simblr.com

First and foremost, my thanks to readers and those who took the time to read and respond to my commentary on the death of Eight Belles and thoroughbred horse racing. Whether you agreed or disagreed, the debate provided more than a few talking points for both sides.
As a follow-up, I am both dismayed and insulted by the actions of PETA in the wake of this tragedy. The call for punishment of the jockey was at the same time laughable and misguided. PETA's action in this case only help to feed the argument from those who feel, and rightly so many times, that in attempting to stop the cruelty of animals PETA often brings nothing but ridicule on themselves for illogical public relations stunts.
PETA had a chance to use this event as a new starting point for meaningful change and dialogue, but buried those good intentions in a morass of pathetic controversy. Too often PETA wants to be the story instead of addressing the story. In this instance, they only helped to damage not only their credibility, but that of those who look upon this as a passionate debate that needs sensible solutions. Gabriel Saez can no more be held accountable for the death of Eight Belles than Edgar Prado could be blamed for the death of Barbaro.
I am heartened to see more than one faction in the thoroughbred industry address the issue, though I will admit to waiting for more than lip service. The Jockey Club has formed a seven-person panel that will examine breeding practices, track surfaces, medication, and racing rules.
The Thoroughbred Safety Committee, part of the National Thoroughbred Racing Alliance, has announced its own fact-finding group as well. However, I must admit that even the casual observer would raise more than one eyebrow at the statement issued by NTRA President Alex Waldrop. According to him, their panel will—and I quote—"provide the examination of the horse welfare and safety issues so badly needed in the wake of recent catastrophic injuries."

bleacherreport.com

IN A LESS politically charged era, the bus would leave Mexico City at 4 p.m. on Wednesday and begin the long journey northward. By the following morning, the 44 passengers on board would disembark at the Laredo, Texas, border and be cleared through customs into the United States. There, they would board an American bus that would take them across Texas and up through the South to Virginia, where they would begin the crawl up I-95 to Delaware. The 62-hour trip would finally end on Saturday in the emerging dawn at Delaware Park, where the yawning travelers would be given the low-paying jobs that are the backbone of the $1 billion thoroughbred racing industry: the care and feeding of horses.
But the buses did not run this year to Delaware Park and elsewhere due to the expiration last fall of the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act of 2005, which had enabled workers such as 35-year-old Ruth Luna Martinez to escape the unrelenting poverty of Mexico and secure seasonal employment in the United States. With two daughters to support and no husband to help her, Martinez earns just a few dollars each day selling clothing at an outdoor bazaar. Only that level of desperation could have impelled her to leave her children with her sister for close to a year and come to the United States to work at Delaware Park. While Martinez knows people who are so impoverished that they have spoken of crossing the border illegally, she says from Mexico through an interpreter that she knows of a woman who was raped and decapitated at the border and adds, "So it is better to wait and come legally."
The pitched battle over immigration has claimed not just individual casualties such as Martinez but threatened the stability of the horse-racing industry, which is mired in a worker shortage due to the decrease in the number of H-2B guest-worker visas issued by the Department of Homeland Security. While there has been a cap of 66,000 such visas issued each year since 1990, the SOSSB Act of 2005 provided an exemption to foreign laborers who had previous H-2B visa status. Some 250,000 visas were issued because of that in 2007, but the ceiling reverted to 66,000 when Congress did not act to extend the previous legislation. Hospitality, landscaping and tourism are just some of the seasonal industries that have been affected along with horse racing, where experts say the labor shortage numbers in the "tens of thousands." With an estimated 20 million undocumented workers in the United States, some reasonably speculate that is precisely how the shortfall is being addressed.

philly.com

The Hamilton Spectator
ON THE AIR
Aussie Rules: 2:30 a.m.: Aussie Rules Football AFL Carlton Blues vs. Port Adelaide Power (SET)
Auto Racing: 10 a.m.: NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice (S AT&T Ch. 15 D) 10 a.m.: Course automobile F1 Grand Prix du Canada practice (S AT&T Ch. 15 D) 11 a.m.: Rolex Sports Car Series (S AT&T Ch. 15 D) 12:30 p.m.: Course automobile F1 Grand Prix du Canada qualifications (S AT&T Ch. 15 D) 2:30 p.m.: Rolex Sports Car Series (S AT&T Ch. 15 D) 5:30 p.m.: NASCAR Sprint Cup Series final practice (S AT&T Ch. 15 D) 7:30 p.m.: NASCAR Nationwide Series Federated Auto Parts 300 (TS AT&T Ch. 13)
Baseball: 1 p.m.: MLB Baltimore vs. Toronto (5)3:30 p.m.: Seattle vs. Boston (29) 7 p.m.: Philadelphia vs. Atlanta ( AT&T Ch. 15 EACH) 7 p.m.: Minnesota vs. Chicago (WG AT&T Ch. 13)
Basketball: 8 p.m.: WNBA Houston Comets vs. Indiana Fever (RA AT&T Ch. 15 T)
Boxing: 10 p.m.: HBO Championship Pavlik vs. Lockett (TS AT&T Ch. 13)
Equestrian: 4 p.m.: CN Grand Prix Show Jumping (5)
Golf: 8 a.m.: EPGA Bank Austria Open (GLF) 2 p.m.: Michael Douglas and Friends Tournament (2) 3 p.m.: PGA Stanford St. Jude Championship (4)(11) 4 p.m.: LPGA McDonald’s Championship (GLF)
Gymnastics: 4 p.m.: United States Championships Women’s (2)
Horse Racing: 5 p.m.: Belmont Stakes (TS AT&T Ch. 13) 5:30 p.m.: NTRA 140th Belmont Stakes (7)
Rugby: 8:30 a.m.: Summer Tour Wales vs. South Africa (SET) 11 a.m.: IRB Pacific Nations Cup Samoa vs. Fiji (SET) 1 p.m.: Barclay’s Churchill Cup England Saxons vs. USA (SET) 4 p.m.: Barclay’s Churchill Cup Scotland A vs. Canada (SET)
Soccer: 11:50 a.m.: UEFA Switzerland vs. Czech Republic Euro Cup (TS AT&T Ch. 13)( AT&T Ch. 14 M AT&T Ch. 13I1)( AT&T Ch. 14 M AT&T Ch. 13I2) 2:30 p.m.: UEFA Portugal vs. Turkey Euro Cup (TS AT&T Ch. 13)(RDS)( AT&T Ch. 14 M AT&T Ch. 13I1)

thespec.com

DENVER — So much for the Nuggets’ supposed advantage on their home court. What’s left for them to try next?
If the Nuggets were back among the people who love them, it was hard to tell Saturday when one fan yelled “Let’s go Lakers” and another answered “Go back to L.A.”
And that was just while they played the national anthem.
By the end, what remained of the crowd wasn’t even enough to shout down the fans wearing gold Lakers jerseys who chanted, “MVP!”
Then there was the game, which the Nuggets hoped to make a track meet but the Lakers turned into “Dancing with the Stars,” controlling the tempo in a 102-84 waltz for a stranglehold 3-0 lead in their first-round series.
The Nuggets were 33-8 at home during the regular season, averaging 113 points.
On the other hand, they’re not in the regular season any more.
“Very few teams have had the ability to do what L.A. did to us tonight,” Denver Coach George Karl said.
“Teams have slowed us down, frustrated us to the point where we’re broken apart a little, but in general we’ve been an offensive machine.”
With two days off after losing the first two games in Los Angeles, including their 12-assist, 14-turnover performance in Game 2, the Nuggets had time to take a hard look at . . . everyone else?
Yes, J.R. Smith alleged the Nuggets had let the referees get into their heads (”It’s hard not to”) which would, at least, account for those six technical fouls they got.
Then there was Kenyon Martin, whose habit of talking trash to people he guards wasn’t working too well with Kobe Bryant, who dropped 49 on him in Game 2.
“It’s one game,” Martin said. “People talk trash, it happens, it’s over. If we start up again in Game 3, then we’ll revisit it but I want to win a basketball game….

latimes.com

In the summer of 2005, just a few days after Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip, Ehud Olmert, who was then minister of industry and trade, wrote a personal letter to Condoleezza Rice. Dear Secretary of State, he wrote, I would like to let you know about an art exhibition of my wife, Aliza Olmert, which is currently on show in Washington. I thought to myself, he wrote, that you would like to see more of her works. Rice was one of the hundreds of the prominent and the affluent who were invited in 2005 to visit Aliza Olmert’s solo exhibition, “Tikkun,” across the United States. The exhibition consisted of photographs of cracked eggshells held together by metal wires, as a metaphor for the fragility of life and the desire to heal rifts.
An employee of Ehud Olmert’s bureau was recruited for the task of inviting the VIPs. Rachael Risby-Raz, who was Olmert’s foreign relations adviser, handled the minister’s extensive ties with his counterparts in foreign governments and with his many overseas friends and acquaintances. (She is currently Prime Minister Olmert’s diaspora affairs adviser.) In the weeks preceding the 2005 exhibition, Risby-Raz sent out personal invitations on official Industry and Trade Ministry letterhead paper to dozens of people. Some of them were also invited to attend a private dinner held in the artist’s honor at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in Manhattan to mark the launch of the exhibition there. Risby-Raz looked after this personally. She was also in constant and continuous contact with the museum’s director, Jean Bloch Rosensaft and her staff, as well as with the selected invitees, to ensure that they would participate in the event.
Most of the expenses of this private visit, which was intended to promote the economic and artistic success of the wife of a high-ranking Israeli minister, were paid for by the Industry and Trade Ministry. Accommodation for security guards: $2,260; flights for security guards: $7,687; vehicle rentals: $1,544. Risby-Raz was also in charge of ordering the plane tickets for the Olmerts, who during their stay in New York celebrated the Passover seder with their son Shaul and the family of his wife Vardit.

haaretz.com

Scott Studwell plans to bring a few board games to work today. When he gets to Winter Park, maybe he’ll take a jog. "Or watch NASCAR," Studwell said, laughing.
Without a first-round pick for the first time in 16 years, the Vikings will have plenty of time on their hands Saturday as they await some action. After giving up the No. 17 overall pick to acquire defensive end Jared Allen from Kansas City, the Vikings are not positioned to select a player until midway through the second round (No. 47 overall).
So despite new draft rules that limit teams to 10 minutes between picks in the first round and seven minutes in the second, the Vikings likely will remain idle until approximately 9 p.m. — seven hours after the draft’s 2 p.m. start.
But Studwell, who as director of college scouting spends his entire year preparing for the draft, said the idle time means the Vikings already have accomplished one of their draft goals.
"We’re not disappointed about losing the picks because we don’t feel like we lost them," Studwell said Thursday.
"We traded them for a great player,” Studwell added. "There were certain positions in the draft that we have targeted that we think would help our football team in certain areas of need, and obviously defensive end was one of them."
Both Studwell and Rick Spielman, vice president of player personnel, said the Vikings have spent long hours discussing the first round even as it grew increasingly clear this week that they would not have a pick. Then they moved on to the second round, spending five consecutive hours on it recently. Spielman said that discussion involved "a little bit more guesswork" but that the Vikings have narrowed their priorities to "four or five guys" they hope will be available at No. 47.

startribune.com

A strange, some would say downright bizarre, social experiment has been taking place in the Whitworth house these past few months. This was not a deliberate undertaking, but evolved from the circumstances in which we found ourselves.
When we returned to re-occupy our home in January and co-habit with the builders who had long overstayed their welcome, our television set was in the garage. It remained there, covered in a thickening film of mouldy fuzz, while the builders undertook an heroic effort to make the construction of St Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague look like a rush job.
For three and a half months we haven’t had a television. For pretty much all my life there has been a TV sitting in the corner of the living room. Whenever I have been in the living room with nothing else to do, or, indeed when I have had plenty to do, I have switched it on for a bit of gormless channel surfing.
Our kids quickly learned to appeal for “ten minutes of TV” several times a day. More often than not we would let them have it. As all parents know, TV is a wonder drug when you need to get ready to go out or want some peace and quiet. But the weird thing is how quickly and easily we have got out of the habit. Somehow, I don’t find myself needing to stick them in front of the box and they seem to find other things to do. And as an adult it does liberate time (although, curiously, it doesn’t feel like that much time).
Now, it would be wrong to say that we are 100 percent TV free. We have discovered the BBC’s iPlayer, the fabulous service accused last week of overloading the internet. Occasionally we have given the kids a recent episode of one of their favourite programmes. But we haven’t done it much, and as long as the laptop is kept out of sight they usually forget to ask for it. We also download the odd programme to watch in bed, but haven’t yet managed to stay awake for more than 20 minutes.

timesonline.co.uk

Patrick Vieira believes Liverpool will win this season’s UEFA Champions League, but is desperate for his former club Arsenal to lift the trophy.
The Internazionale midfielder witnessed first hand Liverpool’s European expertise on Tuesday as the Italian giants were dumped out of the last 16 of the competition 3-0 on aggregate following a 1-0 defeat at the Giuseppe Meazza.
Liverpool have reached two of the last three Champions League finals, including winning the competition in 2005, and Vieira believes that the Reds are again well placed to sample glory in Moscow on 21st May.
“Liverpool were tough opponents and they can go on and win it now,” said Vieira. “They have done it before and they know exactly what it is about at this stage.
“They are in the last eight, so of course they have a great chance now but you also have to say they are the most experienced of all the sides left in the competition.
“They know how to get through these ties, as they showed against us, and they know how to win the cup. They are the side the others will want to avoid now.”
However, Vieira - who left Arsenal in 2005 for a brief stay with Juventus before joining Inter the following year - is eager for his former club to win their first European Cup.

read_more

Football traditions wax and wane. Wooden rattles and bobble hats are out. Jester hats and Jeff Stelling are in. One new tradition to have emerged in the past 10 years is the annual bout of ‘things ain’t what they used to be’ handwringing over the demise of the FA Cup.
Until last weekend, that is. In two topsy-turvy days the FA Cup delivered three cup shocks. As a result, this year’s semi-finals will feature none of the big four clubs and only one representative from the top flight – Portsmouth. The last time that the semis featured three teams from outside the top flight was in 1908.
All week there’s been a notable mood of elation amongst football fans. The ABU brigade (Anyone But United, in case you were wondering) who’d become Pompey fans for the day were cheering. Admittedly, Middlesborough are nobody’s idea of a Goliath but few expected Cardiff to win so comfortably. For me, however, the highlight of the weekend was Barnsley’s 1-0 win over Chelsea. It wasn’t just the spectacle of the cup holders being humbled by a team from the lower reaches of the Championship. Whisper it, but I really enjoyed the pitch invasion at the end. It was just like the good old days. I loved the sheer chaotic unruliness of it all. Fans running onto the pitch before and after the final whistle. Players being mobbed. Now that’s what I call FA cup magic.

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As a tennis pro, he played in every major tournamnet including the US Open and Wimbledon during a nine-year career span. Then, movies beckoned and over the last two decades, he has produced 80 movies including star- studded grossers like Bring Down The House and Raising Helen.
The first South-Asian producer in Club West, he now aims to introduce Indian talent in Hollywood. Ashok Amritraj connects with Roshmila Bhattacharya over cups of cappuccino..
It’s said that India is the flavour of the season. Would you agree?
It’s more like the flavour of the decade. The economy is booming but surprisingly, the entertainment industry, despite all the multiplexes, is lagging far behind the rest of India.
We have just 10 saleable stars in Hindi cinema and about six in Tamil. We need to create new talent. I did it in Hollywood when I introduced Jean Claude Van Damme in Double Impact.
Is that what brings you to India?
My parents live in Chennai and I try to visit them as often as possible. As I’m growing older, I’m drawn to India more. I enjoy the country, its people and I’m addicted to the food. I can’t do without my rotis, sabzis, daal and chicken curry for more than 24 hours. I can see the signs of wealth and civilization all around me.. Prada, Gucci and McDonald’s. I just hope that they don’t take away the essence of what brings me home.
“We have just 10 saleable stars in Hindi cinema and about six in Tamil. We need to create new talent. I did it in Hollywood when I introduced Jean Claude Van Damme in Double Impact.”
And what would that be?
The family bonds.. In the U S, channels and the computer have taken away the need for conversation. I still insist on eating dinner together with the family so that we can catch up.
Every three-four months, my brothers (Vijay and Anand) and I try to get together at my place in Los Angeles. We exchange stories over a glass of red wine and Indian khana. I enjoy listening to stories and telling my own. That’s why I got into the movies.
You haven’t made an Indian film since Jeans.
After Jeans, I’ve made 40 Hollywood films. But now that Hyde Park Entertainment is a global independent company making four-five films a year, I’m in a position to zero in on Asian talent. I’m working on an epic extravaganza, Frozen Flowers in South Korea.
The Other Side of the Line will introduce Shreya Saran to the west along with Tara Sharma and Anupam Kher. Then, there’s Gateway, India’s first reality show on film-making, which will give Hollywood a director from India.
What about an Indian crossover movie?
I don’t like the word ‘crossover’. An Indian film in English about NRIs is not likely to work with the white Americans.. nor is the complete Bollywood package. But Indian talent can be tapped to tell cross-cultural stories.
I’d like to make a film about contemporary India. It surprises me that children here are more pro gressive than my kids who’ve grown up in LA, yet rooted in their culture. It’s a fascinating study of contrasts.
Do you watch Bollywood films?
I’ve been watching a lot lately, since I’m on the Filmfare Awards jury. It’s interesting to see that we’ve moved out of the stereotype and are telling more varied stories. Films like Bheja Fry and Cheeni Kum are making money.

hindustantimes.com