Liverpool reject mega-money bids for Torres

LIVERPOOL have rejected four mega-money bids for Fernando Torres after manager Rafael Benitez ruled the Spanish striker was not for sale at any price. Real Madrid, Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City all made it clear they would pay £60 million (RM348m) for Torres after being encouraged by the lack of transfer cash available at Anfield.

TORRES: Liverpool are rejecting all offers for the Spaniard

But Benitez was told by Liverpool’s struggling American owners that they would leave the decision to him. And his answer was that Torres was untouchable. After seeing United boss Alex Ferguson cash in on Cristiano Ronaldo for a world-record £80 million just months after vowing never to do business with Real, Benitez felt compelled to keep hold of Liverpool’s most prized asset.

“We have had some very big offers for some of our key players this summer and that includes Torres,” Benitez told The Mirror. “Clubs wanted Torres and we were contacted by agents working for those clubs. But we always knew that when a bid came in we would say ‘no’.

“The main thing was that Torres wanted to stay here. People knew the player wanted to stay, but it did not stop clubs trying.

“Football has changed and there is big, big money around. But we still have the same idea to keep the spine of the team and work hard for next season. In football and life you cannot guarantee anything, that is a fact.

“I don’t want to speak about United selling Ronaldo to Real because he is not my player and they are not my team. “But what I will say is that we wanted to send out a message that Liverpool are a strong team and that we want to improve. You don’t improve by selling your best players.”

Torres, a £20 million capture from Atletico Madrid two years ago, would not consider a return to his home city to play for a club he regarded as the enemy.

A move to Old Trafford would have been just as unlikely given United’s status as Liverpool’s bitter rivals and City’s failure to tempt the club into selling the Spaniard twice last season. Chelsea, though, have been strongly linked with Torres before and would have been favourites to land him if Benitez had sanctioned a sale.

Torres has been quick to dismiss reports that he is unsettled on Merseyside and would prefer to live in London. The 25-year-old has been given extra time to recover from his Confederations Cup exertions — along with Xabi Alonso and Andrea Dossena.

All three will return to duty next week for the club’s tour to Thailand and Singapore. Torres’ fitness will be monitored throughout the season and he has undergone specialist physical conditioning to ensure there is no repeat of the hamstring problems that hit him last season after playing at Euro 2008. (mmail)

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Oil Royalty for PAS or Bridge for UMNO - PRK N41 Manek Urai

By Adib Zalkapli

KUALA KRAI— In the final lap of the Manek Urai campaign, the choice is either voting for a new bridge offered by the Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat's insistence that voters take the opportunity to pressure the federal government to pay oil royalty to Kelantan.

Throughout the campaign PAS has repeatedly claimed that the federal government owes the state RM1 billion for oil extracted off Kelantan shores since 2004.

At a rally last night, opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim ridiculed the promise to build a new bridge linking Manek Urai Lama and Manek Urai Baru to replace the 40-year-old single-lane bridge.

“Do not talk about the bridge, give back the RM1 billion and let Tok Guru manage it, they talk about RM6, RM7 million because they think people are stupid,” said Anwar in Sungai Peria near here.

He also slammed the federal government's plan to build new mosques in the rural constituency.

“Manek Urai is not about new mosques, there are enough mosques in Manek Urai,” Anwar told the all Muslim crowd.

DAP's Lim Kit Siang also spoke at what was the biggest Pakatan rally throughout the campaign that caused traffic congestion i

Setting the record straight in Kampung Peria, Anwar during his speech last night. -Picture by Danny Lim

n the constituency.

Anwar, the PKR de facto leader, told some 5,000 people who attended the rally that he will use PAS's victory in Manek Urai to strengthen Pakatan's demand to the federal government to pay the oil royalty to the state.

“In the next Parliament session me and Lim Kit Siang will stand up and fight for Kelantan's right, for the people of Manek Urai we will pressure the finance minister to explain what happen to the RM1 billion,” said Anwar to shouts of “Allahuakbar” from the crowd.

Just hours earlier Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin promised a new bridge in Manek Urai costing RM7 million to replace the current bridge that accommodates only one car at a time.

The narrow bridge connecting Manek Urai Baru and Lama. The straight and narrow like this bridge would probably decide the election outcome.- Picture by Danny Lim

Courtesy Of TheMalaysianInsider

But he said the bridge will only be built if BN wins the by-election, giving Manek Urai voters the stark choice of benefitting themselves or putting more pressure on the ruling federal coalition that has lost four straight by-elections in the peninsula to Pakatan.

Pakatan has won five by-elections in the peninsula since Election 2008, including Penanti which Barisan refused to contest, despite promises of development which is seen as an inherent right rather than a gift from a government that has ruled the country since independence.

“It is only a promise, the previous Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced the construction of the Second Sultan Ismail Bridge across the Kelantan River, but until now it has not started,” Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat told reporters after the rally.

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Daisy Fajarina may have to serve jail term

DAISY Fajarina, the controversial mother of the equally controversial Manohara Odelia Pinot, may have no choice but to serve a jail sentence in France after all.

The 44-year-old Daisy had been sentenced in absentia (without her presence) by a French court to 18 months' jail for abusing her Indonesian stepdaughter who was staying with her and husband, Rener Pinot Noack, in France, but in 2007 fled to Indonesia, where she has remained a fugitive.

Requests for her to be arrested and sent back to France have been denied as Indonesia and France do not have a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. That, however, may change soon. The Indonesian Foreign Affairs
Ministry yesterday said it was considering a request to send Daisy to France to serve the sentence.

Indonesian online news portal, Empo Interaktif, quoted minister Hassan Wirajuda as saying yesterday that he had received a report from the Consulate-General in Marseilles, France, requesting that the Indonesian government assist in getting Daisy to serve the sentence.

Hassan said the Consulate-General had made the request on behalf of an Indonesian "whom Manohara's mother had brought to France". While not naming the Indonesian complainant, Hassan said the request involved "sexual abuse" charges that the French court had passed a judgment on.

"As there has already been a judgment in France, the authorities there are asking that Manohara's mother be compelled to return to France." Hassan said the ministry's Foreign Affairs Department, through its Indonesian Citizens' Protection Directorate, would be in consultation with the Indonesian police headquarters to decide on the next course of action.

He added that Daisy's stepdaughter had the right to see that justice was served in view of the official request by the French authorities and taking into consideration that she had been a victim of sexual assault.

Tongue-in-cheek, Hassan remarked that this would only heighten interest in the 25-episode "sinetron", or soap opera, based on Manohara's allegations that her husband the Tengku Temenggung Kelantan, Tengku Muhammad Fakhry Sultan Ismail, had abused her.

Malay Mail reported yesterday that Manohara was offered a massive Rp2.5 billion (RM865,285) contract for the series. Her decision sparked off speculation that she and her mother were cashing in on the latter's publicity.

The Manohara saga has generated massive interest, starting with allegations that she had been badly treated by her husband. Weeks after appearing in public at a reception in Kelantan, she made headlines again when she "escaped" from her husband and his bodyguards from a hotel in Singapore with the assistance of the Singapore police.

Umno Muar division chief Datuk Kadar Shah Sulaiman Ninam Shah had then taken credit for "negotiating" the escape. He had claimed to have been given the blessings of the Kelantan palace - a claim that has since been refuted.

On July 3, Malay Mail had reported, based on French court documents, that Daisy was a fugitive in Indonesia as the magistrate's court in Grasse, France, had sentenced her to 18 months' jail in absentia for "submitting a vulnerable and dependent person to undignified working conditions and assault since 1998".

Pinot, who was sentenced to four months' jail, had admitted in court that he had been forced by Daisy to caress the stepdaughter's body in front of her after undressing the girl. Court documents had also revealed that Daisy had untidily cut her hair as punishment.

Pinot had admitted that he had started in February, 2007, caressing the girl, kissing her, and touching her breast "everyday a little bit more". She managed to avoid him several times before she gave in and had sex with Pinot.

She was a virgin until then. Pinot, in his testimony, claimed that he was too scared of Daisy to stop her acts of violence against the girl.

Daisy fled France, and a warrant of arrest was issued on June 26 the same year.

She is raring to go

DARING Daisy Fajarina says she is ready to return to France to challenge the court judgment. Denying the allegations brought up by her stepdaughter, she told Empo Interaktif that the charges were trumped up by the girl, whom she brought from Southern Sulawesi to stay with her and her husband, Rener Pinot Noack, in France when the girl was 15.

Daisy, who named the girl when giving the interview, claimed that she was hurt when the girl had an affair with Pinot between March and April 2007.

“I was extremely hurt. I had treated her like my own daughter since she was 15, and I was so in love with my husband,” she said.

Daisy said she was ready to challenge the French court judgment. “The allegations are lies...absolute lies,” she said.

However, she did not state why she was absent from proceedings. She claimed that her stepdaughter and Pinot’s affair was “consensual”.

Daisy claimed that she had caught Pinot and her stepdaughter having sex when she returned home one day to collect the handphone she had left it behind.

She claimed that the stepdaughter left the house after the incident. “She did not even leave a letter to apologise, but had asked that the matter not be reported to the French police,” she said.

“However, once she left, she claimed to have been abused, forced to work for long hours and never ever saw the sun.”

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Courtesy Of MalayMail

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