Spain would applaud if super Cesc Fabregas quits Arsenal insists team-mate Marcos Senna

Chase: In demand Fabregas

Cesc Fabregas"s return to Spain would be a huge coup for La Liga, says his international team-mate Marcos Senna.

However, while Barcelona and Real Madrid would love to take the Arsenal captain back to Iberia, Villarreal star Senna is not so sure Fabregas would jump at the chance.

"I think the arrival of Cesc would be very good for us all, for the fans because he is a great player with great quality," said the Brazil-born midfielder.

"Everyone would be happy for him to come to Spain and demonstrate the footballer he is.

"I think Cesc is more connected to Catalonia than in Madrid, but Barcelona may not be his priority. It"s all talk at the moment."

Reports in the Catalan press have gone as far as saying Fabregas has a pre-agreement to join Barca this summer, despite denials from the player and clubs involved.

Arsene Wenger insists the 22-year-old is not for sale and has asked his suitors to call off their public pursuit, but it has done little to quell reports in Spain.

Tough tackler: Villarreal"s Marcos Senna (left) gets stuck into Athletic Bilbao"s Pablo Orbaiz

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Let Lehman justification be done open Anton Valukas urges court

Christine Seib and Alex Spence & , : {}

The author of a scathing report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers called yesterday for every piece of evidence he had uncovered to be made public so that the investment banks creditors could bring legal action if they wished.

Anton Valukas, an examiner appointed by the US Bankruptcy Court, wants to release several thousand documents behind his 2,200-page report, which is expected to be used by creditors seeking evidence of wrongdoing by those involved in Lehmans failure.

The report revealed that Lehman had used an accounting ploy to move $50 billion off its balance sheet in time for its quarterly results. It also said that a private auction of the banks derivatives book had resulted in a $1.2 billion loss.

CME Group, the worlds biggest futures and options exchange, which conducted the $2 billion auction, provided evidence to Mr Valukas for his report but has asked that the identity of the six bidders be redacted before it is made public. Mr Valukas found no evidence of wrongdoing by CME.

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In a filing to the court, lawyers for the examiner said that the public had a right to know the identity of bidders that resulted in a highly favourable gain for the winners.

Barclays Bank and the Office of Thift Supervision have also raised informal complaints about some information that Mr Valukas planned to reveal.

In his report, Mr Valukas found that litigants had a chance of proving claims of breach of fiduciary duty against several of Lehmans senior executives and of professional malpractice against Ernst & Young. E&Y was the banks auditor while Lehman was using an accounting tactic called Repo105 to reduce the leverage on its balance sheet.

In Britain, E&Y issued a statement this week saying that it was confident we will prevail should any of the potential claims identified against us be pursued ... Lehmans bankruptcy was the result of a series of unprecedented adverse events in the financial markets ... It was not caused by accounting issues or disclosure issues.

Bush help Karl Rove insists waterboarding is not torture

Philippe Naughton & , : {}

George W Bush"s former tip confidant has pronounced he is "proud" of the have make use of of of oppressive inquire techniques - together with waterboarding - during the War on Terror.

Karl Rove, the Republican strategist at large well known as "Bush"s Brain", pronounced in a BBC talk that he did not hold waterboarding, or unnatural drowning, amounted to torture.

"I"m unapproachable that we used techniques that pennyless the will of these terrorists and gave us profitable report that authorised us to foil plots such as drifting aeroplanes in to Heathrow and in to London, bringing down aircraft over the Pacific, drifting an aeroplane in to the tallest construction in Los Angeles and alternative plots," Mr Rove told the BBC.

"Yes, I"m unapproachable that we kept the universe safer than it was, by the have make use of of of these techniques. They"re appropriate, they"re in consent with the general mandate and with US law."

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Mr Rove gave the talk to symbol the announcement of a discourse - Courage and Consequence - in that he argues that story will see agreeably on Mr Bushs two-term presidency, quite his preference to wage fight Iraq.

In the book he calls the 2003 advance the majority material action of the Bush presidency and a pardonable reply to the apprehension attacks of Sep 11, 2001 - even though al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein, were responsible.

Mr Rove admits in the discourse that the disaster to find weapons of mass drop after the advance of Iraq had really bad shop-worn the credit of the Bush Administration.

He blames himeslf, as the White House"s tip domestic confidant at the time, for not carrying pushed behind opposite claims that Mr Bush had taken the nation to fight underneath fake pretences.

The use of waterboarding - effectively authorised by a array of authorised memos from the White House in 2002 - was one of the majority argumentative aspects of the fight opposite terrorism.

The afterwards Director of the CIA, Michael Hayden, told Congress in 2008 that waterboarding had usually ever been used on 3 comparison al-Qaeda detainees and not given 2003. The use was strictly criminialized by President Obama last year.

In his BBC interview, Mr Rove was asked either he thought waterboarding was torture. "No it"s not," he said.

"People need to review the memos that outline what was slight and not slight prior to they have a settlement about these things.

Every one of the people who were waterboarded had a alloy who had to discern that there had been no long-lasting earthy or mental repairs to the individual."

Mr Rove pronounced US soldiers were subjected to waterboarding as a unchanging piece of their training. A less serious form of the technique was used on the 3 suspects - together with the purported 9/11 tract personality Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - interrogated at the US troops jail at Guantanamo Bay, he added.

hair wig

Liam Byrne man in a precipitate who has to find 20bn of assets a year

Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson & , : {}

Liam Byrne has a three-month diary on a whiteboard in his bureau and issues a weekly to do list to staff. His watch is set ten mins fast, ensuring that he arrives one notation early for each meeting.

This former supervision expert is a man in a hurry. While his colleagues are formulation their memoirs, early retirement and holidays for after the election, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is fighting on. He is clever, dynamic and demanding.

He once wrote a memo for his polite servants revelation them when he favourite sunrise cappuccino. I dont scream at people but I do similar to to set really transparent objectives, he says. Im really efficient. Mr Byrne will need these skills over the subsequent couple of months. Weve got to be most blunter about the plans for open spending, he says.

Weve got to find 82 billion of necessity rebate . . . That equates to interlude you do a little things, it equates to pulling a little things to the side and it equates to a series in Whitehall. What Im you do right away with the Cabinet is asking them to pointer their departments up for their share of those spending cuts.

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Yesterday the expansion total were revised upwards. The Treasury believes a little of the necessity will be separated by growth, and a suit by taxation rises, but the Chief Secretary says that the Government contingency additionally find twenty billion of assets a year by 2012-13.

He has told his Cabinet colleagues to come up with departmental cuts totalling eleven billion on tip of assets from open zone compensate and pensions and alternative efficiencies that have already been announced. The sum will, he tells us, be set out in the Budget subsequent month.

People dont jump over up the stairs to the Treasury seeking brazen to their negotiation, he admits. Everybody knows a review with me is not going to be a lot of fun but they apply oneself the actuality that Ive got to be firm.

Some ministers have been some-more associated than others, he says. Peter [Mandelson] has been a personality on all this, Ed [Balls] needs to mention in some-more item where the assets are going to come from.

Three departments have already reached a deal. Some of my comparison and wiser colleagues have motionless theyre going to solve fast and get it done. Is he peaceful to negotiate? Ive got numbers to broach and Im going to broach them. Mr Byrne wants to separate the consultancy budget, throw dozens of quangos and condense the bill for IT.

I wish to be means to mangle out the twenty billion assets dialect by dialect by the time of the Budget. In a little areas I think I can go serve than the assets I already voiced in the Pre-Budget Report in December.

He doesnt wish to speak about swingeing cuts but he says: The cuts to Whitehall will be large, and delivering them will be the greatest plea that this era of polite servants has had to face.

The Department of Health, he says, has the greatest assets aim since the got the greatest budget. It is expected to lose some-more than a tenth of the bill about 10 billion. Birmingham has 3 initial caring trusts. Theyre going to have to have one and get absolved of a lot of the managers. Could there be sanatorium construction closures? Yes . . . Some hospitals will have to begin you do some-more of their caring in the community.

Mr Byrne says that the Ministry of Defence contingency shift the priorities to aim resources at infantry on the front line. We were rebuilt to do a understanding that concerned fortifying budgets for Afghanistan but they had to come up with savings. I think they can go serve in shortening their headcount at the MoD. Would he cruise scrapping a total department? I wouldnt order it out. What about merging the Armed Forces? No piece of Whitehall is free from the need to deliver.

The Government is right away deliberation how to account long-term caring for the elderly. The Tory genocide taxation debate has backfired since it sounds similar to they are not critical about the issue, Mr Byrne says.

We are perplexing to shift a incident that is not great enough. We wouldnt wince from creation formidable choices. Would Labour enlarge VAT after the election? No Chancellor is going to order out a taxation option, he says. He does, however, wish to retire the 50p taxation rate as shortly as it is protected to do so.

Mr Byrne believes that Labour will win usually if it stays the celebration of the upwardly mobile: Aspiration is going to kick austerity. We have to show were going to remodel open services in a approach that helps you get on in life.

Man with suburban tastes

Name: Liam Byrne

Age: 39

Education: Burnt Mill Comprehensive, Harlow, Essex; University of Manchester (first in governing body and complicated history); MBA from Harvard Business School

Family: tied together to Sarah, dual sons and a daughter (Alex, John and Elizabeth).

Career: Currently Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Cabinet part of obliged for open spending). Worked for Andersen Consulting and N M Rothschild

Notable: He runs half marathons (best time 1 hour, 54 minutes).

Axe or scalpel? Scalpel

Florence and the Machine or Florence and the Magic Roundabout? Magic Roundabout

Cappuccino or espresso? Espresso right away or peppermint tea

Lark or owl? Owl

Urban or rural? Suburban

HP Sauce or hollandaise? HP Sauce

Cheryl or Ashley? Cheryl

Economist or GQ? Economist

Tantrums or tears? Tears

Mad Hatter or Red Queen? Mad Hatter

Punch or Judy? Judy

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Vet cries tainted over website extortion

Alexandra Frean: US Business Correspondent & , : {}

Americas heading consumer examination website is being sued for coercion in a legal box that could infer a defining impulse for the internet.

Yelp is being indicted by a small veterinary use in California of extorting income from businesses in lapse for stealing bad reviews of them on the site.

The class-action legal box has been brought by the Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital in Long Beach, that is run by Greg Perrault. It alleges that last Sep Dr Perrault asked Yelp to take down a disastrous review, posted by an particular who had last used his services eighteen months previously. This was in defilement of a Yelp guideline that commercial operation should have used the use inside of the past twelve months.

The lawsuit, that has been filed in California, claims that Yelp sales member responded by mouth-watering Dr Perrault to publicize for $300 (�200) a month, for a year. In lapse Yelp would censor disastrous reviews on the Cats and Dogs Yelp inventory page, or place them reduce on the page so that users wouldnt see them. It alleges that Yelp claimed it would additionally safeguard that disastrous reviews did not crop up in Google and alternative poke engine results.

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Dr Perrault told The Times that he had never asked for his animal sanatorium to crop up on Yelp in the initial place, and added: It feels to me as if Im being hold over a barrel. If I compensate them, I can have some-more carry out over the coming of the website and I can censor bad reviews by pulling them around. It feels identical to a shakedown.

Jared Beck of Beck & Lee, one of dual law firms bringing the case, pronounced in a grave matter that Yelps sales strategy amounted to high-tech extortion. He told The Times that he estimated the series of victims to be in their thousands and that he had been contacted by scores of businesses. The box papers cite countless alternative examples of small companies claiming to have had identical practice to Dr Perraults.

Mr Beck said: This is not how the free marketplace is ostensible to work. Further, Yelp tells the open that the reviews are unfiltered opinions, when they are not.

In a posting on Yelps blog, Jeremy Stoppelman, the arch executive, denied the allegations. Yelp does not remove or censor disastrous reviews in sell for income and Yelp sales people do not suggest to do so. Additionally, Yelp treats examination calm similarly for advertisers and non-advertisers alike. Advertisers compensate for promotion and extended listings, and zero more, and businesses are not penalised for disappearing to advertise.

The site allows consumers in the United States, Canada, Britain and Ireland to post unknown reviews of each sort of internal business. Yelp claimed an assembly of some-more than twenty-six million singular visitors in Dec last year, adding that contributors had created some-more than 9 million reviews. The five-year-old San Francisco-based start-up not long ago lifted $100 million in collateral from Elevation Partners, a in isolation equity firm, months after on foot afar from a $550 million understanding to be acquired by Google.

While thousands of businesses have benefited from the broadside afforded by Yelp, most others contend they have suffered at the hands of infamous or astray reviewers and the incapacity to opt out of the site.

Driving anathema for Wales rugby star after inebriated golf cart float UK headlines

Andy Powell perceived a 15-month pushing anathema for his actions during celebrations of Wales"s win opposite Scotland. Photograph: Stephen Pond/Empics

Welsh general rugby player Andy Powell was currently criminialized from pushing for fifteen months after revelation pushing a golf cart whilst non-professional by splash after celebrating a important victory.

Powell, 28, was arrested at a main road use hire at connection 33 of the M4 hours after Wales had knocked about Scotland with 3 late scores in a thespian Six Nations clash. He was taken in to control with an additional man in the early hours of Feb fourteen nearby the Wales group road house in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Powell"s detain and the successive broadside surrounding the situation led to the behind row brazen being forsaken from the group the following day.

Powell, who plays for Cardiff Blues, pleaded guilty when he done his initial coming at Cardiff magistrates court.

The situation happened after Wales scored a try with the last move of their diversion opposite Scotland at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff after trailing by 10 points with only 10 mins to go. There were wild celebrations in the Welsh capital, mirrored, it would appear, by Powell.

Powell"s lawyer, Conrad Gadd, pronounced the player supposed he had been "foolish". Gadd said: "He is sentimental that any immature child who competence see him as a favourite competence think this poise is excusable and he wants to have it solid that it isn"t."

As well as the 15-month ban, Powell was fined £1,000 and systematic to compensate £85 costs and a £15 victims" surcharge.

BAA lost £277m on Gatwick sale Business The Guardian

Gatwic was sole by BAA to the US investment account GIP, owners of City airport, for £1.5bn. Photograph: Martin Godwin

BAA"s sale of Gatwick airfield last year carried a large monetary cost, the organisation certified today, as it reported an annual pre-tax loss of £821.9m.

The airfield owner"s total were strike by multiform non-cash charges together with £277.3m of waste associated to the sale of Britain"s second-largest airfield to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a US investment fund. The organisation arch executive, Colin Matthews, pronounced the write-down reflected the actuality that Gatwick was sole for less than the value on BAA"s books. GIP, owners of City airport, paid £1.5bn for the Sussex airport.

Matthews said: "We don"t bewail offered Gatwick. We got a great result but it was not a great year for offered airports and the write-down of £277m was a effect of that." BAA sole Gatwick after determining that the open mood, and a Competition Commission inquiry, done long-term tenure of the airfield untenable. It additionally helped strike scarcely £1bn off a poignant debt weight that right away stands at £8.5bn for BAA SP, the auxiliary that owns Heathrow and Stansted.

Revenues at BAA SP rose 8.3% to £1.97bn in 2009 notwithstanding Heathrow and Stansted estimate 3.3 million fewer passengers as the retrogression strike direct for air travel. Higher alighting fees – the theme of sour complaints from Ryanair and easyJet at Stansted – helped BAA enlarge turnover, whilst sell income, that accounts for scarcely a entertain of organisation revenues, rose by 4.8%. BAA took £665m value of charges in the results, with the Gatwick write-down assimilated by a £217.8m strike from the group"s grant intrigue and £117.4m value of waste associated to BAA"s debts.

Matthews pronounced BAA was underneath no vigour to sell an additional airfield notwithstanding confronting a debt remuneration of £1.56bn due in Apr 2011. The Competition Commission has systematic BAA to sell Stansted and one of the Scottish airports – Glasgow or Edinburgh – but that routine is on hold since the airfield organisation has appealed successfully opposite the outcome and the commission could be forced to re-run the complete inquiry. "Even if we don"t sell an airport, there are opposite mechanisms for re-financing that debt," pronounced Matthews.

BAA"s infancy shareholder, Ferrovial, validated the joining to the organisation last year by subsidy a £500m equity injection in to the company. The investment helped BAA launch dual bonds, that lifted £925m for the group.

Matthews additionally indicated BAA"s await for an pick high-speed rail track from London to Birmingham that runs by Heathrow. The supervision is accepted to be deliberation a track that connects to Heathrow around a coax or double back off Old Oak Common in west London. However, the Conservative celebration is thought to be meddlesome in a offer by Arup – the organisation that written the High Speed One track from London to the Channel hovel – that uses Heathrow as a vital rail heart on the main line. Matthews said: "From the Heathrow point of perspective we wish connectivity, so we will of march disagree for the most appropriate probable tie for passengers."

The Tories, who have affianced to set up a high-speed couple instead of a third runway, have indifferent the right to pull up a opposite London-to-Birmingham track if they win the election. The supervision is due to tell a high-speed rail white paper, together with a minute route, subsequent month.