Roundup: Messi's 61st goal lifts Barcelona

Associated Press Sports

updated 4:52 p.m. ET April 10, 2012

MADRID (AP) - Lionel Messi scored his 61st goal of the season and had two assists, leading Barcelona over Getafe 4-0 night Tuesday in the Spanish league and pulling the three-time defending champions within one point of first-place Real Madrid.

Messi capped a superb exchange with Andres Iniesta with a rising shot into the top corner in the 44th minute. Messi leads the league with 39 goals, one shy of the record Cristiano Ronaldo set last season.

Messi has scored in 12 of his last 13 games, totaling 24 goals. He is the first player to reach 60 for a club in a major European league since Bayern Munich's Gerd Mueller scored 67 goals in 1972-73.

Alexis Sanchez scored in 13th and 73rd minutes and Pedro Rodriguez in the 75th as Barcelona (24-2-6) won its 10th straight league game.

Real Madrid (25-2-4) can restore a four-point lead by winning at Atletico Madrid on Wednesday.

---

BLACKBURN, England (AP) - Andy Carroll scored on a leaping header in the first minute of injury time as Liverpool won 3-2 at relegation-threatened Blackburn but lost another goalkeeper to suspension ahead of this weekend's FA Cup semifinal against Everton.

Goals by Maxi Rodriguez in the 13th and 16th minutes gave the visitors a 2-0 lead.

Liverpool goalkeeper Alexander Doni, starting because of Pepe Reina's suspension for a head butt, was given a straight red card for bringing down Junior Hoilett in the area in the 25th minute.

Backup goalkeeper Brad Jones stopped Ayegbeni Yakubu's penalty kick in the 27th, but Yakubu scored tied the game with goals in the 36th and 61st minutes, the latter a penalty kick that raised his total league goals for the season to 16. Jones was lucky not to get sent off himself when he pushed Yakubu over in the area, which led to the tying goal.

Liverpool (12-11-10) is eighth with 46 points. Blackburn (7-19-7) is 18th, behind Queens Park Rangers on goal difference.

---

VERONA, Italy (AP) - Sulley Muntari scored in the eighth minute, giving defending champion AC Milan a 1-0 win at Chievo Verona that ended a four-match winless streak and regained first place in the Serie A.

AC Milan (20-5-7) has a two-point lead over second-place Juventus (17-0-14), which hosts third-place Lazio on Wednesday.

---

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Werder Bremen (11-10-9) tied 2-2 with visiting Borussia Moenchengladbach (15-7-8) in the Bundesliga, while Cologne (8-17-5) moved closer to relegation with a 4-0 loss at Mainz (9-12-9).

A header by defender Naldo secured the draw for Bremen, which had fallen behind to a pair of goals by Mike Hanke.

In other matches Tuesday, surging Stuttgart won 3-1 at Augsburg and Freiburg beat Hertha Berlin 2-1 to all but make sure of remaining in the top division while leaving Berlin (6-15-9) headed to relegation.

On Wednesday, first-place Borussia Dortmund (20-3-6) hosts Bayern Munich (20-6-3), which trails by three points with five matches remaining.

---

PARIS (AP) - Lyon advanced to the French Cup final with a 4-0 victory over Gazelec Ajaccio, a third-division semiprofessional team.

Following a scoreless first half, Alexandre Lacazette put the visitors ahead in the 59th and Lisandro Lopez doubled the lead in the 73rd. Clement Grenier added a goal in the 80th and Bafetimbi Gomis in the 90th.

The hosts played a man short after Anthony Colinet was ejected in the 39th.

Quevilly, which plays in the same league as Gazelec, plays first-division Rennes in the other semifinal on Wednesday.

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


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Man United falls, Man City wins

Roundup: Manchester United stumbled on its path to the Premier League title, losing 1-0 at Wigan on Wednesday night and allowing Manchester City to close within five points with a 4-0 win over West Bromwich Albion.

Ronaldo matches own goal record in Madrid win

MADRID (AP) -Cristiano Ronaldo matched his own Spanish league record of 40 goals in a season by netting a hat trick that included two spectacular long-range strikes as Real Madrid beat Atletico Madrid 4-1 Wednesday to restore its four-point lead over Barcelona atop the standings.

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Snow White and the Huntsman Cast to Kristen Stewart: Happy Birthday!


Snow White and the Huntsman stars Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth and Sam Claflin are helping celebrate Kristen Stewart's 22nd birthday in style.

The trio, in their amazing accents, uploaded separate video cards to offer well-wishes to the actress, who plays Snow White, on the special occasion.

"Kristen Stewart, a little birdie came and told me it was your birthday," proclaimed Theron. "Dude, happy friggin' birthday. You're awesome."

"I feel honored to know you. Just keep rockin', man. You're amazing. Mad love."

Theron, who plays the evil Queen, then blew her a kiss. As for Hemsworth and Claflin, they kept it short and sweet ... but man those guys are cool.

Watch their brief greetings for K-Stew after the jump ...

Snow White and the Huntsman arrives in theaters this summer, and it looks certifiably bad ass. Check out the trailer for the fantasy film below ...

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Syria violence endangers Annan's ceasefire deadline

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian troops killed 31 people on Tuesday, pursuing a fierce assault on President Bashar al-Assad's opponents instead of silencing their big guns and leaving towns as promised under a fraying international peace plan.

The worst bloodshed was in the city of Homs, where shelling of opposition districts killed at least 26, activists said. Opposition groups said there was no sign of a military pullout, with tanks still in cities such as Homs and Hama.

Citing satellite images, a French foreign ministry spokesman endorsed that view and denounced a Syrian assurance that troops were, in fact, withdrawing as a "blatant lie".

Nor did rebels immediately stop shooting. The anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said insurgents killed six soldiers in attacks on checkpoints on an eastern desert road.

As the end-of-day deadline loomed for Damascus to implement the ceasefire plan, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem demanded guarantees from its author, U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, that armed insurgents would also honor any truce.

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For graphic on fighting http://link.reuters.com/zan47s

For Interactive timeline http://link.reuters.com/pyt37s

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"We will not ask the terrorist groups, which are killing, kidnapping and destroying infrastructure, for guarantees. We want Annan to give us these guarantees," Moualem said in Moscow.

The last-minute demand, a variant of one Syria made at the weekend, is not mentioned in Annan's proposals and looks designed to complicate his struggle to get all parties to comply with a six-point plan that is so far largely a dead letter.

The rebel Free Syrian Army will fight on if Assad fails to withdraw troops and tanks from in and around cities as required, a spokesman, Colonel Qassem Saad al-Deen, told Reuters.

The opposition Syrian National Council said a partial ceasefire was unacceptable and government forces should stop all violence on Tuesday. Its spokeswoman, Basma Kodmani, also told a news conference in Geneva that arrests, house demolitions and shelling by tanks and anti-aircraft guns were continuing.

The Local Coordination Committees, a grassroots activist group, said Assad's "corrupt criminal regime" was only trying to buy time to impose its will by force, and chided the United Nations and Arab League for failing to restrain Damascus.

ASSAD'S FRIENDS

China, which along with Russia has blocked punitive U.N. Security Council action against Syria, said it hoped all sides would immediately obey a U.N.-backed ceasefire aimed at stopping a 13-month uprising from sliding into full-scale civil war.

Moscow and Beijing have both supported Annan's plan, which diplomats say still gives Assad until midnight in Syria (2100 GMT) to start withdrawing troops from urban areas.

Extra conditions set by Damascus have fuelled widespread doubts that the deadline for a full truce to start by 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Thursday, April 12, would be respected.

Syrian government media curbs make it hard to assess conflicting reports from inside Syria.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he had told Moualem that Syria could be "more active, more decisive" in meeting the terms of Annan's plan, but he also urged foreign states to lean on opposition groups to stop shooting forthwith.

Moualem said some troops had already pulled back from cities in line with the peace plan, but he tied a full ceasefire to the entry of foreign monitors, another apparently new condition.

"An end of violence must be simultaneous with the arrival of the international observers," he said, adding that Syria wants a say in how the ceasefire monitoring team is composed.

The U.N. peacekeeping department sent an advance team to Damascus last week to discuss how to carry out Annan's plan for "an effective United Nations supervision mechanism".

An Arab League monitoring effort collapsed in January as intensifying violence made a mockery of an Arab ceasefire plan.

Assad's forces have killed more than 9,000 people in the past year, according to a U.N. estimate. Damascus says rebels have killed more than 2,500 soldiers and security personnel.

TURKISH ANGER

The violence has alarmed Syria's neighbors, especially Turkey which already hosts almost 25,000 Syrian refugees. At least five people, including two Turkish citizens, were wounded by cross-border fire into a refugee camp in Turkey on Monday.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Assad of personal responsibility for killing civilians and threatened an unspecified response to the cross-border shooting.

"He is continuing to kill 60, 70, 80, 100 every day," Erdogan said during a visit to Beijing. Assad's troops were "mercilessly" shooting fleeing women and children in the back.

NATO member Turkey has floated the option of carving out a "buffer zone" inside Syria to protect civilians, providing the U.N. Security Council authorized a move that could set up a confrontation between Assad's forces and the Turkish military.

Another neighbor, Lebanon, condemned the killing of a local journalist by Syrian soldiers firing over the border on Monday.

Annan himself was due to visit refugee camps in Turkey, near the border, on Tuesday. His deputy was to brief the U.N. Security Council by videolink on the fate of the peace plan.

Failure to end the violence would highlight the diplomatic stalemate pitting Assad's Western and Arab critics against his friends in Russia, China and Iran. They all call for calm but differ sharply on how to achieve this or on any political transition that could satisfy the antagonists in Syria.

Moscow and Beijing both mistrust what they see as a

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Facebook snaps up Instagram for 'stunning' price

updated 08:10

Published: 5:42AM Tuesday April 10, 2012 Source: ONE News / Reuters

  • Facebook snaps up Instagram for 'stunning' price (Source: ONE News)

    Source: ONE News

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Facebook will pay $US1 billion in cash and stock for mobile photo-sharing application Instagram, in a deal that has been called "stunning".

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted the news of the deal on his Facebook timeline this morning and it received 60,000 likes in just over 30 minutes.

It will be the social networking giant's largest acquisition to date and comes just weeks before its highly-anticipated IPO.

"I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook."

"Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people."

The Instagram app is predominantly used to upload photos to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. It allows users to add filters and effects like sepia tone to pictures taken on smartphones.

It has gained around 30 million users since it first launched in January last year and today, its founders hailed the deal.

"Today, we couldnt be happier to announce that Instagram has agreed to be acquired by Facebook," co-founder Kevin Systrom said in a blog post.

"Stunning price"

Reuters said the price was "stunning" for an apps-maker without any significant revenue, even with soaring startup valuations in Silicon Valley, as Facebook sought to absorb a potential rival or at least prevent it from falling into the hands of a major competitor like Twitter or Google.

As Instagram's popularity has shot up in recent months, the company's leadership has mulled possible strategies to expand the service into a fully featured social network - much like a photo-driven, stripped-down version of Facebook, Twitter, or even Path, a company insider said.

Instagram is "a property that would have been amazingly valuable to not just Facebook, certainly Twitter was in the hunt as well," said Lou Kerner, founder of the Social Internet Fund.

"I'm sure Google was interested as well. So to some degree an acquisition like this is both offensive and defensive. It would be a highly leveragable asset for anybody who wanted to compete against Facebook."

Zuckerberg's plans

Zuckerberg said Facebook is committed to building and growing Instagram independently.

"For years, we've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we'll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests."

He said the company will keep features such as the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

"This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users."

Instagram's founders were quick to stress that the popular app would not be changed significantly.

"Its important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. Well be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network... The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love," they said today.

Business News Video

Copyright ? 2012, Television New Zealand Limited. Breaking and Daily News, Sport & Weather | TV ONE, TV2 | Ondemand

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Juliet Jeske: Removing the Stigma of Divorce

I have heard some buzz about certain politicians advocating for tougher divorce laws. So I did some research in the anti-divorce movement and some of what I found really made my head spin. For instance, in an article on www.smartmarriages.com, I found the following:

It is hardly debatable that many of society's ills can be traced to the continuing high rates of marital distress and divorce.

I would argue that there are plenty of other things contributing to society's ills, but in order to stay on topic I won't list them here. What followed that statement was actually a fairly balanced discussion on the pros and cons of enacting tougher divorce laws. What I found disturbing however is that in 2012, anyone would debate making divorce less accessible.

Our culture has grown leaps and bounds since the 1950's and earlier when most of society viewed divorced people with suspicion and derision. But the stigma of divorce hasn't completely gone away. Every time a divorced political candidate runs for office, the press scrutinizes their marital history as if it is somehow indicative of their moral character. Entertainers and public figures are not immune to this criticism either. Rush Limbaugh -- a seeming crusader of conservative values -- is on his fourth wife. Newt Gingrich can't seem to stop getting married and having affairs. Jennifer Lopez has been divorced three times by the age of 42, and Larry King is on marriage number eight. And of course we have Kim Kardashian who, after a lavish televised wedding for her second marriage, filed for divorce after only 72 days. Some people truly seem to have a marriage problem. And then there is the rest of us.

I married once, and for reasons completely out of my control, my marriage ended. I am not deficient or somehow morally bankrupt as a result. It was not a weakness on my part that my marriage fell apart. My husband was a closeted homosexual. I discovered as much and got out as soon as I possibly could. Many of my divorced friends also felt like they had no choice but to leave their marriages. One of my friends found out that her husband was a criminal, and when she confronted him with this information he blamed her, even though she knew nothing about it. Another friend married a man who refused to seek treatment for his bi-polar disorder -- a disease he struggled with in the past but had hidden from his wife. His untreated mental illness made him physically and emotionally abusive to both her and their child. Since he refused treatment, she also had no choice but to leave the relationship. Or in the case of several of my friends, one spouse simply did not want to remain in a monogamous relationship and continually had extramarital affairs. What is the other spouse supposed to do? Stick around and put up with the constant deception, open themselves up to possibly getting a sexually transmitted disease, and stay faithful to a partner who is not faithful to them? And in some marriages, one spouse becomes overwhelmingly emotionally or physically abusive, constantly tearing down or controlling the other. Should someone stay in that situation? I think not.

Are we supposed to feel like failed people because our partners made it impossible for us to stay in our marriages? Are we emotionally weak or deficient? Are we morally bankrupt? Have we committed some horrible crime against society? When I hear of conservatives promoting laws to make divorce more difficult I want to scream. Marriage is a personal matter between two people. Should the government intervene for the sake of society and prevent divorce? We all know of couples who stay together in a mutually destructive dance of co-dependency, or marriages in which one partner suffers irrecoverably while the other uses them as an emotional punching bag. Is an injurious marriage preferable to a divorce?

In my case there were no children involved; the only people who have suffered are my former spouse and myself. How are we destroying society? And when children are present, should restrictive divorce laws force them to stay in a painful and destructive household in which one or both parents are miserable? I can't imagine that environment could lead to a healthy childhood.

Marriage is just a relationship made more complicated by social and legal ramifications. If one or both parties want to leave a marriage, the government should not force them to stay together for the sake of society. Of course, some individuals do abuse marriage and make both marriage and divorce seem trivial. But most of us were just doing the best we could, and maybe we ended up with the wrong partner. Maybe we got married too young, maybe we felt pressured into it, maybe we just made a foolish choice. It doesn't matter; most divorced people are not morally bankrupt and we are not the bane of society. Thank goodness we live in a country where we can legally walk away from these toxic unions, and anyone who would prevent us from doing so is the truly morally bankrupt person.

?

Follow Juliet Jeske on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JulietJeske

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Cogoo's Turntable Rider puts the 'mix' in BMX, 'awesome' in these videos

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What if a company built a mixer for your BMX bike? What if said mixer could wirelessly control the music you're grooving to while riding? What if we had two videos to prove that such luxuries do, in fact, exist? Japan's own Cogoo has gone well above the call of duty with its latest concoction, the Turntable Rider. Put simply (or as simply as possible), it's a multi-part system that enables a bike to become a DJing machine; the more complex the tricks, the 'better' the mix. Reportedly, the bike's own wheels act as jog wheels, the brakes act as a beat pad and there's even a gyroscopic sensor that doubles as a fader pad. No word on a set price or ship date, but it'll be making the rounds at events starting with the 2012 Kaikoo Popwave Festival. Enough chatter -- head on past the break and mash play a couple of times. Go ahead and prepare those around you to cease working and do the same.

Continue reading Cogoo's Turntable Rider puts the 'mix' in BMX, 'awesome' in these videos

Cogoo's Turntable Rider puts the 'mix' in BMX, 'awesome' in these videos originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Authorities: Texas beach shooting was drive-by

SURFSIDE BEACH, Texas (AP) ? A drive-by shooting led to the death of a 26-year-old Houston man at a packed Texas Gulf Coast beach party and to the wounding of two others, authorities said Monday.

No arrests have been made in the weekend shooting, which took place at a party where up to 20,000 people had gathered at Surfside Beach, about 65 miles south of Houston, said Brazoria County Sheriff Charles Wagner.

Word of the unauthorized party had apparently spread on social media.

The shooting around 8:30 p.m. Saturday killed Derrick Milam, who was hit in the neck by a bullet. An unidentified 16-year-old male was shot in the buttocks and 19-year-old London Kirby, from Houston, was shot in the leg.

"We think it was all ... one continuous incident," Wagner said. "They drove by and started shooting. (Milam) was found in one spot and the two others were found not far down on the beach."

Wagner said authorities learned Thursday that the party would be happening.

"This was a first as far as advertising (a beach party at Surfside) on the Internet," he said. "When I found out about it, I had Surfside (police) notified so they would know about it."

Surfside Police Chief Gary Phillips did not immediately return several telephone calls seeking comment.

Wagner said authorities have previously dealt with large beach crowds but this was the first time violence had occurred.

The sheriff's department had assigned extra officers to patrol the county's portion of the beach, he said. The shootings happened on Surfside city beach property.

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