England look to Rooney for Euro quarters spot

England hope the entrance of Wayne Rooney will seal the exit of Ukraine as Roy Hodgson's side aim to wrap up qualification for the Euro 2012 quarter-finals on Tuesday.

A 3-2 victory over Sweden on Friday has sent confidence coursing through English ranks, with goals scored by Andy Carroll, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck suddenly giving Hodgson a range of options in attack.

But it is the return of Rooney from suspension that will give England an extra jolt of optimism as they seek the point they need to clinch a place in the last eight at Donetsk's Donbass Arena.

A fully-fit Rooney is champing at the bit to enter the fray after serving his two-match ban for being sent off in England's final qualifier last year.

"Obviously I'm delighted to be back part of the team and the squad and to be involved again," the Manchester United star said.

"The lads have done great to put us in the position we are in now and hopefully I'll get a chance to play and try and shine and help us get through the group."

Rooney has ruled out England playing for a draw despite the fact that a point would be enough to secure their passage to the last eight.

"The same as the first two games, we'll go into the game wanting to win and wanting the three points," he said.

"If we have to take a point then we'll happily do that, but we're going into the game trying to get the three points."

Rooney is also convinced England have the ability to mount a successful challenge at the Euros.

"I think we're good enough (to win it)," Rooney said.

"We've got the players to. I know, obviously, everyone doesn't want us to build up expectations but I firmly believe that we've got the players.

"Obviously, you need a bit of luck as well but I believe we've got a good opportunity. We've always believed."

England's preparations suffered a setback late Sunday after it emerged that Walcott, who had been strongly tipped to replace James Milner in the starting line-up, had pulled up in training with a hamstring problem.

"Unfortunately Theo had a slight setback in training, and that's the major concern with him," Hodgson said.

"He felt the hamstring that, of course, kept him out for so long at the end of last season and we were slightly concerned about that when he came to us. But we've been lucky that nothing occurred with that (since then)."

Hodgson meanwhile is confident his team will be able to cope with an intimidating atmosphere in Donetsk.

Hodgson believes England will benefit from the experience of last Friday in Kiev, where an estimated 20,000 Swedish fans drowned out England's smaller band of around 4,000 supporters to create a hostile atmosphere.

"We're getting used to playing away from home," Hodgson said. "We've already played in an away game, we have to prepare for another away game.

"That's what happens -- when you get drawn into a pool with the host nation you have to accept you're literally playing away from home."

Ukraine captain Andrei Shevchenko meanwhile said the hosts would have to raise their game after the bubble of euphoria created by their opening win over Sweden was punctured so clinically in last Friday's 2-0 defeat to France.

"We knew it was a very difficult game and the French played really well, especially in the second half. But we still have a chance," Shevchenko said.

"We know that if we can beat England we'll qualify for the knockout stage. (But) we'll have to play much better than we did against France if we want to beat England. They are definitely one of the most dangerous teams here.

"They had a good result against France and they beat Sweden, so they've had a great start. Home advantage helps us a lot."

Shevchenko, who faces a late fitness test on Monday after damaging a knee in training, also warned his side against focusing excessively on the threat posed by the returning Rooney.

"I know he's a very good player and someone who can change the team," Shevchenko said.

"But the whole England team is very good. They are most dangerous from set-pieces, corners and free-kicks. We will have to watch that."

Euro Crisis Shifts to Spain as Merkel Faces G-20 Pressure

Group of 20 leaders focused their response to Europe's financial crisis on stabilizing the region's banks, raising pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to expand rescue measures as contagion engulfed Spain.

As U.S. President Barack Obama called after-dinner talks with euro-area leaders at the G-20 summit in Mexico, the Treasury department's top international negotiator, Lael Brainard, said Europe is making an effort to "break the feedback loop" between banks and government debt, the link that is worsening Spain's woes.

"We're seeing a notable shift in European discussion" toward spurring economic growth and "laying out a path to financial union," Brainard told reporters as the two-day summit began at the resort of Los Cabos.

G-20 chiefs met as Spain's borrowing costs soared to a euro-era record and elections in Greece failed to damp the threat of contagion. Merkel, who heads Europe's largest economy and rejects pooling euro-area debt or boosting deficit spending, said she'll defend her policies with "good arguments" as world leaders press Europe to stamp out the debt crisis now in its third year. Obama has blamed the crisis for slowing U.S. employment growth.

The euro-area's G-20 governments -- Germany, France and Italy will commit to protecting the currency union, according to an excerpt of a draft of the statement that leaders will issue at the end of the summit.

Integrity, Stability

Euro-area members "will take all necessary policy measures to safeguard the integrity and stability of the area, improve financial markets and break the feedback loop between sovereigns and banks," according to the draft provided by an official from a G-20 government who declined to be identified because the statement is not yet public.

With European Union leaders preparing to discuss paths to closer political and economic union at a summit in Brussels on June 28-29, Merkel has distanced herself from aspects of the EU's proposal for a banking union. She said last week that steps such as jointly insuring deposits and joint euro-area bonds can't replace budget discipline and raising competitiveness across the euro area.

"It's not a complete beating up session, but Germany is the recipient of fairly caustic criticism from other members of the G-20," Rob Carnell, chief international economist at ING Bank NV in London, said by telephone. "The pressure will be on Germany to give more ground and behind closed doors Merkel may well be more accommodative."

IMF Resources

As part of the crisis toolkit, the world's largest emerging economies are announcing contributions to the International Monetary Fund's financial firewall at the meeting, beginning with $10 billion pledges from both Russia and India. Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega said He called for a "change of direction" in crisis-fighting, saying that the antidote "goes beyond the measures that are being adopted" by Europe.

"There is concern that the firewall available may not be adequate to deal with contagion," said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. "The resources currently expected to be mobilized by Europe and the IMF are less than was estimated a year ago, and the crisis is actually more serious."

The euro extended a decline yesterday, falling 0.5 percent to $1.2576, as Spanish 10-year bond yields leapt above the 7 percent level that forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to call for sovereign rescues. That stoked speculation that Spain may need to call for a sovereign bailout after the government called for as much as 100 billion euros ($126 billion) to shore up its blighted banks.

ECB Action

The European Central Bank can stop the debt crisis in the 17-nation euro region "almost immediately" with "massive" government-bond purchases, Guillermo Ortiz, the chairman of Grupo Financiero Banorte SAB and Mexico's former central bank governor, said in an interview in Los Cabos. The ECB "has done quite a bit," Ortiz said. "The problem is it needs to do more."

G-20 leaders are in Los Cabos for their second consecutive summit to be dominated by the crisis. Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is also attending the talks, as the respite in markets after a victory for the pro-bailout New Democracy party in Greek elections on June 17 proved short-lived.

Merkel damped speculation that the terms of Greece's bailout might be relaxed.

"The important thing is that the new government sticks with the commitments that have been made," Merkel told reporters. "There can be no loosening on these reform steps."

China, Indonesia

China and Indonesia set the tone of the meeting by signaling growing exasperation with more than two years of European crisis-fighting that has failed to stem the threat of global contagion.

Even as Obama said that now is the time "to make sure that all of us do what's necessary to stabilize the world financial system," European leaders pushed back, saying they alone are not responsible for the slowing global recovery.

No one thinks the EU "is the only source of the problem," said Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. The crisis "had its origins in imbalances in other countries, including the U.S."

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, challenged at a press briefing in Mexico on Europe's credibility during the crisis, said its leaders had "not come here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to handle the economy."

Merkel, Monti, Rajoy and French President Francois Hollande, the heads of the four biggest euro economies, next meet in Rome on June 22, before the full EU summit in Brussels.

Leaders will pledge "to mobilize all levers and instruments" to ensure financial stability and tackle the crisis, according to draft conclusions.

"Today has been a difficult day," Spain's Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said in Los Cabos. "Spain is a solvent country," he said. "The current situation of market penalization doesn't reflect the efforts and the potential of the Spanish economy."

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Facebook buys facial-recognition tech company

Facebook is buying Face.com, a facial-recognition technology company that helps people tag photos on the Web by figuring out who is in them. Face.com says that by working with Facebook directly it will have more opportunities to develop technology that people will use.

The Israeli company announced the acquisition on its blog on Monday. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Face.com did not say whether its website will continue to run after the acquisition. Facebook commonly shutters sites that it acquires and folds in their employees to its work force. So far, Instagram, which it's buying for nearly $1 billion, has been the only exception.

In a statement, Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook confirmed the deal but declined to elaborate on the terms or plans for the company.

Mass. town OKs $20 fines for swearing in public

 MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Residents in Middleborough voted Monday night to make the foul-mouthed pay fines for swearing in public.
At a town meeting, residents voted 183-50 to approve a proposal from the police chief to impose a $20 fine on public profanity.
Officials insist the proposal was not intended to censor casual or private conversations, but instead to crack down on loud, profanity-laden language used by teens and other young people in the downtown area and public parks.
I'm really happy about it," Mimi Duphily, a store owner and former town selectwoman, said after the vote. "I'm sure there's going to be some fallout, but I think what we did was necessary."
Duphily, who runs an auto parts store, is among the downtown merchants who wanted take a stand against the kind of swearing that can make customers uncomfortable.
"They'll sit on the bench and yell back and forth to each other with the foulest language. It's just so inappropriate," she said.
The measure could raise questions about First Amendment rights, but state law does allow towns to enforce local laws that give police the power to arrest anyone who "addresses another person with profane or obscene language" in a public place.
Matthew Segal, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot prohibit public speech just because it contains profanity.
The ordinance gives police discretion over whether to ticket someone if they believe the cursing ban has been violated.
Middleborough, a town of about 20,000 residents perhaps best known for its rich cranberry bogs, has had a bylaw against public profanity since 1968. But because that bylaw essentially makes cursing a crime, it has rarely if ever been enforced, officials said, because it simply would not merit the time and expense to pursue a case through the courts.
The ordinance would decriminalize public profanity, allowing police to write tickets as they would for a traffic violation. It would also decriminalize certain types of disorderly conduct, public drinking and marijuana use, and dumping snow on a roadway.
Segal praised Middleborough for reconsidering its bylaw against public profanity, but said fining people for it isn't much better.
"Police officers who never enforced the bylaw might be tempted to issue these fines, and people might end up getting fined for constitutionally protected speech," he said.
Another local merchant, Robert Saquet, described himself as "ambivalent" about the no-swearing proposal, likening it to try to enforce a ban on the seven dirty words of George Carlin, a nod to a famous sketch by the late comedian.
"In view of words commonly used in movies and cable TV, it's kind of hard to define exactly what is obscene," said Paquet, who owns a downtown furniture store.
But Duphily said, "I don't care what you do in private. It's in public what bothers me."

Lawn chair balloonist to ride again, with co-pilot

• FILE- This July 5, 2008, file photo shows Kent Couch lifting off from his gas station in Bend, Ore., riding a lawn chair rigged with more than 150 giant party balloons for a flight that ended 235 miles away in an Idaho farm field. Couch plans to fly again July 14, this time with Iraqi adventurer Fareed Lafta in a tandem rig they hope will go 400 miles to Montana. It is a warm-up for a flight planned for this fall in Iraq. Photo: Jeff Barnard / AP

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Four years ago, Kent Couch made headlines by floating through the clouds in a lawn chair hoisted by party balloons from Oregon to Idaho. He's going to fly again, this time with a buddy sitting on a second lawn chair at his side.

They are planning to take off July 14 from the parking lot of Couch's gas station and convenience store in Bend, Ore., the way he did in 2008 when he floated 235 miles to an Idaho farm field.
Iraqi adventurer and skydiver Fareed Lafta, who read about Couch's exploit, will be going along for the ride so he could add lawn-chair ballooning to his bucket list.
"We can't hit above 18,000 feet (because of federal flight restrictions), but we can make a good run at, I imagine, 400 miles or plus" in distance, which should put them in southwestern Montana after an overnight flight, Couch said.
The flight will be a warm-up for another one planned for this fall in Iraq. The men had to scrub a tandem flight last fall after Iraqi officials said they couldn't provide security for the liftoff from a Baghdad soccer stadium.
Since people learned of his plans to fly in Iraq, he regularly gets told he is crazy. "They say: 'Aren't you afraid you'll get shot down?'" he said.
Couch has wanted to fly like a cloud all his life, trying bungee jumping, sky diving, and hang gliding — everything short of getting an actual pilot's license. Then he saw a TV show about the 1982 lawn chair flight over Los Angeles by truck driver Larry Walters, who gained urban myth immortality.
"It looked plenty easy," he said. "I saw this as the easiest way for me to fly."
His first time up was in 2006, when he got only 99 miles before the helium balloons started popping and he had to bail out. In 2007, he flew 193 miles before running low on helium and landing in the sagebrush near Union, Ore.
In 2008, things went much more smoothly. After lifting off at dawn July 5 with the help of scores of volunteers, he floated at 35 mph across the high desert, reaching his goal of crossing the Idaho border. That's when he pulled out his trusty Red Ryder BB rifle to shoot out enough balloons to come to earth just in a pasture outside the tiny farming community of Cambridge, Idaho.
Couch was at it again in 2010, racing another lawn chair balloonist in a flight that went about 70 miles.
None of Couch's flights have been certified by Guinness World Records, said spokeswoman Sara Wilcox. The current record for the longest duration flight by helium balloons is held by Jonathan Trappe for a flight of 13 hours, 36 minutes, 57 seconds over North Carolina in April 2010.
Flight coordinator Mark Knowles said they hoped to get an official observer to certify this one as a world record.
Couch is waiting for his favorite anti-gravity style of lawn chairs to go on sale before putting his latest flying rig together with parts he buys at the local hardware store. The others were bought by a museum.
He will need more than 350 5-foot-diameter balloons filled with helium to lift the two of them, plus 800 pounds of Ballast — red Kool-Aid in 40-gallon barrels.
"If you look up in the sky and see a single cloud up there — if you can imagine floating on that cloud — that's it," Couch said of the thrill that draws him back to lawn-chair ballooning again and again. "I wish people could feel what I feel when I'm up there."