Wenger on the attack after Gunners misfire

Arsene Wenger shrugged off criticism that he should have signed a world-class goalscorer in the January transfer window despite acknowledging that Arsenal’s finishing has been rather poor in recent weeks.

The Arsenal manager cut a frustrated figure at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday as the Gunners created plenty of chances in a 0-0 draw with Southampton, but ultimately were denied on numerous occasions by the sheer brilliance of Saints goalkeeper Fraser Forster.

It has often been said that, in pursuit of winning a first Premier League title since 2004, the north London club should have invested heavily in a proven striker.

Wenger, though, batted away such claims after his side fell to fourth place, five points behind leaders Leicester.

“If you had found a world-class striker, who could have strengthened the team, then you should have told me,” he said.

“Believe me, they do not walk in (off) the street and say: ‘I am a world-class striker’.

“They are already at a big club and under contract and not available. We have Walcott, Giroud, Ozil, Sanchez and Welbeck, who is coming back.

“Tonight, I don’t think that a miracle man would have come in and scored for us. As a team, we can score goals.

“I don’t like to say it was one of those nights. We are all disappointed because we had enough chances to win the game.

“The most disappointing thing is that some players missed chances that they usually take.

“Our finishing is very poor at the moment. We have played three Premier League games now without scoring a goal.

“Forster had a brilliant game. But you’d expect that. The rate and quality of chances created was high for a Premier League game but the quality of finishing was poor.

“Finishing is a bit cyclical, up and down at the moment. It’s very down for us now.

“We have a difficult programme, especially away from home, but we need to respond.”

– Magic –
Southampton manager Ronald Koeman paid tribute to Forster, who kept his fourth successive clean sheet since returning from a knee injury last month.

“Our goalkeeper is magic and he was magic tonight,” Koeman said.

“It’s always difficult when you are out for more than nine months. Knowing you need rhythm and games.

“But since coming back he was the same. Credit to the medical staff and credit to Fraser.

“He is one of the best goalkeepers in the Premier League and maybe one of the best in Europe.”

Koeman was quick to admit that his team had enjoyed their fair share luck given the sheer amount of chances created by Arsenal.

But he emphasised how well Southampton have played away to the supposedly prominent Premier League clubs.

“Not one team in my one-and-a-half years managing Southampton created what Arsenal created against us,” he said.

“So you need to be lucky first and you need to have a goalkeeper who is saving everything and that’s maybe what explained what happened.

“Normally it’s more difficult for opponents to create that many chances against us.

“We didn’t play well but we had unbelievable spirit. In the counter-attacking, we didn’t have the quality.

“But to get one point away to Arsenal, three points at Manchester United, to beat Chelsea away, one point against Liverpool at Anfield is amazing, a dream for a club like Southampton.”

Koeman revealed that his new striker Charlie Austin suffered a “knock” on the eve of the match.

But the recent signing from QPR should be available for the home match with West Ham on Saturday.

“It was risky in my opinion to put him on the pitch. It’s not a serious injury,” he said.

“Normally he’ll be available. If you know his past, he had been out for five or six weeks.

“So I’d prefer to wait one week to ensure the player is back.”

With The Guardian

Fake priest accused of pocketing cash from parishioners for Pope Francis trip

A man of the cloth has been accused pooling the wool over the eyes of parishioners and making off with their money.

Erwin Mena was arrested Tuesday after allegedly pretending to be a priest for decades and selling bogus trips to New York and Philadelphia for the visit of Pope Francis.

He had celebrated Masses, funerals, marriages and heard confessions around California since first posing as an ordained servant of God in the mid-1990s, according to prosecutors.

Police say the 59-year-old clergy con also had a habit of fleecing his flock and others out of their money, including more than $15,000 from more than 24 people who wanted to travel to the East Coast for the pontiff’s visit in September.

He now faces 22 felony counts and eight misdemeanors including filing a false marriage license, grand theft and practicing medicine without a license, according to the Los Angeles Times.

An arrest warrant said that the medicine charge came from offering “a system or mode of treating the sick.”

St. Ignatius of Loyola, the site of the latest alleged Francis-focused swindle, was only the latest in a series of churches of where Mena would appear only to miraculously vanish when he had pocketed cash.

“He has time to escape. He never come back. He never do any Mass again,” the attendee of one church told Fox LA.

Mena, who convinced pastors at different parishes that they did not need to check his official “faculties” letting him perform services, would also sell a faith-based video for $25 and accepted a $16,000 loan to make a video about the Pope.

The prolific padre also has put out several eBooks, including one about his “irreverant confessions” where he discusses celibacy.

Other churches put out a warning that Mena was a fraud last summer, around the time the Archdiocese of Los Angeles contacted the LAPD.

The city’s church officials said they placed Mena on a list of unauthorized priests in 2008, and has reimbursed some of the victims who bought into the September pope trip.

Spokeswoman Doris Benavides told the Times that those who received sacraments from Mena could go through the ceremonies again.

SEXWALE TO SEEK CAF SUPPORT TO REVIVE FIFA PRESIDENTIAL BID

Fifa presidential candidate Tokyo Sexwale will seek continent-wide support in a final bid to revive his ailing election campaign at a meeting of African football leaders on Friday.

Sexwale was grilled on Tuesday by high-ranking officials of his home South African Football Association (Safa), who had earlier endorsed his candidacy in the race to replace Sepp Blatter.

Safa wanted answers about Sexwale’s election tactics and the unconvincing progress of his campaign after they had backed his bid for the presidency and helped him obtain the five nominations needed to stand to replace Blatter.

Safa president Danny Jordaan called Sexwale’s report to them “comprehensive” but said they would only comment further after a meeting of officials of the Confederation of African Football (Caf)in Kigali, Rwanda, on Friday, in what will be Sexwale’s final opportunity to win support before the 26 February election.

Failure to land an endorsement from African football’s governing body is likely to stall Sexwale’s bid in its tracks.

There had been some media reports that dissatisfaction with his campaign was such that he might be asked to withdraw his candidacy on Tuesday but they proved unfounded.

Sexwale is a former political prisoner who was jailed alongside Nelson Mandela and served as Premier of Gauteng province, South Africa’s economic heartland, and later as a cabinet minister in South Africa. He also proved successful in mining and other businesses.

Yet he is an outsider in the five-man race to become football’s global leader.

He faces UEFA secretary general Gianni Infantino, Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman Al Khalifa, former Fifa vice president Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein and the long-odds outsider, Jerome Champagne.



With EWN

5 Dangerous Contact Lens Mistakes You Should Avoid

There can be different explanations behind individuals wearing contact lenses. They are considered convenient and aesthetically valuable; particularly among people with severe nearsightedness who have to wear extremely thick glasses otherwise.

The majority of contact lens users don’t use proper hygiene and that puts them at risk of both minor (irritation) and frightening (vision loss), eye infections, including inflammation of the cornea called keratitis. One type of keratitis called microbial keratitis can occur when bacteria, viruses, and even amoebae invade the cornea. keratitis can lead to blindness or the need for corneal transplant.

Your contacts require a ton of consideration as far as taking care of, wearing and taking them off. Indeed, even a minor slip-up might give you a horrifying contamination and even lasting visual impairment. A large number of people treat them as a cosmetic item, remember that your contacts are a medical device and should be used responsibly and safely. Here are five dangerous contact lens mistakes you should avoid.

1. Wearing contacts for too long

Try not to hold up to change your contact lenses until they begin to feel uncomfortable. Adhere to the substitution plan your specialist recommends. Studies have found that half of individuals utilizing dispensable lenses wear them longer that their suggested plan.

Wearing contact lens for too long is very bad for the eye as the cornea (surface of your eye) needs oxygen to keep it healthy. In spite of the fact that contact lenses are gas porous, it does not allow as much oxygen to reach your eyes as when you keep your eyes naked

Contact lenses make a warm and sodden environment where microorganisms such as bacteria, parasites and fungi flourish and breed. So therefore keeping the contact lens laid on your eyes for a drawn out stretch of time offers more opportunity for microorganisms to delve into your cornea and feast upon it.

2. Going Into Water With Contact Lens On

The shower, hot tub, swimming pool, or other bodies of water can contain bacteria and amoebae which might devastate your eyes if you don’t disinfect your contact lenses properly. A terrifying disease called Acanthamoeba keratitis notorious for showing up in hot tubs could get into your lens and might lead to vision loss and even blindness. If you have to shower with your contacts on, try to keep your eyes closed as much as possible. And if you do end up getting water on your contacts do not forget to clean them.

3. Wearing lengthening mascaras

Most ‘lengthening’ mascaras contain tiny fibres that stick to the eyelashes, making them look longer. However, these tiny fibres can fall off and get under contact lenses, irritating the eye.

‘There is nothing to say that these fibres are harmful to the eye, but they can irritate it, making you rub it,’ says Adrian Knowles. ‘The problem is your fingers may not be very clean’

4. Sleeping with contact lenses on

If you sleep with your contacts on, you’ll stand a five percent higher risk of developing CIEs. The warmth and moisture in your eyes trigger the action of microorganisms that may have been lurking on the lenses or may have entered your eyes through the air. Sleeping with your lenses on is one of the top causes of corneal ulcer—an extremely painful and costly eye infection.

5. Using an unapproved contact lens cleaning care system

Not all contact lens care systems are as effective at disinfection.  Avoid the temptation to purchase a cheaper generic solution.  Instead, use the care system the doctor specifically recommends for use with your brand of contact lenses.

‘Hand of God’

It looks like a fireball has been travelling through the sky.

Not so: this is actually a cloud that was captured earlier this week by photographer and weather blogger Rogerio Pacheco on the Portuguese island of Madeira. He published it on his blog and described the cloud as "the hand of God".

We spoke to the BBC weather meteorologist Aisling Creevey to find out why such a spectacular "fireball" tore up the morning sky. We spoke to the BBC weather meteorologist Aisling Creevey to find out why such a spectacular "fireball" tore up the morning sky. 

It might surprise you that clouds with this type of structure are quite common, she says, but we usually don’t have the luxury of seeing them in this way.

The reason the cloud appeared like this was because light from the sun caught onto a clump of cloud at a lower altitude just as it came into contact with cloud higher up.


There are three layers of clouds, she explains. And this fireball seems to be mixing some layers. The dark features for instance, appear to be clouds at a "middle” altitude - 2,400 - 6,100m - called altostratus clouds.

In fact, clouds like this might be above us all the time, but we usually cannot distinguish the differing shades of grey from each other very clearly. "This cloud is no more complex than normal but just happens to [have been photographed at] the exact moment that the light was caught," says Creevey.

Another meterologist, Emma Sharples from the UK's Met Office agrees. She says: "I think the presence of a rising sun has made [it] appear more striking than the clouds alone would appear. We think they are probably cumulus clouds [cauliflower-shaped and fluffy], so pretty common, but enhanced by the light conditions."

Pacheco was lucky to have captured these images, as the cloud would not have appeared like this for long, possibly only a couple of minutes, adds Creevey.