'Pogba wants to stay at Juventus' - Raiola

The agent for the 20-year-old midfielder claimed that his client has every intention of staying at the Bianconeri, and revealed plans to negotiate a contract renewal

Paul Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola has thrown cold water on rumours that the midfielder was set to leaveJuventus.

Pogba, whose contract expires in June 2016, has been the subject of transfer speculation for his impressive displays since joining the Serie A champions in 2012, with club president Andrea Agnelli admitting that the 20-year-old could be sold if a sizeable offer was received.

However, Raiola has moved to downplay Agnelli’s comments and allay supporters' fears by asserting that Pogba’s camp is primarily concerned with negotiating a new deal that will allow the midfielder to remain at Juventus.

“He [Pogba] is fine where he is. We want to renew with Juventus and we have our clear strategy,” he revealed to Tuttosport. “Paul is very quiet and peaceful here, Juve would have no reason to worry.

“Agnelli has discovered the problem because no one, not only in Italy, but in the world, can refuse an obscene offer. But the fans no longer have to wonder.”

However, despite a seeming mutual interest on both sides for Pogba to renew his contract, Raiola denied that a proposal for a new deal had already been put forth by Juventus.

"Are there already any offers on the table? No, that isn't true, no offers have arrived," he admitted.

Pogba signed for Juventus on a free transfer from Manchester United in 2012 and has since been capped three times for the France national team.

Shutdown impact: US stops offering GSP scheme to exporters

According to the diplomat, the US strongly believes that the future of Pakistan is directly linked with its economy that is why Washington has been promoting trade and investment. PHOTO: facebook.com/karachi.usconsulate/FILE

KARACHI: US Consul General in Karachi Michael J Dodman has said the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) scheme has been put on hold for the time being because of the federal government shutdown in Washington but it will be restored soon and Pakistan is most likely to benefit from the facility.

Speaking to businessmen at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) on Thursday, Dodman said his government was working on various issues pointed out by trade associations and these needed to be addressed with a view to making Pakistan, particularly the city of Karachi, an attractive place for foreign investors.

“We are working closely with various trade associations and institutions including the KCCI, Sindh Board of Investment and Trade Development Authority to explore ways and means for attracting more investment in Pakistan,” he said.

According to the diplomat, the US strongly believes that the future of Pakistan is directly linked with its economy that is why Washington has been promoting trade and investment. He vowed that his government would continue to run US-funded economic programmes and build the capacity of enterprises in Pakistan.

Commenting on the visa policy, Dodman said the US was running a visa office in Karachi where business visas were being issued at a proper time.

Responding to complaints of delay in visa processing, he stressed that the Karachi office followed proper US laws because of which visas were sometimes delayed. However, the situation is improving fast and it is much better now.

Businessmen Group Chairman and former KCCI president Siraj Kassam Teli underscored the need for enhancing trade between the two countries.

He said bilateral ties had faced many challenges since 9/11 and the pace of growth had been too slow and things were not moving the way they should. Pakistan’s annual exports worth around $3.5 billion did not reflect the potential and relations between the two sides, which he said must be enhanced to at least $9 billion.

BMG Vice Chairman Zubair Motiwala, while praising the US move to undertake development projects, suggested that Washington must also initiate programmes focusing on job creation as unemployment remained a major challenge for the country.

“It must be realised that terrorism stems from a empty stomach. In order to create more job opportunities, the US must press on with the free trade agreement or preferential trade agreement,” he said.

KCCI President Abdullah Zaki called for minimising trade barriers between the two countries. “Pakistan’s vital role in combating terrorism has proved that it is a time-tested and true ally. It is unfortunate that this contribution has not been well recognised in terms of increased economic cooperation,” he said.

He expected the US to help address economic challenges and energy crisis, enhance investment, transfer technology, provide education and training, conduct scientific research and develop infrastructure.

Commenting on the Bilateral Investment Treaty, Zaki was of the view that the treaty would enable both sides to negotiate the FTA which would bring trade and industry of the two countries closer.

Debate: Should Spain be allowed to call up Diego Costa

The in-form Atletico Madrid striker has attracted the attention of the world champions but having featured previously for Brazil, should he be able to change allegiance?

DEBATE
By Carlo Garganese & Paul Macdonald

The footballer everyone is talking about in Spain and Brazil right now is Atletico Madrid star Diego Costa. The 25-year-old striker - who has been arguably the best player in La Liga this season, topping the Pichichistandings with 10 goals in eight games - caused a storm last week when he pledged his allegiance to the World Cup holders.

Despite representing Brazil earlier this year in friendlies against Italy and Russia, Costa is eligible to switch nations as he has lived in Spain for more than five years and has not played a competitive game for the land of his birth.

But are the rules, which Selecao coach Luiz Felipe Scolari has branded "backward", fair? Goal's Carlo Garganese and Paul Macdonald go head-to-head over this contentious issue.

"FIFA MUST GET TOUGH AND USE COSTA AS AN EXAMPLE"

By Carlo Garganese

If Diego Costa plays for Spain, then we will have the official confirmation that international football is a farce. The Atletico Madrid striker appeared twice for Brazil as recently as March, in friendlies against Italy and Russia. The fact that he can be allowed to switch countries just over six months later makes a mockery of the sport.

Everywhere you look there are naturalised players who should not be eligible for their new nations. Over the last year, Qatar have called up 15 players who were not born in the Gulf state. The number of Brazilians appearing recently for adopted countries is embarrassing: Thiago Motta for Italy; Pepe for Portugal; Roger Guerreiro for Poland – the list goes on and on. As Fifa president Sepp Blatter warned in 2007: "If we don't stop this farce, if we don't take care about the invaders from Brazil then, in the 2014 or 2018 World Cup, out of the 32 teams you will have 16 full of Brazilian players."

The World Cup next summer is being hosted by Brazil – but instead of welcoming 31 other ‘nations’, Fifa may as well just employ the country’s club teams from the Brasileiro.

Now is the time for Fifa to get tough and use Diego Costa as an example. Stricter eligibility rules are required – one of which must be that you cannot play full internationals for two different teams, competitive or friendly.

Have we entered a time machine back to the 1930s when Italy were winning the World Cup with ArgentineOriundi? Or the days of General Franco when Spain were fielding Hungary’s 1954 World Cup star Ferenc Puskas and Argentina’s Alfredo Di Stefano, who had also previously played for Colombia?

As with England’s embarrassing and desperate pursuit of Manchester United teenager Adnan Januzaj, Spain must not be allowed to call up Diego Costa.

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"DIEGO COSTA IS NOT A PASSPORT FOR HIRE"

By Paul Macdonald

Diego Costa has lived in Spain for over five years, and has adopted Spanish nationality. Fifa regulation is as clear as it has ever been on the issue of players switching allegiance, and this example falls not only well within the confines of the rules, but of common decency. 

Detractors point to the 25-year-old's substitute appearances for Brazil in two friendlies, but Fifa's stance on the merits of uncompetitive fixtures has never wavered.  The issue doesn’t lie with directives, but with where a player feels most settled, and most comfortable.

Despite excelling at Atletico Madrid, Felipe Scolari is patently unconvinced of Costa's talents. When the Confederations Cup came around in June, he wasn’t considered, even after Leandro Damiao’s late withdrawal through injury. At that point, the friendly 'issue' could have been circumvented, but Scolari didn't want to know. 

Now, the world champions have come calling. What is Costa to think? A country where he has settled, developed and refined not only his playing style but his personality, want him to play for them at the World Cup. 

This isn’t an example of a Brazilian becoming a passport for hire, escaping to Africa or the Middle East in order to earn international recognition on a technicality. Fifa’s recent alteration of their statutes has hugely restricted the concept of the international mercenary. For Costa, this represents a genuine change of heart based on personal circumstance.

Scolari’s criticism of the conversion, likening Costa to Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas, is as old-fashioned as the era he is referring to. What is more likely is that Felipao feels that his diffidence has ultimately cost him the services of one of the hottest properties in European football. His Confederations Cup snub is to blame for that, not Fifa, and certainly not Costa.

Low-cut dress Turkish TV presenter says she was fired for political reasons

 

A Turkish TV presenter who was fired from a television show this week after a ruling party official criticised her low-cut dress said the decision was political, media reported Thursday.

"It's ridiculous, pathetic. This is my way of getting dressed and I will continue to do so," Gozde Kansu told the Hurriyet newspaper in an interview.

"I am bored of debates sparked over women's bodies. The easiest thing to do was to sacrifice me, a woman, and they did," she said.

"Nobody wanted to go against the political will which attacked my low-cut dress."

A spokesman for the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) criticised Kansu's costume without identifying her, a day after her show was broadcast.

"A presenter at a TV channel wore such a dress during a show that it cannot be accepted," Huseyin Celik said in a televised interview on Sunday.

"We don't interfere with anybody but it's very extreme," he added.

After Celik's remarks, Kansu was dismissed from the private ATV television which said it did not find her way of presentation in line with the programme's aims.

Kansu hit back at the producers' claims and said her dismissal was not related to her performance.

"If they didn't like my presentation, they would tell me because they have invested enormous amounts of money in this business. They didn't tell me anything," she said. "Whenever Celik spoke, things have changed."

Turkey's AKP government is under fire from secular quarters for allegedly Islamising the predominantly Muslim but traditionally secular nation.

A wave of anti-government protests that rocked Turkey in June threw up the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decade-long rule.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, calling Erdogan a "dictator" and accusing him of Islamising the country. The protests were brutally put down by the police

Now anyone can find you on Facebook -- no matter what

Mary Guedon of the group Raging Grannies holds a sign as she protests outside of the Facebook headquarters in June 2010, in Palo Alto, Calif. The group was calling for the FTC to investigate Facebook's privacy policies.

(Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

It may have been a long time coming, but those hidden in plain sight on Facebook are in for a rude awakening in the weeks ahead.

The social network said Thursday that it is, as promised 10 months ago, killing off a privacy setting that allowed members to prevent themselves from appearing in search results. Facebook first put the setting, called "Who can look up your Timeline by name?," on life support in December of last year, removing it for people who weren't using it. Now, it's ready to finish off the job.

Simply put, the setting let people hide their Timelines -- aka profiles -- from public view. Members could use it to control if they could be found, and by whom, when other people typed their name into the Facebook search bar.

"For the small percentage of people still using the setting, they will see reminders about it being removed in the coming weeks," Facebook announced in a blog post on the change. "Whether you've been using the setting or not, the best way to control what people can find about you on Facebook is to choose who can see the individual things you share."

Facebook tells the remaining members using a Timeline privacy setting that it has better ways for them to manage their privacy on the social network.

(Credit: Facebook)

The change is bound to cause some confusion, if not stir up strong emotions. Privacy and Facebook have always had a complicated relationship, and now it's as if the company is decreeing: if you're a member, you can be found, and what people find on your Timeline is entirely up to you. For its part, Facebook will remind people with an on-site notice that when they post something publicly, the post can be seen by anyone, including people they may not know. It should also be noted that timelines will not be visible to people you've blocked.

Facebook's argument in eliminating the setting is that it gave people a false sense of security. "Our concern, quite frankly, is that people think it provides a level of security, but it actually doesn't," Nicky Jackson Colaco, a member of the Facebook Privacy team, said in an interview with CNET in December.

The extra-long warning or the seemingly rational explanation may do little to temper the concerns of those who have clung to the last bit of anonymity they have left on the social network. But ready or not, Facebook search here you come.The social network contends that the setting never prevented people from finding Timelines in other ways such as clicking on a name in a status update. Another plausible motivation behind the change is improving the quality of the people results in Graph Search, Facebook's nascent natural language search engine.

Archos reveals GamePad 2 gaming tablet

The Archos GamePad 2 appears to fix everything that was wrong with the first model.
(Credit: Archos)

The original Archos GamePad didn't attract much attention, despite the fact that it offered what a lot of hardcore gamers seemingly wanted: built-in game controls in the form of dual control sticks and lots of buttons. It was, for all intents in purposes, an Android-powered Sony PSP, though with a bigger screen and a lot more games to choose from.

No doubt hoping for a better reception, Archos just unveiled the GamePad 2, which promises a host of improvements over the original.

I actually thought the first GamePad was one of the most underrated products of the year. Yes, it suffered from mediocre battery life, and the controls had some issues. But for less than the price (at the time) of aKindle Fire, you got a full-featured Android Jelly Bean tablet that really was stellar for playing certain kinds of games.

The GamePad 2 looks to correct every single shortcoming, starting under the hood: It's powered by a 1.6GHz A9 quad-core processor, a dedicated quad-core graphics processor, and 2GB of system RAM. Archos has also bumped up the screen resolution -- not all the way to 1080p, but at least to a more competitive 1,280x800 pixels. (Personally, I think that's more than adequate for a 7-inch screen. Anything higher is nice, but hardly necessary.)

As for the battery, a definite sticking point in the original GamePad, Archos promises "a much larger battery than normally used on a 7-inch tablet," but doesn't get into specifics. That's understandable, given that games consume more power than most everyday apps, but it would be nice to know at least the capacity of the battery, if not the rated run time.

The first GamePad's dual thumbsticks earned well-deserved criticism for being stiff and imprecise. According to Archos, improving the controls was "one of the main focus points for the...GamePad 2." The thumbsticks now have a concave curvature that should make for a more solid grip, while the buttons have been upgraded with "a vastly improved...click-feeling for a better gaming experience."

The Archos button-mapping tool makes it easy to configure existing games for use with the GamePad 2.
(Credit: Archos)

Archos has also updated the control-mapping tool that allows you to map any onscreen button or joystick to their physical counterparts. For what it's worth, I thought the first one worked pretty well. It's a way better system than trying to get a Bluetooth-based gamepad to work with existing games.

Speaking of which, the GamePad 2 will come bundled with two of them: Asphalt 8: Airborne and Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, both full versions, both optimized for use with the controls.

On top of all that, the GamePad remains a Jelly Bean-powered Android tablet with 8GB or 16GB of onboard storage, a microSD slot for expansion, a front-facing camera, front-facing stereo speakers, dual Wi-Fi antennas, and an HDMI output if you want to take your games to the big screen.

The GamePad 2 is expected to go on sale at the end of this month, with prices starting at US$199.99.

Microsoft's next tablet OS - Windows Phone Blue?

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Could the Windows Phone operating system become Microsoft's OS of choice for 7- to 10-inch tablets?

Based on new rumors, courtesy of Windows SuperSite's Paul Thurrott, this scenario isn't outside of the realm of possibility.

Windows Phone Blue, which may or may not ultimately be christened Windows Phone 8.1, is the first "major" update to the Windows Phone 8 OS since Microsoft launched it in the fall of 2012. We've known about the existence of WP Blue for months. The latest rumors I've heard continue to peg Windows Phone Blue's release-to-manufacturing date sometime around "spring 2014."

Thurrott's new rumors, from a single source who asked not to be named, include some new specifics around both the UI and guts of the Windows Phone (WP) Blue OS. We've known since February 2013 (courtesy of one of my unnamed sources) that WP Blue would be a stepping stone along the way to bringing Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone 8 into closer alignment around the NT core,programming interfaces, and UI look-and-feel. Thurrott's source cites an interesting statistic (which I've not seen Microsoft state publicly), namely, that Windows Phone 8 currently has "33 percent API unity" with Windows RT. Supposedly the goal is for WP Blue to reach (a very precise) 77 percent by the time it comes to market.

The ultimate goal, according to Thurrott's tipster, is to allow developers a single app that can run on both Windows RT and Windows Phone, thanks to universal binaries. That would fit nicely with the concept of a single Windows Store -- something to which Microsoft execs have committed privately to providing alongside the next major release of Windows (whatever that really means).

The same tipster told Thurrott that Microsoft is planning to do away with the Windows Phone back button in the WP Blue release. That's something I hadn't heard previously. It makes me wonder what Microsoft will do, backwards-compatibility-wise, for those of us who have Windows Phones that include back buttons as part of the actual handset. (I'd love to see Microsoft move the Bing search button to the left on Windows Phones, given it's currently far too easy to accidentally hit the search button on WP handsets.)

But none of these tidbits are as interesting to me as one other piece of information from Thurrott's source. Supposedly, Windows Phone Blue will work on devices with 7- to 10-inch screens. Right now, Microsoft prohibits OEMs from putting the Windows Phone OS on new devices with those screen sizes; their only choice, if they want Windows, is to go either Windows RT or Windows 8. As I've reported previously, thecoming GDR3 update for Windows Phone 8 will support devices with 5- and 6-inch screens, like the expected Nokia "Bandit" Lumia 1520 phablet, for example.

Remember: Microsoft's own OS chief, Terry Myerson, recently said publicly that "as phones extend into tablets, expect us to see many more ARM tablets, Windows ARM tablets in the future."

I'm thinking this could mean Microsoft ends up dropping the Windows RT name and instead goes for a single unified OS brand across devices. Whether this ultimately is called "Windows Phone OS" or just "Windows" (or something else all together) will be interesting to see. Whatever it's called, this branded OS should, I'd think, work on ARM-based phones and ARM-based tablets.

It's funny to think of it this way, but after a number of us called for Microsoft to make Windows Phone OS the Microsoft solution for tablets, we just might get our wish, albeit two or three years later than we asked