Diego Lopez enjoying Casillas battle at Real Madrid

Real Madrid goalkeeper Diego Lopez says he is enjoying his ongoing battle with Iker Casillas and insists the pair remain good friends.

The 32-year-old joined the club from Sevilla in January and has since displaced the Spain keeper and become Madrid's first choice between the posts, having firstly impressed Jose Mourinho last season and then Carlo Ancelotti this term.

Speaking to the club's official website he said: 'I've known Iker since I was 18, for about 14 years, and I've always had a good relationship with him.

'It's wonderful to compete in this team with a keeper like Iker. We're both after the spot and we both give everything we have to play.'

'It's the manager that decides the rotation. He decides and we have to try to do our best with it. The most important thing is to be ready every day and train your hardest.'

Another hat-trick from Cristiano Ronaldo helped Madrid to a 5-1 win over Real Sociedad on Saturday and Lopez believes the squad are beginning to adapt to Ancelotti's philosophy.

'We knew that adopting Ancelotti's ideas was only going to be a question of time,' he added.

'Little by little we're seeing the team that the boss wants and today, especially in the first half, we've taken another step towards what he's after.

'Ronaldo is incredible. Today we saw, once again, what a unique player he is. We're very lucky to have him here.'

Ribery: Zidane wanted me at Real Madrid

Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery has revealed that Zinedine Zidane did his utmost to try to persuade him to sign for Real Madrid.

The France international claims that both los Blancos and La Liga rivals Barcelona previously expressed an interest in taking him to Spain.

While Ribery admits he was tempted by the prospect of following in Zidane's footsteps and making the move to the Santiago Bernabeu, he was keen to stress that he is now settled and happy in Germany.

'Barcelona and Madrid are very big teams and there was a moment when both teams were interested in me,' the 30-year-old France international told beIN Sport.

'I liked both but I had a moment in which I felt closer to Madrid than Barcelona. Zidane wanted me to go to Madrid and he tried all he could.

'But I am not interested now because Bayern is my family.'

Ribery played a key role in the German side's historic treble triumph last season and is, therefore, considered by many as the frontrunner for this year's Ballon d'Or award.

The former Olympique de Marseille attacker will face stiff competition from Madrid ace Cristiano Ronald and Barcelona star Lionel Messi, but Ribery fancies his chances of walking away with the prestigious accolade.

'I feel good about it,' he confessed. 'It is getting closer and closer. This has been one of my best years. I was lucky enough to win everything.'

Australia’s Bailey to make Test debut against England

George Bailey will make his Test debut in the opening Ashes clash against England next week while Mitchell Johnson returns to Australia's pace attack, selectors said Tuesday.

Bailey got the nod in a 12-man squad on the back of his remarkable one-day international form including the recent tour to India where he amassed 478 runs at 95.60 while also serving as captain.

'We have included George Bailey in this line-up and are excited by what he can offer at Test level,' national selector John Inverarity said of the 31-year-old, ahead of the first Test in Brisbane, starting on November 21.

'He is calm and composed and comes into the squad full of confidence.'

Bailey said his approach to the five-day Test format would be no different from that he employs in the one-day game.

'It's just good form, so just hit the ball,' he said. 'It's the same approach and I feel very comfortable with where I'm at at the moment.'

Selectors will be hoping he can bring much-needed middle order stability with the Tasmanian preferred to state colleague Alex Doolan.

'Alex Doolan is a very highly regarded player in our eyes. But George Bailey has been in fantastic form with the bat,' said Inverarity.

There were no surprises in the squad, with a rejuvenated David Warner to open the innings with Chris Rogers after hitting four centuries in the past month and all-rounder Shane Watson included despite a niggling hamstring injury.

'Shane is progressing very well in regaining his fitness and we're confident he'll be fit to play,' said Inverarity, although how much he can bowl remains to be seen.

James Faulkner is likely to be 12th man, although he will play if Watson does not recover sufficiently.

Johnson returns to the attack alongside Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle in the absence of the injured Mitchell Starc, with the 32-year-old left-armer set for his first Test since Australia's loss to India in March.

Inverarity said Johnson's bowling has been impressive 'with good rhythm and generating good pace'.

'So we're confident he will acquit himself very well and he will be a bowler to the fore in our attack.'

Skipper Michael Clarke was equally effusive about Johnson, whom he said had shown both speed and control.

'I said a couple of days ago that if Mitch was selected in this squad it wouldn't surprise me in a couple of months' time you see Mitch being man of the series,' he said.

Australia go into the Test with virtually all their players in good form, either during the recent one-day tour of India or in Sheffield Shield games over the past few weeks.

This is in stark contrast to the Ashes tour of England earlier this year when their preparations were badly disrupted after coach Mickey Arthur was sacked just 18 days before the first Test and Warner was suspended for ill-discipline.

Clarke said all players in contention for the five-Test series had done exactly what coach Darren Lehmann had asked of them as they attempt to reverse their 3-0 defeat in England and prevent their old rivals winning a fourth successive Ashes.

England, who have a final warm-up against an Invitational XI in Sydney beginning Wednesday, have injury concerns over wicketkeeper Matt Prior, struggling with a calf muscle injury, and batsman Kevin Pietersen, who is recovering from a knee problem.

Australia: Michael Clarke (capt), David Warner, Chris Rogers, Shane Watson, Steve Smith, George Bailey, Brad Haddin, Mitchell Johnson, Peter Siddle, Ryan Harris, Nathan Lyon, James Faulkner

August Landmesser, The Man Behind The Crossed Arms

Source: Blogspot

The photo above has floated around the internet for a few years now, popular for one of its subjects’ subtle yet profound acts of nonconformity. There is no telling how many men in that crowd were acting out of fear, fully aware that failing to salute the Fuhrer was akin to signing his own death certificate. Knowing that it was, in fact, Hitler standing before the crowd makes the disobedience all the more admirable, but what may seem like an act of justified transgression was at its core a gesture of love. August Landmesser, the man with his arms crossed, was married to a Jewish woman.

Source: I Giorni E Le Notti

The story of August Landmesser’s anti-gesture begins, ironically enough, with the Nazi Party. In 1930, Germany’s economy was in shambles, and the unstable nature of the Reichstag eventually led to its demise and ultimately the rise of the opportunistic leadership of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Believing that having the right connections would help land him a job in the pulseless economy, Landmesser became a card-carrying Nazi. Little did he know that his heart would soon ruin any progress that his superficial political affiliation might have made.

Source: Humores Y Amores

Source: Mental Floss

In 1934, Landmesser met Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman, and the two fell deeply in love. Their engagement a year later got him expelled from the party, and their marriage application was denied under the newly enacted Nuremberg Laws. They had a baby girl, Ingrid, in October of the same year, and two years later in 1937, the family made a failed attempt to flee to Denmark, where they were apprehended at the border. August was arrested and charged for “dishonoring the race,” and briefly imprisoned.

Source: Mental Floss

In court, the two claimed to be unaware of Eckler’s Jewish status, as she had been baptized in a Protestant church after her mother remarried. In May 1938, August was acquitted for lack of evidence, but with a severe warning that punishment would follow if Landmesser dared repeat the offense. Officials made “good” on their word, as only a month later August would be arrested again and sentenced to hard labor for thirty months in a concentration camp. He would never see his beloved wife again.

Source: Movimiento Humanista

Meanwhile, a law was quietly passed that required the arrest of Jewish wives in the case of a man “dishonoring the race,” and Irma was snatched up by the Gestapo and sent to various prisons and concentration camps, where she would eventually give birth to Irene, Landmesser and Eckler’s second child.

Read more at http://all-that-is-interesting.com/august-landmesser#iKqpk9wXi5sdrBSD.99

HTC One getting Android 4.3 with Sense 5.5 right about now

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Mobile Phones

If you own the rather marvellous HTC One, then it's about to get some extra powers. That's because the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update is winging its way to it right now. It brings with it HTC's Sense 5.5 UI and some extra Google Drive storage.

The update has been available in the US, Canada, and Asia for weeks already, but us Brits are only just getting our mitts on it now, Engadget reports. Back of the queue as ever.

As well as the latest version of HTC's Sense UI, the update gives the HTC One an extra 25GB of Google Drive storage. The One already comes with 15GB of storage gratis, so that makes a whopping 40GB of free space to bung things up in the cloud.

There is one caveat. The update isn't available on the HTC One Developer Edition. That's because you can only activate the extra storage once per Google account, so it won't play nice with the Developer Edition's unlocked bootloader. Drat.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 recently started receiving the Android 4.3 update, and the Nexus 4 has it already too. Android 4.3 helped the S4 work with Samsung's Galaxy Gear smart watch, which is either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it.

Android 4.3 is the latest version of Android, but 4.4 KitKat should be hot on its heels. It should land any day now, in fact, along with the Nexus 5 and Nexus 10. Google accidentally listed the Nexus 5 on Google Play recently, so it can't be long now.

There's also a certain rather massive yule-log-and-mince-pie-based festive season coming up. Now I'm no business guru, but surely it'd make sense to launch a new phone in time to capitalise on it.

Virgin Media 152Mbps broadband boost coming in February

Software

Virgin Media has announced a head-spinningly speedy 152Mbps broadband service to fire up in February next year and improve speeds across the board -- but price rises are coming with it.

The unlimited 152Mb service will reach 12.5 million homes across the country that are served by Virgin Media's own fibre-optic cable network.

That's double the speed of the Openreach FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) network owned by BT and rented out by other broadband providers. BT's own rival super-fast service BT Infinity has a current maximum speed of 76Mbps, although Openreach does have a faster FTTP (fibre to the premises) in some areas.

'Claims don't stand up'

But BT is quick to fire back in no uncertain terms. "Virgin Media’s claims don’t stand up to close scrutiny," blasts a BT spokesperson. "Their network only covers 12.5 million homes in the UK, while BT’s fibre network already passes 17 million homes and businesses and continues to grow. Only days ago, Virgin Media was again rapped by the ASA for claiming their broadband was 'unlimited' while throttling some customers' speeds by up to 40 per cent; customers could still find their speed cut by 16 per cent by Virgin Media at peak times.

"It’s not clear how soon Virgin Media will be offering these download speed upgrades, how much customers will have to pay and whether the large number of their customers on 30Mbps will think it is worth the extra money."

Broadband boost across the board

Even if you don't go for the super-duper-fast service, Virgin reckons the improvements will drag everyone else's speeds up by their bootstraps, boosting speeds by at least 20Mb over your current service.

You don't need to change packages to see improved service: next year, you should simply see better speeds without changing a thing. If your speed increases enough for you to need a new Super Hub router, Virgin will send you one for just the cost of the stamp.

Price increases 

Virgin Media is planning some price increases in the new year. A spokesperson told me today that the cost of talk plans are not changing, but prices will change depending on which bundle you're subscribed to. Virgin suggests that cable bills will increase by 6.7 per cent on average in February -- we'll keep you posted when we find out the full details.

"Price rises are never welcome," says industry expert Sebastien Lahtinen ofthinkbroadband.com, but "the key will be what price range becomes the average. We do need to remember that broadband and TV bundles are generally a lot cheaper in the UK than many other countries. If the price rise helps fund networking improvements, this will hopefully improve capacity at peak times and allow people to do even more even if staying on their existing packages."

"The claims of being twice as fast as anyone else is a somewhat selective comparison to say the least," Lahtinen adds, "but this is great news for consumers and a welcome boost for those in households with lots of people using the connection. The disappointing side is that the upload speeds are not expected to increase either on the new 'fastest' product or on current products, so users will still be restricted to 12Mbps upstream."

KitKat ROMs come to Galaxy Nexus, install at your own risk

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Android KitKat isn't coming to theSamsung Galaxy Nexus, Google announced this week. But that hasn't stopped some enterprising developers.

A couple of KitKat ROMs for the Galaxy Nexus have popped up over at XDA Developers. They're 100 per cent unofficial of course, so as ever with these things, you install at your own risk.

The first is called A Taste of KitKat, by someone called Grarak. It's had some pretty positive feedback at XDA Developers, and most features seemed to work, except the Wi-Fi. But that's been fixed now, according toCoolsmartphone. The graphics aren't perfect though. You can see the scratchy lines across the screen, like interference on an old-style telly. This is due to the Texas Instruments chipset that's not supported anymore, and is one of the reasons Google didn't bring KitKat to the Galaxy Nexus.

The other ROM is SlimKat, by kufikugel. Again, it suffers the same graphical glitches, and because of the unsupported chipset inside the Galaxy Nexus, it doesn't look like these bugs will be fixed anytime soon.

But if you can put up with less than perfect visuals, want to check out KitKat, and don't mind risking bricking your phone, they might be worth a look.

Google announced Android KitKat this week alongside the Nexus 5. KitKat is coming to other devices, too. It'll be on the Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 within weeks, and the HTC One"very, very soon". Samsung and Sony are yet to firm up any plans, but expect to hear something next week. A Samsung spokesperson told us it'll announce its plans "in due course". Sony tweeted it'll have something to announce next week, along with some new products, and Android 4.3 Jelly Bean news. Intriguing…

Are you excited for KitKat? What do you make of it? Let me know in the comments, or on ourFacebook page.