Monday, December 15, 2008

Africa News Today - Cartoon Morten Morland; Peter Brookes - Nature Notes



Morten Morland cartoon

Peter Brookes

Brookes Cartoon
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Brookes Cartoon
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Nature Notes


Brookes Cartoon

Africa News Today - Wayne Rooney cleared after stamping accusations

Kasper Risgard complained that Rooney had left stud marks on his chest

(EMPICS Sport/PA)

Kasper Risgard complained that Rooney had left stud marks on his chest

Wayne Rooney will not face disciplinary action from Uefa after he was accused of stamping on an opponent during the 2-2 Champions League draw with Aalborg last week.

The Manchester United striker has escaped punishment after Uefa studied video evidence of the incident. Kasper Risgard, the Aalborg midfield player, complained that he had Rooney's stud marks on his chest after an ugly tangle with the United forward four minutes before half-time. Rooney escaped punishment from Laurent Duhamel, the French referee but Uefa's control and disciplinary body said they would look into the incident using video evidence.

However, after reviewing the challenge Uefa insist Rooney will not face punishment.

"Uefa will not open any disciplinary proceedings against Wayne Rooney," a statement read.

Had Rooney been found guilty, he could have been suspended for at least the first leg of the first knockout round when the Champions League resumes in February.


timesonline.co.uk

Africa News Today - Turkeys! The 100 Worst Movies of 2008 Our critics hated them, but audiences lured by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns defied our advice. Do you agree with our selection of the worst films of 2008? Click film titles for revi

Turkeys! The 100 Worst Movies of 2008

Our critics hated them, but audiences lured by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns defied our advice. Do you agree with our selection of the worst films of 2008? Click film titles for reviews. Have your say below

The Hottie and The Nottie: starring Paris Hilton

Hottie and Nottie: the director dribbles over Paris Hilton as myopically as his hapless hero does

Image :1 of 15

100: The Hottie & The Nottie
"The most eagerly hated movie in America is a tongue-in-cheek homage to Paris Hilton that has drawn nothing but poisonous reviews. On IMDb it has been voted the worst film ever made" - James Christopher

99: Sex and the City
"Everything great about the series has been lost in transition. The fizz has gone, the fun looks fake and the laughs are few" - Cosmo Landesman

98: The Incredible Hulk
"Millions of dollars of computer software at their disposal and the best they can come up with is something that looks like angry Plasticine" - Wendy Ide

97: Wanted
"A movie ruthlessly designed for an audience of comic nerds who suspect that they are destined for greater things" - Kevin Maher

96: My Blueberry Nights
"Wong Kar Wai's first English-language film, and I, for one, hope it will be his last. Something got lost in the translation: his talent" - Cosmo Landesman

95: Easy Virtue
"A criminal waste of Colin Firth – arguably the most charming man in British cinema – in a role that requires him to shuffle around looking like an unmade bed" - Wendy Ide

94: Zack and Miri Make a Porno
"Seth Rogen is an amiable and chubby clown, and quite possibly the most unconvincing romantic hero since Adam Sandler. The most soppy and unsexy 18-certificate skin-flick ever made" - James Christopher

93: Hannah Montana
"Miley Cyrus hails from the Hilary Duff school of wholesome, squeaky-clean candy pop. She comes across as another (fake) blonde singing vacuous fluff, complete with pushy stage mom" - Saadeya Shamsuddin

92: The Oxford Murders
"Imagine The Da Vinci Code remade by a philosophy student, set mostly in Oxford bedsits starring Elijah Wood in the Tom Hanks role, and featuring the world's most unerotic sex scene" - Kevin Maher

91: Mister Lonely
"Harmony Korine's bizarre film about a group of celebrity impersonators who hole up in a Scottish castle: gives The Cottage a respectable run for its money in terms of making no sense at all" - James Christopher

90: The X-Files: I Want to Believe
"It's just not very good; it's an average episode of the TV series stretched to feature length" - Wendy Ide

89: Fine, Totally Fine
"If you're someone who can never have enough Hello Kitty merchandise, this might be just the film for you, but I would have found it hard to bear even without the winsome music that dribbles through every scene" - Edward Porter

88: The Good Night
"While I hate to start chucking around charges of nepotism, I find it hard to believe Gwyneth Paltrow would have signed up were it not written and directed by her little brother" - Wendy Ide

87: Leatherheads
"Oh dear. You have to love George Clooney or American football a lot to want to see this one" - Cosmo Landesman

86: The Bank Job
"The realism here doesn't bear much scrutiny, unless the London of 1971 was populated exclusively by decent criminals, bent coppers, topless barmaids and sinister Whitehall toffs in S&M knocking shops" - Kevin Maher

85: Penelope
"Christina Ricci dons a prosthetic pig's nose as a woman bearing the brunt of her family's curse. The curse can be broken only when Ricci sacks the agent advising her to take films like this" - Wendy Ide

84: Speed Racer
"I can't begin to describe how creepy this futuristic movie is. The famous actors look more plastic than the sets and the plot is a video game" - James Christopher

83: Cassandra's Dream
"Ultimately, the accents are excruciating, the class observations simplistic (everyone is either posh or poor) and the sense of place muddled at best" - Kevin Maher

82: The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
"Talky, tediously overlong and crammed with kitsch, postcard-pretty country scenery; culminates in a cross-dressing pseudo-lesbian clinch" - Wendy Ide

81: City of Ember
"Looks like an early Heath Robinson experiment. The sets are held together by bits of string, and the costumes are supplied by Oxfam" - James Christopher

80: 10,000 BC
"Don't expect Roland Emmerich's film to make much sense, historically, geographically or logically. This is an effects-driven action flick that happens to be wearing a leather loincloth and brandishing a spear" - Wendy Ide

79: Flawless
"Demi Moore still boasts the best voice in the business (an alluring mix of sandpaper on granite, with a dash of honey), but as an actor she is here frequently upstaged by the magnificent foyer of the Grand Theatre in Luxembourg" - Kevin Maher

78: Taken
"A corny, dumb and sentimental tale of revenge by a Superdad terminator who rampages through Paris, wasting bad guys" - Cosmo Landesman

77: Jumper
"Samuel L. Jackson valiantly attempts to look menacing while wearing what looks like a white rubber bathing cap on his head" - Wendy Ide

76: The Chaser
"In the latest scuzzy, violent thriller to reach us from South Korea, a cop turned pimp roams through the lower depths of Seoul in search of one of his prostitutes" - Edward Porter

75: Ghost Town
"Ricky Gervais gets his first leading role in a Hollywood film, but the film's premise is high-concept Hollywood at its creakiest" - Wendy Ide

74: Nights in Rodanthe
"Shamelessly manipulative but too short and sketchy to provide a good wallow: has to make do with Diane Lane's sympathetic presence and Richard Gere's squinty emoting" - Tom Charity

73: Prom Night
"Hoary horror devices are done to death: mirrors reveal the killer's presence; terrified girls lose their clothes during chase scenes, then walk backwards into peril" - Wendy Ide

72: Vantage Point
"Precisely halfway through a plot development of such absurdity causes the whole thing to go down with all hands." - Peter Whittle

71: 21
"Kevin Spacey blackjack movie that gets lost in confused moralising about the need for hard work and honesty while simultaneously celebrating the allure of Las Vegas and the quick, dishonest buck" - Kevin Maher

70: Diary of the Dead
"The horror is toothily familiar. Amazingly, not one of the (living) characters has ever seen a zombie movie" - James Christopher

69: Pineapple Express
"If you are 18 and always stoned out of your brain: seek help. Should you see this film, you will think it really funny, but then your brain is like scrambled egg. Come back Cheech and Chong, all is forgiven!" - Cosmo Landesman

68: Made of Honour
"Call me old-fashioned if you will, but isn't the point of a romantic comedy for the audience to fall in love a little bit – if not with the protagonists, then at least with the idea of their relationship?" - Wendy Ide

67: Brideshead Revisited
"The melodrama is so damp and overwrought it's hard to care about these old ghosts" - James Christopher

66: Forgetting Sarah Marshall
"Russell Brand plays a louche rock star as to the manner born, but Judd Apatow's production is just forgettable" - Wendy Ide

65: Mirrors
"A flat, ponderous and at times unintentionally funny horror. Yes, I know it's meant to be some sort of comment on our narcissistic consumer society, but it's not even scary" - Cosmo Landesman

64: Redbelt
"David Mamet intends this to have the irony-free spirit of a Rocky film, but he comes close to the stuff of a frat-pack sports-movie parody" - Edward Porter

63: Get Smart
"It's probably inch perfect, but from this distance it looks like a rejected chapter from the Naked Gun franchise, and infinitely more wooden" - James Christopher

62: Death Defying Acts
"There's not a moment in the film that feels honest and uncontrived. Zeta-Jones looks more like a well-fed Persian cat than a starving music-hall artiste" - Wendy Ide

61: Freebird
"A cast of D-list actors on a brief respite from the dole? Proof that there are few things more tedious than other people's drug experiences" - Wendy Ide

60: Steep
"Combines awe-inspiring photography with some of the most inane drivel about life-changing experiences and profound bonds with Nature you're ever likely to hear" - Wendy Ide

59: The House Bunny
"Bimbo with heart of gold triumphs over snobbery and stereotypes - a standard teen-frat film, but from a female point of view. Frankly, this is one unfunny, vapid bunny I'd like to boil" - Cosmo Landesman

58: Priceless
"Beneath its frothy and "comic" surface lies a cynical, smug and morally imbecilic film that thinks people who exchange sex for money and expensive clothes are rather cute and amusing" - Edward Porter

57: The Eye
"The Sixth Sense twists are as remarkable as pasteurised cheese. The shrieking fright moments break every EU rule about decibel levels" - James Christopher

56: 27 Dresses
"The latest romantic comedy which posits that a woman is somehow incomplete until she has a ring on her finger and a billowing meringue of a dress" - Wendy Ide

55: The Lost City
"Andy Garcia's preposterous vanity project is an all-singing, all-dancing version of the Cuban Revolution. But all is not well in Havana" - James Christopher

54: Back to Normandy
"The interviews are mostly mundane affairs, there is the occasional whiff of the vanity project, and the running time, given the nature of the material, is inexcusable" - Peter Whittle

53: Flashbacks of a Fool
"For a fool, the protagonist of Baillie Walsh's film (played by Daniel Craig) is doing all right. A weirdly pointless film" - Edward Porter

52: Shutter
"From the producers of The Grudge and The Ring comes The Camera – at least, that's what this bland attempt at Asian horror should have been called" - Cosmo Landesman

51: Step Up 2 the Streets
"If there is any mileage left in making films about troubled teenagers expressing themselves through hip-hop, there certainly isn't for doing it with the streams of clichés spouted in this sequel" - Louise Cohen

50: Dan In Real Life
"I was trying to garrotte myself even before the characters started telling each other that "love isn't a feeling, it's an ability" - Edward Porter

49: Babylon AD
"I have a soft spot for Vin Diesel, but it was sorely tested by this slapdash sci-fi effort, which, with its rather sudden ending, seems to have mislaid a whole section of its script" - Peter Whittle

48: Street Kings
"LAPD's finest, Keanu Reeves, blows holes through Korean paedophiles, bent cops, crazed pimps and drug dealers to clean out the corrupt law enforcers and bring order to America" - James Christopher

47: Body of Lies
"Ridley Scott's expensive adventure is a lump of indigestible paranoia. Leonardo DiCaprio is the most gifted CIA agent who has ever glued on a beard in Iraq" - James Christopher

46: Untraceable
"The presence of Diane Lane usually guarantees some class, but not even her turn as an FBI agent can save this nasty, grimy-looking thriller" - Peter Whittle

45: Then She Found Me
"After some laboured attempts at Nora Ephron-style comedy, the film bottoms out as a schmaltzy tale of one woman's stoicism, with a jarring cameo from Salman Rushdie" - Edward Porter

44: Four Christmases
"This crass comedy extinguishes any seasonal goodwill within minutes – it may be the least festive Christmas film yet made" - Tom Charity

43: Botched
"British/German/Irish co-production set in Moscow, featuring a supporting cast of British and Irish character actors wrestling with Russian accents as thick as borscht" - Wendy Ide

42: The Air I Breath
"Full of dumb symbols – meaningless shots of irrelevant objects that strain for significance in a movie completely devoid of the same" - Kevin Maher

41: Fools Gold
"A ghastly romantic comedy about a race to find a 17th-century Spanish wreck full of treasure. Completely dead behind the eyes" - James Christopher

40: Superhero Movie
"A "parody movie" that parodies Spider-Man, Batman and X-Men. By parody, of course, I mean copying the original movie and inserting lots of fart jokes" - Kevin Mahier

39: Max Payne
"Mark Wahlberg trudges through this dull cod-noir fantasy with his standard bemused grimace — not quite a bulldog chewing a wasp, more a bulldog vexed by a wasp alighting on its nose" - Edward Porter

38: Incendiary
"Another grief movie, but one that goes for the jugular with a blunt hatchet: plunges straight down that treacherous black hole that exists between fact and fiction and the inability to replicate either" - Kevin Maher

37: The Accidental Husband
"The mutual attraction between Emma and Patrick is a preposterous piece of plotting: she's a highly-strung Manhattan princess; he's a soccer-playing, beer-swilling, blue-collar bloke" - Wendy Ide

36: Make It Happen
"It could be a contemporary take on classic backstage musicals such as Easter Parade or Kiss Me Kate. Or it could be the end of the cinematic arts as we know them" - Kevin Maher

35: The Rocker
"As rock-based comedies go, this has to be one of the worst in living memory. The music is uninspired pastiche and the comedy is infantile and unoriginal" - Cosmo Landesman

34: Teeth
"The myth of the "vagina dentata" is interpreted all too literally in this amateurish comedy horror. A shoddy and distasteful piece of work that equates female sexuality with violent revenge" - Wendy Ide

33: Strange Wilderness
"It plays like a series of outtakes from the floor of a cutting room reserved for feeble movies" - Edward Porter

32: Irina Palm
"Casting Marianne Faithful as a dowdy housewife would perhaps always be a hard sell. This dreary tale is brightened only by some gloriously awful dialogue" - Edward Porter

31: One Two Three
"British hunk Upen Patel is back, but 'Bollywood Brad' is reduced to an incredulous cameo in this infantile comedy which makes the Farrelly brothers look like Fellini" - Anil Sinanan

30: The Strangers
"A couple are in their remote holiday home when there is a loud knock on the front door at 4am. "Stay here darling with the axe-wielding psychos while I go and get help." Ugh" - James Chrstopher

29: A Bloody Aria
"If this ugly tale of power abuse and violence is intended as an allegory for modern Korean society, then this is one of the most unflattering depictions of a nation's psyche I have seen" - Wendy Ide

28: Choke
"Victor pretends to choke on food so passing good samaritans will save him and, later, lavish money on him. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry: the rest of the film won't either" - Cosmo Landesman

27: Outpost
"This no-budget horror Britflick doesn't boast a single symbol that isn't derivative of another better, more coherent movie" - Kevin Maher

26: Cashback
"Sean Biggerstaff stars as Ben, a rather dull young man who has the ability to stop time. He uses it to be even more boring for even longer" - Wendy Ide

25: Funny Games
"There is only one thing worse than torture porn such as Hostel and Saw - art-house torture porn such as Haneke's film" - Cosmo Landesman

24: Space Chimps
"It's remarkable that they managed to smuggle an oral sex joke into a U-rated movie – "Now that's what I call suction!" says Ham as he returns from the space toilet. How we laughed" - Kevin Maher

23: The Women
"Diane English's hotly anticipated makeover of George Cukor's 1939 classic is a costly and bemusing disaster. Dull is too kind a word. This deeply tedious update sucks every ounce of meaningful poison from the crisp and bitchy original" - James Christopher

22: Lady Godiva
"The cast speak in nonsequiturs and clichés; the good guys drink sherry and the baddies sip Martinis. It's such a horror show of dismal acting and dreadful writing that it's almost worth watching" - Wendy Ide

21: To Get To Heaven, First You Have To Die
"A piece of phallocentric arthouse pabulum masquerading as serious cinema. Tells of a gormless country boy tormented by impotence, who wanders around Tajikistan drooling over luckless women" - Kevin Maher

20: GamerZ
"Woefully inept account of a Scottish university Dungeons and Dragons club. Perhaps a learning curve for all involved. It's not much else" - Kevin Maher

19: The Foot Fist Way
"It's hard to imagine a less sympathetic protagonist. He has David Brent levels of self-importance and would think nothing of kicking a six-year-old in the head if he wanted to make a point" - Wendy Ide

18: Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
"A "Capra-esque" comedy about a big-city talk-show host returning to his country hometown. By Capra-esque I mean jokes about doggie sex, crushed testicles and skunk spray" - Kevin Maher

17: The Bucket List
"Rob Reiner has, unintentionally, created a cinematic first: a film about not one but two people with fatal diseases that is so awful, it makes you wish they'd both hurry up and die" - Cosmo Landesman

16: The Baker
"The jokes are flat; a chaotic sex scene is anything but sexy. And the infuriating Latin-lite soundtrack would be better suited to an advert for carpet shampoo" - Wendy Ide

15: Death Race
"Apparently, the only navigators with map-reading skills equal to the task are half-naked supermodels contractually obliged to synchronise their breasts and buttocks in bouncy slow-motion" - James Christopher

14: Swing Vote
"A political satire with negligible politics and no satire to speak of, it's like a party political broadcast brought to you by the Idiot Party" - Wendy Ide

13: Mutant Chronicles
"The cast ranges from the good to the bad to the gloriously bonkers: John Malkovich, bless him and his rabid overacting. But a screenplay that sounds like it was hewn from chunks of wood is a great leveller, so everyone comes out looking equally inept" - Wendy Ide

12: Eagle Eye
"I don't have the willpower, words, or energy to explain why a psychopathic CIA computer suddenly decides to take over the world. But that's the plot in a nutcase" - James Christopher

11: Rambo
"To justify the quite horrendous level of violence, the film dehumanises the Burmese soldiers to the extent that barely a scene goes by without one of them raping or murdering" - Wendy Ide

10: Alien vs Predator: Requiem
"A wrist-slittingly awful addition to the Alien and Predator franchises. Surely it can't fall much farther. Legions of human extras are eaten or thrown around the set like cannon fodder. Mindless" - James Christopher

9: Righteous Kill
"The teaming together of De Niro and Pacino for some serious screen time together certainly is an event — one you must miss. The best thing that can be said about this film is that you get to see two living legends fall on their faces for the price of one" - Cosmo Landesman

8: Love in the Time of Cholera
"This adaptation of Gabriel GarcÍa Márquez's novel is offensively boring. The entire cast speaks broken English like Manuel in Fawlty Towers" - James Christopher

7: Semi-Pro
"Will Ferrell's movie success is a mystery to many of us – with his dead little eyes and air of Saturday Night Live self-regard, he's hard to like, let alone laugh at" - Peter Whittle

6: 88 Minutes
"There are so many things wrong with this Al Pacino vehicle that it's difficult to know where to start. The fact that it's nearly 30 minutes longer than the title suggests is as pertinent a place as any" - Wendy Ide

5: Star Wars: The Clone Wars
"The latest instalment of George Lucas's interminable franchise has the charm of a cash machine. This noisy animated feature is set in a galaxy that isn't far away enough" - James Christopher

4: First Sunday
"The least funny man ever to make a career in comedy movies, Ice Cube hauls his sullen mug back in front of the cameras for this execrable movie. A new low, even for Ice Cube" - Wendy Ide

3: Never Back Down
"Reveals a genuinely repugnant validation of street violence, a palpable hatred of women, and the worst aspects of crass barrel-scraping Hollywood studio movie-making. Then again, maybe you just had to be in the right mood. Or a Nazi" - Kevin Maher

2: Meet the Spartans
"If Hollywood is really serious about saving the environment, perhaps it should stop polluting it with toxic waste. Barely a movie, more a barf of total idiocy, this spoof of 300 sets its intellectual sights lower than a swamp of primordial soup" - Wendy Ide

1: Disaster Movie
"It could be the first great mainstream art experiment. Or, perhaps, since the opening word of dialogue is "Shit!", the jokes are mostly about it, and the characters are regularly covered in it, it is more likely that the movie itself is just, well..." - Kevin Maher


http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5245052.ece?print=yes&randnum=1229359306714

Africa News Today - Elton John blasts X Factor - but will play concert with Alexandra

As a tearful Alexandra Burke was told she had won The X Factor and would perform a concert with Elton John on New Years Eve, the veteran musician was telling a London audience that he couldn't stand the TV talent show.

Performing at Greenwich's O2 Arena on Saturday night, the flamboyant singer told the crowd that he would rather have his "c*** bitten off by an Alsatian" than watch the ITV show. Without going into too much detail on a family website, he also said he would be happy to lose his testicles in the process.

Across the capital at The X Factor's studios in Wembley, a stunned Burke, in the arms of judge and music mogul Simon Cowell, was being told that as well as securing a record contract, her win meant she would share the 02 stage with Grammy magnet John in two-and-a-half weeks time.

Revellers at John's concert heard the news shortly afterwards. As they were exiting the stadium, a message over the loud speaker announced Burke's imminent performance with the man who had just blasted her route to fame.

Burke, at least, will be in sympathetic company at Elton John's New Year's Eve Party. The night's other guest singer is fellow TV talent show winner – Pop Idol's Will Young.

Perhaps the pair can draw comfort from an interview John gave in 2006, explaining that his hatred of the series did not extend to the contestants.

"The X Factor is a cruise ship show. I've got nothing against the people who go on - good luck to them. But I hate how they're treated.

"They're given an awful sense of stardom and pressure straight away but they're only successful until the next series. The record companies sell a lot of records and those people are gone. It's cruel.

"Will Young is the best thing that's ever come out of those shows. He has proved himself. But it's no way to find talent. I want to hear new songwriters, people who are creating their own stuff, not just singing my songs every week."

Africa News Today - Transcript: Bush seeks new shoe jokes Excerpts from President Bush's impromptu press conference aboard Air Force One after Iraqi shoe attack

Transcript: Bush seeks new shoe jokes

Excerpts from President Bush's impromptu press conference aboard Air Force One after Iraqi shoe attack

Mr Bush: Okay, my opening statement: I didn't know what the guy said, but I saw his sole….I'm pretty good at ducking, as most of you will know —

Reporter: You were quick.

Mr Bush: I'm talking about ducking your questions…I — look, I mean it was just a bizarre moment, but I've had other bizarre moments in the presidency. I remember when Hu Jintao was here. Remember we had the big event? He's speaking, and all of a sudden I hear this noise — had no earthly idea what was taking place, but it was the Falun Gong woman screaming at the top of her lungs. It was kind of an odd moment.

Reporter: Well, not to belabour the point too much, on this man, but I have a serious question about it. Obviously he's expressing a vein of anger that exists in Iraq, and —

Mr Bush: How do you know? I mean, how do we know what he's expressing? Who —

Reporter: We had a translator who said he shouted about the widows and orphans.

Mr Bush: I don't know. I've heard all kinds of stories. I heard he was representing a Baathist TV station. I don't know the facts, but let's find out the facts. All I'm telling you, it was a bizarre moment.

Reproter: I wanted to ask something broader.

Mr Bush: I don't think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want to. I don't think it would be accurate.

Reporter: Well, then, separately from him —

Mr Bush: That's exactly what he wanted you to do. Like I answered on your question, what he wanted you to do was to pay attention to him. And sure enough, you did…

[A noise is heard aboard the aircraft]

Mr Bush: The other shoe just dropped. Look, I'm going to be thinking of shoe jokes for a long time. I haven't heard any good ones yet.

Africa News Today - Wall Street 'fraud' victims continue to rise; From Times Online December 15, 2008

How he did it - allegedly | Biggest fraud in history? | Who is exposed? | SEC complaint against Madoff | What is a Ponzi scheme? | The rise and fall of Charles Ponzi | The 10 biggest swindles - ever

The list of institutions and individuals set to lose billions of pounds after investing in a fund run by Bernard Madoff, the Wall Street broker and former Nasdaq chairman, is growing by the hour.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), the bank majority-owned by the Government, today admitted that it had an exposure of £400 million to the $50 billion alleged fraud.

It joins Man Group, the world's largest listed hedge fund manager, HSBC and Santander, the Spanish group that owns Britain's Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, which are exposed to Mr Madoff's business.

So far, Santander has emerged as one of the hardest hit after admitting it is sitting on an exposure worth more than €2.33 billion (£2.08 billion) through Optimal, one of its funds.

EIM, the hedge fund group which is run by Arpad Busson, the multimillionaire who is engaged to Uma Thurman, the actress, said that it is exposed to products sold by Mr Madoff for about $220 million.

Bill Glass, partner and head of business development at EIM, founded in 1992 by Mr Busson, confirmed the exposure to Mr Madoff's funds. EIM sells funds of hedge funds and manages around $11 billion.

Mr Busson set up Absolute Return for Kids, a charitable foundation for underprivileged children, which last year raised £27 million, mainly from the hedge fund industry.

RBS's potential £400 million loss is a new blow to the beleaguered bank, which is 58 per cent owned by the Government after it accepted £20 billion from the taxpayer as part of the recent £37 billion bailout of British banks.

Mr Madoff was arrested last week after apparently admitting to setting up a $50 billion "Ponzi" scheme to defraud investors.

Mr Madoff is believed to have told employees that he was "finished", that he had "absolutely nothing", and that "it's all just one big lie". There is a 24-hour guard outside Mr Madoff's office in midtown Manhattan.

A Ponzi scheme, otherwise known as a pyramid structure, is where older-established investors are given an abnormally high return using money paid in by new clients instead of using net revenues for payments.

Man Group, the world's biggest listed hedge fund manager, also confirmed this morning that its RMF division has about $360 million (£240 million) invested in two funds that are "directly or indirectly sub-advised by Madoff Securities and for which Madoff Securities acts as broker-dealer executing the investment strategy."

RMF is an adviser to Bramdean Asset Management, the fund run by Nicola Horlick, who admitted last week to an exposure of about $25 million through her firm's listed Bramdean Alternatives portfolio.

Since Mr Madoff's arrest, the list of casualties has continued to grow, with a number of charities exposed to the alleged scam.

Film director Steven Spielberg 's charity, the Wunderkinder Foundation, had 70 per cent of its interest and dividend income in the Madoff firm in 2006.

A spokesman for Mr Spielberg confirmed that the foundation has suffered losses on its investments with Madoff, but could not say how large these losses were.

The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, founded by the famed Holocaust survivor and writer, is also understood to have invested with the company.

The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, an American charity that supports Jewish programmes, invested its entire $8 million endowment with Mr Madoff. The head of the charity has said she does not expect it to survive.

Other casualties include Nomura, the Japanese bank which bought some of Lehman Brothers' European operations earlier this year, which said its exposure to investments with Mr Madoff totalled 27.5 billion yen (£202 million). A spokesman described the firm's potential losses as "limited".

BNP Paribas said last night that it had an exposure of €350 million. Reichmuth, a private Swiss bank, said that it was facing a $325 million loss and it was reported that Benbassat & Cie, another Swiss private bank, had exposure of $935 million.

Although regulatory filings show that Mr Madoff had only about 25 clients, the number who could lose money through funds that invested in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities could run into thousands.

Fairfield Greenwich Group, the hedge fund, said that it had $7.5 billion in investments linked to Madoff. Banque Benedict Hentsch Fairfield Partners, a private Swiss bank, has $47.5 million of clients' money at risk.

Vincent Tchenguiz, the property magnate, who is one of Britain's richest men, is understood to have invested £40 million with Bramdean.

Other wealthy individuals affected include Norman Braman, former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles American football team, Fred Wilpon, owner of the New York Mets baseball team, and J. Ezra Merkin, the chairman of GMAC Financial Services.

The BridgeMaker

The BridgeMaker

10 Wonderful Gifts that Give Us Hope

Posted: 14 Dec 2008 01:14 PM CST

"Once you choose hope, anything’s possible." - Christopher Reeve

I love the Christmas season. The next several days will be filled with excitement as Mary Beth and I finish our Christmas shopping and make final preparations to extend the Christmas spirit into our home. Gifts need to be wrapped and shipped; several holiday parties are scheduled, and our favorite Christmas treats are waiting to be prepared, and eaten, with joyful gusto.

Through the busyness of our lives, though, it can be easy to forget why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. We buy the gifts, decorate our homes and reach out to family and friends not because there is an obligation to do so, but because by perpetuating the Christmas tradition, year-after-year, we are saying it matters to keep this time of year sacred.

Christmas provides us with the opportunity to see the gifts of hope that are still in style; are in the perfect color and just the right size to wear all year long.

However, it can be easy to be hopeless right now. The world is far from perfect. The instability of our economy and the recent events in Mumbai has some of us scratching our heads and wondering why we even bother to keep hope alive.

For me, the reason is clear – hope is a wonderful gift I have been given that helps me see the goodness that exists all around me and in me. Hope sustains my belief that no matter what happens, incredible value and grace can be found in the experience.

Over the course of my lifetime, I have received these wonderful gifts that give me hope. I share them from my heart to yours:

  1. When we understand our lives count for something. We have a purpose for being here. It may be to become a community or business leader, a scientist responsible for finding an important cure to a disease, or to be a loving spouse and parent. It really doesn't matter what we do. What matters is how we take the gifts we have been given and use them to inspire and care for others. When we do this, it's clear our lives do indeed count for something.
  2. Refusing temptation. The enemy will taunt us and lure us into believing what feels good is good. When we cover our eyes, shield our hearts and refrain from doing something that we wouldn't want those closest to us to know about, we breathe new-found hope into our souls and remind ourselves of the dignity and self-respect that lives there.
  3. Finding the courage to start-over. Starting over again is not a sign of defeat; it's a sign of hope. It signifies where we were heading was not the proper destination, but we still have the energy and passion to keep going – albeit in a different direction. Staring over recharges our spirit and keeps us moving forward in life.
  4. When personal satisfaction trumps instant gratification. I have been tempted by the over-use of alcohol for as long as I can remember. When I find myself alone, my desire to drink, and drink to excess, increases.

    Recently my wife and daughter went out of town for a long weekend. The temptation was strong, but the need to stay sober was surprisingly stronger. There's no question I would have enjoyed the temporary effects of the alcohol, but self-care intercepted the temptation and brought with it an even more stimulating feeling of personal satisfaction.

  5. When time does heal old wounds. Emotional pain will not last forever. While it's true that deep scars can be left behind, the intense pain associated with the trauma does tend to wane and yield to time.

    When the hole created by the pain begins to be filled-in with love and grace, hope begins to seep through until its healing presence can at least start working on the edges as it gradually moves more towards the core.


  6. Forgiveness. Forgiveness provides hope for a new start. To forgive is to let go of the anger, shame and resentment that is keeping you stuck in the pain and in the past. Providing forgiveness does not condone the circumstance – it just provides a way to move pass it.

    To be clear, the act of forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. The root word give in the word forgiveness reminds us that when we forgive we give ourselves hope for a new beginning.

  7. Change. Change allows us to redefine and reinvent ourselves. When we are open to change, we are given the opportunity to see things differently and to do things differently.

    We change in order to grow. Real growth, however, can occur incrementally. Meaning we don't have to change everything about ourselves or our lives all at once, we just need to begin changing some things – a little at a time.

    Decisions bring about change and change brings about growth and growth brings hope. So, begin by making a few new decisions, new choices, about how you want to live the rest of your life and feel the hope as it begins to swell inside of you.

  8. Do something good every day. Inspiration can be found in the oddest places. One morning last week I was in a Starbucks getting my morning charge when I noticed the statement, "Do something good every day," hand printed on a chalkboard underneath the menu. Starbucks is running this campaign over the holiday season by donating 5 cents (on select products) to the Global Fund to help save lives in Africa.

    Do something good every day doesn't just have to be a temporary marketing campaign, it can also be a daily mantra if we choose to remember its challenge. By doing something good every day we can choose to bring hope to people we know and to people we don't know. I think by doing so, we will bring hope to ourselves, too.

  9. Love will continue forever. In my article, How to Love Consciously, I write:

    There will be a day when I no longer share this life with Mary Beth. When that day arrives, my hope is she will know my intent was to discover exactly what she wanted and my conscious choice was to give her more of that.

    The article was written from the point-of-view of how to love someone with whom we are sharing a life right now. The next phase of love is the stage that will last forever. The choices we make today will impact and shape what that eternal love will be like.

    When love is given without conditions, and it is returned authentically, we can have hope the love will continue forever.

  10. When we understand that we are enough I am enough. If I never make a gazillion dollars, I'm still enough. If I never write a best-selling book, I'm still enough. If I never achieve every dream and goal I have, I'm still enough.

    I'm enough because each day I try to be the best parent, husband, friend, employee and world citizen I can be.

    Please don't get me wrong, I stumble through most days replete with mistakes. I miss opportunities to connect with my children, I irritate Mary Beth and I foul-up plenty of other things as well. But, at the end of the day, a gentle peacefulness layered with feelings of hope settles over me because I understand that I don't have to be perfect, or try to be perfect any longer, I just have to be Alex and that's more than enough.

The day after Christmas will be a busy one. It will be on a Friday and most folks will have the day off from work. The malls and shopping centers will be packed with shoppers eager to return or exchange gifts that didn't seem to fit or just didn't feel good enough to wear.

There's a good chance my family will be in the crowd, too. The sweaters, boots and jeans we unwrapped the day before will be scrutinized to see if they are the right style; are in the perfect color and just the right size. If necessary, these gifts will be offered up for things we like better.

The gifts that give us hope, on the other hand, do not need a return policy. These gifts are crafted for each one of us and if we give ourselves permission to try them on, we will see how well they fit and how good they feel.

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