CHAMPIONS League: Barcelona beat Manchester United 3-1, to win the final

AP - Lionel Messi scored one goal and created another on Saturday to lead Barcelona to a 3-1 win over Manchester United and a third Champions League title in six years.

Barcelona dominated possession at Wembley with trademark passing but needed the Argentina striker to conjure a 54th-minute solo strike from the edge of the area to take the lead for the second time. Messi followed his 53rd goal of a remarkable season with a feint and run that eventually led to David Villa receiving possession on the edge of the area, from where he curled a shot into the top corner. Although Wayne Rooney equalized Pedro Rodriguez’s opener before halftime, Barcelona’s victory was as comprehensive as its 2-0 win over United in the final two years ago.

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United Kingdom: Britain will feel the bite of government budget cuts kick in

AFP - Three French aid workers in Yemen, two of them women, were reported missing on Saturday in Hadramawt province in the country's southeast, a Yemeni security official and Paris told AFP.
              
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the three were reported missing when they failed to return to their residence in Seyun for lunch, adding that "their mobile phones were suddenly switched off."
              
"Units of the security forces were immediately deployed to search for them," added the official, who said in response to a question that he could not rule out that they had been abducted.
              
"The most likely thing is that they have been kidnapped," he said.
              
The three have been working in Seyun since mid-April for Triangle Generation Humanitaire, a French NGO working in Yemen since 1998.
              
The foreign ministry in Paris confirmed that three French nationals had gone missing in Yemen on Saturday, and added that the French authorities were doing everything possible to find them.
              
"We received this information from our embassy in Sanaa about the disappearance of three of our nationals in Yemen," foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.
              
He said the French authorities were "in close contact with the Yemeni authorities, including the security forces" to locate the missing people.
              
Foreigners have frequently been kidnapped in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state by tribes who use the tactic to pressure the authorities into making concessions.
              
More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Yemen over the past 15 years, and most have later been freed unharmed.

United Kingdom: Obama rejects the notion of Western decline

AFP - in a rallying cry of the Western world, US President Barack Obama Wednesday denied that the rise of powers such as China, the India and the Brazil meant the inevitable decline in Europe and the United States.

In a speech to both houses of Parliament Britain means to inject new momentum into the transatlantic alliance that has strengthened the global security since the second world war, Obama said Western nations must renew itself.

"Countries such as China, the India and the Brazil are giant growth," Obama told the assembled lawmakers, arguing that, ultimately, the emergence of new powers would benefit everyone.

"This rapid change took place, it is become fashionable in some circles to question if the rise of these nations will accompany the decline of American influence and European in the world," Obama said.

"Perhaps this argument, these nations represent the future and the time for our leadership."

"This argument is false." Now is the time for our leadership. ?

The head of the U.S. joined a select list of the foreign political leaders who have addressed both houses of Parliament to 900 years Westminster Hall, Nelson Mandela and Charles de Gaulle.

Speech by Obama in the historical Hall was long awaited by foreign policy experts and political leaders who have speculated that Obama believes that future lies of America with the new Giants and not his former allies.

But he rejected this idea, saying: "it is the United States, the United Kingdom and our democratic allies that shaped a world in which may emerge new nations and people could thrive."

"And even where the nations most assume the responsibilities of global leadership, our Alliance will remain essential to the objective of a century that is more peaceful, more prosperous and more just.".

"We remain catalysts more global action.".

But the President said that although the links between the United States, Great Britain and Europe have been forged in two world wars, they had to be redesigned to respond to a new era of threats, including terrorism and climate change.

The President also argued that countries such as his own and his hosts had an inherent advantage in a new global economy that threatens their competitive advantage, but which price a well-educated workforce.

"To maintain" this advantage in a world that is more competitive that ever, we will have to redouble our investments in science and engineering and to renew our national commitments to educate our workforce, Obama said.

Obama also praised NATO, currently fighting in Afghanistan, as the "alliance more successful in human history" and promised to never release the fight against Al-Qaida and to ensure that the Afghanistan is purged of terrorism.

He also said that the West had a crucial interest in the wave of revolt raged in North Africa and the Middle East and called his leadership colleagues to help ensure that the political transitions are successful.

"It will take years before these revolutions reach their conclusion, and there will be difficult days along the way." Power rarely gave up without fighting, "he says.

"Make no mistake: what we have seen in Tehran, Tunis and Tahrir is a desire for the same freedoms we take for granted at home."

"Let so there is no doubt: the United States and the United Kingdom are squarely on with those who long to be free,"Obama said, many of the themes of his major speech on the Arab uprisings taking last week."."

"We will proceed with humility, and knowledge that we do not dictate results abroad." Ultimately, freedom must be won by the people themselves, not imposed from without. ?

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