England looks to US sports to add glitz to FA Cup

By ROB HARRIS

updated 7:56 p.m. ET Jan. 26, 2012

LONDON - Seeking to restore the allure of the FA Cup, English soccer is looking to American sports to see how some glitz can be added to the final of world soccer's oldest domestic cup competition.

Once the main event in the English soccer calendar and a must-see TV event globally, some of the cup's appeal has been lost as the more lucrative Premier League and Champions League appear to be outshining the 140-year competition.

Wembley Stadium has staged NFL regular-season games for five years, giving a glimpse of how the FA Cup final could be spiced up with more entertainment and glamor there.

"We are always learning, we are investing more internal marketing resources alongside that (broadcaster) ITV and Budweiser put in," FA General Secretary Alex Horne said while overlooking the Wembley field.

"As a collective we all think we can make something more of the day of the final and the event ? whether it's on the pitch or the buildup to the event.

"Of course we can learn from the NBA events or the NFL events ... there are many people who do this well."

While looking west across the Atlantic for inspiration on event management, Horne is not losing sight of the competition's big fan base in the East.

"The FA Cup continues to attract huge audiences throughout the world, especially in Asia," Horne said. "China and Thailand are huge markets for English football and the FA Cup in particular. We had a global audience of half a billion for the FA Cup final last year, so we know it's a very relevant product."

But the FA Cup final could be moved from its traditional kickoff time this season in a bid to boost British TV audiences, potentially hitting Asian viewing figures.

The final is set to be at 5:15 p.m. instead of 3 p.m, while talks are under way with the Premier League about preventing a repeat of last season when the match had to be played on the same day as a topflight league program for the first time in 50 years.

That led to Manchester United clinching a record 19th league title just before local rival City ended a 35-year trophy drought by lifting the FA Cup at Wembley.

"The important thing for us is giving (the final) an identity, even if it is not on the last day of the season," Horne said.

The problem of the FA Cup final sharing the day with other big matches in England could be exacerbated by the Champions League final returning to Wembley in 2013 after being staged there last May. UEFA needs the stadium for two weeks before the match.

But ahead of the fourth round this weekend, the FA has sought to highlight the enduring value of the cup, with a study showing that clubs have collectively earned around $1 billion over the past 10 years in prize money, TV payments and ticket revenue.

Such rewards can have a transformational effect on teams ? particularly those lower down the pecking order.

"When Burton secured a replay at Old Trafford (against Manchester United in 2006) they earned $1.1 million in that year," Horne said. "That enabled them to pay off the debt on their stadium, invest in playing talent and ultimately progress into the Football League.

"Crawley last year earned $2.4 million from the competition, including a 1-million pound ($1.6 million) payday at Old Trafford."

The FA Cup is in the first year of a $38 million, three-year title sponsorship deal with American beer brand Budweiser.

___

Rob Harris can be reached at http://twitter.com/RobHarrisUK

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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The report by the institute founded by nuclear expert David Albright offered a more temperate view of Iran's nuclear program than some of the heated rhetoric that has surfaced since the United States and its allies stepped up sanctions on Tehran.

"Iran is unlikely to decide to dash toward making nuclear weapons as long as its uranium enrichment capability remains as limited as it is today," the report said.

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The escalating rhetoric and tensions have led to concerns about the potential for missteps between the adversaries that might spiral into a military confrontation that neither wants.

But the report, financed by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace, said Iran had not made a decision to build a nuclear bomb. The USIP is an independent, non-partisan center created by the U.S. Congress in 1984 that receives federal government funding.

"Iran is unlikely to break out in 2012, in great part because it is deterred from doing so," said the ISIS report, which has not yet been publicly released.

The report turns down the temperature, saying that sanctions and the fear of a military strike by Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities have worked as a deterrent.

The institute has advised U.S. and foreign governments about Iran's nuclear capabilities and Albright is considered a respected expert on the issue. The report tracks closely with what is known of official U.S. government assessments.

U.S. officials say Iran has not made the decision to build a nuclear weapon and that Iranian leaders haven't made the decision because they have to weigh the cost and benefits of building a nuclear weapon.

Much of what the Iranians are doing with their nuclear program has civilian uses, but they are keeping their options open, which significantly adds to the air of ambiguity, U.S. officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Some conservative and Israeli analysts in the past have challenged these types of assessments, asserting that Iranian nuclear efforts are sufficiently advanced that they could build a bomb in a year or less.

But according to the institute's report: "Although Iran is engaged in nuclear hedging, no evidence has emerged that the regime has decided to build nuclear weapons."

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(Editing by Eric Walsh)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120126/wl_nm/us_usa_iran_nuclear

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/meds/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20120126/hl_hsn/ussoldiersfacehostofmentalhealthissues

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"My first reaction was disbelief," says Dan Fabrycky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new analysis. After playing with the data himself, however, he has come around ? though he is still cautious. "After turning it over in my mind a few days, I cannot come up with a more natural theoretical explanation," he says.

The evaporation was inferred from observations by NASA's Kepler space telescope. These show that a star called KIC 12557548, which is slightly smaller than the sun, is dimming every 15.685 hours precisely. That suggests an orbiting companion is transiting, or passing in front of the star. Unlike other transits seen by Kepler, though, the dimming in this system varies wildly from one pass to another.

The best explanation is a rocky planet about the size of Mercury that is subliming ? turning directly to a gas - due to the intense radiation from its star, conclude a team led by Saul Rappaport of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hot rocks

The planet's orbital period suggests it is just 1 per cent of Earth's distance from the sun, where it should attain a temperature of 2000?kelvin. "That's well above what you would need to vaporise pyroxene and olivine ? common minerals that make up rocky planets," says team member Eugene Chiang of the University of California, Berkeley.

As a result, the subliming planet is leaking rock vapour and dust into space, the team say, forming a large cloud around the planet that blocks starlight when it passes in front of the star. This is similar to the way sunlight vaporises ice from comets, producing a dusty cloud called a coma. The planet may even have a comet-like tail, the team say.

The cloud fluctuates in size over time, explaining why the amount of dimming varies from one event to another, they say.

No rocky planets have been seen evaporating before, although gas giants have.

Grazing transit

The team considered another possibility: that the dimmings were caused by transits of a giant planet with a variable orbit. In that case, some transits might put the entire planet in front of the star, whereas others would be grazing transits, with only part of the planet blocking starlight. That could explain the variability.

However, this explanation requires a second planet to gravitationally perturb the first planet's path ? and such tugs would also change the timing of the transits. So far the time between transits has stayed constant to within one part in 100,000 ? far too regular to accommodate a second-planet explanation.

Alternatively, if there was a binary star very nearby in the sky, its light could contaminate measurements of the star's light, mimicking transit events ? but the team could find no sign of such a binary near the star of interest. That leaves the evaporating-planet idea as the only viable explanation the team could come up with.

"The idea is very provocative," says Jonathan Fortney of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study. But he says further work is needed before all other possibilities can be ruled out.

Mercury boils dry

The planet is probably about the size of Mercury, the team say. If it were larger, its gravity would prevent the gas and dust from leaking into space to form the cloud, whereas a smaller planet would evaporate so quickly that we would be implausibly lucky to spot it during this phase.

Normally Kepler would not be able to detect a planet as small as Mercury, because it dims its star too little. If the team are right, the telescope only picked up this one because of the dust cloud, which blocks much more light than the planet alone would.

Assuming the planet is Mercury-sized, it should evaporate away to nothing in about 200 million years. This may offer a preview of things to come in our own solar system billions of years from now, when the sun is predicted to bloat into a red giant.

Mercury will eventually be engulfed by the expanding sun, but for a brief period before being swallowed, its surface may boil and produce a dusty cloud around the planet like the one Kepler has observed. "There will come a point where our Mercury will go through this phase, but it will be pretty short-lived," says Chiang.

The team hope to obtain time on the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the spectrum of starlight passing through the cloud. If it reveals common rock-forming elements like silicon and magnesium, it would bolster the evaporating-planet explanation.

Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1201.2662

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