Raul with Schalke

Raul insists he can help the new club Schalke to topple Bayern Munich and claim the Bundesliga title for the seventh time.
The 33-year Spaniard joined Schalke on a two-year contract in July after 16 years at Real Madrid.
Schalke finished second behind Bayern in the league last season but Raul believes they can do better this term and win the title for the first time since 1958.
"You can dream of winning the championship," said Raul Bild. "With the coach, we have [Felix Magath], anything is possible. He was champion with Bayern Munich and Wolfsburg.
"The first thing I said on arriving, that we must beat Dortmund but if we could not beat them, but potential champions, then everyone would be happy."

Israel's New rules for civilians bringing aid to Gaza

Israel's security cabinet said on Thursday he would "liberalize" the system that allows civilians to bring relief to Gaza. The decision comes after an international outcry over Israel's treatment of ships carrying aid to Gaza last month. A flotilla of ships trying to break Israel's blockade in Gaza was intercepted by warships May 31 Nine people on one ship were killed when the Israeli army gunfire and boarded it broke. Israel says its troops were attacked with knives, metal poles and other objects. The security cabinet said it would continue "existing safety procedures to prevent the influx of weapons and war material." Some Palestinian leaders quickly rejected move to Israel. "It's just for the aesthetics of the Israeli occupation," said Jamal al Khoudary, an independent member of Parliament from Gaza. "They run the international pressure."
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said the Hamas government rejects easing of the Israeli siege, insisting that it is completely lifted. Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency, said: "We need to see actions not words. The United Nations has said the blockade should be lifted. Collective punishment about 1.5 million people is illegal and must be completed, which ends with the lifting of the blockade. "

FIFA Games

Johannesburg, South Africa - If FIFA wants to really stop trademark unofficial advertising to the World Cup, we must consider relaxing its approach off the field.
By detaining and questioning 36 young women for wearing mini-dresses orange, FIFA has given a Dutch beer brand exposure she was looking for exactly. The practice of ambush marketing has made headlines around the world. It was even the new front page for a document of South Africa.
Nobody would talk about that now, if FIFA has simply ignored women. Two of them could end up in jail. Criminalized for wearing a bright, short dress, imprisoned alongside murderers and rapists. What good do it?
From the governing body of football of course the need to protect the rights of its authors. They pay billions of dollars for the exclusive use of the World Cup brand and the tournament is the main source of income of FIFA.
However, controversy mini-dresses have a logo the size of my little finger on the hem. They were not different from the bright orange worn held by most football-loving fans Netherlands.
FIFA does not care about football. The president Sepp Blatter has its detractors and sometimes may appear eccentric, but he is passionate about the game His organization rose to political interference in the affairs of unwanted national football associations, they invest in the base of the sport and help in charity work.
However, there is a congestion of companies threatening to stifle the natural joy of football life.
Rather than advertising for the fans, it's almost as if they are told what to eat, drink this, what car to drive and what the credit card to use. The message is: "Come to the World Cup - as long as you live your life like FIFA."
Where will it end? Football fans should stop wearing replica kits if they are made by an official sponsor of the World Cup? Countries will cancel the agreements with manufacturers of sportswear rival?
Why not simply hand out overalls FIFA plain ticket gates for all fans may look alike - happy clapping, vuvuzela-blowing machines in a sports stadium sterile, devoid of diversity and individual character.
As a sports journalist, I work normally afraid of crowds in football - they make my life a misery. But after the group match against Denmark and Holland, we filmed in the middle of 83,000 people without any problem at all.
Although it made my life easier, it has also raised concerns about the direction of increasing the company's World Cup seems to be moving in.

US raises stakes on Iran by sending in ships and missiles

Pentagon says Patriot shield will deter strike on American allies in the Gulf

Tension between the US and Iran heightened dramatically today with the disclosure that Barack Obama is deploying a missile shield to protect American allies in the Gulf from attack by Tehran.
The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to four countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait – and keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down Iranian missiles. Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia develop a force to protect its oil installations.
American officials said the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran and reassuring Gulf states fearful that Tehran might react to sanctions by striking at US allies in the region. Washington is also seeking to discourage Israel from a strike against Iran by demonstrating that the US is prepared to contain any threat.
The deployment comes after Obama's attempts to emphasise diplomacy over confrontation in dealing with Iran – a contrast to the Bush administration's approach – have failed to persuade Tehran to open its nuclear installations to international controls. The White House is now trying to engineer agreement for sanctions focused on Iran's Revolutionary Guard, believed to be in charge of the atomic programme.
Washington has not formally announced the deployment of the Patriots and other anti-missile systems, but by leaking it to American newspapers the administration is evidently seeking to alert Tehran to a hardening of its position.
The administration is deploying two Patriot batteries, capable of shooting down incoming missiles, in each of the four Gulf countries. Kuwait already has an older version of the missile, deployed after Iraq's invasion. Saudi Arabia has long had the missiles, as has Israel.
An unnamed senior administration official told the New York Times: "Our first goal is to deter the Iranians. A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don't feel they have to go nuclear themselves. But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well."
The chief of the US central command, General David Petraeus, said in a speech 10 days ago that countries in the region are concerned about Tehran's military ambitions and the prospect of it becoming a dominant power in the Gulf: "Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the Gulf front."
Petraeus said the US is keeping cruisers equipped with advanced anti-missile systems in the Gulf at all times to act as a buffer between Iran and the Gulf states.
Washington is also concerned at the threat of action by Israel, which is predicting that Iran will be able to build a nuclear missile within a year, a much faster timetable than assessed by the US, and is warning that it will not let Tehran come close to completion if diplomacy fails.
The director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, met the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and other senior officials in Jerusalem last week to discuss Iran.
Pro-Israel lobby groups in the US have joined Republican party leaders in trying to build public pressure on the administration to take a tougher line with Iran. One group, the Israel Project, has been running a TV campaign warning that Iran might supply nuclear weapons to terrorists.
"Imagine Washington DC under missile attack from nearby Baltimore," it says. "A nuclear Iran is a threat to peace, emboldens extremists, and could give nuclear materials to terrorists with the ability to strike anywhere."
Washington is also concerned that if Iran is able to build nuclear weapons, other states in the region will feel the need to follow. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to already have atomic bombs, although it does not officially acknowledge it.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said in London last week that the US will press for additional sanctions against Iran if it fails to curb its nuclear program.
Europe's foreign affairs minister, Catherine Ashton, today said the UN security council should now take up the issue. "We are worried about what's happening in Iran. I'm disappointed at the failure of Iran to accept the dialogue and we now need to look again at what needs to happen there," she told Sky News.
"The next step for us is to take our discussions into the security council. When I was meeting with Hillary Clinton last week we talked about Iran and we were very clear this is a problem we will have to deal with."
However, China and Russia are still pressing for a diplomatic solution.
Tony Blair, Middle East envoy on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU, continually referred to what he described as the Iranian threat during his evidence at the Chilcot inquiry last Friday. Textual analysis now shows that he mentioned Iran 58 times.
Besides the new missile deployment, Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia to create a 30,000-strong force to protect oil installations and other infrastructure, as well as expanded joint exercises between the US and military forces in the region.
The move is a continuation of the military build-up begun under former president George W Bush. In the past two years, Abu Dhabi has bought $17bn (£11bn) worth of weapons from the US, including the Patriot anti-missile batteries and an advanced anti-missile system. UAE recently bought 80 US-made fighter jets. It is also buying fighters from France.
Petraeus said in a speech in Bahrain last year the UAE air force "could take out the entire Iranian air force, I believe".
Patriot missiles are designed to intercept enemy missiles before they reach their target. Since production began in 1980, 9,000 missiles have been delivered to countries including Germany, Greece, Taiwan and Japan.
During the first Gulf war Patriot success was 70% in Saudi Arabia and 40% in Israel. Since then the US has spent more than $10bn (£6.3bn) improving, among other aspects, the system's radar and computer compatibility for joint forces action. Once in position, the system requires a crew of only three people to operate. Each missile weighs 700kg and has a range of about 100 miles.
The US navy is in the process of upgrading all its Ticonderoga class cruisers and a number of destroyers to carry the Aegis ballistic missile defence system. It uses a surface-to-air missile that is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles above the atmosphere. It has also been tested on failing satellites as they fall to earth. Each missile is over 6m long and costs more than $9m.

Chris McGreal in Washington
guardian.co.uk

Iran warns: it will make its own nuclear fuel

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran set a one-month deadline Saturday for the West to accept its counterproposal to a U.N.-drafted nuclear plan and warned that otherwise it will produce reactor fuel at a higher level of enrichment on its own.
The warning was a show of defiance and a hardening of Iran's stance over its nuclear program, which the West fears masks an effort to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran insists its program is only for peaceful purposes, such as electricity production, and says it has no intention of making a bomb.
"We have given them an ultimatum. There is one month left and that is by the end of January," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, speaking on state television.
Even if Tehran started working on the fuel production immediately, it would likely take years before it could master the technology to turn uranium enriched to the level of 20 percent into the fuel rods it needs for a medical research reactor.
Still, any threat to enrich uranium to a higher level is likely to rattle the world powers that have been trying to persuade Iran to forgo enrichment altogether.
Enrichment is at the center of the West's concerns because at high levels it can be used in making nuclear weapons. At lower levels, enriched uranium is used in the production of fuel for nuclear power plants.
Iran dismissed an end-of-2009 deadline imposed by the Obama administration and its international partners to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap most of its enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The deal would reduce Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, limiting—at least for the moment—its capability to make nuclear weapons.
The U.S. and its allies have demanded Iran accept the terms of the U.N.-brokered plan without changes.
Instead, Tehran came up with a counterproposal: to have the West either sell nuclear fuel to Iran, or swap its nuclear fuel for Iran's enriched uranium in smaller batches instead of at once as the U.N. plan requires.
This is unacceptable to the West because it would leave Tehran with enough enriched material to make nuclear arms.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, refused to comment Saturday on Iran's announcement of a one-month deadline. The U.S. State Department also had no immediate comment.
The U.N. deal has been the centerpiece of the West's latest diplomatic push to get Iran to scrap a key part of its nuclear work.
Under the plan, drafted in November, Iran would export most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium for further enrichment in Russia and France, where it would be converted into fuel rods. The rods, which Iran needs for the research reactor in Tehran, would be returned to the country about a year later.
Exporting the uranium would temporarily leave Iran without enough of a stockpile to further enrich the uranium into material for a nuclear warhead, and the rods that are returned cannot be processed further for use in making weapons.
"They (the West) must decide on supplying fuel for the Tehran reactor on one of the two offers—purchase or swap," Mottaki said. "Otherwise, the Islamic Republic of Iran will produce the 20 percent enriched fuel with its own capable experts."
Iran currently has one operating enrichment facility that churns out enriched uranium at a level of 3.5 percent. The country needs fuel enriched to 20 percent to power the Tehran medical research reactor. For nuclear weapons, uranium needs to be enriched to 90 percent or more.
The U.N. has demanded Iran suspend all enrichment, a demand Tehran refuses to meet, saying it has a right to develop the technology under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iran has also defiantly announced it intends to build 10 new uranium enrichment sites, drawing a forceful rebuke from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency and warnings of the possibility of new U.N. sanctions.
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press

Obama wants answers

Obama wants answers after botched terror attack
HONOLULU – President Barack Obama is demanding answers on why information was never pieced together by the U.S. intelligence community to trigger red flags about an alleged terrorist and possibly prevent his botched Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner.
Administration officials are poring over reams of data, looking for failings that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian with suspected ties to al-Qaida, to board the Northwest Airlines flight from Nigeria by way of Amsterdam.
Obama's criticism came as senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press that intelligence authorities now are looking at conversations between the suspect in the failed attack and at least one al-Qaida member. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the conversations were vague or coded, but the intelligence community believes that, in hindsight, the communications may have been referring to the Detroit attack. One official said a link between the suspect's planning and al-Qaida's goals was becoming clearer.
The New York Times reported in Wednesday's editions that the government had intelligence from Yemen before Christmas that leaders of a branch of al-Qaida there were talking about "a Nigerian" being prepared for a terrorist attack. The newspaper said the information did not include the name of the Nigerian.
Obama's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, is due to present the president with an early report by Thursday, based on recommendations and summaries from across the government.
"There were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have — and should have — been pieced together," Obama said in a brief statement to reporters Tuesday.
"Had this critical information been shared, it could have been compiled with other intelligence, and a fuller, clearer picture of the suspect would have emerged," Obama said. "The warning signs would have triggered red flags, and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America."
Senior administration officials said the system to protect the nation's skies was deeply flawed and, even then, the government failed to follow its own directives. They described a breakdown that would have been much worse had Abdulmutallab been successful; an angry Obama called the situation "totally unacceptable."
"It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on a no-fly list," Obama said.
Obama first spoke to reporters Monday after three days of silence. On Tuesday, he chided officials for what he called a "potential catastrophic breach of security." Critics have questioned why Obama didn't talk sooner about the issue publicly.
Officials said Obama chose to make his second statement in as many days after a morning briefing offered him new information about the suspect's activities and thinking, along with al-Qaida's plans.
It will take weeks for a more comprehensive investigation into what allowed Abdulmutallab to board the airliner he is accused of trying to blow up with more than 300 people aboard. Law enforcement officials believe the suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation. Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to destroy an aircraft, is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich.
Abdulmutallab had been placed in one expansive database, but he never made it onto more restrictive lists that would have caught the attention of U.S. counterterrorist screeners, despite his father's warnings to U.S. Embassy officials in Nigeria last month. Those warnings also did not result in Abdulmutallab's U.S. visa being revoked.
Intelligence officials began laying blame on other agencies.
The CIA said it worked with embassy officials to make sure that Abdulmutallab's name made it into the government's database of suspected terrorists and noted his potential extremist connections in Yemen. The CIA said it forwarded that information to the National Counterterrorism Center.
Intelligence officials say they learned the suspect's name in November, when his father came to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him.
One U.S. intelligence official said Abdulmutallab's father didn't provide sufficient information to earn him a spot on the no-fly list.
"Abdulmutallab's father didn't say his son was a terrorist, let alone planning an attack. Not at all," the official said on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. "I'm not aware of some magic piece of intelligence that suddenly would have flagged this guy — whose name nobody even had until November — as a killer en route to America, let alone something that anybody withheld."
Officials in Yemen were investigating whether Abdulmutallab spent time with al-Qaida militants there during the months leading up to Friday's attack.

By PHILIP ELLIOTT and LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press

Charlie Sheen Arrested

ASPEN, Colo. – Authorities say actor Charlie Sheen has been accused of using a weapon in an alleged case of domestic violence in Aspen.
Sheen spent part of Christmas Day in jail after being arrested at a home in the Colorado ski resort town.
Police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro did not provide details on what kind of weapon Sheen is accused of using.
Sheen also was arrested on investigation of second-degree assault, a felony, and criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.
Sheen's lawyer didn't return a telephone call Sunday seeking comment.
Sheen hasn't been charged and was released Friday after posting an $8,500 bond. Prosecutors will determine whether to file charges.