| Two thousand children to take part in paralympic school sports championship Children of all abilities will compete in 10 paralympic sports including boccia, petanque and goalballTwo thousand schoolchildren from the Olympic boroughs will take part in a championship inspired by the Paralympic Games next week.During the the School Sports Championship, children of all abilities will compete in 10 Paralympic sports including wheelchair basketball, archery and judo.The championships - hosted by the Hackney Learning Trust - will involve 66 schools from the Olympic host boroughs of Greenwich, Newham, Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Hackney.All teams participating will include children with special educational needs.Seb Coe, chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games said: "We want to inspire and educate young people about Paralympic sports and this event will show that they can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of their ability."Alan Wood, chief executive of the Learning Trust, said: "The championships are again set to be the biggest inclusive sports event in the country."Other sports included in the championships are boccia – a target ball sport similar to pétanque, and Goalball – a sport devised in 1946 to help in the rehabilitation of visually impaired Second World War veterans during which players wear eye shades and throw a ball with a bell on it.Since the Schools Sports Championships began in 2008, many schools have integrated Paralympic sports into their PE lessons.One school leaver who took part in the 2008 championships, Mohammed Moossun, will be working as a volunteer at this year's event.He describes the effect sports coaching had on him. "At my school we had six weeks of Paralympic Archery coaching which I really enjoyed. Not only because it was an opportunity to learn a sport I had never tried, but because it gave me the chance to do PE with my classmates."For most of my time at secondary school I used PE lessons to go to the local gym which made me feel dejected as I would have rather been doing PE."This has grown to become a really special event and I'm proud to be part of it."• The School Sports Championship takes place 11-15 October. The Paralympic Games will be held from 29th August - 9th September 2012School sportsSchoolsOlympic games 2012LondonFrances Boothguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Is black the new grey for squirrels? It is often heard that the British red squirrel is being wiped out by its American cousin but now the grey squirrel could be replaced by another breed. bbc.co.uk |
MPs' expenses: Nadine Dorries cleared over second home Nadine Dorries has been cleared by the Commons sleaze watchdog of wrongly claiming £60,000 in second home allowances, but found to have breached rules by failing to declare when she moved house twice. telegraph.co.uk |
US embassy cables: A stormy meeting in Kazakhstan Friday, 15 February 2008, 11:18C O N F I D E N T I A L ASTANA 000338 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR SCA/CEN, EEB EO 12958 DECL: 02/14/2018 TAGS PGOV, PREL, EPET, PINR, KZ SUBJECT: CHEVRON INCIDENT REFLECTS CHANGING DYNAMICS IN KAZAKHSTAN'S ENERGY HIERARCHYREF: A. ASTANA 65 B. ASTANA 225Classified By: AMBASSADOR ORDWAY FOR REASONS 1.4(B) AND (D)1.(C) On January 15, KazMunaiGas First Vice President Maskat Idenov expelled from a meeting Chevron executives Guy Hollingsworth, President for Chevron Eurasia, Europe, and Middle East Exploration and Production, and James Johnson, Chevron Eurasia Strategic Business Unit Managing Director. In press reports, an unnamed source stated that the two were thrown out of the meeting because of "improper comments on Kashagan negotiations and disrespectful conduct towards KazMunaiGas management." Johnson told us later that the incident occurred at the end of a meeting that had gone generally well, and resulted from an innocent issue over the newly-arrived Johnson not having his cell phone number handy to exchange with Idenov. Idenov,s version of the conversation was heavy with descriptions of Hollingsworth £ing on the table8 and Johnson slowly tapping a business card on the table while telling Idenov all he needed was his secretary,s phone number. Idenov almost immediately sent a letter of protest to Chevron CEO Dave O,Reilly, and faxed (twice) a cc to the Ambassador. Knowledge of the incident, and the letter, have been the talk of the diplomatic and business community ever since, with sources ranging from the Indian Ambassador to the local ABN Amro chief raising it with the Ambassador.2. (C) In subsequent conversations with the Ambassador and Eurasian Energy Diplomacy Coordinator Steve Mann, Idenov emphasized that his actions were not an indication of poor relations with Chevron. In both conversations, Idenov amplified his anger with Hollingsworth by explaining that Hollingsworth does not understand &how we are doing business now8 ) followed immediately by a detailed recitation of Hollingsworth,s extensive contacts with Timur Kulibayev in locations ranging from the Astana golf course to the beach in Spain.Comment-------3. What really appears to be at issue here is Idenov demonstrating that he, not Timur Kulibayev, is now the &go to8 guy in Kazakhstani oil and gas. Idenov, the chief negotiator for Kazakhstan on Kashagan, is now &number 1A8 at KMG, according to one international oil company representative. Under restructuring at KMG, all employees report to Idenov, and only Idenov to KMG President Uzakbay Karabalin. The ascendant Idenov appears determined to show the international majors that they need to deal with him. In an early stage of the Kashagan negotiations, he tossed some less senior ConocoPhillips representatives out of a meeting to deliver the message that he should be dealing with the upper levels of KMG,s corporate partners. In the case of Chevron, he felt secure enough to throw out of a meeting executives from one of Kazakhstan's biggest money-makers. It is difficult to imagine that any KMG official would have so criticized Kulibayev, even in private to American diplomats, if he were not very confident of his position.4. (C) One very substantive aspect of determining who,s on top is related to the oil pipeline that must be built to connect Kashagan (and Tengiz) to the planned trans-Caspian oil terminal in Kurik. Both Hollingsworth and Prime Minister Masimov have told the Ambassador that discussions are underway to make this pipeline project a joint project between the GOK/KMG and Chevron. Masimov has noted that the Kashagan companies, the natural partners for such a pipeline, have been unable to agree on how to do this despite several years of trying. Chevron, which is not involved with Kashagan, has a major interest in additional transportation routes for Tengiz crude ) which it is 100 percent responsible for marketing. The proposed pipeline would run right past the Tengiz field on its way to the terminal; even a 25 percent Chevron share would give them an inside track at getting their crude into that pipeline if there were capacity problems with both Kashagan and Tengiz volumes. Idenov, by contrast, told the Ambassador and Mann that KMG would build the pipeline &100 percent by ourselves8 and conclude commercial contracts with the Kashagan shippers to transport their oil. He specifically said that it would be a violation of business principles to cut the Kashagan partners out of the process of determining how to build the pipeline ) a direct swipe at the Chevron proposal. To make this mix even more complicated, ExxonMobil country rep told Mann that his company was working with KMG on a new legal basis to buildthe pipeline that would allow the Kashagan partners to share ownership.5. (C) Idenov's actions are designed not only to demonstrate that he,s up, but that Timur Kulibayev is down, if not actually out. We had already concluded that Kulibayev,s influence in the oil and gas sector had been significantly reduced with his removal late last year from a senior executive position at Samruk, the state holding company that owns KMG. Shortly after Kulibayev was fired, Hollingsworth told us that Kulibayev had explained (during a golf game) that it was the desire of the President to &protect8 him from responsibility for the Kashagan negotiations if they went wrong. This appears to be somewhat self-serving: A former USG official told the Ambassador that she had been at a dinner in Astana with the CEO of Samruk, Kanat Bozumbayev, immediately after Kulibayev lost his position. According to Bozumbayev, he had been instructed to personally deliver the news of the firing to Kulibayev, who appeared to have no inkling that it was going to happen.6.(C) Kulibayev is still the head of Kazenergy, the semi-official trade group, and has obvious links to key government officials, including his father-in-law, the President. Kulibayev is by all accounts a very savvy and effective businessman. Samruk Board Chairman Richard Evans (retired CEO of BAE), told the Ambassador that Kulibayev was the one real businessman he had met in the entire Samruk structure. Our guess is that Nazarbayev, in the aftermath of the Rakhat Aliyev affair, decided to minimize risks to him and his reputation by removing all of his close relatives from major government positions. ORDWAYKazakhstanPrince AndrewMonarchyOilUS foreign policyThe US embassy cablesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Our second gallery of Telegraph readers' photographs of the snow in Britain Our second gallery of Telegraph readers' photographs of snow. telegraph.co.uk |