OLYMPICS-Formula One, West Ham in race for Olympic Stadium - Reuters UK
LONDON, July 17 |
LONDON, July 17 (Reuters) - Motor racing group Formula One and football club West Ham United are among four bidders competing to take over the Olympic stadium after the games leave London, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) said on Tuesday.
The LLDC said it was assessing proposals from the two, as well as from Leyton Orient Football Club and the UCFB College of Football Business, without saying when a decision was due.
The process to select a main tenant for the stadium in east London was extended by eight weeks in May after the LLDC said some parties had been discouraged from bidding because of unresolved issues including stadium naming rights.
"London is further ahead in planning legacy than any previous host Olympic city," LLDC chairman Daniel Moylan said in a statement.
There has been speculation that Formula One plans to use the stadium and neighbouring land to create a motor racing circuit.
Some local politicians fear the 80,000-seat venue could become a white elephant. A previous plan to sell the stadium to West Ham fell apart last October with the government citing "legal paralysis" after Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, who had a bid turned down, challenged the decision.
The LLDC also said a bid to turn the 1 million square foot Olympic media centre into offices, research labs and a data centre was now the preferred choice.
A plan by the so-called iCity consortium is the favourite after the only other bidder withdrew last week and criticised the selection process.
The consortium is backed by data centre manager Infinity and property company Delancey. It plans to create more than 4,000 jobs.
The LLDC said it will name the residential developer selected to build the first neighbourhood of housing on the park next week. (Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Tom Bill and Stephen Powell)
Senior BJP leader and RSS ideologue Bal Apte no more - rediff.com
Apte, 73, is survived by his wife and a daughter.
"Apte was admitted to our hospital on July 6 for a respiratory disorder. He died of chronic lung disease around 3 pm today," Medical Director of Hinduja Hospital Gustad Davar told PTI.
Apte, a prominent face of the Sangh in BJP, was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra [ Images ] twice in 2000 and 2006. He was denied party nomination earlier this year and replaced by Ajay Sancheti, considered close to BJP president Nitin Gadkari [ Images ].
He was BJP vice president during 2002-2010 and was also a member of the party's Central Parliamentary Board.
BJP's Tarun Vijay described him as an ideal RSS swyamsewak and legendary organiser for Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Apte was for long associated with ABVP, the youth wing of RSS, and was also its president.
A lawyer by profession, Apte had been under detention from December 1975 to February 1977 under the stringent Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) during Emergency.
The then BJP president Rajnath Singh had constituted a committee under Apte to go into the reasons for the party's poor showing in 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
He was on the Governing Council of Shikshan Prasarak Mandali, an educational institution running 20 colleges and schools, for about two decades.
His funeral will take place at Dadar crematorium on Wednesday morning, party sources said.
Image: Bal Apte
MONEY MARKETS-US repo rates dip with reduced cash needs - Reuters
By Chris Reese and William James
NEW YORK/LONDON, July 17 (Reuters) - The interest rate on U.S. repurchase agreements, a key source of short-term funding for Wall Street, fell on Tuesday as bond dealers' cash needs declined after they paid for their purchases of Treasuries supply last week.
The rate on repos secured by Treasuries was last quoted at 21 basis points midmarket, down from 23 on Monday. The elevated level of Wall Street borrowing costs has stoked expectations the Federal Reserve might lower interest on excess reserves and/or slow their selling of short-dated Treasuries.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, offered few new clues on whether the U.S. central bank was moving closer to a fresh round of monetary stimulus, but repeated the Fed's pledge to act if needed.
The Treasury last week auctioned $66 billion of 3-year and 10-year notes and 30-year bonds.
Money market fund managers have their fingers crossed in hopes the Fed does not follow the European Central Bank and lower the interest rate it pays on excess reserves to banks, as they believe such a move would cause disruptions in funding markets, especially money market funds.
Demand for euro zone treasury bills has surged since the ECB cut its deposit rate to zero last week as buyers who focus on short-term debt look to secure what little yield remains by moving into longer-term and lower-rated investments.
Belgium, whose highest credit rating is AA, on Tuesday became the latest euro zone sovereign to sell short-term debt at a negative yield, issuing three-month bills at a yield of minus 0.16 percent.
Triple-A rated France, Germany and the Netherlands have all sold T-bills at negative yields in the past week, as has the euro zone's EFSF temporary rescue fund, which is backed by state guarantees.
Investor appetite for low-risk assets is already at an all-time high with dwindling confidence in the euro zone's ability to haul itself away from the brink of break-up and the global economy struggling to grow.
But analysts said last week's ECB cut in the rate it pays on overnight deposits to zero had triggered a new spike in demand.
The knock-on effect has seen overnight rates fall, pushing some of the most secure banks to offer a negative yield on certificates of deposit, which are widely used by the most risk-averse asset managers such as central banks and money market funds.
"Banks are now charging for the privilege of placing money with them ... which is pushing many investors to seek alternative areas in which to effectively park their money," said Richard McGuire, strategist at Rabobank in London.
The resultant boom in demand for yield was causing convergence in rates on treasury bills - debt with a maturity of less than two years - among Europe's highest rated issuers.
Germany issued six-month bills last week at an average yield of minus 0.034 percent, while on July 16 France sold 23-week bills at a cost of minus 0.005 percent - a difference of around 3 bps. At similar sales a month earlier the gap between the two auction yields was 12.5 bps.
"To me, this is investors saying 'I'm actually getting capital destruction in the safest assets, so I'm going to move out along the credit curve and the term structure a little'," said Thushka Maharaj, a vice president in the Credit Suisse European interest rate strategy team in London.
"We are still expecting convergence between French and Netherlands T-bills toward the German yield; in the front end the spread is about 20 basis points so there's still room there," Maharaj said.
The search for higher-yielding assets has also pushed down the cost of short-term borrowing for the likes of Spain and Italy - both on the frontline of the region's debt crisis.
Spain on Tuesday sold 12- and 18-month bills at around a percentage point lower cost than last month. However, analysts said the 3.92 percent and 5.07 percent yields were still too high to say markets believed the country's finances were on a sustainable path.
The U.S. Treasury on Tuesday sold $30 billion of 4-week bills at a high rate of 0.075 percent, up slightly from 0.07 percent in a similar sale last week.
Tiger eyes 'hot week' to end four-year major drought - ESPN.co.uk
Tiger Woods believes the level of competition at majors has rocketed in recent years and the days of one player dominating the sport are over.
Woods, who returns to Royal Lytham for a third time as he bids to win a fourth Open crown, insists he feels no frustration at a four-year major drought.
Woods won seven titles inside three years between the 1999 US PGA Championship and the 2001 US Open, but with 17 different winners in as many majors, the former world No. 1 admits it now takes a slice of luck to win the big titles.
"I think the fields are deeper, there's no doubt," Woods said. "And we're having to shoot some pretty low scores in general. But I think that it's you need to have a hot week at the right time.
"I think that there are more guys now have a chance to win major championships than ever before, and I think that will just continue to be that way. What do we have, 15 in a row I think it is now. And it just goes to show you the depth of the field.
"And the cut is no longer 13, 14 shots. It's sometimes under 10 shots between guys making the cut and the leader. So that goes to show you the depth of the field that everything is getting a little bit closer."
Woods, who last landed a major title at the 2008 US Open, insists he is neither anxious nor impatient to secure his 15th major.
"First of all, I had to go through that whole process of just getting healthy again," Woods said. "Being banged up and missing major championships because of it in a couple year stretch there wasn't a whole lot of fun. I think I missed four majors there just because I was injured.
"I figure if I'm healthy, then I can prepare properly for major championships and I can get myself there. I think that if I continue putting myself there enough times then I'll win major championships."
Woods is relishing the challenge posed by Royal Lytham, and believes the course will reward the best players.
"This is one of their more difficult ones that we play," he said. "It's more confined, but I think that as far as shot making it tests us, it tests us a lot, because as I said, we have to shape the golf ball both ways. Here you have a lot of different angles. And it really tests your ability to hit shots and hit them the proper distances more so than most links courses."
© ESPN EMEA Ltd
RSS to burn copy of Kashmir interlocutors report - New Kerala
Bruce Springsteen curfew 'not for health and safety' - BBC News
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has criticised promoter Live Nation for attributing the curtailment of Bruce Springsteen's Hyde Park concert on Saturday to "health and safety" issues.
Fans were left bemused when the Hard Rock Calling event was abruptly ended in order to meet a 22:30 BST curfew.
One of them was Kevin Myers, deputy chief executive of the HSE.
In a web posting, he said the promoter was "disingenuous" to give health and safety as the cue for ending the gig.
"The fans deserve the truth," he wrote on the HSE website. "There are no health and safety issues involved here.
"While public events may have licensing conditions dictating when they should end, this is not health and safety and it is disingenuous of Live Nation to say so."
A Springsteen fan who was a member of the audience on Saturday, Mr Myers goes on to suggest 'The Boss' knows something about the issue himself.
'Unfortunate'To support his argument, he invites readers to "look at the words of Factory from Darkness on the Edge of Town referring to the toll that factory work can take on the health of blue collar workers".
Springsteen's guitarist Steven Van Zandt was also angered by the concert's abrupt curtailment, using Twitter to express his dissatisfaction with "English cops".
According to Westminster Council, however, the decision to end the concert was made by organisers "to comply with their licence".
In a statement on the Hard Rock Calling website, Live Nation said it was "unfortunate" that the performance had been "stopped right at the very end".
It said a 22:30 BST curfew had been "laid down by the authorities in the interest of the public's health and safety".
Country trip Lady Antebellum supported Springsteen on Saturday and have added their voices to those bemoaning his enforced silencing.
"I'm sure there was definitely a reason," said singer Hillary Scott. "I hear they had a very strict curfew in Hyde Park."
George Michael says illness caused five-week memory gap - BBC News
Singer George Michael has revealed he has a five-week gap in his memory from when he was battling pneumonia late last year.
The star told BBC Radio 2's Chris Evans that it was "touch and go" whether he would survive his time in hospital.
Michael said he had to learn to walk after the illness, which left him fighting for his life, as his muscles had wasted away.
The 48-year-old said: "It's like I just dodged a bullet."
Michael was forced to cancel a string of shows while he was treated in the Austrian capital Vienna, where he said medics "downplayed" his condition to avoid a "death watch kind of thing".
The true extent of his illness did not become public until after his release from hospital.
The singer admitted the severity of his condition could have been avoided if he had followed advice to get checked out, when a temperature forced him to pull out of a show at the Royal Albert Hall a few weeks earlier.
"I took it for granted that I'd just fought off flu," the former Wham star told Evans.
"I went and played for another three weeks in Europe. And then one afternoon I was having lunch and suddenly felt really odd and said to everyone that I had to go and lay down for half an hour on my own," he added.
"And that's the last thing I remember for five weeks. It was three weeks of them trying to save my life and two weeks awake."
Close to deathThe star has written new single White Light about his near death experiences.
Kate Moss features in the video, more than 20 years after missing out on starring in his supermodel-filled promo for his single Freedom.
Michael told Evans in an interview for his breakfast show that he was "very close" to death on several occasions, and still found it upsetting to talk about.
"When something like that happens in such a random fashion, I think it takes a while to think that life is safe again."
He continued: "I literally had to learn to walk again and weird stuff, because when they keep you sedated for that long your muscles literally atrophy at an incredible rate. And I just woke up like this feeble old man."
In March this year Michael announced rescheduled dates for The Symphonica tour, starting on 4 September with a newly-added date in Vienna.
He said he would donate 1,000 tickets to the medical staff in the city who had looked after him.
Michael also confirmed to Evans that he is scheduled to perform at the Olympics closing ceremony in August.
"That's the plan yes," he said. "I'll be playing a couple of songs to kick off the concert at the end."
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