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Flip side of Italy’s woes is a German economy with a suspect engine

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 The European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany   CREDIT:  FRANK RUMPENHORST L ast week I wrote about the inter-relationship between Italy’s financial plight and its underlying economic difficulties, now finding expression in its government’s conflict with the EU. It has been told by the EU to come up with a different budget. If its budget isn’t modified, the EU will probably reject it. We shall see if the Italians bend the knee to Brussels. But the Italian difficulties represent only one side of the euro problem. The flip side is to be seen in Germany and, contrary to popular misconceptions, it isn’t rosy either. On the face of it, Germany is an amazing economic success story. The economy is growing strongly and unemployment is only 3.4pc. Yet recent German economic performance...

Budget preview: Will the Chancellor be forced to replicate Ken Clarke's 'devious' income tax hikes of 1993?

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Ken Clarke was the last Chancellor to bring in major tax rises in his 1993 Budget - will Philip Hammond follow his example?   Anna Isaac   21 OCTOBER 2018 • 12:00PM Follow   W hen Ken Clarke MP prepared to give his first Budget as chancellor, on November 30 1993, he was a little apprehensive about the reaction. Clarke had his reasons. He was about to introduce some of the largest tax hikes and spending cuts seen since the aftermath of the Second World War. “Short-term popularity struck me as irrelevant. I went quite far, because politically I followed the orthodox belief that you do the difficult thing as quickly as you can.” However, it did not play out as expected. The UK’s longest-serving member of parliament, Father of the House of Commons, was in for a shock. “I tried to enjoy Budget day. I delivered it in as flamboyant a way as I could and I had my large glass... Register

Commonwealth Games. As the opening of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics shines a light on the delivery of major sporting championships, a British example shows how such events can create lasting benefits for host cities.

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Future goal: The Etihad Stadium was an athletics venue in 2002   CREDIT:  GETTY 4 AUGUST 2016 • 4:30PM Andrew Cave and Alex Miller C entral planning helped give the city a rich inheritance from the 2002 Commonwealth Games. A s the opening of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics shines a light on the delivery of major sporting championships, a British example shows how such events can create lasting benefits for host cities. Manchester has used sport to revitalise communities and tackle social deprivation since it successfully staged the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The legacy of the Games is obvious all over the city, from its swimming complex and squash, taekwondo and basketball centres, to the Etihad Stadium, converted after the Games from an athletics venue to the home of Manchester City Football Club. In designing the Games as a catalyst for change, with a commitment to regeneration to create a lasting legacy, the city also spawned a regional athlet

From goal-line technology to wearable fitness devices, sports tech is growing at a rapid pace and boosting engagement for sports fans and advertisers

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Officials check the new goal-line technology at Stamford Bridge in 2013   CREDIT:  GETTY 13 MAY 2015 • 10:30PM F rom goal-line technology to wearable fitness devices, sports tech is growing at a rapid pace and boosting engagement for sports fans and advertisers Sports and businesses have broken new ground with a raft of advances. Providers of leading-edge technology have also become  attractive to investors . UK-based company Hawk-Eye, the ball-tracking technology company for which Sony paid £20m in 2011, sealed a five-year deal in 2013 thought to be worth £10m to become the provider of Premier League goal-line technology. Digital products can also help sports to better engage with, and therefore monetise more effectively, their fans. Retro-fitting stadiums with wireless technologies helps fans use social media, and venues to sell services, during games. Statistics available on mobile devices have become big business too. Opta, which provides sports data

Dante Pettis of the San Francisco 49ers runs onto the field for his team's Sept. 16 game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium, the first game that Copia started collecting food waste from stadium restaurants. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

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Dante Pettis of the San Francisco 49ers runs onto the field for his team's Sept. 16 game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium, the first game that Copia started collecting food waste from stadium restaurants. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images) NFL players are used to seeing high-quality protein-rich food in their cafeterias, served up as nourishment to help them prepare for or recover from games and practice. A juicy steak. A lean grilled chicken breast. Roasted potatoes and vegetables. But what happens to the food that goes untouched? Historically, that has ended up in the trash. For-profit company Copia is working to change that. The technology company reduces food waste by picking up untouched food from places such as NFL stadiums, offices, cafeterias, events, and restaurants and delivering it to non-profit organizations and shelters. Copia’s platform enables nonprofits to create profiles and make requests for food donations, while its algorithm ma

Alex Turnbull, director of broadcast production at the PGA Tour, and Mike Downey, principal evangelist for sports and entertainment at Microsoft

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Subscribe to the SportTechie Podcast TuneIn  |  iTunes  |  Soundcloud  |  Stitcher Alex Turnbull, director of broadcast production at the PGA Tour, and Mike Downey, principal evangelist for sports and entertainment at Microsoft, joined Bram on the SportTechie podcast to talk about golf’s new content relevancy engine. The CRE was built by Microsoft for the PGA Tour, and uses artificial intelligence to help broadcasters automatically find statistics and content to enhance their coverage. “Essentially there is an opportunity for us to take the burden off of both our employees and our broadcasters covering the sport. And that’s where we began working with Microsoft,” Turnbull said. “And we’re looking for ways where we could apply automation, apply logic, apply artificial intelligence to surface relevant statistical information and present that to our fans and our viewers and players to make an otherwise mundane situation dramatic and compelling. So that’s

Virtual Reality Could Reduce Pain During Exercise, Extend Workouts

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Golden State Warriors teammates Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala play around with virtual reality. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images) Diving into virtual worlds while exercising might help to reduce pain and allow people to sustain workouts for a longer period of time, a new study shows. The research, led by Maria Matsangidou, a Ph.D. candidate at the Kent University  School of Engineering and Digital Arts in the U.K.,  set out to determine whether the subjective component of pain could be minimized if the brain were busy elsewhere in a virtual setting. The study analyzed 80 people—21 men and 59 women with an average age of 23 years—as they performed isometric bicep exercises. First, they were asked to stand with their backs straight against the wall, with their elbows and wrist joints at a 180-degree angle. They were then asked to bicep curl a dumbbell through a full range of motion. Weight was added until the participant was no longer able to perform