Remembering the UnConventional Rivelino of Brasil

1970 FIFA World Cup

The 1970 FIFA World Cup, the ninth staging of the World Cup, was held in Mexico, from May 31 to June 21. Mexico was chosen as hosts by FIFA in October 1964. In a match-up of teams that had won the World Cup twice, the final was won by Brazil, who beat Italy 4-1. This means Brazil were the first three-time champion and were allowed to keep the Jules Rimet Trophy permanently. The Brazilian team, featuring the likes of Pelé (who was in his fourth and final World Cup), Carlos Alberto, Clodoaldo, Gérson, Jairzinho, Rivelino, and Tostão, is usually regarded as the greatest attacking World Cup team ever. This tournament also saw the return of free-flowing, attacking play after the physical battles of 1962 and 1966, and is still considered by many fans to be the finest World Cup in history. 

Rivelino

Roberto Rivellino (b. January 1st, 1946 - São Paulo) is a Brazilian football player, famous for his extremely potent left-foot shot, thunderous long-range free kicks and large moustache. He also invented a soccer move called the "Elastico", also known as "flip flap". He is widely regarded as one of the most graceful footballers ever, and is usually ranked as the 4th best Brazilian, after Pelé, Garrincha, and Zico, respectively, as well as one of the best midfielders the world's ever seen.

Rivelino, as he is most commonly known in Brazil, started as a futsal player in Clube Indiano, São Paulo. He tried to get in his childhood favorite team, Palmeiras in 1963, but they did not utilize him in the team. After that he tried his luck in their biggest rival, Corinthians, one of the most important Brazilian soccer teams. Unfortunately for him, when he played for Corinthians, the club was in one of the worst eras of its history. After losing the 1974 São Paulo State championship to Corinthians' arch-rival, Palmeiras, Rivelino was ostracized by the majority of Corinthians' supporters, and left the club to play for Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro.

Among the cariocas, Rivelino was also an idol, winning the Carioca State Championship in 1975 and 1976. Towards the end of the seventies, Rivelino went to play in Saudi Arabia; he retired in 1981.

Rivelino is also one of the players that have more than 100 caps for the Brazilian national team. He was a starter in most games in the successful Brazilian campaign in the 1970 FIFA World Cup, scoring 3 goals, including the powerful free-kick against Czechoslovakia, which earned him the nickname "Patada Atómica" (Atomic Kick) by Mexican fans. Rivelino also played in the 1974 and 1978 FIFA World Cups, although with less success (4th and 3rd places respectively).

After his professional retirement, Rivelino started a career as a soccer commentator and coach (he has directed the Japanese national team).

Rivelino was one of the players named by Pelé in 2004 as the 125 Greatest Living Footballers. 

2005 Golden Foot: Roberto Rivellino

Pork beats Viagra for high spirits in the presidential bedroom

clipped from www.smh.com.au BUENOS AIRES: Eating pork is at least as effective as popping a Viagra pill to spice up your sex life, according to the Argentine President, Cristina Kirchner, who claims to have tested the theory. ''Pork consumption improves sexual activity,'' Ms Kirchner informed a surprised gathering of business people at a meeting at the presidential palace. Ms Kirchner said she ate some roasted pork over the weekend with her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, at the couple's retreat in Argentina's southern Patagonia region, with ''impressive'' results. ''We were in high spirits the whole weekend,'' she said, smiling. ''I'm a pork fanatic and I'm not saying this just to impress you, or for self-promotion.'' People in Denmark and Japan, where pork consumption is high, ''have much more harmonious sexual lives than us Argentines have'', Mr Uccelli said. The head of Argentina's association of pork producers, Juan Uccelli, backed up Ms Kirchner's claims.

Voight blasts Brangelina split rumours as 'nonsense'

clipped from www.smh.com.au Jon Voight has branded rumours of an impending split between daughter Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as "nonsense". The Oscar-winning actor - who has a notoriously difficult relationship with his daughter Jolie - insists the couple are staying together and there is no truth in the recent claims suggesting otherwise. At the weekend, it was claimed Pitt and Jolie, who raise six children together, were set to separate after signing legal papers which equally split their $US330 million ($369 million) fortune and custody of the kids. They agreed to share their money and assets and custody of their six children, all of whom would live with Angelina in the event of their parents’ break-up.

With an eye on World Cup, Malaysian fans pick Germany, Brazil to win

With an eye on World Cup, Malaysian fans pick Germany, Brazil to win: "
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 29 – Football-crazy Malaysians, who made a beeline to view the iconic Fifa World Cup trophy on display here today, put a stake on their favourite team to lift the title.

Going by the responses to a random survey, either Germany or Brazil ought to win the World Cup.

“After having won the 2008 European Cup, Germany are in top form. Germany players like Micheal Ballack (Chelsea) and Miroslav Klose (Bayern Munich) are playing for top European clubs,” said Wan Meswar Wan Ahmad, who works in the private sector.
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65th anniversary of Indonesian republicanism

65th anniversary of Indonesian republicanism: "This year also marks the 65 th anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic of Indonesia, an ex-colony of Holland, which is now the most populous Muslims-majority country on earth and the land of ancestral origin as well as a source of cultural inspiration of Malays in Malaysia. Other Muslims- majority republics include Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Khazakhstan, Uzbekistan and also Turkmenistan.

Chinese nation to mark republican centenary

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101 East - Malaysia: Whose God?

Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad has been suspended for six months as Shah Alam PAS chief and member of the party’s political bureau by the PAS discipline committee.

Khalid was also found guilty for exposing internal party matters to the public.

Khalid’s suspension as the Shah Alam division head and political bureau member began yesterday.

KHALID SAMAD FAN CLUB

Khalid Samad - Blog

I was born in Kota Bharu, Kelantan in 1957 and I grew up all over the country. My parents are originally from Muar, Johor but my father was a civil servant and he was posted to different states – Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Selangor and even up to Sabah. Yes Shahrir Samad (above) is my brother and yes we are from the same parents. I studied Fuel and Energy Engineering in Leeds University, UK and I graduated in 1979. As a student in the UK, I was a member of a group called ‘SUARA AL-Islam’. When I returned to Malaysia, I joined PAS in 1983. I was a PAS C.C. member from 1987 to 1993. I have never been a member of IRC, JIM or any other Islamic organization, although I often interact with their members.

75,000 Kelantanese and More Gathered for Oil Royalty

75,000 Kelantanese and More Gathered for Oil Royalty: "

Gua Musang MP and UMNO chief Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah said last night that Kelantan is entitled for RM2 Billion worth of royalty from the oil extracted off its waters. He who is also of Kelantan royalty bloodlines (uncle to Sultan of Kelantan) and ex-chairman for Petronas, also argued why Kelantan’s royalty was not paid whereas Sabah and Sarawak got their shares. Earlier, Ku Li said that it is also the intention and with the blessing of Duli Yang Maha Mulia Tuanku Al-Sultan Ismail Petra ibni Almarhum Al-Sultan Yahya Petra and the Crown Prince that he shall be fully transparent and speak only the truth about the state rights to get the 5% royalty.

The PAS government had demanded the oil royalty payment from Petronas last year, after the Statistics Department revealed that Kelantan, together with Sabah and Terengganu, had contributed 62.5 per cent of the oil extracted in Malaysia.

The Barisan Nasional-ruled federal government has insisted oil from the joint development area with Thailand was not from part of Kelantan’s waters and has only offered RM20 million as “compassionate payment”.

But Razaleigh, the founding chairman of Petronas, disagreed with the government’s move, saying the formula for oil royalty was first agreed with Sarawak and later extended to all states.

Biographer of Dr. M paints gloomy picture of Malaysia

clipped from www.thejakartapost.com Former Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad sowed the seeds of religious extremism that now rears its ugly head in the form of attacks against Christian churches there, his biographer Barry Wain says. Church burning is symptomatic of religious politics seen in Malaysia today, Wain told a discussion at the launch of his book Malaysian Maverick — Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times in Jakarta on Wednesday. Former Asian Wall Street Journal managing editor Barry Wain (second left) Religious extremism and corruption were some negative legacies left behind by the man who led Malaysia as prime minister for 22 years until 2003, the former editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia said “He didn’t necessarily create them, but they developed under his watch.” In the past month, Malaysia has seen a spate of attacks against houses of prayer for religious minorities in the wake of the controversy over the use of the word “Allah” for God.

Brad leaves Angelina for Jennifer?

clipped from entertainment.malaysia.msn.com Several mags in the States have reported that Brad and Angelina's relationship has hit the rocks. But new rumours have this Hollywood tale taking an even uglier turn. Reports are surfacing of a reunion between Brad and his ex-wife Jennifer Aniston. It all started when friend George Clooney asked both Brad and Jen to help out at the Hope For Haiti Now telethon, knowing very well that the exes would bump into each other backstage. They did, reuniting at an elaborate backstage buffet. How quaint! "She's never had a relationship live up to what they had, and now that things with Angie are finally ending, she'll take him back," said a close friend of Aniston. "The moment he and Angie make it official that they've called it quits, she's ready to try again." When the dust eventually settles between Brad and Angie, Jen has apparently already pledged to take him back! The only thing tackier than a Brad and Jen reunion would be if Pitt leapt out screaming, "We were on a break!"

Unicode nearing 50% of the web

Unicode nearing 50% of the web: "About 18 months ago, we published a graph showing that Unicode on the web had just exceeded all other encodings of text on the web. The growth since then has been even more dramatic.

Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings, like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252 or Unicode. Most encodings can only represent a few languages, but Unicode can represent thousands: from Arabic to Chinese to Zulu. We have long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode for processing.


This graph is from Google internal data, based on our indexing of web pages, and thus may vary somewhat from what other search engines find. However, the trends are pretty clear, and the continued rise in use of Unicode makes it even easier to do the processing for the many languages that we cover.

Searching for 'nancials'?
Unicode is growing both in usage and in character coverage. We recently upgraded to the latest version of Unicode, version 5.2 (via ICU and CLDR). This adds over 6,600 new characters: some of mostly academic interest, such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs, but many others for living languages.

We're constantly improving our handling of existing characters. For example, the characters 'fi' can either be represented as two characters ('f' and 'i'), or a special display form 'fi'. A Google search for [financials] or [office] used to not see these as equivalent — to the software they would just look like *nancials and of*ce. There are thousands of characters like this, and they occur in surprisingly many pages on the web, especially generated PDF documents.

But no longer — after extensive testing, we just recently turned on support for these and thousands of other characters; your searches will now also find these documents. Further steps in our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

And we're angling for a party when Unicode hits 50%!

Posted by Mark Davis, Senior International Software Architect

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Change in peace deal with MILF

clipped from www.islamonline.net CAIRO - The Philippine government has asked the Congress to start discussing the partition of the autonomous Muslim region of Mindanao, as differences remain plaguing the way for peace deal to end a decades-old conflict, Manila Standard Today reported on Thursday, January 28. “I will get the House of Representatives to start working on a possible amendment of the Organic Act of the ARMM (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao) or for the crafting of an entirely new law on Muslim Mindanao,” Congress House Speaker Prospero Nograles said. According to the first bill, Mindanao’s coverage would expand to neighboring villages which have voted in a 2001 plebiscite to be part of the region. clipped from newsinfo.inquirer.net The government panel and its MILF counterpart last Wednesday swapped draft agreements in Kuala Lumpur in a fresh start of negotiations aimed at hammering out a final deal by June. He stressed that the draft did not mention anything about a “Bangsa Moro” substate.

Ubuntu Firefox shuns Google for Yahoo! search

clipped from indlovu.wordpress.com clipped from www.theregister.co.uk The next release of Ubuntu will scrap Google as the default search engine on its Firefox browser in favor of Yahoo!, thanks to a new revenue-sharing deal between Yahoo! and commercial Ubuntu backer Canonical. clipped from indlovu.wordpress.com Ubuntu women from Ubuntu China clipped from www.theregister.co.uk With regulators set to approve Yahoo!'s search pact with Microsoft, this means that Redmond will power the future of Firefox on Ubuntu, a combination with decidedly anti-Redmond connotations. The ultimate irony is that Microsoft will essentially be paying people to build a Linux distro. clipped from indlovu.wordpress.com Ubuntu taking over the world clipped from www.theregister.co.uk With the next release of Ubuntu - version 10.4, dubbed Lucid Lynx and due in April - Yahoo! will be the default engine in the search box in the top right-hand corner of the Firefox browser bundled with the OS, and Yahoo! search will be the browser's default homepage. As is typical with Firefox, users will have the option of changing the search box default. This means they can change it back to Google

Haiti Earthquake - Aftermath

clipped from www.rte.ie The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January was the most powerful to hit the impoverished Caribbean state in almost two centuries. Over 150,000 people are confirmed dead so far 200,000 families - up to one million people - are in need of immediate shelter and non-food assistance 370,000 people affected by the quake are living in makeshift shelters in Port-au-Prince alone Up to 90% of buildings in the town of Leogane, near the epicentre of the quake, were destroyed An initial EU assessment found that more than 4,000 structures were destroyed or damaged in Port-au-Prince Nearly two dozen countries have reported nationals dead or missing, with 500 UN workers still unaccounted for Some 43 international search and rescue teams are currently operating in Haiti Over 2,600 US troops are at work in Haiti, with another 5,000 stationed on vessels offshore More than $1.2 billion has so far been pledged in aid globally, according to UN data

Simon Cowell Charity for Quake-hit Haiti

clipped from www.rte.ie Simon Cowell is to make a charity single to raise money for quake-hit Haiti. 'The X Factor' judge said the urgent fundraising effort - which could involve stars such as Susan Boyle and Leona Lewis - followed a request from the UK prime minister, Gordon Brown. Cole "would love" to be part of the single. clipped from www.rte.ie The latest stars to add their names to the list include Miley Cyrus, Jon Bon Jovi and Mariah Carey, reports Digital Spy. Mariah Carey - one of the artists expected to sing on Cowell's single Recording work on the track got underway this weekend in London with Cheryl Cole, Ortise Williams and JLS lending their voices to the project. Among the others expected to take part are Leona Lewis, Susan Boyle, Take That, Rod Stewart and Mika. clipped from www.rte.ie "We had a request from the Prime Minister and The Sun newspaper, 'Would we put a record together?', so we haven't got a lot of time but we are going to do something, and attempt to raise as much money as possible."