Burnley v Hull, Ten games in to the Barclays Premier League season and Burnley are the team in the largest amount of trouble at the time of writing, and looking like potential record-breakers too. Of a possible thirty points Burnley have managed to collect four to this point with not a single win to their name, while conceding nearly four times the number of goals they’ve scored, so the signs are all there, and at some point soon the club with either need a rapid rethink as to their plans for this term, or to start planning for the Championship next year. Burnley could welcome back Steven Reid, but remain without Sam Vokes and Matthew Taylor. Hull midfielder Gaston Ramirez but Michael Dawson, Alex Bruce, Nikica Jelavic and Robert Snodgrass are all unavailable, as are goalkeepers Allan McGregor and Steve Harper.
West Ham v Aston Villa, In an alternate universe football is funny, rather than all about money, and these two face off once a year to decide who gets to wear the claret and blue in the top division, but sadly we’re this side of the shadow and all that is at stake is three points. Sam Allardyce and his new striker Diafra Sakho picked up the Manager and Player of the Month awards respectively after some excellent work over the previous four weeks paid off with three wins and a draw, one victory over Man City, and Villa are definitely in the kind of form that would allow West Ham to continue that run. West Ham will assess Winston Reid and could welcome back Diafra Sakho and Andy Carroll, but Guy Demel is still out. Aston Villa forward Christian Benteke begins a three-game ban with Philippe Senderos set to return after three games out with a thigh problem.
QPR v Man City, It’s been a pretty annoying couple of weeks for Manchester City, and although QPR look like an easy three points for the reigning champions we’ve seen just how many bullets City can put in their own feet recently, and how that might play into Rangers’ hands. Rumours currently surround the future of the City manager, as well as their star player, but they’ve won four of their last five and even in their current weakened state QPR will need a stunning performance and a Champions League-standard ref to win. Joey Barton and Nedum Onuoha could both return for QPR and Jordon Mutch is also fit again, but Rio Ferdinand is banned. Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany has been ruled out with a calf injury, and joins David Silva and Aleksandar Kolarov who are both out.
Southampton v Leicester, I know we’re all supposed to be amazed at the way Southampton failed to collapse like a wet piñata after selling a few players over the summer, but in reality they spent quite a lot in rebuilding both the team and the management positions, and should get results to some extent. The speed Ronald Koeman has hit the ground with is impressive of course, and today he has a chance to show again that this is a team with real foundations as a decent, but not amazing Leicester side visit for this 3pmkick-off. Southampton manager Ronald Koeman has no fresh injury worries, with Sadio Mane fit to start now. Leicester’s leading scoring Leonardo Ulloa is expected to start, and Matthew Upson has returned to training after recovering from a foot problem.
Man Utd v Crystal Palace, The juxtaposition in budgetary allowance between these two managers could not be more extreme, with one manager being allowed to spend obscene amounts without the help of Champions League revenue or even the prospect of doing well in the league while the other scrapes along, surviving off cast-offs and loans much of the time. Despite the fact United spent in excess of £150m over the summer there is a four-point gap between them and Palace before this game, and after Leicester there is no guarantee that’ll come down by the end of the day. Manchester United must make do without Marcos Rojo, Phil Jones, Jonny Evans, Rafael and Chris Smalling, along with injured loan star Radamel Falcao. Palace are missing Mile Jedinak and Wilfried Zaha is ineligible against his parent club.
Liverpool v Chelsea, Last year Liverpool and Chelsea was pretty much the defining match of the season, at least for the Anfield side and ever since then they’ve endured the blandishments of supporters up and down the land, who want to rub Liverpool faces in the disappointment, with one exception in Man City fans. Now we’re a few months down the road and reality has bitten for Liverpool the finances will tell in Chelsea favour, and the shock provided by a Chelsea win last year will be reversed, with Liverpool underdogs and the London side favourite. Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard is set to return, along with potentially Raheem Sterling, Jordan Henderson, Philippe Coutinho, Dejan Lovren and Mario Balotelli, but Daniel Sturridge remains sidelined. Chelsea have Cesar Azpilicueta back after completing a ban.
Sunday, 2 November 2014
Feminist T-shirts worn by politicians allegedly made in sweatshop conditions
A women’s rights charity behind a T-shirt campaign is investigating claims by a newspaper that the products were made in sweatshop conditions.
The Fawcett Society has said it will have the clothes withdrawn from sale if the reports are proved true. The Mail on Sunday claim the T-shirts, worn by politicians – such as Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Harriet Harman – proclaiming their feminist credentials, are made by female workers being paid just 62p an hour.
The paper said its investigation found the shirts with the slogan “This is what a feminist looks like” were being produced on a factory in Mauritius where female machinists sleep 16 to a room.
The fashion retailer Whistles, which sells the garments for £45 each, described the allegations as extremely serious and said it would be mounting an urgent investigation.
The T-shirts hit the headlines last week when the Labour and Lib Dem leaders posed wearing them for photographs for Elle magazine as part of a campaign by the Fawcett Society – which receives all the profits – to promote women’s rights.
After David Cameron refused repeated requests to join them, Harman, the Labour deputy leader, wore one during prime minister’s questions.
The Mail on Sunday, which said it had toured one of six factories on Mauritius owned by Compagnie Mauricienne de Textile (CMT), which produces the garments, claimed that the workers were earning 6,000 rupees a month – equivalent to £120.
The paper said the figure was a quarter of the country’s average monthly wage and around half what a waiter earns.
Fayzal Ally Beegun, president of the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Union, told the paper: “The workers in this factory are treated very poorly and the fact that politicians in England are making a statement using these sweatshop T-shirts is appalling.”
Dr Eva Neitzert, deputy chief executive at the Fawcett Society, said they had been assured by Whistles that the T-shirts were produced to ethical standards.
She said the charity had originally been assured the garments would be produced ethically in the UK, and when they received samples in early October they noted they had been made in Mauritius.
The Fawcett Society told the Mail it was assured by Whistles that the factory was “a fully audited, socially and ethical compliant factory” and decided to continue with the collaboration.
“We have been very disappointed to hear the allegations that conditions in the Mauritius factory may not adhere to the ethical standards that we, as the Fawcett Society, would require of any product that bears our name,” Neitzert said.
“At this stage we require evidence to back up the claims being made by a journalist at the Mail on Sunday. However, as a charity that campaigns on issues of women’s economic equality, we take these allegations extremely seriously and will do our utmost to investigate them.
“If any concrete and verifiable evidence of mistreatment of the garment producers emerges, we will require Whistles to withdraw the range with immediate effect and donate part of the profits to an ethical trading campaigning body.
“While we wish to apologise to all those concerned who may have experienced adverse conditions, we remain confident that we took every practicable and reasonable step to ensure that the range would be ethically produced and await a fuller understanding of the circumstances under which the garments were produced.”
A spokesman for Whistles told the Mail: “We place a high priority on environmental, social and ethical issues. The allegations regarding the production of T-shirts in the CMT factory in Mauritius are extremely serious and we are investigating them as a matter of urgency.
“CMT has Oekotex accreditation [an independent certificate for the supply chain], which fully conforms to the highest standards in quality and environmental policy, while having world-class policies for sustainable development, social, ethical and environmental compliance.
“We carry out regular audits of our suppliers in line with our high corporate social responsibility standards.”
A spokesman for the deputy prime minister said: “Nick Clegg had no idea where these T-shirts were being made and can only assume that the Fawcett Society were unaware of the origins or they would not have asked him to wear it.
“He remains entirely supportive of efforts to ensure all women are treated as equals in this country and the world over.”
A Labour spokesman said the party was happy to support a campaign promoting equality, but added: “Anything else is a matter for Elle magazine and the Fawcett Society.”
Vine: Did Marouane Fellaini spit at Sergio Aguero during first half of Manchester derby?
The Belgian was not happy when the Manchester City went down under his challenge.
Marouane Fellaini was clearly unimpressed after he clipped the ankle of Sergio Aguero during the first half of the Manchester derby at the Etihad Stadium.
The Manchester United midfielder could be seen returning to the scene of the crime - despite the fact that referee Michael Oliver did not award a penalty - to give Aguero a piece of his mind.
Looking at this Vine, though, it seems that Fellaini may have spat at the Argentine.
Lava from the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii flows towards homes in the town of Pahoa where close to 1.000 people live. People on the Turkish-Syrian border watch as smoke rises from the besieged town of Kobani.
A Free Syrian Army fighter walks through a hole in the wall inside a damaged building on the frontline of Aleppo’s Al-Ezaa neighbourhood. A model prepares for a fashion show in Israel’s Neve Tirza prison, the only female jail in the country. The show featured clothing designed and made by inmates. Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong open their umbrellas for 87 seconds, marking the 87 rounds of teargas fired by police at unarmed student protesters in the same location one month ago. The Admiralty district protest zone has been dubbed Umbrella Square.
Football team are banned from wearing their Pornhub sponsored jerseys
A university in England has banned a student football team from wearing their new kits because they are sponsored by a porn site.
The team, named Rutherford Raiders, put Pornhub as the sponsor on their jerseys as a joke before they were contacted by the porn site who offered to sponsor their jerseys for real.
However, the University of Kent has banned them from wearing the sponsored jerseys and spokesman Martin Herrema said the team would be banned from playing if they wore the kit on campus.
Herrema said: “The University of Kent sports department would never sanction sponsorship of this type - it is totally inappropriate.
"The team has been spoken with and will not be allowed to wear the shirts in question at any time.”
Ed Sheeran agrees to marry his biggest teenage fan, who is living with cancer
Ed Sheeran has agreed to 'marry' his biggest fan, 19-year-old Katie Papworth, who is gravely ill with cancer.
The singer was performing in Glasgow on Thursday when he accepted a ring and a proposal from Katie, who lost her sight to an aggressive form of brain cancer recently.
Katie also presented Sheeran with a painting she had made for him, on which he wrote: "Dear Katie, lovely to finally meet my wife."
Katie’s mam Trish said: "Katie took the picture of the lego house she’d made and gave Ed a ring with an infinity symbol. Ed loved her artwork and asked if he could keep it for his wall.
"When she presented the ring he smiled and said, ‘I suppose I should say yes. OK.’
"He made it really special for her and she’s since said she needs to think about bridesmaids."
Katie said: "We haven’t set the date yet, but it’s not official because we haven’t been in a church."
Just today, Sheeran posted the following message to YouTube.
What a gentleman.
Video: Lock and load - the trailer for Fast & Furious 7 is here
It won't be a Shakespearean play but it will be enjoyable
Vin Diesel, the late Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham, Kurt Russell, Jordana Brewster and Lucas Black and many more star in the first trailer for the upcoming Fast & Furious 7.
It is exactly how you'd expect - cars driving out of airplanes, buses that fire bullets, lots and lots of action, style, fun and a steadfast refusal to play by the rules like only they can.
And, in case you were wondering, no they're not too old for this.
The RAF has intercepted Russian military aircraft as they neared UK airspace for the second time this week, the Ministry of Defence has said. The Soviet-era Tupolev Tu-95 aircraft – also known as a Bear bomber – flying in international airspace was intercepted by Typhoon fighters from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland on Friday and escorted through British skies.
A spokeswoman said the Russian aircraft had been picked up by the RAF control and reporting centre at Boulmer, Northumberland, which scrambled the Typhoons.
The RAF pilots visually identified the Russian aircraft and escorted them through UK airspace, she said.
The intervention follows a similar incident on Wednesday, when two Bear bombers were tracked over the North Sea as Nato radars picked up a series of Russian formations engaged in “significant military manoeuvres” ranging from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
The exercises prompted Nato to warn of an “unusual” increase in Russian military flights in European airspace.
Its jets had intercepted four groups of Russian aircraft within 24 hours by Wednesday and some were still on manoeuvres late that afternoon.
The two Bears that neared Britain on Wednesday had been part of a larger formation of eight aircraft – including four Il-78 tanker planes – intercepted by Norwegian F-16 fighters in international airspace over the Norwegian Sea.
While six of the planes returned back towards Russia, the two Bears carried on towards the UK where they were picked up by Boulmer in Northumberland.
The bombers continued over the Atlantic to the west of Portugal, where they were intercepted by Portuguese air force F-16 fighters before turning back.
The Russian flight coincided with similar incidents over the Black Sea and the Baltic where Russian military formations were intercepted by Turkish fighters and Portuguese jets assigned to the Nato Baltic air-policing mission.
The distinctive Bear, which has two counter-rotating propellers on each engine, has been described as the 1950s equivalent of the US B-52. It was originally designed to carry two nuclear bombs to targets in the continental US.
More recent variants of the Bear have been used for maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare.
The aerial exercises come amid a background of months of heightened tensions between Moscow and the west following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military incursion into Ukraine.
Nato said it had conducted more than 100 such intercepts of Russian aircraft this year – about three times as many as in 2013 before the confrontation with Moscow over separatist revolts in Ukraine soured relations.
President Vladimir Putin has committed to reinvigorating Russia’s armed forces, which had been diminished by the economic woes that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tension over Ukraine has seen Nato step up its vigilance, particularly for member countries that shared a border with Russia.
The spokesman said there was no particular reason for concern over Russian warplanes flying in international air space, but that such exercises were shadowed by Nato aircraft as a precaution and to protect civil air traffic.
RAF Typhoons were also scrambled on Wednesday to intercept a civilian plane that has aroused the suspicions of air traffic controllers. The jets created a sonic boom over Kent, alarming thousands of residents.
The Russian-made Antonov An-26 cargo airliner was escorted to Stansted airport after being intercepted by jets from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire when communication with the Latvian-registered plane was lost.
The plane, which was transporting car parts, was later allowed to continue on its original destination, Birmingham.
Sir Richard Branson acknowledged on Saturday that his dream of commercial space tourism may have ended in the explosion that consumed Virgin Galactic’s test craft SpaceShipTwo in the skies above California’s Mojave desert.
After rushing overnight to the scene of Friday’s accident, the Virgin chief executive told reporters he and his team would love to see the project through to completion – but he added a big if. “We owe it to our test pilots to find out what went wrong,” Branson said. “And once we find out what went wrong, if we can overcome it, we will make absolutely certain that the dream lives on.”
“Yesterday we fell short,” he said. “We’ll now comprehensively assess the results of the crash and are determined to learn from this and move forward.”
“We are not going to push on blindly,” he added.
According to initial accounts, SpaceShipTwo broke up at an altitude of about 45,000ft shortly after separating from its mothership, WhiteKnightTwo. One crewmember, identified on Saturday as 39-year-old Michael Tyner Alsbury of Tehachapi, California, was killed.
Alsbury was a project engineer and test pilot at Scaled Composites, a Northrop Grumman Corp subsidiary that built and designed the spacecraft for Virgin Galactic. He was flying for the ninth time aboard SpaceShipTwo, including serving as the co-pilot on the vehicle’s first rocket-powered test flight on April 29, 2013, according to his biography on the company’s website. Another, who has been named as Peter Siebold, was injured.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board – which has investigated space shuttle crashes but confines most of its work to conventional aircraft – on Saturday began the painstaking task of sifting through the wreckage, in the desert near Edwards air force base north of Los Angeles, going through the test flight data and interviewing witnesses.
In an initial news conference, the acting NTSB chairman, Christopher Hart, said he did not even know if SpaceShipTwo had a black box flight recorder.
Branson said it was up to the NTSB to establish what happened and that he would not comment until the agency had completed its investigation. In a prepared statement, he sounded upbeat about recovering from Friday’s accident and continuing his ambition of launching a commercial venture to send civilians into space.
However, when reporters started asking him follow-up questions, he sounded much more hesitant and tentative. “We would love to finish what we started some years ago,” he began, then hesitated several times before completing his sentence.
‘It was eerie, just an eerie feeling’
Accounts of what happened on Friday morning are necessarily murky and unreliable at this stage. But it is known this was the first test flight in nine months. It is also known that Virgin Galactic had been forced to abandon a previous rubber-based fuel compound because it did not deliver the required performance and was trying out a new plastic-based compound for the first time on a live flight.
Some reports suggested Friday’s test flight was delayed because of concerns about the fuel’s temperature. At about 10.30am, SpaceShipTwo and its mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, soared into the sky.
Shortly after they separated, about 40 minutes later, SpaceShipTwo suffered what Virgin Galactic has described as “a serious anomaly”, broke up at 45,000ft.
SpaceShipTwo crash kills pilot.
Siebold parachuted out and, despite incurring unspecified injuries, reached ground safely and was rushed to hospital. Alsbury was not so lucky. It is not clear if he too parachuted out and died on his way to the ground, or if he never made it out.
The wreckage of SpaceShipTwo was strewn on either side of a railway track about 22 miles north of Mojave. Deputies from the local sheriff’s department rushed to secure the scene pending the arrival of the NTSB investigators, staying out all night in unseasonably cold temperatures to keep the curious at arm’s length.
The pilots worked for Virgin Galactic’s partner company, Scaled Composites, which is based at the Mojave air and space port. The pilots, who wear distinctive green and blue uniforms, are a fixture in the tiny town not far from Edwards Air Force Base and their misfortune plunged much of Mojave into mourning.
The accident was too far away to hear, but cafes and restaurants along Mojave’s main drag realised there was a problem when nobody showed up for what is usually a crowded lunch hour. “It was eerie, just an eerie feeling,” said Carlos Davila, who runs the Old Desert Café.
From the start, Branson has cut a glamorous figure in this town and his promise of space travel within reach of anyone – anyone with $250,000 (£156,000) spare for a ticket, anyway – never lacked for public-relations panache.
His timetable, however, has always seemed wildly overoptimistic. At SpaceShipTwo’s unveiling, he talked about commercial flights beginning as early as 2011. Last year, he applied to begin a rigorous 18-month testing process with the Federal Aviation Authority, only to stop the clock once it became clear the fuel compound still needed work.
Branson’s chutzpah won him a lot of supporters. Virgin Galactic said 800 people had paid deposits for a ticket, including teen pop bad-boy Justin Bieber and the actor Ashton Kutcher. The town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, meanwhile, has invested more than $200m in public funds to start work on the spaceport from which VirginGalactic’s commercial flights would blast off.
All of that is now in doubt. “Space is hard,” the chief executive of Virgin Galactic, George Whitesides, acknowledged after the accident.
A piece of debris is seen near the crash site of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo near Cantil, California, on Saturday.Photograph: LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS
Few projects in the history of aviation have carried the weight of so many ill omens as Branson’s extravagant venture to send civilians into space.
Even before Friday’s disaster in the skies above the Mojave desert, this was a project marked by bad luck and near-calamity.
Five years ago, as Branson was declaring SpaceShipTwo to be “the sexiest spaceship ever” at an unveiling at the Mojave spaceport, howling winds, sleet and near-freezing temperatures reduced the invited glitterati – politicians, actors, glamour babes and some of the world’s top aerospace engineers – to human icicles. Barely 20 minutes after they abandoned their vodka cocktails and champagne, the heavy tent erected for them on the airport runway collapsed. It was pure luck the structure did not succumb sooner and kill a lot of people.
Branson put on his bravest face on that occasion. And he was forced to do so again on Saturday, as he flew into Mojave to reassure his large team of engineers that the commercial space tourism project would continue – if at all possible.
Branson was wearing his trademark open-neck white shirt and black jacket, but the casual confidence of his delivery before the news cameras could not mask a deep hesitation about a project that has already crashed through several deadlines and whose cost has skyrocketed north of $1bn.
“It’s fair to say that all 400 engineers who work here and indeed most people in the world would love to see the dream living on,” he said. “Once we find out what went wrong, if we can overcome it, we will make absolutely certain that the dream lives on.”
That “if” was a big one. Roughly one-third of Branson’s seed money has come from a single source, the Abar investment fund in Abu Dhabi, which will now have to think seriously whether it is realistic to expect a space tourism hub in the Arabian Gulf in the near future, as it had been hoping.
The loss of SpaceShipTwo, on its own, means that Branson’s dream of boarding a test flight himself early next year has now been shattered. It is too early to say if a new test craft will be built, how long it will take, or how much it will cost.
A week of losses continued and the damage at the Camp Nou accumulates. Barcelona lost to Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu last Saturday; they lost a legal case against their former president Joan Laporta on Thursday, re-opening the wounds of a civil war at a club with a perilous propensity to division; on Saturday night they lost again, this time in Catalonia. Joaquín Larrivey’s goal meant Barcelona lost 1-0 to Celta Vigo and lost their place at the top of the table. They had enjoyed a six-point lead over Real; now, they stand two points behind.
Just as importantly, at times it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Barcelona are losing their identity. There were chances here for Barcelona to have won this game comfortably and, had they done so, the analysis may have been different. Four times they hit the frame of the goal and there were nine more shots on target. Celta’s keeper, Sergio, made a series of superb saves. But even if Barcelona had found a way through, the doubts would have remained after a game against a hugely impressive Celta side and in the aftermath of defeat in theclásico.
There is little of the pace, precision or control that had once defined Barcelona; the chances they made came by a more direct route. Yet if few of the old virtues were in evidence, some of the old flaws were recognisable in the way they conceded the game’s only goal.
It came on 55 minutes and it came from a long clearance from Sergio. Javier Mascherano was out-jumped by Pablo Hernández, whose flick-on reached Nolito, a strong candidate to get his first Spain call-up in a fortnight’s time. As it bounced up, Dani Alves made a mess of bringing it under control and Sergio Busquets dangled a foot tentatively, watching it escape him. Nolito back-heeled cleverly into the path of Larrivey who slotted the ball home.
At the other end, Barcelona had wasted lots of chances and would continue to do so as they chased the game. The game had started with Neymar hitting the bar. Lionel Messi had three chances in four first-half minutes, the first pushed away brilliantly, the second cleared, via the bar, by Jonny Castro, and the third a header over the top. And the sense this just was not going to happen increased when Neymar hit the bar from six yards at the start of the second half.
Sergio brilliantly pushed away a shot from Luis Suárez and easily caught a header from the Uruguayan making his home debut. As the game slipped away from Barcelona, Messi hit the top corner of post and bar from a free-kick. In the meantime, Celta had very nearly made it 2-0 when lovely footwork from Charles drew a save from Claudio Bravo. It could have been worse. But one goal was painful enough.
This guy made ice wheels for his bike, and they are awesome
From the man who brought us real-life Wolverine claws and Magneto shoes that let you walk on the ceiling, comes a new invention that's just in time for the colder weather: A bike with ice wheels.
Amateur inventor Colin Furze replaced his bicycle's wimpy rubber tires with something far more dangerous and fleeting. After making the icy bike wheels in — no surprise — the freezer, he takes his creation on a tour through town and ultimately, on top of a frozen glacier.
Typical bikes could never withstand an icy terrain, but Furze flies through with ease. He has less luck, however, when riding the bike uphill on city streets.
Of course, going downhill is no picnic, either.
He also gives it a try with orange juice — because why not? Although this seems to disintegrate almost immediately.
Furze told Mashable that he's been able to fund his quirky projects thanks to the success of his previous videos.
"It used to be just a hobby, but now I earn enough from YouTube," the former handyman said. "Now I do this all day — it's much more fun than plumbing."
Samsung Galaxy A5 and A3 phones try to capture young people's attention Smartphones are ever-slimming, and Samsung's just-announced Galaxy A5 and A3 models are another indication of the trend. And it couldn't be a better time, as the company is trying to stay afloat amid fierce competition. The A5 and A3 clock in at just 6.7mm and 6.9mm thin, respectively. Of course, that's nowhere near where some smartphone designers are going, but for a mainstream audience that's pretty slender. According to CNET, Samsung is struggling in the smartphone business as of late. The company has even pledged to "reform" its products at a fundamental level. It seems like the latest Galaxy A5 and A3 models could be a sign that Samsung has been doing some thinking for a while now. In a news release, Samsung highlighted (more than anything else) that these phones were built with young people and social media in mind. The metal-framed phones have AMOLED displays and 1.2 GHz Quad Core processors. The available colors seem to be named to maximize the "whoa" factor: Pearl White, Midnight Black, Platinum Silver, Soft Pink, Light Blue and Champagne Gold. They also have front-facing cameras for the best selfie-taking possible, and there's a GIF-animating tool. If that doesn't make it clear that Samsung's trying to make the new Galaxy phones as "cool" as possible, nothing else will.
Disgraced Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega's lawsuit over his inclusion in a 2012 Call of Duty video game has been dismissed by a judge who determined the game's use of his likeness is protected by the First Amendment.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Fahey's ruling determined that Activision Blizzard, Inc. created a complex and multi-faceted game, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and it relied very little on the inclusion of Noriega in a pair of missions.
Noriega had sought unspecified damages in the lawsuit, which Fahey ruled cannot be amended or re-filed. Noriega's attorney William T. Gibbs said he had not seen the ruling and had no immediate comment on it.
Noriega sued Activision in July, claiming the company depicted him as a killer and enemy of the state. The game features a storyline in which players capture Noriega, who then helps the game's villain.
"This was an absurd lawsuit from the very beginning and we're gratified that in the end, a notorious criminal didn't win," said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was part of the legal team that represented Activision in court earlier this month.
Giuliani had argued that Noriega's status as a public figure in the 1980s prevented him from suing over his inclusion in the game.
Activision, which has featured historical figures such as former President John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro in previous Call of Duty games, praised the ruling.
"Today's ruling is a victory for the 40 million dedicated members of our Call of DutyBlack Ops II. The game earned more than $1 billion in sales within 15 days of its release. Fahey disagreed, writing that the marketability and economic value of Black Ops II comes not from Noriega, but from the creativity, skill and reputation of (Activision.)"
Activision has pointed out that Noriega appears in one mission in the game and he wasn't used in any of the marketing for Black Ops II.
1. Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston once starred in a hilarious instructional video for Windows 95. This "CyberSitcom" was supposedly filmed in Bill Gates aoffice.
2. Jennifer Aniston's hair stylist was stoned when he created the iconic "Rachel" haircut.
3. Friends occurs in the same fictional universe as several other hit '90s sitcoms.
4. Jennifer Aniston turned down a role as a featured player on Saturday Night Live to join the cast of friends.
5. David Schwimmer paid $4.1 million to tear down a historic New York townhouse and build a fancy new home that was later vandalized.
