Real Madrid piles pressure on Barca with easy La Liga win

Spanish leader Real Madrid piled the pressure on Barcelona by taking a provisional 13-point lead over its rival with a 4-0 victory over Racing Santander on Saturday.

Cristiano Ronaldo headed home his league-leading 28th goal after six minutes and the hosts played against 10 men from the 39th when Domingo Cisma was red-carded for handling for a second time.

Karim Benzema scored a goal either side of the break while Angel di Maria marked his first appearance of 2012 with an impressive 73rd-minute strike as Madrid prepared for Tuesday's Champions League last-16 match at CSKA Moscow with its 18th win in 19 league games, which includes eight straight victories.

“We won easily, we won without much shine or too much effort, but we won well,” Madrid coach Jose Mourinho said. “We won without having to suffer, which is the most positive aspect.”

Three-time defending champion Barcelona will need to beat Valencia later on Sunday at the Camp Nou to remain within 10 points of its biggest rival.

As encouraging as Di Maria's and Sami Khedira's returns from injuries ahead of the CSKA match were, Di Maria and Ronaldo both limped off after the final whistle. Di Maria appeared to hurt the same right thigh muscle that had sidelined him since December at the close, while Ronaldo's ankle bothered him.

Madrid was keen to end a recent run of conceding the opener at Santiago Bernabeu Stadium as it charged out of the start buoyed by the return of Kaka and Marcelo to the starting lineup, while Raphael Varane made a rare start at centerback to shift Sergio Ramos wide. Di Maria and Khedira both got minutes as second-half substitutes while Gonzalo Higuain watched from the bench as Mourinho looked to save the Argentina striker for Moscow.

“It's important to have as many players as possible available now that we're entering a period when we'll play games every three days,” Mourinho said.

Ronaldo watched a header come off the post before scoring after Kaka's initial cross rebounded back to the Brazilian to head to the wide-open Ronaldo inside the box. Madrid has won all 30 games in which Kaka has scored or assisted on a goal and the Brazilian playmaker was active throughout.

Antonio Rodriguez continued to be Santander's standout player as the Spanish goalkeeper saved from Benzema and Marcelo before Cisma's hands got in the way of Ronaldo's cross to leave Santander with little hope as Madrid was already dominating.

Benzema patiently ran on to Alonso's threaded free kick before looping over Rodriguez, with either Ramos or Bernardo Espinosa likely helping the ball over the line for a 2-0 lead before the break. Madrid's defense was sturdy and allowed few chances to its 18th-place opponents.

Di Maria scored within 10 minutes of going on as the Argentina international carried across the face of the area before curling a tricky shot that touched Rodriguez's fingertips on its course into goal.

Benzema capped the rout with his 13th league goal in the 89th as the France striker's rising shot touched a Santander defender before finishing in the top corner.

“Every game we want to play like this and prepare like this for the Champions League,” said Benzema, who gave Madrid 79 goals through 23 games as it chases the record of 109 in a season.

Also, Getafe striker Nicolas “Miku” Fedor won and scored a late penalty to salvage a 1-1 draw against Espanyol, and Sevilla ended an eight-game winless slide with a 2-0 win over Osasuna.

Fedor stepped up to slot home the spot kick in the 70th minute after he was fouled by Espanyol's Thievy Boufama inside the area.

Espanyol had gone ahead only four minutes earlier through Alvaro Vazquez, who was returning from injury. The visitors played with 10 men from the 81st when Ernesto Galan was sent off for a second yellow card.

Espanyol moved into provisional fourth place with the point, one point above Levante. Valencia was eight points back of Barcelona in third.

Sevilla moved within four points of Espanyol with a much-needed victory that also provided new coach Michel with his first win in his second game in charge.

Gary Medel's 16th-minute goal proved enough in a match dominated by the hosts, who were saved by Andres Palop in the 78th as the Sevilla goalkeeper stretched to his left to keep substitute Roland Lamah's shot from inside the area out. Sevilla sealed the victory in stoppage time as Jesus Navas fed substitute Piotr Trochowski to score on the counter with Osasuna pressing for an equalizer.

Sharpe paints in aid of Mawson's huts

WENDY SHARPE has won the Archibald, Sulman and Portia Geach art prizes and been exhibited around Australia and beyond. But never before has her work been displayed thousands of metres deep in Antarctic waters.

The Sydneysider has just returned from a six-week trip as the invited artist aboard Australia's flagship Antarctic ship, Aurora Australis, on a mission to help what has been called the birthplace of the country's Antarctic heritage.

During the trip, research scientists on board had her draw on a styrofoam Esky the size of a six-pack before they sent it almost five kilometres down in the ocean with scientific equipment. Her work returned crushed smaller than a coffee cup.

''It's incredible,'' Sharpe said. ''Nothing brings [the underwater pressure] home to you better than that.''

That piece, and scores of her other artworks, are to be exhibited in Sydney mid-year and made into a book. The proceeds will go to the conservation of Mawson's huts, Antarctic shelters built by the Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson and his team 100 years ago and now among only a handful of remaining sites from what is called the heroic age of Antarctic exploration.

Sharpe said she made ''piles and piles'' of paintings and drawings during the centenary trip on themes inspired by the huts, shipmates, inquisitive penguins, the sky and the auroras. She also made visual diaries of daily life aboard the 95-metre vessel.

''I was painting all the time,'' she said. She often did this sitting because the ship was too rocky for standing. ''They have occy straps to hold everything down so it doesn't fall all over the place.''

The dramatic landscape of ''endless white going on and on forever'' and the vast isolation of Mawson's huts were among Sharpe's overriding impressions in a location that was ''like being on another planet''. The huts are almost 2000 kilometres from the nearest base.

The not-for-profit Mawson's Huts Foundation invited and funded Sharpe's trip as guest artist aboard the ship, which steamed from Hobart to Antarctica and back to Fremantle. The foundation has made 10 trips to carry out restoration work on the huts in 15 years. It can do this for just two months a year when there is a lull in winds that can reach 360 km/h.

Walker’s past comes back to haunt him

We’ve got the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice to thank for doing the research that shows once again why politicians who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Bice went back to 2006, when Scott Walker was Milwaukee County executive, to see what Walker had to say about Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle when a purchasing director in the state Department of Administration was indicted in what turned out to be a seriously flawed case initiated by a George W. Bush-appointed U.S. attorney.

When Georgia Thompson was indicted on charges that she steered a state contract to a longtime Doyle supporter, Walker, then running for the GOP nomination for governor, issued a stinging press release that accused Doyle of essentially harboring crooks in his administration.

“Unfortunately, we have a governor that condones unethical and illegal behavior,” Walker pontificated. “The people of Wisconsin deserve better.

“Today’s indictment provides further confirmation that the Doyle administration is damaged and must be removed from the Capitol,” candidate Walker added. “Governor Doyle needs to purge his administration of individuals who place politics and special interests ahead of the people of Wisconsin.

“Little can be said to underscore the seriousness of this charge,” he continued. “I am hopeful that the people of Wisconsin will allow me the opportunity to clean up Madison with the same fervor that guided my reform movement in Milwaukee County.”

Thompson, who had been in state government long before Doyle was elected and was hired under a Republican governor, was surprisingly convicted of two felonies by a federal court jury, but the verdict was thrown out by an appeals court panel that found she had been wrongly convicted and the case against her was based on a serious lack of evidence. There doesn’t appear to be any press release from the Walker camp related to that circumstance, however.

Now it turns out that while Walker was sanctimoniously accusing Doyle of enabling illegal behavior by a woman who was a career civil servant, his personal staff in the county executive’s office was allegedly up to much more serious shenanigans. And while Walker blamed Doyle for not properly supervising a worker in a department outside of the governor’s office, some of the staffers now under indictment worked within earshot of Walker. Still, he insists, he knew nothing of the misdeeds that the Milwaukee County district attorney charges occurred while he was the boss.

James Rowen, a former investigative reporter for the old Milwaukee Journal who now produces a widely read political and environmental blog, claims to be not surprised by what he calls “the wreck of Gov. Walker.” Rowen insists that Walker’s ethics have been suspect dating all the way back to his days at Marquette University, where he was a student but never graduated.

According to the university’s student paper, the Marquette Tribune, Walker violated campaign guidelines on numerous occasions when running for the student body presidency. The Tribune had endorsed Walker’s opponent, but initially editorialized that it was comfortable that either candidate would serve effectively.

The student paper the next day, however, called Walker “unfit” because he had distributed a mudslinging brochure about his opponent, and several of his campaign workers, upset with the endorsement of his opponent, took piles of the paper and threw them away.

Taxman piles pressure on cash-strapped Rangers

The potentially fatal cash crisis engulfing Scottish champions Rangers took a new twist Tuesday when British tax chiefs applied to place the club into administration.

The move just came 24 hours after Rangers said they wanted to enter administration themselves.

But Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the British tax authority, fear they could be placed well down the list of the club's creditors if Rangers are allowed to declare their own administration.

Edinburgh's Court of Session was due to rule Tuesday on which of the competing administration plans would be allowed to proceed.

Rangers are awaiting a tribunal verdict which could leave them with a bill of up to 75 million ($118 million, 90 million euros), should they lose their dispute with HMRC.

Duff and Phelps, the restructuring firm engaged by Rangers to assist in their talks with HMRC, said Tuesday the club remained hopeful of a "consensual" solution, even though, in the midst of all the courtroom drama, that now looks increasingly unlikely.

The firm said they were issuing a statement to "provide a moratorium against potential creditor actions", saying Rangers were "continuing to trade as usual".

If Rangers do enter administration, they are set to be hit with a 10-point penalty from the Scottish Premier League (SPL) that would all but end their title hopes this term.

Whyte, who bought the club from Sir David Murray for 1 in May and pledged to pay off its 18 million debt to Lloyds Banking Group, blamed the previous regime for the current problems on Monday and said administration represented the best hope of long-term survival.

"There is no realistic or practical alternative to our approach because HMRC has made it plain to the club that should we be successful in the forthcoming tax tribunal decision they will appeal.

"We should not forget the tribunal relates to a claim by HMRC for unpaid taxes over a period of several years dating back to 2001 which, if decided in favour of HMRC, the club would be unable to pay."

Rangers draw an average home gate at Ibrox of 46,000 -- higher than leading English clubs Liverpool and Chelsea -- yet are still facing the prospect of financial meltdown.

Whyte tried to explain their predicament Monday by saying: "As I have said before, Rangers costs approximately 45 million per year to operate and commands around 35 million in revenue."

Rangers were forced to sell star striker Nikica Jelavic to English side Everton on last month's transfer deadline day in a bid to bring in cash.

But deadline day also saw Whyte admitting that under him Rangers had borrowed more than 20 million in lieu of season ticket sales.

Rangers and arch-Glasgow rivals Celtic are Scotland's two most successful clubs and their rivalry, anchored in sectarian hatred with Rangers a largely Protestant club and Celtic a Catholic one, is arguably the most bitter in all British football.

Celtic currently lead the SPL by four points from Rangers, who are a huge 19 in front of third-placed Motherwell.

But while the duo dominate Scottish football, they've struggled to make an impact upon the lucrative European Champions League.

Plunge in bond prices piles pressure on bank earnings

As the nation awaits banks’ 2011 financials, there are indications that their balance sheets might be impaired by investments in bonds, which experienced negative returns, occasioned by the tight monetary policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria,(CBN) Business Day investigations have revealed.

Business Day further learnt that most of the banks that opted for investment in bonds for safety, after a series of hikes in monetary policy rate (MPR), the anchor rate at which CBN lends to banks, started paying higher on the bonds, through rise in yields, while prices on the same instruments nose-dived, leading to losses in the investment portfolio.

Also, substantial haircuts and write- offs against transfer of loans, both delinquent and performing, to the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) by the banks, was part of their undoing, as it impacted negatively on their balance sheets.

Haircuts are percentages that are subtracted from the par value of assets that are being used as collateral. The size of the haircut reflects the perceived risk associated with holding the assets. It means the margin between the actual market value of a security and the value assessed by AMCON on the loans.

FSDH analysts, in their recent review of the banking industry for 2011 and outlook for 2012, said, “Notwithstanding these opportunities, the major risk we see in the industry for the results of banks in December 2011, is the losses that banks may book from their bond portfolio investment which is as a result of drops in the price of bonds and increases in yields.

The effects of the CBN’s contractionary measures are: increase in yields on fixed income securities and inter-bank rates, drop in the prices of bonds across tenor, increases in cost of funds and potential loss on bond portfolios of banks.

Despite the aggressive contractionary policy measures of the CBN, inflation rate remains in double digit, while the exchange rate had to be devalued in response to high demand pressure at the foreign exchange market.”

Already, some banks have communicated to their shareholders, ahead of the official release of their unaudited financials to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), that there will not be dividend since they made losses.

However, Johnson Chukwu, managing director and chief executive, Cowry Asset Management limited, was quick to add that the impact of the CBN’s policy differs from bank to bank, depending on the size of their balance sheets and method of their reporting.

“The impact of the drop in bond prices as a result of the increase in yield, occasioned by the increase in Monetary Policy Rate to 12% in the last quarter of 2011 will differ among the banks, depending on the size of each bank’s balance sheet and its method of reporting the bonds in its records.”

For instance, if a bank books the bonds as investment, it will not be required to ‘mark it to market’; hence it can carry it at ‘cost to maturity’. If however the bank records the bond as part of its trading portfolio, it will be required to ‘mark it to market’ and recognise the difference between the cost of the bond and the current market value, as loss on the portfolio.

The volume of bond a bank can carry as investment asset without jeopardising its liquidity ratio, is dependent on the size of the bank’s balance sheet.

Last year, MPC, which convened six meetings, raised the MPR from 6.25 percent in January to 12 percent in November, maintaining plus/minus 2 percent around the MPR. This means that the Standing Lending Facility (SLF), overnight window facilities by CBN to banks, stands at 14 percent Cash Reserve Ratio, minimum cash requirement expected to be kept by banks, also went from one to eight percent; Liquidity Ratio moved from 25 to 30 percent and backed with aggressive Open Market Operations (OMO) to reduce liquidity in the system.