WINTER OLYMPICS 2010: Vancouver genocide lane ruled as well unsure for bobsleighs

The track where Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died 10 days ago has been ruled unsuitable for four-man bobsleighs after more crashes.

Training was postponed while ice was shaved away from the wall on curve 11, the large right-hander that leads into the four-corner Gold Rush Trial before the final corner which proved fatal for the Georgian.

The bobs could not set themselves up well enough coming out of 11 to be right for curve 13, named 50-50 because of the number of spills there.

It was the first tacit admission that the track built three years ago to be the worlds fastest is too tricky for four-man bobs. Latvian and Croatian crews each crashed during a supplementary practice session and officials consulted with the captains of 11 national teams.

Unsuitable: Italy"s bobsled crashes

US captain and coach Brian Shimer, an Olympic bronze medallist as a four-man driver in 2002, said: ;The curve 13 was true to its name today. It was 50-50.

;It is still the toughest track in the world.

World Bobsleigh Federation spokesman Don Krone said it was common for the ice to be altered during competition, after a track had been used for luge and skeleton. The change was made just 24 hours before Britains world champion pair Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke started their two-man bob competition.

Britains womens curling team, skipped by teenager Eve Muirhead, exited the tournament after a 6-5 defeat by Canada.

;Sorry, guys, said Muirhead, struggling not to cry. Her team had managed only three wins in their nine matches.

David Murdochs mens team had their fifth win against Germany and were playing late last night against Norway for a place in the semi-finals.

More...British bobsleigher Nicola Minichiello has gold medal back in her sights Brits Paula Walker and Kelly Thomas unharmed after horror bobsleigh crashBritish pair battered and bruised after terrifying bobsleigh crashHorror at 95mph: Georgian luger killed after smashing into concrete pillar

Fury as locale halls outlay �1.4m on afar days

Town hall chiefs have blown 1.4million of taxpayers money on ;morale-boosting trips for staff while telling the public they are strapped for cash.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed council officials have paid for away days to 200-a-night hotels, spas, go-karting tracks and even holiday village Center Parcs over the past four years.

Ironically, the junkets, called ;team-building trips or ;planning meetings, are often used to discuss the councils financial constraints.

The revelation comes at a time when the average annual council tax bill stands at 1,500 more than double the level when Labour came to power in 1997.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker described the "away days" as a "grotesque waste of money"

Some visits have even extended overseas. A ;benchmarking and research trip for staff of Torbay Council in Devon took them 1,000 miles away to Malaga in Spain.

Lewisham Council in South London, whose chief executive Barry Quirk earns 188,000-a-year, spent 10,635 for six senior managers to visit 200-a-night Rowhill Grange Hotel & Utopia Spa in Kent to discuss ;strategic leadership, management delivery and ongoing service improvements.

The council said the costs covered the ;preparation, delivery and follow-up of the meetings.

Richmond Council in South-West London spent 85,980 in all. The bill included 13 away days to the picturesque Lensbury Club, a popular haunt of the England rugby team on the banks of the Thames. The council said the trips improved its ;overall corporate performance.

In Wirral, the council cited budget constraints when it refused to pass on the recent 2.5 per cent cut in VAT to residents.

It was, however, able to lavish 3,609 on three ;business planning trips for 19 officials at the Grade-I listed Bulkeley Hotel 50 miles away on the Isle of Anglesey and boasting ;majestic panoramic views of Snowdonia.

The council said it was the ;cheapest possible location.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said last night: ;It is beyond belief that councils are spending public money on frivolous away days that, farcically, almost always involve officials dreaming up ways to cut budgets.

;Councils always complain about being underfunded yet they find the resources to send employees go-karting. It is a grotesque waste of money.

Using Freedom of Information legislation, The Mail on Sunday contacted every council in Britain for details of spending on team-building trips, away days and ;brainstorming sessions.

The 57 local authorities that provided information admitted spending a total of 1.4million since 2005.

Mansfield Council in Nottinghamshire cited the difficult economic climate when closing a swimming pool in the village of Warsop last week.

Yet it found 17,066 to send staff to a ;senior management team workshop 35 miles away at the Bawtry Hotel in South Yorkshire. Mansfield said it was ;one of the closest venues it could use.

Other trips included Forest Heath Council in Suffolk ;integrating new staff at Center Parcs, a 2,100 Windsor Council ;team-building trip to Legoland, and Gedling Council in Nottingham paying 1,000 for go-karting, archery lessons and Laser Quest.

The council said the trip was important for ;building good team work.

Perhaps the most bizarre junket was by Sefton Council in Merseyside, which spent 3,679 sending management to consultants Success Factory, whose aim is ;to make a difference in the world whilst living a wonderful life.

The biggest spender was Tower Hamlets in East London which paid out 233,890 on trips to ;invest in staff development. Sefton and Torbay refused to comment.

Unlikely judge of conform declares genocide of lipstick

Gr�inne Gilmore, Economics Correspondent & , : {}

Newspaper columnists, radio pundits and supposed character commentators are customarily credited with identifying the zeitgeist. Not this time. Step brazen the number-crunchers from the Office for National Statistics.

The ONSs image of what we put in the selling baskets is dictated to work out the cost of vital but has the engaging side-effect of educational becoming different day to day and fashions.

This is how we learnt yesterday that the power of lipstick as the buttress of womens handbags was over, carrying dropped, as it were, out of the basket, and that mouth shimmer had taken over. Another nifty amicable regard was that the hairdryer is pass. Why? Because it has been transposed in womens affections by hair straighteners, done renouned by the poker-straight locks of hair of Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow in the early Noughties.

In a pointer of an increasingly health unwavering Britain cans of fizzy splash have been forsaken from the ONSs basket of products and services in foster of small bottles of vegetable water. Cereal bars were additionally combined to the basket. Soaring sales of computer games such as Wii Fit and Guitar Hero additionally done an impact, call the ONS to supplement a new difficulty for computer games with accessories. Guitar Hero III, that was expelled in 2007, became the initial diversion to transcend $1 billion (665 billion) in tellurian sales.

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The ONS collects 180,000 prices of about 650 products and services to work out inflation, utilizing report collected by 300 cost collectors around the country.

Items are additionally rated on marketplace share, call the ONS to reinstate baby food with powdered baby regulation and cartons of ripened offspring extract with bottles. The basket is done up of equipment that have sales of some-more than 400 million a year and equipment are customarily taken off the list if sales tumble subsequent 100 million.

The dual measures of acceleration the consumer cost index (CPI) that is the Bank of Englands cost of vital benchmark, and the wider sell cost index (RPI) are consequential to workers and pensioners.

CPI acceleration is increasingly being used as a basement for workers compensate deals, whilst RPI acceleration determines the annual climb in state grant payments and alternative benefits. The cost of most sight tickets are additionally pegged to RPI inflation.

CPI acceleration strike 3.5 per cent in January, the top turn given Nov 2008 and well on top of the Bank of Englands 2 per cent target, whilst RPI acceleration is at 3.7 per cent.

Inflation has been pushed higher by the enlarge in VAT behind up to 17.5 per cent in Jan and a 70 per cent climb in oil prices over the past year, as well as the products of sterlings depreciation, that have alien products some-more expensive. However, the Bank expects CPI acceleration to tumble behind towards 2 per cent after this year.

The need for joy food during the retrogression has driven up sales of garlic bread, a tack food from the 1980s, call the ONS to supplement this to the basket in place of pitta bread.

Supermarkets launched 44 garlic bread products last year, up from 31 in 2005, total from Mintel, the marketplace investigate company, show. Chicken Kiev, an additional prime from the Eighties, stays in the basket.

Mutton, ox liver, Axminster carpets and mangles were all enclosed in the strange acceleration basket in 1947. All of these have prolonged been ejected, but there sojourn distinguished similarities in between afterwards and now.

The costs of going to a football compare or the motion picture are still key measures, as are the costs of books and newspapers. Keeping the certification as the judge of fashion, the ONS private leggings from the basket in 2008. Statisticians would not criticism yesterday on either jeggings (jean leggings) would have it on to the list subsequent year.

• Petrol prices will reach jot down levels this year, according to investigate by the AA. It has has warned that unleaded fuel could shortly cost 1.20 a litre or some-more and urged Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, to check the key of a programmed 3p enlarge in motor fuel avocation due on Apr 1.

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John Lewis reward greeted with cheers

Marcus Leroux & , : {}

Staff at John Lewiss flagship Oxford Street store cheered yesterday sunrise as they learnt the distance of the reward they and their colleagues have been awarded.

Partners at the employee-owned organisation will embrace an normal of 2,100 the homogeneous of scarcely eight weeks compensate after annual pre-tax increase rose 9.7 per cent to 307 million.

The 69,000 staff were awarded a fifteen per cent reward in a 151 million payout improved than the prior years thirteen per cent, but bashful of the twenty per cent they warranted dual years ago.

Both the dialect stores and Waitrose, the partnerships grocery chain, available market-leading expansion in the second half of the year.

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Charlie Mayfield, the partnerships chairman, pronounced that the surprising tenure had valid a strength in adversity. We have a genuine event to take a longer perspective than the competitors, so in a year that a series of the competitors went on to the defensive, we went on the attack, he said. We were means to do that since of the regressive monetary structure, that meant we had the income in the bank to move forward and invest.

Sales at John Lewiss twenty-nine stores and website rose 4.3 per cent to 3.9 billion in the year to Jan 30, with like-for-like sales rising 2.3 per cent. Andy Street, John Lewiss handling director, pronounced it had gained marketplace share in each of the 3 product categories: home, conform and electricals.

In the initial five weeks of this year John Lewiss sales are 14.9 per cent forward of last year, incompatible new stores.

The restructuring the commercial operation has undergone in the past year, that enclosed shutting a placement centre and informal call centres, is expected to go on this year, Mr Street said.

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Peers opinion for church polite partnership ceremonies

Mary Bowers & , : {}

The House of Lords voted to lift the anathema on polite partnership ceremonies in churches and alternative eremite premises last night.

Peers voted by 95 to twenty-one - a infancy of 74 - to lift the anathema that formerly prevented gays and lesbians from removing tied together in such places.

In a minute to The Times ten days ago, comparison bishops together with the Bishop of Salisbury and the Dean of Southwark voiced their await for the amendment, that was tabled by happy Labour counterpart Lord Alli.

The move will outcome in an legislative addition to the Equalities Bill that would allow, though not compel, eremite organisations to host polite partnerships. Religious denunciation would additionally be available inside of the ceremonies.

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It is likely that as a outcome there would be effectively no disproportion in between matrimony and polite partnership inside of the church. Critics contend that the shift will force clerics to take a some-more magnanimous proceed to same-sex relationships.

The law would concede ceremonies usually between denominations who validate happy marriage. The Quakers have already campaigned for the shift in legislation, and Unitarians and magnanimous Jews have additionally already shown their await for the amendment.

Ben Summerskill, Chief Executive of the happy rights campaigning organisation Stonewall, pronounced that he was positively happy with the result.

He told The Times: This was a really critical issue of eremite leisure since it was utterly wrong in the perspective for the Church of England to be attempting to brag not as big denominations in to not celebrating the lifelong relations of happy people who have really clever eremite faith.

Lord Allis cross-party legislative addition was co-sponsored by Tory financial orator Baroness Noakes, late decider and crossbench counterpart Baroness Butler-Sloss and crossbencher Baroness Campbell of Surbiton.

Supporters enclosed the former Bishop of Oxford, crossbencher Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and Liberal Democrat rabbi Baroness Neuberger.

Leading opponents of the legislative addition enclosed Tory former Cabinet ministers Lord Tebbit and Lord Waddington.

Lords Leader Baroness Royall of Blaisdon and Tory equivalence orator Baroness Morris of Bolton, a Roman Catholic, both spoke opposite the legislative addition but after abstained.

The legislative addition has nonetheless to be authorized by the Commons, but it is doubtful that MPs would have any poignant changes to it.

A orator for the Government Equalities Office said: Baroness Royall done the Governments on all sides transparent during the debate; were right away deliberation the on all sides and determining what stairs to take next.

Ukraine budding apportion suspended in no-confidence opinion World headlines

The Ukrainian budding minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, was degraded in the presidential elections last month but had resisted calls to quit.

The Ukrainian budding minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, was suspended in a parliamentary opinion of no certainty today, sounding the genocide knell for the Orange confederation that emerged from the 2004 revolution.

Tymoshenko, degraded in new presidential elections by her Orange nemesis Viktor Yanukovych, was private when deputies mustered 243 votes in foster of a no-confidence fortitude in the 450-seat chamber.

Yanukovych"s Regions celebration will find to form the own confederation inside of thirty days and a supervision inside of 60, or face a snap parliamentary election. The president"s celebration is the greatest confederation in the cover with 171 seats but is well short of the compulsory 226 majority.

Mykola Azarov, a former financial apportion and a expected claimant for the budding minister"s post, said: "The talks are not elementary but I think they will be finalised in the entrance days."

Even if Yanukovych succeeds in stitching together a coalition, the querulous inlet of Ukraine"s council and the singular powers of the presidency meant the country, that is separate in between a Russia-leaning easterly and south and a western-friendly west and centre, could face serve domestic instability at a time when the economy, that engaged by 15% last year, requires obligatory attention.

Despite losing the 7 Feb presidential election, Tymoshenko had resisted vigour to quit. But her infancy has evaporated as not as big confederation allies switched their devotion in new weeks.

Let true couples have polite partnerships Mark Simpson

Mark Simpson & , : {}

An legislative addition due by Lord Ali to the Equality Bill now prior to the House of Lords equates to that same-sex couples could shortly be authorised to control their polite partnership rite in eremite buildings, in outcome finale any superfluous eminence in between polite partnerships and marriage.

Each to their own, I suppose. But this same-sexer is somewhat distrustful about the knowledge of the new physical establishment of polite partnerships removing in to bed with the old unsuccessful institutions of church and marriage.

I introduce an additional legislative addition to Lord Ali: concede true couples to come in in to polite partnerships as they do in France and New Zealand but are criminialized from you do here.

When polite partnership legislation was debated in 2003 it was claimed that it would criticise marriage. The being is that matrimony has already undermined itself. After decades of high increases, the divorce rate has depressed in new years usually given fewer people are removing tied together than at any time given annals began.

BACKGROUNDEnd club on church happy unions, contend bishopsWhy it was a happy anniversary for polite partnershipsLaw remade the approach happy couples are seen Very polite partnerships

Given an pick to marriage, true couples appear to tumble on one knee. In France, 90 per cent of the 150,000 couples that have entered in to polite partnerships given they were introduced in 1999 are heterosexual couples.

Traditional matrimony is out of fashion, solely maybe as a celeb print op. Likewise, increasingly renouned prenuptial agreements take the picturesque prevision of removing divorced prior to you get married.

Civil partnerships, that have grown out of the need to recognize same-sex relations and hedge the feeling of Church and tradition, paint an establishment for a physical post-feminist, post-marriage world.

Marriage is so but a friend that David Cameron not long ago betrothed taxation bribes for people who got married. But rather than enlivening people to stay in unsuccessful marriages or reluctantly come in in to new ones maybe the Tories should do what they explain to do best: suggest people some-more choice. As the French e.g. shows, this could outcome in hundreds of thousands of couples, most with children, entering in to legally stable partnerships that differently they would not.

Part of the interest of the French PACS is that they can be finished by a minute from possibly partner, but any claims on the others income or property. UK partnerships have the same divorce mandate as matrimony (with the difference of illicit love affair as a belligerent for divorce).

We would do well to follow the French model. I think that UK happy couples are finding that keeping divorce lawyers in Italian sports cars is an next to right they can probably do without.

Mark Simpson blogs at marksimpson.com