UK delays changes to sports TV coverage - Board Games

LONDON July 21 (Reuters) - The London Olympics and Euro
2012 soccer tournament will be shown on free-to-air television
in Britain after the government deferred until 2013 any changes
to the rules on broadcasting sports events.
Sports Minister Hugh Robertson said that changes to the
broadcasting landscape, including the completion of a switchover
to digital transmission in 2012, meant it was not the right time
to review the list of protected events.
"The current economic climate also points to us not making a
decision at this time which could adversely impact on sport at
the grassroots. I have therefore decided to defer any review
until 2013, when we will look at this again," Robertson said in
a statement.
England's home cricket test matches are not protected and
migrated to Sky (BSY.L) following the hugely popular 2005
England victory over Australia in the Ashes.
A review by former Football Association Executive Director
David Davies in 2008 proposed adding home Ashes test matches to
the list, as well as the home countries' soccer qualifiers for
major tournaments.
In a separate statement, Robertson said he wanted sports
governing bodies to pass as much as 30 percent of their revenues
from broadcasting deals to the grassroots of their games.
Watch Board Games Online

Reggae meets Pink Floyd, Beatles with the All Stars - Music

By Jeremy Gaunt
CROPREDY England (Reuters Life!) - Anyone who has ever listened to reggae masters Toots and the Maytals taking John Denver's "Country Roads" to new heights knows that reggae can cover just about anything.
The Easy Star All-Stars, which delivered a thumping dose of Jamaican dub to a heavily Brit folk-rock audience at Fairport's Cropredy Convention in Oxfordshire at the weekend, is reaching new levels.
From the cult CD "Dub Side of the Moon", through "Radiodread" to "Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band", the New York-based group is jamming its way through a pantheon of rock classics.
Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", Radiohead's "OK Computer" and The Beatles' "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", to be precise.
What is remarkable about the productions -- which follow the originals from start to finish -- is that each comes across as a true homage rather than a rip-off cover.
And while it is unsurprising that reggae would do well with the likes of Floyd's "Money" or The Beatles' "Lovely Rita", it is less immediately obvious with tracks such as "Breathe" or "Within You Without You".
Yet it works with great effect, as many bouncing, joyful fans in the Cropredy crowd attested, albeit that some of the more fiddle-focused folkies at the back seemed unmoved.
The success of giving classics the Caribbean treatment does not seem strange to Ras I Ray, the All-Stars' bassist and sometime frontman.
"It is the simplicity of reggae music," he told Reuters ahead of the Cropredy set. "In all music you can have reggae music."
The All-Stars usually comprise nine people -- eight musicians and singers, and a sound mixer who Ray is adamant counts as a full band member. They are individual artists brought together by Easy Star Records, a specialist in reggae and dub production.
What success the band has achieved so far has been mainly in western Europe, particularly Britain where a tour is ending this week and a new one, incorporating Ireland, is due to start in October.
In between, the band is playing in Canada and the United States. Ray says the latter has been a hard nut to crack because the U.S. music industry is compartmentalised and, frankly, doesn't know where to put the All-Stars.
Meanwhile, another cover is on the way, but the band either doesn't know what it will be because Easy Star Records has not decided, or is just not telling.
"There is another cover in the future. We don't know exactly what it will be," Ray said.
Somebody in the room mumbled Abba. Could have been a joke, might not have been. Either way, reggae and the All-Stars would surely handle it.
(Editing by Steve Addison)
Watch Music Online

Director Cameron dives beneath Lake Baikal - Entertainment News

MOSCOW (Reuters) - "Titanic" director James Cameron spent his birthday underwater.
Cameron, who turned 56 on Monday, dove beneath the surface of the world's deepest lake in a submersible he used to film the wreck of the Titanic, the Foundation for the Preservation of Lake Baikal said.
Cameron boarded the Mir-1 submersible and spent a few hours in Lake Baikal's waters, the Russian-based group said.
The Mir-1, less than 8 meters (26 feet) long, is one of two submersibles Cameron used to film the Titanic in preparation for the 1997 blockbuster. Russia used the vessel in 2007 to plant a Russian flag on the sea floor near the North Pole.
On Monday, it was piloted by Anatoly Sagalevich, the director of the technical council of the preservation foundation, who invited Cameron on his first visit to Lake Baikal and gave him a hardy "hydronaut's" watch.
The sickle-shaped lake in Siberia, some 5,000 km (3,000 miles) east of Moscow, is the world's oldest and deepest lake, according to UNESCO, which lists it as a World Heritage Site. It holds one-fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water.
Ecologists say the 25 million-year-old lake -- which reaches a depth of 1,637 meters (5,370 feet) -- harbors 1,500 plant and animal species, including a unique freshwater seal.
The two Mir craft have been used to explore the lake since 2008.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who last winter signed a controversial order allowing a paper mill environmentalists say pollutes the lake to reopen, dove to the bottom of Baikal in 2008 and declared the lake clean.
Cameron, an avid deep-sea diver, has said his initial motive in proposing to make Titanic was the hope of filming the famous wreck on the floor of the North Atlantic.
Watch Entertainment News Online