-       Glen Mills, who coaches Usain Bolt, expressing his feelings on the return of Justin Gatlin following a ban for drugs cheating.

“Players in Serie A think they are gods who can make a match end whichever way they want.”

-       Maurizio Galdi, sports journalist on Italian football

“I honestly believe that newspapers and all they mean, mistakes and qualities, are a huge benefit to society.”

-       A quote from Tom Watson’s book Dial M for Murdoch.

“I’m on a mission and in a hurry.”

-       Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith.

“We have never experienced such hardship before.”

-       General Abdulaziz Adam al-Hilu, the military and political head of the SPLA-North from Southern Sudan, explain that things have got worse since the Sudan split between North and South.

-       Channel 4 reporter Jonathan Miller and his team were arrested in Bahrain following a car chase and deported. They had been filming demonstrations when they were spotted by a police helicopter. There driver and guide were detained, the driver was treated roughly but is said to be ok.

As the trial of Anders Behring Breivik continues in Norway thousands of people sang Children of the Rainbow following mass murderer’s accusations that the song brainwashed the nation’s youth into supporting immigration.  A 40,000-strong crowd gathered outside the courthouse where the trial was taking place, some laying roses in memory of the 77 people killed by Breivik.

International soccer stars are coming together for a charity match against Burkina Faso. Didier Drogba, Lionel Messi, Samuel Eto’o and Yaya Toure will be among those featured in the match. The match has been organised by the wife of the African nation’s speaker of parliament, Sylvain Vebamba. She spoke with leading African players at this year’s African Cup of Nation’s and decided to arrange the match.

The distribution of International Aid by the EU has been criticised by British MPs. The majority of the aid money has been given to ‘middle-income’ countries, with just 46% going to less affluent countries. An International Development Committee report said that Turkey received £182m in 2010 and Serbia was given £178m. Britain gave £1.23bn to the EU international aid fund in 2010. Committee chairman Malcolm Bruce said: “Giving aid to relatively rich countries like Turkey could devalue the concept of aid.”

Oscar winning Sean Penn has been awarded the Peace Summit Award by Nobel Prize laureates in Chicago. He was given the award for his work in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake.

Puerto Rican boxer, Miguel Cotto, has spoken of how he has turned to Yoga to help tone down his aggression. Cotto takes to the ring of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas this weekend for a big fight with Floyd Mayweather. But after this he gets back to his Meditation. Cotto said: “When you find peace in life, when your family brings you peace, when the people around you bring you peace, you live in a peaceful atmosphere. That’s where I am right now. I have peace in my heart and in my life. Everything I’m going to do in my life, I do it with peace.”

Italian soccer is finding itself under threat from terrace violence and match-fixing again. Violent Ultra fanatics are pushing regular supporters out of stadiums as they dominate the stands, with attendances having fallen by 300,000 between 2008 and 2010 in the top three divisions. Around 50 players have been called up by a sporting tribunal to answer match-fixing questions, with 17 players suspended last year following wire taps. Sports Journalist Maurizio Galdi, said: “About 75 matches since 2009 are now being investigated and at the end of all this we could see around 50 players sent for criminal trial.”

Greece’s economic crisis has led to one of its charities bringing doctors back from earthquake-torn- Haiti to treat patients in their own country. Dr Aspasia Michalakis, said: “Here there’s also a crisis, like in Haiti. Many times I feel I am in Haiti when I’m in Athens. There are too many critical cases. Now we have to concentrate in Greece. We had the opportunity to go to Libya, but because of the [Greek] crisis we didn’t go.”

Charles Taylor, 64, has become the first head of state to be convicted of war crimes since the Nuremberg trials. The former President of Liberia was convicted of aiding and abetting murder, rape, enslavement and the use of child soldiers during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The trial cost an estimated $50m (£31m) and has been hailed a success. However, British QC, Courtenay Griffiths, warned that the process risked being viewed as “neo-colonialism”, because so far only Africans had been arrested. Mr Griffiths said: “There has to be some concern about Africans being transported in handcuffs – chains – to a European court at the beginning of the 21^st century and it only appears to be happening to them. If such behaviour is to be deemed illegal, I would like to see it deemed illegal across the board. But are the President of the United States or the Prime Minister of Great Britain, if they engage in such activities, to be brought before an international court?”

-       Hadrian’s Wall will be lit up by 1.8m (6ft) weather balloons with internal lights in celebration of the London 2012 Olympics. The Roman wall, built to keep the Scots out, stretches from the River Tyne to the Solway Firth. It has been designed by New York Artists YesYesNo and Zachary Lieberman and will be on show from June 21^st to September 9^th.

The London 2012 Paralympic Games is expected to attract the largest ever-broadcast revenues. Locog has introduced a range of new deals, which see £10m generated by the sale of the rights.

The British Olympic Association’s (BOA) opposition to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) code, that allows athletes who have been found guilty of cheating can-not be banned from the Olympics for life, has been overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The ruling will mean that sprinter Dwaine Chambers and cyclist David Miller can now represent Team GB at the London 2012 games. The BOA now wants to change the WADA code that has been supported by every other country in the world.

A free membership scheme at a group of Golf Club’s is leading the way in providing a positive example of how to attract young people into sport. The Olympics was won on the promise of ‘inspiring a generation’, but more attention has been paid to building facilities and security than getting the kids sporty. However, Paul Gibbons, who owns four golf clubs, the best known of which is Oxfordshire, three years ago decided to give 8 to 18-year-olds free membership. The scheme has cost his clubs around £240,000 in subscriptions but is seen to be worth the investment. Gibbons explains: “We didn’t create the scheme to make money but to try to encourage more young people to take up the game, particularly as golf is now an Olympic sport.”

Cashing in for 2012, the top earning Team GB athletes (not including soccer stars): A Murray (tennis) £3m; J Ennis (athletics) £1m; V Pendleton (cycling) £900k; P Radcliffe (athletics) £500k; C Hoy (cycling) £500k; K-A Payne (swimming) £500k; R Adlington (swimming) £400k; M Farah (athletics) £400k; B Ainslie (sailing) £350k; P Idowu (athletics) £300k.

The BBC is to send a 765 strong team to cover the London 2012 games. This is nearly double the 493 whom they sent to the Beijing Games in 2008. The BBC paid £65m for the exclusive rights to the Games, but they have declined to say what the budget is for this year’s coverage.

Scotland Yard and MI5 regard complacency as an enemy as they put together the biggest ever security operation in the UK. Trials in the UK and US show that Britain is still a key al-Qaeda target. Many of the leaders, including the figurehead Bin Laden, have been killed, but the ideology has been spread via the internet. The network now has hard-to-detect lone operators and groups of “self-starters”. There are around 50 British Islamists who have been fighting in Somalia, and conflicts in Nigeria, the Arab world, as well as in Mali and Sudan that could pose a threat to UK security in the future.

-       London 2012 security measures have seen the Army taking over a tower in a gated residential community and placing High Velocity Missiles (HVMs). The tower is part of Lexington building in Bow and has excellent views over the Olympic village. There are 700 residents living in the building and some have expressed their concerns that the presence of the army might make it a potential terrorist threat. Resident Brian Whelan, 28, said: “It makes you think it will be some sort of Army base – it’s not ideal. I’ve looked these [the missiles] up and I don’t think they’re the kind of thing you can fire over a highly populated area like Tower Hamlets. Think of the debris. Will this make me a target for terrorists?”

-       A real-life terrorist threat was played out in West London, giving security forces the perfect opportunity to prepare for the forthcoming London 2012 games. Thousands of people were evacuated from the Tube as Tottenham Court Road was sealed off and Snipers, bomb disposal, nuclear, biological and chemical warfare experts moved in. The terrorist was Michael Green, a BNP member who had stood for election in 2010 in Stevenage. Green has been charged with possession of a weapon for the discharge of a noxious liquid/gas or electrical incapacitating device; false imprisonment; making a bomb hoax; causing criminal damage and recklessly endangering life.

Police sergeant Mark Rushton decided that guarding the Olympic torch was more important than attending court as a witness in the trial of his alleged attacker. The Devon and Cornwall Constabulary Officer had two fingers broken when he was head butted by Michael O’Brien during a police raid on the man’s home. The investigation into the incident is said to have cost thousands of pounds.

A London Underground worker has donated £500,000 to the British National Party. According anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate, the donation will help to stop the debt-ridden party from ‘imploding’. The BNP has been targeting disgruntled Tube workers in the run up to the London Mayoral election following a promise from Boris Johnson to introduce driverless trains.

The Bling Bling lifestyle of Premiership soccer stars draws players and entourages to the limelight like insects to the moon. But one soccer star has spoken of how he tells himself everyday to ‘stay real’. Louis Saha sees himself as the ‘kid from the hood’ who didn’t pay attention at school. He grew up in the Parisian suburbs to parents from Guadeloupe. Now he has written a memoir of his of experiences titled Thinking inside the Box: Reflections on Life as a Premier League Footballer, in which he writes: “Some bling-bling footballers are so extreme and obsessed by their appearance and reputation that they wind people up. Some go to nightclubs with a dozen mates. They shower beautiful girls with jeroboams of Moet & Chandon. The £4,000, six-litre Methuselah is not tasted but wasted over the body of Mam’zelle Starf*****, who has just made the footballer pay for it….”

Convicted rapist, Ched Evans, has been named in the PFA League One team of the year. The news comes just days after Evans was sentenced to five years in jail for raping a girl who was “too drunk to consent”. The Sheffield United striker had scored 35 goals in 42 appearances this season. PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor defended the decision saying: “That was a football judgement by his fellow professionals. It was not a moral judgement and in no way does the PFA condone the offence for which he was convicted. If he had been removed from the team, it would have created more of a storm and would have been manipulating the vote.” WFTS comments – The stain will remain….

The traditional handshake held before every Premier League match has been cancelled for the Chelsea versus QPR game. The decision was made in light off the ongoing John Terry alleged racism directed at Anton Ferdinand in their previous league match. A Premier League statement read: “After discussions with both Chelsea and Queens Park Rangers about the potential and specific legal context in relation to John Terry and Anton Ferdinand, the decision has been taken to suspend the handshake convention for Sunday’s match.”

Football League clubs have voted in favour of new Financial Fair Play rules. If Championship clubs make losses of more than £6m they will be fined millions of pounds or put under a transfer embargo for 2014/15 season. Clubs promoted to the Premiership will be fined a “Fair Play Tax” of 1% for the first £100,000 to 100% on anything over £10m. Clubs that are not promoted to the Premier League and are breaking the rules will be put on transfer embargo. The Football League has established a Club Financial Control Panel to monitor clubs from this year’s 2011-12 season. Championship clubs are allowed an acceptable deviation of £4m losses for 2011/12 season, with this reduced to £2m by 2015/16.

Former England cricket star Adam Hollioake has turned to amateur boxing. The 40-year-old had his first fight in Brisbane, Australia, winning with a technical knockout after 2mins 49secs.

A nine-year-old boy has broken down on Britain’s Got Talent TV show leading to criticism from government minister. Malaki Paul, from North London, was being watched by 10m viewers when he broke down half way through his performance. The producers of the show had shown footage of the young boy becoming upset in the run-up to the performance because he was worried he would not remember all the lyrics to song he was performing. His mother and Toni-Ann and judge Alesha went to comfort him. His mother asked if it was ok for him to carry on and he did, winning four-out-of-four ‘Yes’s’ from the judges. Minister for Children and Families, said: “Many will have felt uncomfortable to see a young child under so much pressure. The welfare of the child must always come ahead of the drive for ratings.”

The governments lead on David Cameron’s Troubled Families programme has called for local authority officials to get down on their hands and knees and “clean the floors”. Louise Casey said that too many similar programmes had failed because officials just turned up with a clipboard and “monitor decline”. She said that they call on families at 7am to make sure children were up and had gone to bed on time. Ms Casey said: “They watch, they check, they assess. They assess the fact that the floors need to be cleaned. But they don’t actually make any difference. There is no lasting change.”

Police minister Nick Herbert has said that the state is acting like a bad parent by repeatedly tolerating criminal behaviour. In a speech in Washington Mr Herbert said: “The state too often acts like a bad parent, neglectful in repeatedly tolerating bad behaviour, then inevitably harsh. It is quite likely that many of these offenders have grown up in families where no boundaries have been set for them. The State continues with that message.”

The economic downturn has lead to an increase in the number of foreign students studying at private schools in the UK. An annual census by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) has found that there has been 6% (1,411) increase in the number of foreign pupils. There has been a doubling in the number of Russian pupils at British independent schools in the past five years, which is the largest increase. The top three countries are: China (3,636), Germany (2,281) and Russia (1,695).

Austerity is a word for the poor not the rich. Britain’s top 1,000 people are now worth a record £414bn, an increase of 4.4% on last year. Top of the list of Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian steel magnate resident in London, is worth £12.7bn, despite a 27% decrease in is total wealth. The Duke of Westminster is the richest British person on the list with a £7.35bn value made coming his central London property empire.

Parents have been told to restrict their children’s mobile use until more is known about the potential risks from radiation. The latest report from the Health Protection Agency has concluded that there is no convincing evidence of mobile phones causing brain tumours or any other type of cancer. However, the HPA did recommend that the evidence needed to be monitored continuously. HPA chair, Anthony Swerdlow, said: “The evidence overall has not demonstrated any adverse effects from exposure to radio frequency levels below internationally accepted guidelines. But if this is something that takes 15 to 20 years or more to show up, we need to keep watching rates just in case.”

A promising cyclist has been killed whilst out riding with her club. Orla Lawlor, 26, a triathlete and a lawyer, was hit by a vehicle at 10.45am on Sunday in Cambridge, she suffered multiple injuries and died at the scene.

The Old Bailey has jailed a teenage girl for 12 years for her part in organising the killing of 15-year-old Sofyen Belamouadden. The schoolboy was attacked by a mob of 20 young people at Victoria Station. Victoria Osoteku used Facebook to help arrange the violence and also bought a £3.99 Argos knife set that was used to stab their victim to death. Judge Christopher Moss QC said: “You played a pivotal role in the events leading up to that day and must take a substantial share of the responsibility for that.” Her victim’s mother, Naina Ghailan, was angry at the sentence, saying: “I’m disgusted. She’s got 12 years and she’ll only serve half. She’s an adult and she should have got life. She planned the whole thing.”

Police in Birmingham have arrested three young people – a boy and girl aged 16, and 15-year-old boy – in connection with a stabbing of man in the city centre. The victim is in a critical condition in hospital. The case is being treated as attempted murder.

A team of young ice-skater’s from Altringham have won gold at an international tournament. The Twizzles beat off competition from Switzerland, Spain, Germany and Australia at the Trophy D’Ecosse 2012 competition in Dumfries, Scotland.

Pupils from Wellington High School in Timperly have raised £36,000 for the Genesis Breast Cancer Appeal. Students at the school took part in their annual sponsored walk and broke last year’s record of £31,000 raised by the event.

A Jury of six men and six women have found a 12-year-old boy guilty of raping two young girls. The boy, from Bolton, will be sentenced on June 18^th after reports are prepared by child psychologist and the youth offending team. Judge Brown, will consider the boy’s age and intellectual abilities when sentencing, and said: “It was more a form of bullying and sexual experimentation.”

-       Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

“Nothing to do with Formula One.”

-       Bernie Ecclestone’s response to criticism for not cancelling this years Grand Prix in Bahrain, amidst the suppression of protests in the country.

“The surly young man in a hoodie who turns up look unwilling to work can turn into an excited and motivated employee.”

-       Employment minister Chris Grayling calls for business to employ young British hoodies.

“They never said sorry for hurting me.”

-       Thusha Kamaleswaran, aged 6, who was shot in the cross fire of a London street gang war.

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‘News like this makes you believe in the power of prayer and miracles’

Gordon Taylor, Chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association following Fabrice Muamba’s release from hospital

‘Sport is about bringing people together Sport is about inclusion isn’t it?

Charles Comeneche, UK Athletics Director on the issue of plastic Brits

‘Always want the ball to come back, welcome it, embrace it and encourage it. Always be happy to see it’

Alan Jones, Tennis Coach and motivator

“This is going to be an Olympic Games watched by many youths and we don’t want these cheats to have an opportunity to tarnish them…. It will be sad if we have to fall in line with the rest of the world.”

-       Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy on the debate about the inclusion of drug cheats who served their time.

-       The troubles in Bahrain have led to four mechanics from a Formula One team having to flee their car after a petrol bomb was thrown at security forces. The Force India team members had been driving back from the circuit in the capital Manama when they found themselves caught up in the disturbances. Will Hings, the Teams spokesman said: “We were not the target. We just happened to fall upon an incident that was ahead of us, a disruption in the road. Nobody was hurt from our team. We were not targeted directly by Molotov cocktails.”

The gender apartheid of Saudi Arabia is an issue for the IOC and not Locog according Lord Coe. He has dismissed the issue by passing the buck. C Wilke, from Human Rights Watch, said: “The IOC and Locog want this to be the first Games where every nation is represented by both male and female athletes, so that officials can pose with women squads from every delegation, ticking that particular box. But Saudi has always imposed an effective ban on women in sports, with no women’s sports federations, no PE in schools and the government closing down gyms for women, and this is not unravelling despite the kingdoms membership of the Olympic Movement that prohibits such gender-based discrimination. Scouring the world for a viable national team of women’s athletes with Saudi passports is not the solution.”

-       And lets not forget the women who are making the sports clothing to be worn at the London 2012 games. The vast majority of the workers who are on the production lines for Adidas, Nike, Puma, et al, are women. The workers are paid perfectly low wages, bullied, forced to work unpaid overtime, sexually harassed, and sacked if they try organise unions to fight for rights and conditions. Meredith Alexander, who resigned from her position with the Commission for a Sustainable London, wrote in The Independent: “Locog’s contracts are all signed now so its too late to insist that workers get a living wage. But it could invest a lot more in helping them safely to access its complaints mechanism. More investigations such as that in Indonesia are also an important way to help. But these approaches can solve problems only one factory at a time. Systemic change requires real commitment from the industry itself.”

The London AGM of mining company Rio Tinto saw protestors gathering outside to demonstrate against it’s social and environmental record. The company has provided the metal for the 4,700 medals at this years London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. The metal has been sourced from mines in Utah and Mongolia. Meredith Alexander, who is campaigning against the companies sponsorship of the Olympics, said: “The impact that Rio Tinto has had in terms of the environmental and social problems that are associated with its mines around the world is really shocking. The case they need to answer is how long they can continue to operate in a way that can bring such devastation to communities when mining assets that morally belong to them.”

The two-time Olympian and NBA star Dwayne Wade has joined some of his other colleagues in calling for payment for representing their country at the Olympics. The Miami Heat guard backed Ray Allen from Boston Celtics who first raised the issue on FoxSports.com before their two teams met in Miami. Wade, 30, said: “It’s a lot things you do for the Olympics –a lot of jerseys you sell. We play the whole summer. I do think guys should be compensated. Just like I think college players should be compensated as well. Unfortunately, it’s not there. But I think it should be something, you know, there for it.”

FIFA has ‘donated’ £36m to South Africa’s 2010 World Cup Legacy Trust for grassroots and humanitarian work. However, they are also spending £122m on a new underground FIFA museum in Zurich.

Soccer clubs in the English Premier League (PL) have the most lucrative kit deals. According to Sport+Markt and PR Marketing, the combined value of the 20 PL clubs deals is €109.7m (£90.4), which is nearly double the value of the German soccer club deals. The average deal is worth €5.5m (£4.5m) for 2011/12, where as for the average for all the ‘top five’ European soccer leagues is  €3.3m (£2.72m).

A UNICEF and Save the Children study has found that there are 4m less under-fives dying every year than in 1990. Also 56m more children are know in education than there were in 1999. The number of children living on 80p a day is falling, as is malnutrition, whilst vaccination is on the increase.

Researchers in Canada have found clear links between the use of speed and ecstasy and the onset of depression in teenagers. The study of 3,880 children aged 15 and 16 from deprived areas of Quebec, over five years, showed that youngsters who used the party drugs were 70% more likely to exhibit heightened depressive symptoms than those who used neither.

North London singing sensation, Adele, has been listed in the top 100 of most influential people in the world. The Time’s magazine table has listed the 23-year-old alongside the likes of Barack Obama, Rihanna and hackers group Anonymous.

The Mike Tyson story can be heard from the man himself at a strip joint in Las Vegas. The boxing legend tells his tales of punching people in the face outside nightclub and having sex with prostitutes. He includes how he was found by his trainer and surrogate father, Cus D’Amato, living in a rough Brooklyn area with his alcoholic mother. Tyson discusses his personal questions about manhood, race and fear, however, according Time Entertainment critic Gary Andre Pool he “never satisfyingly answered and the show detours instead into tangential anecdotes, dead ends and moments when the audience simply cringes in embarrassment.”

A 9-year-old boy went to school on an ordinary Monday morning and informed his teachers that his mother and sister were dead at home. Police arrived at his home within minutes to find the bodies of his mother and sister, along a blood-covered man and an unharmed 4-year-old. The shocking incident took place in modest Las Vegas neighbourhood. All involved belong to a single five people family. The man is not a suspect and has not been charged.

A 15-year-old boy was shot and seriously wounded by riot police as he attended a funeral in Bahrain. Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Aziz was said to be intensive care after being shot in the chest. Several other people were also wounded as they attended the funeral of Ahmed Ismail Hassan, a 22-year-old journalist. Thousands of people had turned out for the funeral.

-       A Williams F1 catering staff member has been released from her position after she refused to attend the Bahrain Grand Prix because of human rights abuses in the country.

-       McLaren team principal, Martin Whitmarsh, said of his teams presence at the Bahrain Grand Prix: “We are a sports team. We have a calendar set out in front of us. We don’t determine that. To be drawn into comment on political and human rights issues would be inappropriate.”

A 25-year-old Seria B player has died after having gone into cardiac arrest during league match. Italian soccer player, Piermario Morosini, was playing for Livorno against Pescara when collapsed in 31^st minute, the match was abandoned. All games have been called off in Italy this weekend.

A museum in Naples has burned contemporary works of art in protest against cut backs. The Carsio Contemporary Art Museum chief, Antonio Manfredi, began the protest by burning a picture by French artist, Severine Bourguignon. Mr Manfredi, said: “It’s terrible – a dreadful scene. But we are convinced this will succeed in waking up the institutions, not only locally but also regionally and nationally.”

A report titled The Geographical Flow of Music has shown that Atlanta and Oslo are more influential on setting musical trends that New York and Manchester. The findings were based on a study of 60 billion pieces of data from the music streaming website Last.fm.

The TV celebrity culture has a new hero in the form of The Voice star Danny O’Donoghue, from Dublin, who says he is a one woman man, being love with his Lithunian girlfriend. The mother-of-one, Irma Mali, 28, has a traumatic past though. Her ex-lover and father of her nine-year-old daughter Nikoleta, was found dead in a pool of blood having been shot in the head in Dublin. A coroner’s ruling that Marius Simanaitis had committed suicide was over-ruled following a challenge by his brother, Vilnius, who said: “The police have done nothing. The coroner has not carried out an investigation. He just said “your brother committed suicide”. But the evidence does not stack up. Marius died from a bullet to the front of his head, from a gun with a silencer which would have been impossible to hold in that position. There was no gunshot burn on his skin and he had other injuries to his body, consistent with fighting. All I want is justice. If I have to wait 20 years to bring Marius’s killers to justice then that’s what I will do. I am 100% sure he was murdered.”

In order to ensure The Parade of Nations only lasts for 1.5hours during the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony, the number of officials taking part will be restricted. The Beijing 2008 parade lasted for two hours. All accredited competitors will take part but the key officials of the 200+ nations will be limited. As the competitors and officials complete the 1.5km walk they will be cheered on by 2,500 schoolchildren.

Team GB will be boosted by a £750,000 investment as part of a partnership with Visa. The Team 2012 presented by Visa programme will see the investment spent in the final 100 days of Olympic preparation and 133 days of Paralympic preparations. To date UK Sport has spent £312m of National Lottery funding preparing athletes for London 2012.

The build up to London 2012 is becoming a more anxious experience for commuters as their daily routines are being changed to fit with the Olympic programme. Delays and cancellations are expected on the London Underground as the timetable is changed in preparation for the Games.

In order to make sure that the London 2012 games are safe from terrorists and criminals the UK will see the largest peace-time mobilisation of Police since the 1980’s miner strikes. A £553m budget has been allocated, but the plan will see the displacement of officers from other regions of UK, leaving those regions vulnerable to crime and terrorism. A total of 11,000 police officers will be on duty everyday in London during the games, with 1,500 of these being recruited from outside the capital. A total of 7,000 special constables (unpaid and with less powers and training) will be used, but London only has 4,000 specials at present. PC John Stewart from London said: “I am being told by the gangs themselves that they simply can’t wait until the Olympics to cause havoc because they know the we will all be elsewhere.”

The London 2012 volunteers are being allocated their workloads and realising what they have signed up to. Olympic shifts for some drivers are 16 x10-hour day and night shifts. In response to this news a LOCOG spokesperson said: “We have eight million hours to allocate and we’ve stressed from the start this will be arduous work delivering the Games and it goes on throughout the night. Only a tiny percentage have complained and we will do what we can to accommodate them.” In LOCOG’s Games maker letter to volunteers they said: “We can’t stress enough it’s really important to commit to your shifts. We can consider changes only in exceptional circumstances. Please bear in mind, there is a mind-boggling volume to allocate.”

The London 2012 games were won with promise of promoting a healthier nation but the Olympic sponsors, McDonalds, are using the games to promote the sale of their less-than-healthy happy meals. The global power that MD’s are to sell include: nine million free toys of Mendaville and Wenlock, the Olympic mascots, along with a new addition of Rainbow Power. There will also include a free exercise toys. The move comes as critics slam the nutritional content of Happy Meals, which are being sold in conjunction for the Olympics. The Acadcemy of Medial Royal Colleges (AoMRC) described the McDonald’s Olympic Happy Meal launch as “the single greatest public-health threat in the UK.”

Musician John Lydon has revealed that the reason why his band The Sex Pistols turned down the opportunity to perform at the London 2012 Olympic closing ceremony was because of censorship. Lydon said: “They tried to get us involved in the Olympics. What they wanted was, they’re going to do this thing where celebrities go around the stadium on the back of flat-top lorries. So there will be Naomi Campbell in a Vivienne Westwood dress, followed by Madness doing ‘BaggyTrousers’, and then the Pistols doing ‘Pretty Vacant’. But without the ‘vay-****’, just pretty’ and the word ‘censored’.”

Companies who have businesses inside the Olympic Park are being told to step up their security at their warehouses to ensure that terrorists don’t plant bombs in their supply trucks destined for the London site. A Locog source, said: “Over the past few months all the companies have had to beef up security. The threat of someone planting a bomb on a lorry headed for the Olympic park is very real.”

Twitter-laureate, Joey Barton, is painting a new image of himself as thinking intellectual. His latest plans are for a website with topical debate. Mr Barton has 1,384,760 followers on Twitter, and he only joined last August. In this time he has written 4,598 Tweets, many of which have hit the national media. Joey likes to discuss football, politics, philosophy, art and social justice. However, for now he is taking a rest from Tweeting, saying he is having “a little Twitter sabbatical before I say something I’ll end up regretting”. He now plans to return with his own website titled joeybarton. A place for “self-publication”, containing a blog, host video content and a “hub” for people discuss a wide range of topics. Barton says: “Obviously in 140 characters it is sometimes difficult to get your point across without being misconstrued”.

Labour MP Jim Dowd was said to have to disrupted proceedings in an All Parliamentary football group session because  he was ‘worse for wear’. The session was discussing the FA and Premier League youth development programmes with Ged Roddy and Gareth Southgate explaining the detail of the Elite Player Performance Plan. An insider said: “He must have had a very long lunch, it was very embarrassing.”

A 28-year-old contestant of BBC’s The Voice reduced the judges to tears and then said his performance was inspired by the gang murder of a friend of his. Jaz Ellington’s friend, Fabian Ricketts, 18, was gunned down in April 2006, after he was caught up in a gang dispute. Elllington said: “I’ve gone through a lot of heartache and I’ve written about it. I lost Fabian a few years ago. It was like, “Wow, I’m never going to see you again. The only way I could express that was in a song called Perfect Picture which I sang at his funeral.”

Celebrities and pop stars made the list but the UK’s prime minister wasn’t named in the Time magazine list of top 100 most influential people in the world. David Cameron, was beaten by Brits including pop singer Adele, the Queen, film director Danny Boyle, and actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Craig.

The UK is host to far-right anti-Muslim network that is on the rise globally. The news comes as the Norwegian trial of Anders Behring Breivik begins. The UK based far-right organisations are forging links with their fellow groups in the US and Europe. There are around 190 anti-Muslim groups that are promoting an Islamophobic agenda. The Stop Islamization of Nations (Sion) group is cited by campaigners as an example of moves to form cross-border alliances. The growth of the far-right is being fuelled by the economic crisis sweeping Europe according to Andrea Mammore, a historian at Kingston University London, who said: “The economic crisis continues to promote nationalism alongside the need for a common enemy. A fear of radical Islam is being developed, the idea that it presents a threat to our freedom.”

HM Revenue and Customs are investigating reports that rich millionaires are using Romanian charities to avoid paying their taxes. Britain’s have donated millions of pound to charities in Romania that are said to be tackling the brutal treatment of orphans and disabled children. Whilst the majority of givers do so in good heart, richer donors have been accused of donating to organisations that are spending the money on charitable causes and in some cases the money is finding its way back to the donor themselves. The news comes as the government tackles criticism for putting a cap on tax-free charitable donations. Ken Clarke, Justice Minister, said: “If you put a cap on charitable donations, an awful lot of very clever accountants would start using a great deal of ingenuity looking at the charitable allowances to see what you could get there. Most of it is philanthropy, of course, but you can set up a charitable trust in some Eastern European country….you can relieve yourself of a lot of British tax doing that.”

Plans to introduce ‘neighbourhood justice panels’ have been announced by the Home Secretary Theresa May. The move would see residents given to the opportunity to address issues of youth gangs and petty crime in their area. Local residents would make up panels that would pass judgement on crimes such as vandalism, violence and other anti-social behaviour. Police Minister Nick Herbert, said: “We are most definitely not encouraging people to take the law into their own hands, but we do want them to get involved in law and order at a local level in a meaningful and responsible way.”

The Old Bailey has seen a gang of youths, who butchered a teenager from a rival school to death in front of travellers at busy train station, jailed for more than 100 years. A Facebook feud between the school-boy Sofeyn Belamoudden and a sixth former led to his murder. Sofeyn was punched, kicked and stabbed to death by a pack of up to 20 students aged between 15 and 18 at London Victoria underground station. Ringleaders Samson Odegdunne, 18, Christopher Omergi, 18, and Obi Nwokeh, 19, were jailed for a minimum of 18 years for murder and conspiracy to cause grievous bodily murder. Adonis Akra, 18, Samuel Roberts, 19, and Femi Oderinwale, 18, were sentenced to 12 years for manslaughter. And Tyrone Richards, 17, and Enoch Amoah, 19 were given seven years each after being found guilty of manslaughter.

Olympic gold medallist Darren Campbell has been visiting a Hampshire secondary school and five of its feeder primary schools in role as ambassador for the Sky Sports Living for Sport programme. The programme is run in partnership with the Youth Sports Trust The sprinter met with students at Bridgemary Community Sports College and Holnrook, Woodcot, Bedenham, Peel Common and Grange primary schools in Gosport. A sports themed assembly was held at each primary school. Assistant head teacher Jo Radford, said: “We were absolutely delighted to welcome one of Britain’s most successful Olympic sprinters to our school. Our students have worked extremely hard on their Sky Sports Living for Sport projects over the past two years and to see that work rewarded with a visit from a truly inspirational athlete gave them a school day they will never forget.”

A decision to move the kick off the FA Cup final to a 5.15pm kick off will mean that thousands of Liverpool fans will be stranded in London. The big match is coinciding with engineering works, which mean later trains are being cancelled. Police fear that the later kick-off and the transport problems will lead to violence between Liverpool and Chelsea fans. A spokesman for the Liverpool FC Official Supporters Club said: “The final should kick off at 3pm and everything else should work around the fixture. The last people who are thought of by the FA are the fans. We are seen as a money-making machine who do anything to follow their clubs.”

Fabrice Muamba has left London Chest Hospital 30 days after he collapsed in front of 36,000 soccer fans at White Hart Lane and millions more watching the match live. His miracle survival followed the prays of those watching.

Sunderland soccer star Kirean Richardson has been speaking about how he has found God as he turns his back on the ‘bling bling’ lifestyle of the nations soccer players. Richardson, 27, is a former Manchester United player who was nicknamed the ‘Lord Snooty’ by the clubs fans because of stand-offish behaviour. In December he revealed his new found faith by exposing a T Shirt with ‘I belong to Jesus’ written on it as scored for Sunderland. Richardson, who attends the Good Word Ministries, near Durham, said: “I’ve been a born-again Christian for four years. I was saved in Sunderland. It’s changed my life for the better – through Jesus’s death. People need to know if they feel they can’t talk to anyone, the church is here for them. The main thing is having a relationship with God.”

A group of students were asked to leave the Grosvenor Hotel in London after one of them asked for the signature of Barcelona soccer star Lionel Messi. James McWatt, 19, asked for the soccer legend to sign a Barcelona shirt he had bought, and Messi was about to do so when his team mate, Dani Alves, intervened leading to a fracas involving the Barcelona squad and the police being called to the hotel. Business student McWatt, and his friends Ryan Hill, 18 and Steve Carruthers, 21, were then asked to leave the £350-a-night hotel.

Former Mayor of London Ken Livingston is hoping to win back his old job and has been answering questions of voters:

-       Darrly Cox, 60, a cabbie from Brent, asked: “How do you feel about beach volleyball that is going to shut The Mall for three months?”

Ken Livingston: “I’m not happy about it. Nothing should be closed off except for absolute minimum time. I would want to re-examine the closing of the Olympic lanes if I was elected Mayor.”

-       Juliet Elkan, 45, stay-at-home mother, Greenwich, asked: “I would like to know your thoughts on the riots, about why they happened and what you would do about the issues.”

Ken Livingston: “If Mark Duggan hadn’t been killed we might not have had the riots. The real problem was when his parents went to Tottenham police station there wasn’t anyone to meet them. People must be allowed to protest but not to use violence.”

Football league soccer star Ched Evans has been jailed for five years after being found guilty of raping teenager. Evans, 23, a former Manchester City trainee, has scored 35 goals this season for Sheffield United and also scored on his debut for Wales. The girl was said to be drunk to consent to sexual intercourse and has no memory of the incident. His co-defendant, Port Vale defender Clayton McDonald, was found not guilty of the same charge by Caenarfon Crown Court. The two players had been friends for ten years having met at Manchester City youth academy. Judge Merfyn Hughes QC, said during sentencing: “The complainant was 19 years of age and was extremely intoxicated. CCTV footage shows, in my view, the extent of her intoxication when she stumbled into your friend. As the jury have found, she was in no condition to have sexual intercourse. When you arrived at the hotel, you must have realised that. You have thrown away the successful career in which you were involved.”

Modern day children and young people are said to be suffering the effects of ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’. The term has been coined by US based writer Richard Louv and describes the growing disconnection children have with nature. A report titled Natural Childhood from naturalist, author and TV producer Stephen Moss, has highlighted how children are losing contact with the natural world around them. The report used academic research and a survey to highlight how: fewer than ten per cent of kids play in wild places; down from 50 per cent a generation ago. Meanwhile, the ‘roaming radius’ for kids has declined by 90 per cent in one generation (30 years). Fiona Reynolds, director-general of the National Trust, said: “Getting outdoors and closer to nature has all sorts of benefits for our children. It keeps them fit, they can learn about the world around them and most of all its fun. As a nation we need to do everything we can to make it easy and safe for our children to get outdoors.”

The National Youth Theatre is under threat of closure due to cash crisis. Two thirds of its staff are to be laid off after it announced that it was £650,000 in debt. Among the stars to come from the theatre school are Dame Helen Mirren, Colin Firth and Jude Law. Young members who have been paying an annual subscription fee will now see three of their summer productions cancelled. The cause of the financial problems are said to be an accounting error which led to the charitable company increasing salaries for staff, permanent positions for free lance staff, and lavish theatrical productions. A source from the theatre said: “The situation is an absolute disaster. They’re blaming the problem on a lack of funding but it’s due to incompetence within the organisation.”

Government welfare reforms will lead to 350,000 children losing out on free school meals. There are around 1.2m school pupils who are living in poverty but who are missing out on having free school dinners according to research by the Children’s Society. A new cap on low income benefits will leave 100,000 households worse off.

Rising youth unemployment is in part because British young people cannot compete with older foreign workers. Employment minister Chris Grayling made the statement as Business lobby groups warned that young people were being failed by the education system that was preparing them for the workplace. Mr Grayling said: “You’ve got these young people who are up against somebody who may be five or six years older, who has had the get up and go to cross a continent, to come to the UK, [they are] up against somebody who has who has no previous experience and has just left school or college here. And employers are very often giving that older person the chance, rather than that young inexperienced person.”

-       Chris Grayling, employment minister, went to say that he not only should we ‘hug a hoodie’ but we should employ them also. Mr Grayling told the Policy Exchange think tank in London: “Often the surly young man in a hoodie who turns up looking unwilling to work can turn into an excited and motivated employee.”

Moves to put a cap on tax-free charitable donations are unravelling as the idea takes a beating from all sides. The plan would have earned the government £100m but at the same time cost charities the same amount and more. John Low, from the Charities Aid Foundation, said: “This has been a shambles. The Government simply has not thought this through.”

A 16^th Birthday party went Facebook viral leading to a mob of gate crashing youths turning up. Bardley McAnulty, had intended for about 30 of his friends to turn up, but in the end hundreds of people invited themselves along having heard about the party via the social network site and Balckberry Messenger (BBM). The four bed detached house in Poole, Dorset, had a window smashed, the back door ripped of it’s hinges, curtains in the sitting-room ripped down, the garden fence damaged and a children’s outdoor play house was wrecked. Police turned up to disperse the gathering, arresting a 16 and 17-year-old for drunk and disorderly behaviour. Bardley said: “It started with a few people bringing plus-ones and I didn’t see a problem with letting them in, but then a larger group turned up and I said no. They opened up the side gate without me knowing and from there people just kept coming in. After a while the street was full of people coming into the house and I kind of lost control of what happened. It was scary how quickly things can change.”

Three gang members have been jailed for life for a shooting that left a five-year-old girl paralysed. Nathaniel Grant, 21, was the leader of the trio and he pulled the trigger, he was jailed for a minimum of 17 years. Fellow gang members Kazeem Kolawole, 19, and Anthony McCalla, 20, were jailed for a minimum of 14 years. They were members of the Brixton GAS gang. Sentencing Judge Martin Stephens said that the shooting of Thusha Kamaleswaran “was an attack on society itself by men who see themselves as outside the law and above the law.”

Teenage rioter Darrel Desuze has been jailed for eight years after pleading to guilty to the manslaughter of pensioner Richard Mannington Bowes. Desuze, 17, punched Mr Bowes as he tried to put out a fire in a dustbin. Mr Bowes suffered brain damage and died three days later in hospital. Desuze’s mother, Lavinia, 31, was also jailed for 18 months for trying to pervert the course of justice. She had tried to get rid of the clothes he wore that night. Mr Bowes sister Anne Wilderspin, said after the hearing that she forgave Desuze. Mrs Wilderspin said: “Darrell and his mother have blown their prospects as regards opportunities for future employment. Their integrity is hopelessly damaged. I hope and pray that they will now have the opportunity to look at their lifestyles in a different light so as to find a new purpose in life.”

A 52-year-old Police Officer has been charged with racial abuse following an incident filmed during last year’s riots. Pc Alex MacFarlane was charged after the Crown Prosecution Service reviewed footage which appears to show him say to 21-year-old Mauro Demetrio: “The problem with you is you will always be a n*****, yeah?”

The inability of government and all the respective interests to utilise the games volunteer effort, existing initiatives of citizenship, empowerment as part of the Big Society project and the youth contract has seen headlines for all the wrong reasons in a week that could have provided all the right messages. With the Works and Pensions Minister, Chris Grayling grabbing the headlines with his call for ‘Hug and hire a hoodie’ one of the clearest indications of a coalition as fragmented in this all important area of youth policy. Grayling’s call for companies to employ those that, by their hooded identities, would be labelled as ‘NEETS’ not in education, employment and training should therefore see companies now asked to take the risk of developing life skills and work, culture and ethic that has seen them failed by education and the much heralded and failed Connexions initiative. Whilst employment figures, although marginally encouraging in the tens of thousands who are now unemployed, the figures of youth employment are still at the million mark. How ironic that whilst companies wish hard work, punctuality and enthusiasm as the ingredients that would see them employ a hoodie, that these life skills are achievable as part of what should be a 2012 youth contract offer. With Big Society and government contracts now being offered to social enterprises to take on some of the most disaffected and failed young people in society on a performance based approach with the brief simply to identify a NEET, provide them with a transformational process that sees them inspired to work and only given £1200 to do so until they are employable can only lead to a corrupting of the numbers so spectacularly exposed by a recent major training provider in this area. If the national governing bodies of sport (most of them Olympic and Paralympic) are not able, within their current whole sport plans, to provide proposals of working with those who truant and those who are not in education, employment and training, given the life skills like our volunteers and game makers, they should rightfully have their funding applications rejected.