Chelsea increased as Frank Lampard is spoken fit for Champions League showdown with Inter Milan

Frank Lampard has handed Chelsea a massive boost ahead of their crunch clash with Jose Mourinho"s Inter Milan.

The midfielder was a doubt for the Champions League first leg showdown at the San Siro after being struck down with a virus. But Lampard has been declared fit to fly out with Chelsea to Italy today.

It is a huge boost for Chelsea, who will be without injured first-team stars Ashley Cole, Michael Essien, Jose Bosingwa and Deco.

Welcome return: Frank Lampard (centre) is back for Chelsea

Chelsea squad

Cech, Turnbull, Hilario, Ivanovic, Carvalho, Terry, Alex, Bruma, Belletti, Mikel, Ballack, Lampard, J Cole, Malouda, Kakuta, Kalou, Sturridge,Anelka, Borini, Drogba.

Boss Carlo Ancelotti will also have to cope without Cole"s replacement Yuri Zhirkov, who did not travel because of a calf problem.

It leaves the Italian facing a headache at left-back given that one possible contender - Paulo Ferreira - was not registered for the Champions League knockout stages.

However, along with Lampard, Chelsea also welcome back defenders Alex and Juliano Belletti who were sidelined with knee injuries.

Meanwhile, Samuel Eto"o has warned Chelsea he is ready to inflict more heartache on them.

Eto"o was part of the Barcelona side that dumped Chelsea out of the semi-finals last season in an incredible second leg at Stamford Bridge. Now at Inter, he is ready to send the Blues crashing out once more.

Andy Carroll delivers an additional revelation blow Football

George Caulkin & , : {}

It takes more than a punch to fracture a season. Newcastle United got back into the habit of breaking records last night, which represents a positive alternative to breaking jaws.

Inevitably, incredibly, Andy Carroll, the source of such consternation over the previous 24 hours, led his side away from a precipice that many had predicted they would tumble over.

In scoring his sixteenth goal of the season, Carroll who, in celebration, pressed his fingers to his lips provided a partial answer to those who have questioned his character.

In engulfing him, his team-mates gave their own response to doubts over Newcastles unity. And in recording their nineteenth clean sheet, they set a standard for a club who have seldom been associated with defensive solidity.

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A narrow victory over Doncaster Rovers, who proved worthy opponents, stretched Newcastles unbeaten sequence to nine matches, the best in the division, and maintained their ten-point lead over third-placed Nottingham Forest. If nothing else, they demonstrated that their hard-earned tilt at promotion will not be squandered readily.

They still have issues to contend with. While it is understood that Steven Taylor will not press charges against Carroll after their altercation at the clubs training ground on Sunday, he is believed to be seeking an apology from his team-mate and some form of disciplinary action. The former England Under-21 captain was released yesterday from hospital.

Northumbria Police have not interviewed the pair, nor have they received any official complaint.

With a club investigation in progress, Carrolls inclusion in Chris Hughtons side was evidence that there is no mood within St James Park to tear up his contract.

This is a team that has been focused all season, Hughton, the Newcastle manager, said. Weve carried the pressure of being on top of this division and the pressures that go with it.

Conflict between Carroll and Taylor is thought to have begun over wages in spite of his improvement in recent months, Carroll is not among Newcastles high earners and spread to a mutual female acquaintance.

It is an old story (and one that Fabio Capello will be familiar with), and the question for Hughton and his squad was whether their spirit could endure it.

Just as a single physical disagreement, no matter how serious and unsavoury, does not define Newcastles campaign, so the club must appreciate they cannot escape their history. What they still have in their power is an ability to shape their future, something they achieved at the Keepmoat Stadium, so much so that Joey Bartons return from long-term injury was barely noticed.

Clad in thick black gloves (not of the boxing variety), to protect his damaged hand, Carroll appeared unperturbed by his latest misadventure. He applauded a healthy contingent of Newcastle supporters when he strode out to warm up (after the final whistle he tossed his shirt into the crowd) and, in an enterprising performance, he proved the difference for his side. He had chances too.

The first was miscued, the second was a testing header that was deflected for a corner and the third was a blistering shot across goal that prompted a fine reactive save from Neil Sullivan. If self-awareness and embarrassment are elements of Carrolls make-up, the 21-year-old disguised both with a thick layer of bluster.

Doncaster were not idle bystanders. Neat and intelligent, they posed questions and twice Steve Harper repelled shots from Billy Sharp.

Carrolls role as the dramas leading man could not be denied, however. In the 59th minute, Wayne Routledge snapped up a misplaced pass in midfield and diverted it forward, inviting Carroll to chase. He did so adroitly, angling into the penalty area, holding off James OConnor and beating Sullivan with an excellent finish.

Andy took his goal very well, Hughton said. Weve always said he has to add goals to his game and hes done that. Hes a vital player for us. The kid has some scriptwriter, too.

Doncaster Rovers (4-4-2): N Sullivan J Chambers, S Martis, J OConnor, G Roberts (sub: J Mutch, 87min) D Shiels (sub: J Spicer, 87), M Wilson (sub: J Emmanuel-Thomas, 74), J Oster, M Woods B Sharp, J Hayter. Substitutes not used: S Hird, S McDaid, B Smith, A Lockwood.

Newcastle United (4-4-1-1): S Harper R Taylor, F Coloccini, T Kadar, D Simpson W Routledge (sub: F Pancrate, 88), N Butt, D Guthrie (sub: J Barton, 75), J Gutirrez K Nolan A Carroll. Substitutes not used: J Enrique, L Best, T Krul, N Ranger, B Tozer. Booked: Taylor, Simpson, Nolan.

Referee: K Hill.

Siberian tigers starve to genocide at Chinese zoo

Jane Macartney in Beijing & , : {}

The Year of the Tiger has got off to a comfortless begin for the involved big cat in China.

At slightest eleven Siberian tigers carnivorous to genocide in a zoo in northeastern China after the owners ran out of income and fed the predators only one or dual duck carcasses a day over the past couple of weeks.

Six of the tigers died not long ago on a singular day at the secretly owned Iceberg Animal Zoo in Shenyang, the Liaoshen Evening News reported.

The animals had been cramped in small, soppy cages, it said.

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It is not the initial time the zoo has been in the headlines for withdrawal the tigers to go hungry.

Two tigers at the zoo were shot by military in Nov last year after the inspired animals mauled a zoo workman as he was clearing sleet from a path. One journal reported at the time that the tigers being starving.

In late 2007, wildlife experts were repelled when 4 tigers at the zoo killed and devoured an additional tiger with that they had common their vital buliding for five years.

A zoo central said: The zoo is in a monetary predicament and we havent been means to yield the tigers with enough food for the last dual years. An adult tiger cooking about 20lb of beef a day, but the tigers here can hardly get a duck to moisten their craving each one or dual days.

The tragedy comes only days after a wild tiger pup the initial to be seen in China for at slightest 60 years was found trapped in a forestry workers woodpile in a beside range to the north. The pup was tranquillised and prisoner but died dual days later.

Only about twenty of singular involved Siberian, or Amur, tigers are believed to tarry in the wild along Chinas limit with Russia. The South China tiger is believed to be close to extinct.

About 5,000 tigers live on farms in northeastern China and in the southwest where they are bred in the goal that a anathema on traffic in tiger tools might one day be lifted, unleashing direct between Chinese for skeleton for make use of in normal disinfectant and aphrodisiac tonics.

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Swedish newspapers combine to urge leisure of debate over Muhammad cartoons

David Charter, Europe Correspondent & , : {}

Three heading Swedish newspapers and the inhabitant broadcaster carried a animation depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a dogs physique after an purported tract to attempted murder the artist who drew it was denounced in the Republic of Ireland.

The hazard to Lars Vilks was a hazard opposite all Swedes, the countrys greatest every day newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, proclaimed, adding that the new year mattock conflict on a Danish cartoonist for sketch the Prophet meant that Scandinavian values of honesty were being assaulted.

The sketch by Mr Vilks was published yesterday in the Stockholm-based Dagens Nyheter and Expressen newspapers and the Malmö every day Sydsvenska Dagbladet, in counterclaim of one of the cornerstones of Swedens constitution. This states that Swedes have the right to leisure of debate and cannot be calm from the official countenance of their views.

The newspapers stopped short, however, of using the animation on their websites since of their wider accessibility around the world. Islam forbids representations being done of the Prophet.

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In Sep 2007, al-Qaeda leaders set a cost on Swedish artist Lars Vilkss head, pronounced Dagens Nyheter in an paper comment. His purported crime was to pull a animation of the Prophet Muhammad as a devious dog; a sort of travel designation renouned in Sweden where sculptures are mostly placed in the center of roundabouts. The threats are attacks on one of the majority elemental rights the leisure of debate and should be noticed as a wider provide opposite an open and free society, the paper stated.

Gunilla Herlitz, the Dagens Nyheter editor-in-chief, shielded the reprinting of the animation as a bona fide piece of the story of the day. I hold that, in this case, the animation is a piece of the headlines and thus we would similar to to show the readers what this is all about. But the animation is published in a context and is not the heading design on the page.

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Red Knights receiving Manchester United supporters for a ride

Patrick Barclay, Chief Football Commentator & , : {}

My, how this retrogression is biting. Ive only review that a small chaps in the City are so bad that they can hardly means to lift 1.5 billion for Manchester United.

Seriously, is it only me? Or did you, too, conflict to the headlines that dozens of financiers and the similar to have outrageous sums accessible to put towards Uniteds rescue from debt a smallest of twenty million each is accepted to have been affianced for this heart-wrenchingly good means with nausea?

While the idea of Uniteds being returned to a state of mercantile change by a kinship of fans is emotionally appealing, the climb of the ostensible Red Knights creates no clarity at all. Not unless we know either they see United as estimable of free concession a judgment that competence be simpler to generate in excellent London restaurants than between the waste of Chile, say, or Haiti or an event to profit.

If we pretence the former, I have never listened anything similar to it. Where have these people come from? They contingency have been around in 2005, prolonged prior to the retrogression was ostensible to have ravaged their block mile, and nonetheless no might between them appears to have thought to buy the lions share of the bar then, when it would have been far cheaper to solve the element of extended ownership.

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John Magnier and J. P. McManus, the Irishmen so calamitously introduced to United by Sir Alex Ferguson, sole their 28.7 per cent to the Glazers for 227 million in the open of that year and the Red Knights crop up to have let this event come and go with the same turn of reason they displayed in permitting the tellurian monetary complement to collapse.

And who are these Red Knights, anyway? One is Jim ONeill a crony of Ferguson, we are told, as if this were a small form of soundness rather than an supernatural sign of his luckless loyalty with Magnier, with whom he fell out over Rock of Gibraltar, the racehorse, perfectionist multimillions for the timber rights and carrying to solve for a relations pittance.

Ferguson no disbelief still smoulders over that, but the goods on United of the Irishmens preference of customer have valid forever some-more significant. The Glazers, with Fergusons vigourous await theyre good owners, he cried after the 2008 Champions League delight have progressively increasing the debt weight to the point where it roughly equates with the clubs worth when they paid for them.

So they are right afar a gift case. Maybe that is how the Red Knights see it. We have each right to be sceptical, as was David Gill, the United arch executive, when he referred to that an additional of the Knights was Keith Harris, the former Football League authority who right afar advises football clubs. Harriss career in the competition seems dedicated to proof you can have fume but glow and this adds to Gills guess that the Red Knights will blur away.

If their goal is to have a profit, they had improved not take the Glazers for mugs. Or cowards. There is a doctrine in story here, too. After Magnier and McManus became disloyal from Ferguson, the fans shocked opposite them. And what did the Irish do? Sold to the Glazers.

Now the Glazers might conflict to the green-and-gold protest, that appears inextricably related with the Red Knights movement, by keeping the bar instead of offered it.

The expiry date of the down payment by that piece of the debt was not long ago refinanced 2017 suggests that the Americans design United to climb in value, maybe by a long-awaited arm of the digital revolution, over the subsequent couple of years. So because should they sell, generally when the down payment allows them to provide the bar as a good small earner in the meantime?

From the notation the Glazers understanding with the Irishmen was signed, United became dual horses, one using for sporting excellence (and really successfully) and the alternative for the aggrandizement of a Floridian family. While Ferguson rides them both at the same time, all is well. His retirement, when it comes, will have an outcome that stays imponderable. The benefaction mindfulness is with what he will do now.

Will he come out opposite the Glazers? It is tough to see how he can, since his constant capitulation to date. The green-and-gold band of soldiers and the Red Knights mental condition of it, but his experience with Magnier and McManus was chastening.

So let the City boys with United leanings have their meetings in the domicile of companies that should, after all the universe has seen in the past dual years, know improved than to fool around with football; the Glazers have their exit plan and they are doubtful to need any assistance with it. There are improved things, in any case, to be finished with 1.5 billion.

I am no favourite says lamentation Joannie Rochette after winning bronze

Frank Praverman & , : {}

Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette pronounced currently that her bronze award success was likely by her mother only days prior to her comfortless death.

The universe china medallist"s 55-year-old mother Therese died from a heart conflict 4 days ago in Vancouver. But the skater put her pique at the at the behind of of her to lift out a gutsy opening in a formidable margin led by exile South Korean gold-medal leader Kim Yu-Na.

Rochette explained how she had been carrying a complaint with one of her three times jumps, the lutz, so she phoned her mother. "It was my idea entrance here to be on the lectern and my mother told me last week "you"re going to get it. I know it,"" pronounced Rochette.

"I"m certain if she could have seen my three times lutz tonight, she would have been proud."

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The 24-year-old certified it was a conflict to contest but she had been increased by the thousands of messages of await she perceived from around the world. "I felt so most love in so small time," she said. "All of your comments and all of your letters unequivocally helped me in one approach or an additional get on the ice and movement here for myself, for my nation and for my mother."

Taking to the ice for Tuesday"s short programme was the hardest part, she said. "It was the initial foe given it happened and it"s the initial critical foe that my mother was not in the stands attending. Even though I was perplexing to be an contestant focused on my goals, emotions only took the most appropriate out of me. I was unapproachable that I could carry out them.

"I unequivocally didn"t feel similar to skating given my mind was not unequivocally here. I"m blissful I did it given in ten years [time when] the suffering is left afar a small bit, I would have wished I had skated here and that"s one of the reasons because I did it and I know that"s what my mother would have longed for me to do."

She came at the behind of on the ice in the early hours of this sunrise and, skating after the spellbinding opening of Kim, was means to lift out her own most appropriate ever free movement to Camille Saint-Saens"s "Samson and Delilah".

Despite two-footing dual of her jumps, she hermetic the last lectern symbol with her most appropriate ever free movement measure of 131.28 and an altogether 202.64. It was scarcely twenty-six points at the at the behind of of Kim but it was great sufficient for bronze at the at the behind of of china medallist Mao Asada of Japan.

Being in the "Kiss and Cry" area watchful for the formula was really formidable for Rochette. "I pronounced "hello" to everybody in my home locale similar to I regularly do. Usually I contend hi to my mother and father first, so that was a small opposite today. I couldn"t contend hi to my mom. She was regularly unapproachable of me. She was my biggest fan, my most appropriate friend. She was with me each step of the way."

Rochette additionally had the throng on their feet after putting Canada at the behind of on the women"s lectern for the initial time given Elizabeth Manley took china at the 1988 Calgary Games. "I goal this award will enthuse a new era of skaters." she added.

Kim soared to a world-record 228.56 points and cracked her prior symbol by some-more than eighteen points. It will go down as one of the biggest performances in figure skating story and is South Korea"s initial award at the Winter Olympics in a competition alternative than speedskating.

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Former Met military investigator confronting prison over heroin bootlegging tract World headlines

A hold up vessel attends the stage of the fallen a rigid-hull inflatable vessel used in a "high stakes" cocaine-smuggling plot. Photograph: Metropolitan Police/PA

A former Metropolitan military investigator is available judgment after the hearing of a cocaine-smuggling gang, piece of whose £200m load was privileged overboard in severe seas off the Irish coast.

Michael Daly, 49, was pronounced to be main to the conspiracy, organising the logistics, purchasing a rigid-hull inflatable vessel and anticipating "safe houses" to be rented nearby a remote outworn post where the drug were to be brought ashore in County Cork.

The squad attempted to filch 62 bales – some-more than 1,500kg (3,300lb) – of the drug in to the Irish Republic. The plan was foiled when their vessel ran out of fuel in severe seas and was shipwrecked on 2 Jul 2007.

Daly, whose residence was since as "of no bound abode" but who had family links to the west Cork area, and Alan Wells, 56, progressing certified their tools in the conspiracy. They are due to be condemned at a after date.

The box can be reported for the initial time currently after a automechanic indicted of arranging 3 Land Rovers for the squad was privileged of swindling to supply category A drug by a jury at London"s Blackfriars climax court.

Mark Gadsden, prosecuting, had told the justice that Daly was "one of the principals who was to have common in the large increase that were to be done from this conspiracy". Wells assisted Daly in the logistics, he said.

Video footage and photos were shown to the jury to give them an thought of the continue conditions, as three-metre high waves crashed opposite the hilly cliffs.

Gadsden said: "The continue conditions were utterly bad. It was floating a force five or 6 clever wind and there was utterly a clever swell. The rib [inflatable dinghy] got in to difficulty, carrying run out of fuel, and in conclusion it due to take in H2O and afterwards had turn submerged and dragged down by the engines so usually the tip piece of the rib was projecting out of the H2O when it was speckled by the boat men."

The heroin had been ecstatic opposite the Atlantic on a catamaran yacht from Barbados to a handover point off the Irish coast, the justice heard. The boat, the Lucky Day, had been paid for in Florida for $110,000 in income on 3 Mar 2007.

It was sailed to the island of Margarita off the seashore of Venezuela on 31 March. From there it set off with a Lithuanian organisation on twenty-five May on the 3,000-mile journey, Gadsden said.

The place where the drug finished up on the sunrise of 2 Jul was not the dictated alighting site, the justice heard. "Subsequent review by the Republic of Ireland military suggested a rarely worldly and meticulously programmed operation that centred on dual rented properties from that most key exhibits were recovered."

Fingerprints and alternative justification were found at the "safe houses" in Farranamanagh and Letter West after the conspirators" plan went wrong, the jury was told.

Gadsden said: "They were strategically located, unaware the due alighting site at an intensely remote outworn pier."

The justice listened that Daly had paid for the main drug rib in Oct 2006 for the homogeneous of £34,000 from a South African company, utilizing a income send around a unfamiliar banking business in Victoria Street, London. In 2007 the vessel, and a not as big rescue rib, were taken to Ireland from the UK, on the car packet from Pembroke to Rosslare.

Daly and Wells both managed to rush Ireland after the unsuccessful alighting around the car packet utilizing Daly"s fake passport, the justice heard. Police notice teams saw Daly at the Bridges beer hall in South Darenth, Kent, on 4 September. Both he and Wells were after arrested.

Four others have possibly pleaded guilty or been convicted for their piece in the attempted drug bootlegging operation.