Aston Villa have signed Middlesbrough and England winger Stewart Downing on a four-year deal, the Midlands club have confirmed. The fee is thought to be in the region of £12m. [+]

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People looking for offhanded symbolism can feel free to try tracking Mos Def's career trajectory as an MC through his album covers. Iconic solo debut Black on Both Sides: a stark, immediately-striking photo portrait that renders the attribution of his name unnecessary. Aggro experimental follow-up The New Danger: that same face now obscured by a stick-up man's mask, his bright red, bloody-looking index fingertip pointing to his own head on some Taxi Driver shit. Click to continue reading...

Just days after returning to Los Angeles Galaxy, David Beckham has revealed he could yet return to England to play in the Premier League.

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The Manchester United boss claimed he had attempted to contact Tevez on a number of occasions to persuade him to remain at Old Trafford, but was blanked. But Tevez has now claimed that is not true.

Tevez, who cost the club a fee in the region of £25m, said: "I was there for two years and Sir Alex never called or sent any text messages in that time.

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Just after October 6, 2008, when Iceland effectively went bust, I spoke to a man at the International Monetary Fund who had been flown in to Reykjavík to determine if money might responsibly be lent to such a spectacularly bankrupt nation. He'd never been to Iceland, knew nothing about the place, and said he needed a map to find it.

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The technology world's attention shifted to Sprint-Nextel this week with the company's announcement that it would hand off management of its wireless and wireline networks to Ericsson. Some time around or after September, 6,000 Sprint employees will begin working the system under the Swedish mobile maker's supervision, the new partners say.

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The hydrogen economy goes down the toilet: Energy experts have mixed opinions on whether hydrogen might make sense as a portable fuel of the future. It can be made using electricity from renewable sources, which is good, but the process is inefficient and requires fresh water, which is already in short supply in many areas of the globe. Click to continue reading...

The campaign to get radio stations to pay up for the music they play marches on. With revenues from recorded music sales declining, rightsholders have turned their eyes in recent years to commercial US radio, which currently pays songwriters (but not performers or record labels) for the tunes that power their business.

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I've written extensively on the many basic problems that make all government-run, computer-automated mass surveillance programs a waste of taxpayer money. But a new report (PDF) from the Offices of Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, CIA, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence shows in some detail how our government took the bad idea of building powerful computers to sniff out a terrorist needle in a digital haystack, then made it even less useful in practice.

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The way Arsenal handle their transfer dealings is just downright embarassing sometimes.  Arsene has gotten more and more noncommittal in his press conferences and I suppose he has to and no one is able to get anything done.  Remember the last time he promised a signing within two weeks?  The Nasri, Alonso, and Arshavin dealings [. Click to continue reading...

I was watching the Man U v. Spurs cup game last week and couldn't help but be envious of Ferguson's team.  As we all know, Manchester has suffered an injury crisis as of late yet Ferguson has agains tated his unwillingness to buy because his squad is good enough.  Against Tottenham he ended up fielding a [. Click to continue reading...

The celebrations were a bit premature, stemming from an insultingly vague Dailymail article that alluded to a potential deal today.  It contained the usual bit of clairvoyant verbiage such as: "Zenit will accept improved 15m offer" and "Arsenal hope at last to conclude deal".  Clearly nothing concrete but it looks like the masses took what [. Click to continue reading...

I'm as sick as the next guy of this whole Arshavin saga.  In fact, I was sick and done with it before the Euro's when I realized that, having missed out before his time to shine, we had missed out completely.  After the tournament the world realized the guy was sizzling and later ranked him [...] Click to continue reading...

Commentary unnecessary: photo evidence.  Enjoy Or maybe he's just enjoying some suspension time off.  But more seriously, a couple words about Clichy.  The guy had a phenomal season 07/08 playing practically every game and along with Flamini was probably our most consistent player.  A lot of people will talk about the Birmingham game but if you [. Click to continue reading...

Last week I was almost 90% positive that the Kaka deal would happen just as I was 90% sure the Arshavin deal would soon close and while typically, there is no concrete news of an Arsenal signing, I think everyone can sleep a little better at night knowing that Manchester City will not have completely [. Click to continue reading...