Best Watches For Sale

Archaeologists working at the Avenue of Sphinxes in Luxor, Egypt, have uncovered the remains of a fifth century Coptic church and a Nilometer, a structure used to measure the level of the Nile during floods.

According to a statement released by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the remains of the church were found on the second of five sections of the ancient religious path leading to the Karnak temple.

The church was built with limestone blocks originally belonging to the Ptolemaic and Roman temples that once stretched along the Avenue. The blocks are well preserved, with many of them bearing depictions of Ptolemaic and Roman kings offering sacrifices to ancient Egyptian gods.

Also this week, in the avenue's fourth section, the Egyptian team discovered the remains of a Nilometer, which contained a collection of New Kingdom clay vessels. Constructed out of sandstone, the Nilometer is a cylindrical structure seven metres in diameter and has spiral steps which used to descend into the Nile. During periods of flooding it was used for measuring the increase in water level of the river.

The development and restoration works at the Avenue of Sphinxes aim to revive this 2700-metres-long ancient route connecting the Luxor and Karnak temples. It is thought that originally no less than 1350 sphinxes were guarding the path.

Other recent discoveries along the Avenue are foundation stones decorated with depictions of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, the chapel of 21st dynasty priest Min-Kheber-Re and a number of fragmented sphinxes that are now being restored in order to be reinstated along the Avenue.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

European companies, including the UK retail giant Tesco, are facing criticism from a leading human rights organisation for allegedly exploiting weak labour laws in the US and bullying employees to prevent them from joining unions.

Human Rights Watch says European multinationals talk nicely about labour relations at home, but pay scant regard to them overseas. In a report published this morning, the New York-based campaign group says that managers at Tesco's new mini-market chain in the US, Fresh & Easy, have created an anti-union atmosphere, and that employees who want to organise union activities live in fear for their jobs. Another UK company, the security firm Group 4 Securicor (G4S), fired an employee for trying to persuade colleagues to join a union.

The pair are on a list of European companies singled out by Human Rights Watch for what the group says is hypocrisy and violation of international standards on freedom of association. T-Mobile and DHL of Germany and the French industrial giant Saint-Gobain are among the other multi-nationals criticised.

"Even self-proclaimed 'progressive' companies take full advantage of weak US laws to stifle freedom of association," said Arvind Ganesan, director of the business and human rights programme at Human Rights Watch. "The behaviour of these companies casts serious doubt on the value of voluntary commitments to human rights. Companies need to be held accountable to their own stated commitments and to strong legal standards."

European companies routinely trumpet their commitment to good labour relations in corporate and social responsibility reports designed to present a caring face to investors and the wider world. In its annual publication, for example, Tesco says: "Employees have the right to freedom of association. We recognise the right of our staff to join a recognised trade union where this is allowed within national law."

And yet when it was recruiting an employee relations director for Fresh & Easy before launching the chain in 2007, the job advert listed "maintaining non-union status and union avoidance activities" among the responsibilities. The company said the advertisement was a mistake by its recruitment agency, for which it has apologised.

Tesco employees told Human Rights Watch that managers clearly took an anti-union stance. "It was constantly driven home to us in team-lead meetings that we should tell employees they have no need for the union, that the company will take care of them so they don't need a union," said Shastina Furman, who worked for the company in San Diego. "When the union started passing out flyers outside our store, my manager told us 'You don't want to be part of it. These are not the right people for you.'"

Sometimes, the managerial messages allegedly came with menaces. A human resources manager from Tesco's headquarters came to San Diego and asked Shannon Hardin, a $10-an-hour customer assistant, why she supported the union. "This made me worried too, like they were targeting me. I thought this was my right and management shouldn't be getting into my personal thoughts."

Tesco said it aimed to have good relations with unions, but found that local unions in the US were "trying to damage our business from day one". It denied having an anti-union policy.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Pregnant women living close to mobile-phone base stations are at no greater risk of having children who develop cancer, researchers have found.

The first study to examine the effects of the 81,000 phone masts across Britain on mothers-to-be has found no link with early childhood cancers such as leukaemia, which is thought to be triggered in the womb, and brain tumours. The study, by researchers at Imperial College, London, is the most detailed yet of the claimed link between phone masts and childhood cancer.

Reports of clusters of cancer cases among families living close to the masts led to demands that the masts be moved. But the numbers involved have been too small, and the risks of a biased selection of cases too high, to draw firm conclusions. Paul Elliott, professor of epidemiology and public health medicine, said the big advantage of the new study was that it was nationwide and not focused on areas where there was concern about cancer risk.
"We looked at the exposure of the child at the birth address and nine months before," he said. "So we were effectively looking at the exposure of the foetus. Within the limitations of the study, these results are reassuring."

The increase in mobile phone use – from 9 million handsets in 1997 to 74 million in 2007 – has raised worries about the effects of exposure to low-frequency radiation. Several studies, including the Interphone study involving more than 10,000 people from 13 countries that was published last month, have found no damaging health effects from mobile phones themselves.

Public anxiety about transmitters has grown despite the level of individual exposure from transmitters being much lower than from mobile phones.

For the study, Professor Elliott and colleagues identified almost 1,400 children aged up to four who were registered with leukaemia or a brain or nervous-system tumour between 1999 and 2001. Then the distance of each patient's birth address from the nearest base station was estimated.

The authors admit the study examined only early childhood cancer and not other potential health effects said to be linked with mobile phones. However they concluded: "The results of our study should help to place any future reports of cancer clusters near mobile-phone base stations in a wider public-health context." John Bithell, of the Childhood Cancer Research Group at the University of Oxford, said doctors should reassure parents not to worry about the masts.

"Moving away from a mast, with all its stresses and costs, cannot be justified on health grounds in the light of the current evidence," he said. There was also no evidence that has shown any biological effects of mobile phone radiation that "might lead us to worry about its health effects," he added.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Would-be managers and supporters were yesterday scrutinising the wording of Aston Villa's statement about the criteria required of Martin O'Neill's eventual successor. Issued after Sunday's win over Everton under Kevin MacDonald, it appeared to rule out the United States coach, Bob Bradley, as well as Slaven Bilic and Ronald Koeman – although not necessarily the caretaker manager.

The statement said the successful candidate must have "experience of managing in the Premier League". A curiously limiting caveat, in that Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and Jose Mourinho would have been spurned by Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea if they had enforced it, it appeared to erase any remaining hope MacDonald may have had of landing the post Villa aim to fill before resuming league combat at Stoke City on 13 September.

The phrasing offered encouragement to a number of seasoned ex-Premier League managers, principally Gérard Houllier, Sven Goran Eriksson and the ex-Villa players Alan Curbishley and Gareth Southgate. Both the Ajax coach and former Spurs manager, Martin Jol, and fellow Dutchman Guus Hiddink, who had a successful interim spell at Chelsea and is now coaching Turkey, would be popular choices, although there would be contractual problems in prising either away from his present position.
Behind that clutch of contenders are Gianfranco Zola and Glenn Hoddle. A further group with the required background includes Iain Dowie, Paul Jewell, Alan Shearer, Gary Megson, Phil Brown, Chris Coleman and Alan Pardew. However, Villa's American chairman-owner, Randy Lerner, is highly unlikely to opt for one of them ahead of MacDonald.

Villa insiders point out that the 49-year-old does possess the experience, being in his second stint as an acting manager at the highest level. The first, with Leicester in 1994, produced a solitary point, but Villa currently stand fourth in the Premier League under MacDonald's stewardship after two wins in three matches.

After the Everton match on Sunday, Lerner told MacDonald they would talk within 24 hours. But MacDonald said: "I still don't know whether it's for me or not. There have been moments when I thought, 'Yeah, I'll do it', but also times when I thought, 'This isn't for me'. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it, but also lying if I said I enjoyed the past week [the defeat at Newcastle and exit from Europe]. The lows have been so low and the highs so high. After the game people said, 'You must be excited', but it was just relief."

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Its mass of office blocks and car parks have earned it an unenviable reputation as one the ugliest spots in Britain. It's boring, drab, dull. Call it what you want – nobody likes Croydon. There is universal permission to be as rude as you like about this urban punchbag. No joke too corny. Take Jimmy Carr, who was in town on Tuesday night, and quipped later on Twitter: "I'm having a knife crime in Croydon. Sorry, nice time. It's like 1974." When he played a gig there earlier in the year, he joked: "An audience member proposed – she's not even pregnant. That's a first for Croydon."

The unwritten rule on the comedy circuit is that you don't pass through these concrete woods without adding another line in the Croydon gagbook.

Blame David Bowie – who called Croydon a "complete concrete mess" when he was there briefly as a student. Or the 19th-century writer William Cobbett, who wrote: "From London to Croydon is an ugly a bit of country as any in England." Selling Croydon may just be one of the toughest PR jobs in the country.

Yet Toby Kidd, who has worked with the rock group Franz Ferdinand, still believes he can help add some shine to the much-maligned south London borough. He has been brought in to curate a new arts and entertainment programme in the town hall building, transforming old rooms with disco lights and star performers. The idea is to conjure up some long-awaited Croydon cool.

Mike Fisher, the leader of Croydon Council, has heard all the teasing before. "It's such a shame," he said of Carr's tee-heeing at Croydon's expense. "It's a cheap joke," he sighed to the local paper this week. "Some of his jokes are more akin to the 1970s." The trouble for Fisher and others is that, as far anyone outside of Croydon is concerned, the town is indeed trapped that bygone age.

When ambitious proposals to regenerate the area in the style of Barcelona, with new public squares and more interesting architecture earlier this year, the idea was roundly mocked. There was hardly a newspaper in the country which didn't succumb to the temptation of a teasing compare-and-contrast factbox. Barcelona: Gaudi's cathedral, the Picasso Museum and Barcelona FC. Croydon: A tram and the birthplace of Kate Moss. All the jokes, bruised Croydonites argue, actually mask a cultural heritage. The remind anybody who will listen – sadly for them, not many – that the Davis Theatre, which once stood in the High Street, could lay claim to hosting Buddy Holly, on his only UK tour, and Ella Fitzgerald. The actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft, poet John Ruskin and film director David Lean (there is a David Lean Cinema in Croydon) spent their childhood years there. Another treasured association is with the composer-conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who is buried in Croydon. And as Bowie did briefly, Malcolm McLaren, Roy Hudd and Ray Davies of The Kinks, studied at colleges in the area.

Toby Kidd and his colleague Sam Hunt hope their programme at the Croydon Clocktower Arts Centre, inside the Edwardian town hall building, might finally turn the tide and end the jokes. "The Clocktower has been an open secret," Kidd says. "But there is huge potential in our customer base because there's no other venue that gives the high-quality mix of art forms we can. We have to make the Clocktower represent the immense talent and diversity we know is here, and not behave like a backwater. We'll be producing music, comedy and theatre in-house on a national scale."

drive from www.independent.co.uk

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday 13 August 2010

The piece below claimed that a junior health minister, Anne Milton, had recently written to the Scottish Office about free school milk, but that institution disappeared in 1999.

The coalition government was accused of making policy "on the hoof" yesterday after plans to remove free milk for the under-fives were summarily dropped by David Cameron amid fears it would remind voters of the "Thatcher milk snatcher" episode of the 1970s.

Cameron moved so quickly that David Willetts, the higher education minister, was on live television defending the idea of removing free milk when the prime minister announced the U-turn, leaving broadcasters to tell Willetts of the change.

The idea of cutting free milk had been the brainchild of the junior health minister, Anne Milton, who today received the full backing of the prime minister and the health secretary.

A spokesman for the Department of Health saidtoday the proposal was "one of the options" being considered, adding: "We have decided to rule it out.

"The prime minister and the secretary of state for health have full confidence in Anne Milton," he said. "She is a very good minister doing what she was asked to do – come up with ideas to save money. But we are not going ahead with this one."

The government expected opposition to the measure from the media, parents, nurseries, childminders and the dairy sector. In a letter to the Scottish Office, Milton said: "Abolition of the scheme is likely to be highly controversial, particularly as this will affect some children in low-income families." She added: "This should not prevent us from ending an ineffective universal measure … given the state of public finances and the need to make savings."

Milton said that the cost of running the scheme in England this year was nearly £50m and would rise to £59m in 2011-12. She said the programme did not "provide value for money in difficult times" and had "become increasingly outdated".

Health was one department that had been due to have its budget protected in the autumn spending review.

The plan had not been relayed to Cameron personally, and the swiftness of his response appears to show the resonance Thatcher's decision still has within Downing Street.

Thatcher's plan to halt free school milk for the over-sevens as education secretary in 1971 remains one of the most remembered aspects of her political career.

Asked about Milton's plans on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show this morning, Willetts said: "We're having a comprehensive spending review, so we are looking at a whole range of options. This is one of the options that is being looked at.

drive from www.guardian.co.uk

When it comes to the countryside, despite all I've learned. I still rank as an idiot, a novice. I've only just discovered the difference between a swallow and a swift. (Swallows have red throats) However, I can and always have been able to spot a puffball at half a mile because they are delicious. It's about the right time of year for them and as there has been some rain I thought it would be worth extending my runaround to come back through the field where they grow.

The Daylesford steers, the castrated male cows, were in that field.

It's not always easy to tell the difference between cows and bulls until it's too late but I know these fellas: each one two tonnes of pure organic Daylesford with attitude. Handsome beasts: black, bold and beautiful. It's lovely talking to them over a fence. We often do it. They gather quietly in a crowd of eyes and a cloud of steam.

Even entering a field full of them, you're all right as long as you square up to them. It takes a bit of bottle to do it. You just have to be bold, raise your arms as you walk gently towards them saying tough stuff like, "You want some?" "Yeah? Yeah?? Yeah, really?" and "Who are ya? Who are ya?" It's quite good fun. You don't want to startle them but they will back off if you keep your nerve.

The trouble starts when you walk away from them. Once they've got inquisitive they start to follow. So if you run, they run. This was apparent by the time I was halfway along the copse when one of them did a little dance, a crazy skip and a skitter and then launched into a full-on, full-speed ahead charge.

There was a sort of feedback effect on the others and soon they all were stampeding and having a great time. I only just managed to scissor kick over the fence at the end of the garden with a nine-inch scratch on my backside, completely exhilarated. I won't be doing it again but I don't know who had the most fun, them or me.

Life gets better in a gentleman's club

"Some days," they say, "you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you." Well, yesterday morning it was all about the bear, and I didn't see him coming at all. I'd hoped I might be telling you about that first, that most satisfying biff of autumn, today, but no. Oh, no. The prevailing atmospheric conditions, just a big cloud of bad news.

From daybreak it was raining toxic sludge. The first snippet, enough to ruin my wife's day, arrived by text message before my head had left the pillow and I woke up to the sound of her swearing.

Then, lurking in with the newspaper, there was a hand-delivered note full of quite the most pointed, infuriating nonsense I have read for a long time. Even before I'd set out for town, I was hopping up and down but somehow, inexplicably when the emails started to whirr it was more of the same only different. Soon I wanted to throw the phone out of the window. It was all looking a lot like a bear's birthday when really it should have been all about that first biff of autumn that can be so exhilarating.

By 11am I was sitting in a magnificent gentleman's club. Apart from me and the porter and two people changing lightbulbs it was all quite deserted. I was lounging back in a Chesterfield trying to feel grandiose but drawn into black and pointless speculations. How could so many interrelated things have gone quite so spectacularly wrong in such completely different ways on the same morning? I was looking so broken that the porter evidently thought I was some kind of loser masquerading as a gentleman.

"You can't have your bag in here", he said. "Lose it. Are you a member? Did you sign in?"

There he was, the bear. A rubbish bear at that and he knew I was weak and he was having his fun and there I was, beaten.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Egon Ronay, the Hungarian food critic who transformed British eating habits, died yesterday at the age of 94. Launched in 1957, the Egon Ronay Guide to British Eateries rapidly became the food-lovers' bible, helping to improve the range and quality of British restaurant food, which, by international consensus at the time, was pretty ordinary.

The son of a prominent restaurateur from Budapest, Ronay emigrated to England in 1946 after first the Nazis and then the Russians left the family business in tatters.

He started off managing three restaurants in London owned by a friend of his father's, before borrowing £4,000 to set up his own, the Marquee, near Harrods in 1952. Described as "London's most food-perfect small restaurant" by Fanny Craddock in her Daily Telegraph column, on the menu were classic French dishes unheard of in Fifties Britain. He went on to write his own column for the paper for six years.

But it was the launch of the Egon Ronay Guides that made him the most famous and respected food critic in the UK. Inspired by the French Michelin Guide, the first edition sold 30,000 copies and over the next three decades it became synonymous with good food. Lauded for his integrity, Ronay and his team of anonymous inspectors never accepted a free meal or drink, and restaurants proudly displayed blue plaques in their window for each year they were listed.

With taste buds for talent, Ronay was an early champion of Marco Pierre White and Raymond Blanc, though in recent years he saved his highest praise for Gordon Ramsay. But he was just as passionate about food for the masses after a horrifying early experience at the Victoria Station buffet when he was forced to use a shared teaspoon – hung on a piece of string – to stir his tea.

This led him to cross swords on several occasions with Charles Forte about the quality of food served at the peer's Welcome Break and Little Chef outlets. The quality of airline catering became another bugbear and for four years in the 1990s he worked with the air authority BAA on improving standards.

As a food consultant for the pub chain J D Wetherspoon, he would famously turn up unannounced in a chauffeur-driven limousine to check the crispiness of the onion rings and fluffiness of the baked potatoes.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Stuart Broad insists the challenge of taking wickets in Australia holds no fear for the England attack.

Broad has so far contributed 11 Pakistan wickets to the sackful taken against the at-times-hapless tourists, in conditions made for exponents of traditional English seam and swing this summer.

James Anderson has been still more prolific, with 20 wickets in three Tests.

It was a little harder work for England's bowlers at The Oval last week - and after Pakistan had battled to a four-wicket win to trail only 2-1 with one to play at Lord's, their captain Salman Butt offered the view that Broad and co may be in for much more of a struggle as they bid to retain the Ashes down under next winter.

Yet Broad believes he and his colleagues have the talent and adaptability to prove Butt wrong.

"We have no fear going to Australia, and we certainly have the skills necessary to go and win the Ashes over there," he predicted.

"We are very confident in our attack. We have bowled fantastically well this summer, in the conditions we've had.

"We have bowled Pakistan out very cheaply in all but one innings."

Butt's warning follows an unexpected claim from Australia captain Ricky Ponting that another 5-0 whitewash may be in the offing for England, following their Ashes drubbing on Australian soil in 2006/07.

Broad sees things very differently.

"We are all very confident in what we do," he said.

"We have the best spinner in the world in Graeme Swann, and some very skilful seamers too.

"Everyone will have an opinion on the Ashes, because it is such a huge series. But what opposition players and opposition captains say has no impact on us and what we are going to do.

"We have great confidence in our ability - just look at our record over the last 18 months."

England will have the added presence of Tim Bresnan for company as they prepare for the resumption of hostilities with Pakistan at HQ on Thursday.

Bresnan was nominated as stand-by only for a team who knew, barring injury, they were going to play at The Oval. The Yorkshire seamer is a fully-fledged member of a 12-man squad this time, but Broad reports the extra edge of competition for the final place will not alter preparations.

"Tim has been with us throughout the whole series, pushing for a place," he said.

"It does not change the mindset for any of us. It doesn't add any more pressure - because you always put yourself under pressure as an international player.

"That is what you do to try to come up with good performances."

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Vanessa Perroncel, the model who shot to fame after being accused of having had an affair with the former England captain John Terry, has made a surprise attack on the use of injunctions by footballers, after two England players last week succeeded in keeping their sex lives out of the press.

In an interview with this newspaper, the 33-year-old former girlfriend of Manchester City left-back Wayne Bridge, said she had suffered because of an unnecessary injunction, as in her case "a simple denial would have done". She added that footballers who cash in on their profiles by selling wedding pictures to magazines should not be allowed to "cherry pick" what is then written about them by using the courts.

In February, Terry was awarded a super-injunction against the News of the World, which stopped the paper printing allegations he had had an affair with Perroncel, but it was later lifted. Perroncel has repeatedly denied the claim. She says she is angry that Terry took an injunction out, as she felt it was disproportionate. "There was no need: a simple denial would have done," she says. "People said I had been gagged but that wasn't true." She is angry at the damage the allegations did to her reputation, and at the red-top intrusion she suffered. But she believes newspapers should be free to report genuine cases of infidelity.
"Each case has its own answer," she said. "I don't think you can make a rule for everyone. There are some people who enjoy the limelight, and they let the press have really intimate information, like weddings, baptisms and so on. So why should these people then be allowed to cherry pick what the newspapers write about them? I know how expensive it is to take out an injunction, and it's not fair that footballers should be allowed to protect themselves because of their money. "

Perroncel says some footballers are not interested in media coverage, and have a right to a private life. "Wayne [Bridge] hated the publicity. We were just happy being happy and being in love. Of course it's flattering when magazines say they'd love to work with you. Footballers get idolised, and people enjoy reading about them. But Wayne and I didn't want any of that, so we should be allowed to be left in peace."

Last week Lord McNally, a justice minister, announced the Government may create Britain's first privacy law, which would put on statute decisions that are currently made by individual judges. Yesterday Lord Lester of Herne Hill condemned High Court judges for granting injunctions "too readily".

Perroncel says freedom of speech brings with it responsibility. "The press should think about whether a story is in the public interest. If so then they should print it. In my case I had nothing to hide, but what they wrote was untrue and very damaging, which is why I am now trying to clear my name."

French-born Perroncel says the British press is responsible for distorting the public's interest in footballers. "Why do we idolise them so much?," she laughs. "They only kick a ball, right?"

drive from www.independent.co.uk