing liberal Moon Jae-in in the South Korean presidential vote. Polls show the candidates in a close race.

North Korea is "working hard to influence the upcoming election. They may have a preferred candidate," South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said in an interview with a small group of foreign reporters in the presidential Blue House. "Even if they test fire a missile, it will not have a big impact on the election," Lee said, speaking through an interpreter.

Lee gave the interview Thursday but his office embargoed the publication of his comments until Sunday.

North Korea under its young leader has pledged to bolster its nuclear arsenal unless Washington scraps what the North calls a "hostile" policy. North Korea maintains that it is building bombs to defend itself against what it sees as a U.S. nuclear threat in the region.

This year is the centennial of the birth of national founder Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong Un. According to North Korean propaganda, 2012 is meant to put the North on a path toward a "strong, prosperous and great nation."

"North Korea appears to be under pressure to redeem its April launch failure before the year of the 'strong, prosperous and great nation' ends," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul.

He added that a successful rocket launch would raise North Korea's bargaining power with South Korea and the United States "because it means the country is closer to developing missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads."

Before its last two rocket launches, North Korea notified the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization about its intentions to launch. IMO spokeswoman Natasha Brown said that as of Friday the organization had not been notified by North Korea.

The North's announcement on Saturday comes two days after South Korea canceled what would have been the launch of its first satellite from its own territory. Scientists in Seoul cited technical difficulties. South Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the North's planned launch is "a grave provocation and a head-on challenge to the international community."

North Korea's missile and nuclear programs will be a challenge for Obama in his second term and for the incoming South Korean leader. Washington's most recent attempt to negotiate a freeze of the North's nuclear program and a test moratorium in exchange for food aid collapsed with the April launch.

In Japan, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said he would coordinate with the U.S., South Korea, China and Russia in strongly urging the North to refrain from the rocket launch.

Japan's defense minister has also ordered missile units to intercept the North Korean rocket if it or its fragments threaten to hit Japan.

Kyodo News agency said Japan also postponed high-level talks with North Korea scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned North Korea's launch plan, saying a failure by North Korea to cancel the firing will lead to a further response by the international community.

The Korean Peninsula remains in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. Washington stations nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea as a buttress against any North Korean aggression. Tens of thousands more are in nearby Japan.

___

Associated Press writers Jean H. Lee, Hyung-jin Kim and Sam Kim in Seoul, Jill Lawless in London, Thomas Strong in Washington, D.C., and Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2012-12-01-NKorea-Rocket%20Launch/id-c3b5ab5a4d5546a5985d107525cb830a

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Chaos Is Good for You

Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for Burda Media.

Can we exploit the fact that life is unpredictable, chaotic, full of shocks and disasters? Trader-turned-scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb is based at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and the University of Oxford. His latest book is Antifragile: How To Live in a World We Don't Understand.

Linda Geddes: In your new book you talk about things being "antifragile." What do you mean exactly?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: When you ask people what is the opposite of fragile, they mostly answer something that is resilient or unbreakable?an unbreakable package would be robust. However, the opposite of fragile is something that actually gains from disorder. In the book, I classify things into fragile, robust, or antifragile.

LG: Can you give me some examples?
NNT: Nature builds things that are antifragile. In the case of evolution, nature uses disorder to grow stronger. Occasional starvation or going to the gym also makes you stronger, because you subject your body to stressors and gain from them. Another example is the restaurant industry. It benefits from the fact that individual restaurants are fragile by exploiting their mistakes as it tries to figure out why a particular restaurant went bust. Trial and error is an antifragile activity.

LG: How is antifragility different from the saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"?
NNT: I look at it in terms of systems: Situations where what kills me makes others stronger, how the fragility of some parts of the system brings overall benefits. There are good and bad systems organized in terms of whether the system gets stronger or weaker from errors made by an individual part. Every plane crash makes the next one less likely, but every bank going bust makes the next one more likely.

LG: How would you make something antifragile?
NNT: If antifragility is the property of all these natural complex systems that have survived, then depriving them of volatility, randomness, and stressors will harm them. Just as spending a month in bed leads to muscle atrophy, complex systems are weakened or even killed when deprived of stressors.

If you want to move away from fragility, you must avoid centralization and debt and foster aggressive risk-takers who are willing to fail seven times in a lifetime. The economy of the West was initiated through trial and error. We still have a pocket of that in California, where there are small costs of failure and big gains once in a while. The top-down approach blocks antifragility and growth, whereas everything bottom-up thrives under the right amount of stress and disorder.

LG: Are you saying that capitalism is good but that 21^st-century capitalism has gone too far?
NNT: What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats. The largest "fragilizer" of society is a lack of skin in the game. If you are mayor of a small town, you are penalized for your mistakes because you are made accountable when you go to church. But we are witnessing the rise of a new class of inverse heroes?bureaucrats, bankers, and academics with too much power. They game the system while citizens pay the price. I want the entrepreneur to be respected, not the CEO of a company who has all the upsides and none of the downsides.

LG: Politicians like U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron seem interested in your ideas. Is the West making its economies antifragile?
NNT: I think Cameron's government is aware of the problem and doing what it can given the circumstances it inherited. The economic class doesn't realize an economy lives by stressors rather than by top-down control. This is what the previous prime minister, Gordon Brown, did with "we want to eliminate boom and bust." He mistook the economy for something you take for repair. Governments shoot for robustness, but you must make the economy gain from errors. Bailing out every bank that fails makes the system riskier, not safer.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=710b16d321a1df7fd5ae34c2b7462ae7

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