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Shane Williams selects his men to watch in this year's Six Nations
3 Febwww.guardian.co.uk - sport
Wales' record try scorer runs the rule over the players he believes have the potential to stand out in the tournament
England
I'm biased, being a winger, but I'll be keeping an eye out for Chris Ashton. No doubt he'll be one of the top scorers in the tournament because of his hunger to score tries – his strike rate at the moment is quite phenomenal. He's got an interesting couple of months coming up in club rugby, too, with his impending move to Saracens. There'll be a lot of pressure on him but he's the kind of player that enjoys that atmosphere. He's a controversial character and quite cheeky – he seems to play at his best when he's under that pressure.
Wales
I'm looking forward to seeing Alex Cuthbert play. He plays in my position. He hasn't got much experience at international level but having him play for Wales in sevens will have helped him a lot. He's come on leaps and bounds this season and has been in good form for Cardiff Blues. Other teams will have done their research on him but sometimes new players come into international rugby and they're overlooked, so the element of surprise could help him too. The other sides will know all about Leigh Halfpenny and George North but Cuthbert could slip under the radar. He's got a great work-rate and is very quick too, like Ashton, I think he could end up with a lot of tries.
France
France are a mixed bag: they've got great experienced players but a few new guys coming in too. I particularly like the look of Raphaël Lakafia and Wesley Fofana. Imanol Harinordoquy is also a tremendous player and, when he's on form, France hardly ever lose a game. I played against him when we [Ospreys] were beaten by Biarritz a couple of weeks ago [22 January] and Harinordoquy put in one of the best individual performances I've ever seen. When he teams up with Dimitri Yachvili they are a deadly combination and both players bring a huge amount of experience with them.
Ireland
Johnny Sexton is coming through and he's a very accomplished outside-half, who will be hoping to take over from Ronan O'Gara permanently. He's already got a lot of trophies under his belt with Leinster. It'll be interesting to see how he takes control of that No10 shirt and whether he can hold on to it for the coming years. He's got a point to prove in this Six Nations. He controls the game very well, kicks well and he's a very clever player too – he knows how to make the right decisions. That's exactly what you need at his position: someone who knows when to kick and when to run and can control a game. He certainly has become a master of that over the past couple of years. He's got the potential to be one of the best 10s out there.
Scotland
Max Evans is a great player. He's not the biggest in terms of stature but he's gutsy and willing to get involved. He's confident in defence and attack. I'm looking forward to seeing Richie Gray play again. He had a very good Six Nations last season and had a great performance against France in Paris. He'll be keen to keep up that standard and maintain his reputation as one of the best locks in European rugby at the moment. He's one of the stand-out players. Scotland could be a dark horse this year. They've got a young squad and nothing to lose.
Italy
There's a name that always stands out for me with Italy and that's Sergio Parisse, I don't think I've ever seen him have a bad game for his country. He'll be the Azzurri's main target and he can give the bigger sides problems. He's a back-row but he could probably play any position he wanted. He's full of skills and a world-class player. He's an obvious name to pick but I do enjoy watching him play and I don't enjoy playing against him – so that means he's very good.
Shane Williams will offer insight and analysis as part of the BBC for this year's Six Nations. Every game of the tournament will be shown live on BBC One and BBC One HD apart from France v Ireland (11 February) and Scotland v France (26 February), which will be broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Two HD.
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Guardian Sport Network | Transfer near-misses mean PSG remain a work in progress
3 Febwww.guardian.co.uk - sport
Despite having the money to chase football's biggest names, Paris St-Germain failed to lure the stars they really wanted
The clue was in the number. "A press conference will take place on Wednesday 1 February at 15:30 at Parc des Princes to present Thiago Motta, who will wear the number 28," read the brief statement released by Paris St-Germain on Tuesday. Motta is a European champion and an Italy international, who cost the not insignificant sum of €10 million, but he was not the star signing that PSG had been hoping to announce on the final day of the transfer window. To paraphrase Garry Cook's famous remark about Richard Dunne, he doesn't exactly roll off the tongue in Beijing.
There are vacant numbers in the current PSG squad list that could have adorned replica shirts liable to be torn off the rails in the club shop. Alexandre Pato might have chosen the number 11 shirt that he wore at Internacional and has sported at times for Brazil. The number eight that Kaká wears for Real Madrid is also unattributed. With Jérémy Ménez in possession of the number seven shirt and Mohamed Sissoko the number 23, David Beckham had been lined up for the number 32 jersey. After the Englishman's abrupt volte-face, that shirt was earmarked for Carlos Tevez. But neither he, nor Beckham, nor Kaká, nor Pato will be seen in PSG's iconic strip this season.
PSG made four signings in January – with Motta following Maxwell, Alex and new fourth-choice goalkeeper Ronan Le Crom through the door – but none of them were the marquee names that had held the local media in a state of permanent breathless excitement since the transfer window loomed onto the horizon in mid-December. Although Motta was relinquished reluctantly by Internazionale, Chelsea were quite happy to cede Alex and Maxwell left Barcelona with little fanfare.
There are few more glamorous locations than Paris and few clubs in the world capable of matching PSG's huge spending power, but Ligue 1's low international profile – coupled with the absence of European football at Parc des Princes in the second half of the season – has frustrated the club's efforts to attract the kind of players who generate global interest.
Missing out on Beckham, Pato and Tevez in such public fashion would have been embarrassing enough without the French press having trumpeted their arrivals with such confidence. Beckham was said to be "95%" certain to come to Paris, with L'Équipe picturing him beneath the headline 'Here he is!' in their 21 December issue and Le Parisien reporting that he had agreed a contract worth €800,000 a month. Reports that Manchester City had agreed to sell Tevez to PSG were met with an immediate rebuttal from the current Premier League leaders, while it took Pato less than 24 hours to nix reports of his arrival by issuing a statement declaring his commitment to Milan.
PSG have spent close to €105 million on new signings this season but they are still searching for the player capable of taking their merchandising clout to the next level. Javier Pastore's €42 million switch from Palermo may have shattered the Ligue 1 transfer record but, as former Marseille president Bernard Tapie was only too happy to point out in an interview that appeared prior to Christmas, hardly any of PSG's signings are regular, first-choice internationals. Not Ménez, not Kévin Gameiro, not Blaise Matuidi. Not even Pastore. Diego Lugano may be the captain of Uruguay but his early performances have been unconvincing to say the least.
Matters have been clouded by the club's inconsistent transfer strategy. Antoine Kombouaré, sacked in late December, had already signed goalkeeper Nicolas Douchez and centre-back Milan Biševac when incoming sporting director Leonardo decided to assert his authority by bringing in his own men. Salvatore Sirigu arrived from Palermo to snatch the number one jersey from Douchez's disbelieving fingers, while Lugano's transfer from Fenerbahçe bumped Biševac down the pecking order in central defence (although he has since re-surfaced at right-back). It was like watching the comings and goings of the Sheikh Mansour era at Manchester City condensed into the space of four weeks.
The result is that Carlo Ancelotti finds himself embarking on the second part of the campaign with a squad containing six centre-backs and five central midfielders but only two senior strikers in Gameiro and Guillaume Hoarau, following the sale of Mevlüt Erding to Rennes. Few expected the new coach to confirm the popular stereotype about the defensive priorities of Italian football so quickly.
Compounding the imbalance in the squad is the fact that PSG have got very little time to get things right. Last summer's takeover by Qatar Sports Investments gave the club unprecedented muscle in the transfer market but the imminent imposition of Uefa's Financial Fair Play Rules means that we are in the end game of European football's great spending boom. The noticeable dip in expenditure during the January transfer window demonstrated that the continent's top clubs are nervously tightening their belts in view of the uncertain challenges ahead. Against that backdrop, PSG are like the man who sweeps into his neighbourhood to show off a brand new gas-guzzling Lamborghini, only to find that all his neighbours are shrewdly investing in hybrid cars.
On the pitch, things remain on track. The players have responded favourably to Ancelotti's more varied training sessions and consecutive wins over Toulouse and Brest have preserved their three-point advantage at the Ligue 1 summit. Champions League qualification is on course and Leonardo will find it much easier to assemble a star-studded cast next summer if the stage is set for a tilt at the club game's biggest prize.
Tactically, Ancelotti was quick to introduce the 4-3-2-1 formation that he deployed with success at Milan and – on occasion – Chelsea. Alex will likely compete with Lugano for the right to partner captain Mamadou Sakho at centre-back, while the elegant Mathieu Bodmer (who has been appointed vice-captain) appears to have been earmarked for the deep-lying midfield role that Andrea Pirlo made his own under Ancelotti's command at Milan. Injuries to Pastore and Ménez mean Ancelotti has yet to address the problem of how to configure his attack when everybody is fit, but the 3-1 win over Toulouse in the Italian's first home game provided a clue, with Ménez, Pastore and the irrepressible Nenê fielded in a fluid front three while Gameiro looked on forlornly from the bench.
The "almost" in Leonardo's assertion that PSG did "almost everything we wanted to" in the transfer market barely disguised a multitude of disappointments, but a first league title in 18 years would make the club a much more palatable proposition for the stars that currently reside just beyond their ever-widening orbit.
• This is an article from our Guardian Sport Network. To find out more about it, click here.
• This blog was written for Football Further.
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Stephen Lawrence killers Gary Dobson and David Norris will not have sentences reviewed
1 FebTelegraph - UK News
Gary Dobson and David Norris, two of the men who murdered Stephen Lawrence, will not have their sentences reviewed by the Court of Appeal after the Attorney General decided they were not "unduly lenient".
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Steven Lawrence killers Gary Dobson and David Norris will not have sentences reviewed
1 FebTelegraph - UK News
Gary Dobson and David Norris, two of the men who murdered Stephen Lawrence, will not have their sentences reviewed by the Court of Appeal after the Attorney General decided they were not "unduly lenient".
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Neil Young: I was working on new iPod
1 Febwww.guardian.co.uk
Singer tells technology conference he and the late Apple boss planned audiophile successor to iPod with high-resolution audio
Neil Young has claimed he was working with the late Apple boss Steve Jobs on a follow-up to the iPod. Young said he and Jobs were developing a new device for listening to "high-resolution audio", which would download content "while you're sleeping".
"Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music, but when he went home he listened to vinyl," Young said during an interview at the D: Dive Into Media technology conference. He and Jobs were apparently both concerned with the dearth of high-quality listening formats for audiophiles, and the two men met to work on new hardware that could store the large music files Young prefers. Since Jobs's death in October, Young complained, there is "not much going on".
Young is a notorious opponent of MP3s and other compressed music formats. He even criticises CDs, which he claims offer only 15% of the audio information contained on master recordings. "What everybody gets [on an MP3] is 5% of what we originally make in the studio," he said. "We live in the digital age, and unfortunately it's degrading our music, not improving."
The 66-year-old singer called on his audience to improve standards for high-fidelity audio and new consumer-friendly playback devices. The main obstacle to better quality recordings is file size: audiophile-quality songs can take as long as 30 minutes to download, Young said, and current players can store no more than about 30 albums. "I have to believe if [Jobs] lived long enough he would have tried to do what I'm trying to do."
While Young attacked the internet's effect on audio standards, he acknowledged its utility as a promotional tool. "I look at [the] internet as the new radio," he explained. "Radio [is] gone. Piracy is the new radio; it's how music gets around."
Young is currently working on two new albums with his long-time on-off backing band Crazy Horse. He recently updated his website with an epic, 37-minute jam, thought to be taken from these sessions.
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Iain Duncan Smith offers concessions to rescue welfare reform
1 FebTelegraph - UK News
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith issues appeal to peers and bishops not to block his proposals.
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Statins work as well for women as men: study
31 JanReuters - Health News
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Despite doubts raised by some studies, a new research review suggests that cholesterol-lowering statins offer as much protection for women as for men. -
Macedonia Muslims urge restraint over carnival
30 JanBoston.com -World news
Muslim leaders in Macedonia appealed for calm on Monday among community members outraged over a carnival in which Orthodox Christian men mocked Muslims by dressing as Burqa-clad women.
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David Cameron: is he appealing to women?
30 JanTelegraph - UK News
The Tory party and its leader are much more popular with men - hence the recent attempts to soften David Cameron's image. James Kirkup reports.
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Men over 50 hit by 'codger' label at work
29 JanThe Age National Headlines
Male workers on average salaries are the biggest victims of age discrimination, a study shows.
