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Work on a £100million building development ground to a halt yesterday – because of a goose.
The bird has laid three eggs right in the middle of the building site and has been given her own bodyguard to protect her and her brood.
Security guard Jake Fielding has been assigned to give the Canada Goose 24-hour protection and takes his duties extremely seriously.
The development that is being delayed because of the goose is known as the Cube – which was meant to be the finishing touch to an exclusive area of Birmingham.
 A goose has laid three eggs right in the middle of a building site, bringing work to a halt. The bird has been given her own bodyguard to protect her and her brood
It will contain a boutique hotel and residential apartments and is the final phase of luxury development The Mailbox, in an affluent area of the city.
Work on the Cube, which will be overlooking a canal, was expected to finish soon – but the arrival of the goose has delayed the whole operation.
Contractors Fitzgerald have been forced to hold off on any work on the pavements, where the goose has got settled.
A spokesman from Fitzgerald admitted that the goose was a source of both amusement and annoyance.
He said: ‘The goose has been her for about three weeks now, and she’s settling in quite nicely, which is unfortunate for us.
‘But Jake Fielding, who is guarding the bird is doing a great job of keeping her safe and hopefully we won’t be waiting too long for the eggs to hatch.
 The development that is being delayed is known as the Cube – which was meant to be the finishing touch to an exclusive area of Birmingham
‘We try to be very environmentally friendly, and don’t want to do anything to disturb the bird.
‘The goose has meant we have had to put off finishing the pavements around the bird and its eggs for three weeks.
‘We have been able to work on other parts of the site in the meantime so we are not losing money but it is a pain that it has delayed the project.
‘It is frustrating that we’re being held up but I’m sure work will be able to continue as usual once the eggs have hatched.
‘It wouldn’t be a good idea to move her before her goslings have hatched.’
Cllr Mike Whitby said of the Cube back in 2006 before the goose incident that it would break all the boundaries of what has been achieved in Birmingham so far.
He said: ‘Our city is a city of the future and as a futuristic building with phenomenal foresight in style and design, it is indicative of our plans in how we see Birmingham developing.
‘The Mailbox has already raised the bar in the quality and calibre of our architecture and the retail offerings, worldwide brand names and stylish restaurants have given Birmingham a contemporary profile rivalling the capitals of Europe.
‘The Cube will help to elevate us onto a global stage.’
 LOS ANGELES, Calif. — As alleged mistresses continue to come out of the woodwork and Sandra Bullock remains silent and unseen, Jesse James has checked himself into rehab.
A rep for the West Coast Choppers boss released a statement confirming reports that the star had entered a rehab facility to seek help.”Jesse checked himself into a treatment facility to deal with personal issues,” his rep said in a statement to People. “He realized that this time was crucial to help himself, help his family and help save his marriage.”
The type of rehab facility James’ is in was not disclosed, however, both TMZ and Radar Online reported it was a facility which deals with sex addiction.
A source told People that rehab was “100 percent his own idea.”
James’ rehab stint comes just two weeks after allegations first emerged that the reality star cheated on his Oscar-winning wife with a tattooed woman named Michelle “Bombshell” McGee.
Several women have also been linked to James since McGee’s claims first surfaced in In Touch magazine. McGee claimed she had an 11-month affair with James, including while Bullock was away filming her role in “The Blind Side,” the movie Bullock won an Oscar for earlier this month.
 Tyra Banks — who clearly got herself in tip-top shape for the new season of “America’s Next Top Model” — flaunted her fab figure on the orange carpet at the Kids’ Choice Awards in a fire-engine-red frock that hugged her signature curves in all the right places.
- New service between Frankfurt and Erbil -
Frankfurt, 24 March 2010 — After a 20-year break, Lufthansa will resume flights to Iraq. On 25 April 2010, Germany’s leading airline will launch services from Frankfurt to the city of Erbil in Northern Iraq. Lufthansa customers will have a choice of four flights per week on this new route. Lufthansa will operate the four-and-a-half hour flight with an Airbus A319 with 132 seats in Business and Economy Class.
With the resumption of flights to Iraq, Lufthansa is continuing to expand its route network in the Middle East and will then offer 100 flights per week to 15 destinations in twelve countries. Erbil has been served since 2006 from Vienna by Austrian Airlines, which flies under the Lufthansa Group banner. This flight is operated on a codeshare basis with Lufthansa, thereby offering customers of both airlines a choice of nine flights per week to Erbil.
The demand for flights to Iraq is growing amid signs of an economic recovery and foreign investment. With a population of one million, Erbil (also written Arbil) is the fourth-largest city in Iraq and has a rich history spanning thousands of years. The economy in this region is growing vigorously. Numerous diplomatic and commercial representations, organisations and foreign companies have been set up in Northern Iraq. Erbil International Airport has recently been expanded and offers a modern passenger terminal.
For more information and flight reservations, please visit the Lufthansa website at www.lufthansa.com or contact the Lufthansa Call Center on 01805 805 805 (calls cost 14 euro cents per minute), Lufthansa-designated travel agencies or Lufthansa sales counters at airports.
Lufthansa also plans to resume flights to the Iraqi capital Baghdad this year and is currently making the necessary preparations to do so.
SAGA–Airplane buffs can once again view the YS-11, the first domestically produced passenger aircraft of the postwar period.
 The only surviving YS-11 passenger plane in Kyushu, built in 1969, is again ready for public viewing. (JUN KANEKO/ THE ASAHI SHIMBUN) The aircraft, vintage 1969, was displayed at Saga Airport until 2005, when the exhibition site fell victim to the expansion of a cargo facility.
The YS-11 was relocated to an adjacent park in December and spruced up.
The plane was donated in 1998 to celebrate the opening of the airport.
A total of 182 YS-11s were produced. The last one retired from regular domestic service in 2006.
Pierre Gagnaire collects Michelin stars the way Tiger Woods collects girlfriends: widely, impressively, and in great numbers. In 1993, Gagnaire, then 43, earned a top three-star rating for his namesake restaurant in St Etienne, central France — a rare achievement for a chef who was closer to the beginning of his career than the end.
Five years later, he repeated the feat at the newly opened Pierre Gagnaire Paris, and in 2004, after taking over the kitchens of Gaya Rive Gauche in the 7th arrondissement, he won yet another Michelin star. Now 59, Gagnaire shares the stage with Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon as the leading light of contemporary French cuisine.
Yet unlike Ducasse, the suave businessman who runs a culinary empire, or Robuchon, whose menus rely on familiar dishes whether they’re being served in Monaco or Hong Kong, Gagnaire still seems happiest in the kitchen. Overseeing eight restaurants from Europe to Asia to the Middle East, he personally revamps all his menus three times a year, and uses only local ingredients in his cooking. So this month’s opening of Pierre Gagnaire Tokyo means the chef will be spending a lot of time in Japan.
“The issue is quality,” he says amid the pre-launch bustle at his new restaurant, which sits atop of the ANA InterContinental Tokyo hotel in Akasaka. “If I want to keep good quality, I have to be on-site.”
Pierre Gagnaire Tokyo is, in fact, the chef’s second foray into Japan — a prior, eponymous eatery in Aoyama earned two Michelin stars before problems with backers forced it to close in 2008. Gagnaire, a lithe, kinetic man with a mad-scientist swoop of white hair, says he is thrilled to be back in a country he’s been visiting for more than 25 years.
“The first time I came to Japan, I thought, ‘I’ve found what I’m looking for,’” he recalls. “It’s a shock because you see the beauty that’s on the plate. I wasn’t influenced by Japan — I didn’t know much about it — but I found that there could be such a tenderness… It goes beyond art, it goes beyond craft. I had known about these things before, but until I came to Japan, I wasn’t sure about their expression.”
Born in Loire in 1950, Gagnaire began his career at age 18 and spent most of the next decade in Lyon, Paris and the US. In 1976, he joined his father’s restaurant, Clos Fleury in St Etienne, helping to retain its Michelin star. After striking out on his own in 1981, Gagnaire enjoyed a dramatic rise — in addition to all those Michelin stars, his flagship Paris venue was named the third best restaurant in the world in 2008 by Restaurant Magazine UK.
Gagnaire’s cuisine defies ready description. Although its radical combinations and presentation have led some to call it molecular cuisine, the chef shrugs off the label, preferring instead the term note à note, which suggests the subtle, shifty progression of sensations that diners experience with each dish.
A meal at a Pierre Gagnaire restaurant is likely to include a half dozen morsels within any given course, sometimes centered around a unifying theme, though just as often not. A preview luncheon at the new restaurant featured a pre-appetizer plate that contained, among other items, a marshmallow topped with shallots and pepper; a warm spinach financier with citrus foam; and a ginger sable with sea salt.
The next course included a procession of scallops and root vegetables: Espelette chili-spiced sashimi slices sitting on pillows of creamy white beets, ringing a pudding-like mound of red-beet puree; grilled scallops curled around sweet potatoes accompanied by a disc of raw-beet carpaccio in a Campari-rum marinade; and scallops sautéed with turmeric served with white cabbage and orange reduction. It’s said that the buzz in a Pierre Gagnaire dining room rises and falls with the arrival of each course, as diners are captivated by the succession of flavors and textures each new bite delivers.
For the launch of his new restaurant, the chef has brought in key staff from Paris, including several with close ties to Japan. The manager, Michel Delépine, is a veteran of Ginza’s renowned L’Osier, while pastry chef Takahiro is a local son who has worked with Gagnaire since 2006. Head chef Olivier Chaignon has been with his boss at Gagnaire’s London restaurant, Sketch, as well as in Paris and Tokyo.
Pierre Gagnaire Tokyo is the chef’s fifth restaurant to debut since 2006, joining eateries in Hong Kong (2006), Dubai (2008), Seoul (2008) and Las Vegas (2009). A further venue is planned for Moscow, but that will likely be the end of Gagnaire’s expansion: besides visiting each restaurant three times a year, the chef spends half of his time in Paris (“Everything starts there,” he claims), and he simply wouldn’t be able give any new restaurants the attention they demand.
“When I’m visiting one of my restaurants outside Paris, I’m thinking only about where I am,” he says. “When I’m in Paris, I’m thinking of my other restaurants.” Gagnaire’s control of the dining experience extends to the table settings and staff uniforms, which in Tokyo come courtesy of renowned designer Junko Koshino.
The chef’s hectic schedule doesn’t allow for much leisure, but during his rare downtime, he says he enjoys running and reading. Accompanying him on the Tokyo trip is his elegant wife Sylvie, who also serves as an ad hoc translator — although Gagnaire gamely tries to conduct this interview in English, he soon reverts back to his native French. So it makes for a warm matrimonial display when, after being asked if he’s ever felt nervous cooking for anyone in his illustrious career, the world-renowned chef and restaurateur casts a sidelong glance at Sylvie and sheepishly says, “Yeah — her.”
Pierre Gagnaire Tokyo. 35F, ANA InterContinental Tokyo, 1-12-33 Akasaka, Minato-ku. Tel: 03-3505-1111. Lunch from 3,800 yen (Tue-Fri) and 6,000 yen (Sat-Sun); dinner from 18,000 yen. Jackets recommended for men. Open Tue-Sun 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. (L.O.) and 6-9 p.m. (L.O.), closed Mon. Nearest station: Tameike-Sanno, exit 13. www.pierregagnaire.com
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Tuesday acknowledged the difficulty in convincing Japan to fully reopen its beef market to imports from the United States. ‘‘I have no illusions how easy this is going to be. It’s obviously going to be difficult,’’ he told a press briefing ahead of his trip to Japan next week.
But Vilsack said he expects ‘‘forward progress’’ regarding Tokyo’s controls on U.S. beef imports, which stem from fears about mad cow disease, when he meets Japanese officials such as Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu. ‘‘We would never make a demand. This is a relationship that has been bound in friendship for an extended period of time, and it is really about friends basically talking to each other about each other’s needs,’’ he added.
Japan and the United States are at odds over Washington’s insistence that Tokyo abolish its ban on imports of U.S. beef from cattle aged over 20 months.
Japan suspended all beef imports from the United States after the first U.S. case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease, was found in 2003. It later partially reopened the beef market with certain restrictions.
Vilsack is due to travel to Japan for five days starting next Monday as part of a new initiative by President Barack Obama’s administration to double U.S. exports over five years.
GENEVA – The world’s largest atom smasher conducted its first experiments at conditions nearing those after the Big Bang, breaking its own record for high-energy collisions with proton beams crashing into each other Tuesday at three times more force than ever before.
 An event display shows the activity during a high-energy collision at the CMS control room of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, at their headquarter outside Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 30, 2010. The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider directed two proton beams into each other at three times more force than ever before, Tuesday, as part of its ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus) In a milestone for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider’s ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, took high-tech photographs so they could study the disintegrating protons after they collided at a combined energy level of 7 trillion electron volts.
The collisions herald a new era for researchers working on the machine in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.
“That’s it! They’ve had a collision,” said Oliver Buchmueller from Imperial College in London as people closely watched monitors.
In a control room, scientists erupted with applause when the first successful collisions were confirmed. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links to witness the new record, which surpasses the 2.36 TeV CERN recorded last year.
Dubbed the world’s largest scientific experiment, researchers hope the machine can approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.
The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.
Tuesday’s initial attempts at collisions were unsuccessful because problems developed with the beams, said scientists working on the massive machine. That meant the protons had to be “dumped” from the collider and new beams had to be injected.
The atmosphere at CERN was tense considering the collider’s launch with great fanfare on Sept. 10, 2008. Nine days later, the project was sidetracked when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to the massive magnets and other parts of the collider some 300 feet (100 meters) below the ground.
It cost $40 million to repair and improve the machine. Since its restart in November 2009, the collider has performed almost flawlessly and given scientists valuable data. It quickly eclipsed the next largest accelerator — the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago.
Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the tunnel, the coldest place in the universe, at a couple of degrees above absolute zero. CERN used powerful superconducting magnets to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles.
“Experiments are collecting their first physics data — historic moment here!” a scientist tweeted on CERN’s official Twitter account.
“Nature does it all the time with cosmic rays (and with higher energy) but this is the first time this is done in Laboratory!” said another tweet.
When collisions become routine, the beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing.
The experiments will come over the objections of some people who fear they could eventually imperil Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
CERN and many scientists dismiss any threat to Earth or people on it, saying that any such holes would be so weak that they would vanish almost instantly without causing any damage.
Bivek Sharma, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, said the images of the first crashed proton beams were beautiful.
“It’s taken us 25 years to build,” he said. “This is what it’s for. Finally the baby is delivered. Now it has to grow.”
YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — Nissan Motor Co. said its new electric car, the LEAF, will be sold for 3.76 million yen ($40,000) in Japan, less expensive than other zero-emission vehicles but still out of reach for many drivers who may also balk at its limited range.
The U.S. sale price for the LEAF was to be announced later Tuesday. Deliveries of the curvaceous, four-door hatchback will start in December and customers in Japan will be able to place orders starting April 1, Nissan said. Orders in the U.S. start April 20, and soon after that in Europe.
Under current Japanese government incentives, the LEAF would be eligible for a 770,000 yen credit, making the price 2.99 million yen in Japan, the country’s No. 3 automaker said. American buyers would also be eligible for a $7,500 tax credit.
The price makes the LEAF one of the cheapest offerings in the fledging electric car market, but analysts said it was still a bit too high to appeal to a wide swathe of buyers. The limited range of the car – 100 miles (160 kilometers) on a single charge – is also a major obstacle. Its top speed is about 140 kilometers per hour.
“It would have to be cheaper, but the main stumbling block is range,” said Christopher Richter, an auto analyst at CLSA Asia Pacific Markets in Tokyo.
“For this to be a game-changer, you’d need to have double the range, and lithium ion battery technology just can’t do that right now at an affordable price,” he said.
Still, Richter predicted the car would definitely find an audience, particularly among “people who want to be green, people who love technology and people who are status-conscious.”
“It’ll be attractive to a lot of families as a second car, particularly in the U.S. market.”
Owners of the LEAF – the name is meant to reflect the “purifying” function of leaves in nature – would need a special kit to recharge the car at 200 volts from their homes that Nissan would help set up. Normal Japanese current is 100 volts. The company has not said how much this connection set-up would cost.
A full charge takes eight hours, but a more powerful quick-charger that will be available in about 200 dealerships across Japan can recharge batteries 80 percent in under 30 minutes, Nissan said.
To help alleviate driver worries about running out of energy while on the road, Nissan will also install regular chargers at all 2,200 company dealerships in the nation. The company didn’t disclose cost of using either of these chargers.
Analysts said the LEAF may make more sense for the U.S. market than Japan or perhaps Europe because most cars in the U.S. are parked in garages attached to single-family homes, making it easy to set up recharging equipment.
But in Japan, where many families live in apartment buildings and park their cars further away, a vehicle that requires regular recharging may be a tougher sell.
So far, some 65,000 people in the U.S. – where the LEAF went on a promotional 22-city tour earlier this year – have said they are interested in the car via Nissan’s Web site. In Japan some 9,300 people have signaled an interest.
CEO Carlos Ghosn, who also heads France’s Renault, has been a vocal proponent of electric vehicles, and predicts the segment will grow to about 10 percent of global sales by 2020.
The LEAF puts Nissan in a commanding position in the young electric car market, Richter said.
“Nissan is the vanguard on this,” he said. “Really for the next few years, they are going to own the full EV (electric car) space in the same way that Toyota has owned the hybrid space for many years” with its Prius.
Production of the car will begin this fall at the company’s Oppama plant, south of Tokyo, Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga told a news conference.
In 2012, Nissan plans to start building the vehicle at its plants in Smyrna, Tennessee, and Sunderland, England. It will also produce lithium ion batteries at those two factories, as well as at plants in France, Portugal and Japan.
“Nissan will become the first in the world to produce an electric car on a global scale,” Shiga said.
The Yokohama-based automaker played up the energy cost savings of the LEAF as well. It estimated that over six years of ownership, the electricity cost in Japan would be 86,000 yen. That compares with an estimate of 670,000 yen of gasoline cost for a similar class of vehicle over the same period, it said.
Other makers, large and small, are trying to develop viable electric vehicles amid growing consumer concerns about emissions and dependence on oil.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. launched its electric vehicle, the i-MiEV, in Japan in June. Hours after Nissan announced the price for the LEAF, Mitsubishi said it would slash the price for the i-MiEV by 13 percent to 3.98 million yen.
So far, electric vehicles have been largely experimental, mainly used by government-linked groups. Tokyo has made reducing greenhouse gases a pillar of its policy, and has encouraged the production of electronic vehicles as a way to achieve that.
Earlier this month, Nissan, Toyota Motor Corp., Mitsubishi Motors and Fuji Heavy Industries, which makes Subaru brand cars, and a major Tokyo power company set up a group of 160 business and government organizations to promote electric vehicles by standardizing recharging machines and marketing the technology abroad.
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Bankrupt Japan Airlines Corp. might eliminate over 4,000 more jobs than anticipated by fiscal 2012, according to informed sources.
The expanded reductions, to around 20,000 from the currently planned 15,700, will include additional early retirements, the sources said Saturday.
JAL is apparently aiming to acquire new loans by deepening its restructuring so it can promote early rehabilitation. The job cuts will be the pillar of its reconstruction plan, which is to be compiled by the end of June.
The reduction would account for nearly 40 percent of the JAL group’s workforce.
JAL has decided not to recruit any new graduates for any kind of jobs, including pilots and cabin crew, for fiscal 2011 — the first time in its history. The airline hopes this will reduce costs under the government-backed restructuring process following its filing for protection from creditors in January.
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