The Waxman-Markey climate bill is the best we will get from America until the corruption of public life is addressed
It would be laughable anywhere else. But, so everyone says, which is or tomorrow, is the best we can expect - from America.
The cuts it proposes are or in most other developed nations. Like the US bill calls for an 80% cut by 2050, but in this case the baseline is 2005, not 1990. .
The cut proposed by 2020 is just 17%, which means that most of the reduction will take place towards the end of the period. What this means is much greater . Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill's measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it's printed on. You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when .
There are mind-boggling concessions to the biofuels industry, including . There's a provision to allow industry to use 2bn tonnes of a year, which include highly unstable carbon sinks like crop residues left in the soil (another concession won by the powerful farm lobby). These offsets are so generous that if all of them are used, US industry will have to make no carbon cuts at all until 2026.
Like the EU , Waxman-Markey would oblige companies to buy only a small proportion (15%) of their carbon permits. The rest will be given away. This means that a resource belonging to everyone (the right to pollute) is captured by industrial interests without public compensation. The more pollution companies have produced, the greater their free allocation will be - the polluter gets paid. It also means, if the ETS is anything to go by, that the big polluters will be able to make windfall profits by passing on the price of the permits they haven't bought to their consumers.
In one respect the bill actually waters down current legislation, by preventing the from regulating coal-burning power stations. If the new coal plants planned in the US are built, it's hard to see how even the feeble targets in this bill can be met, let alone any targets proposed by the science.
Even so, I would like to see the bill passed, as it at least provides a framework for future improvements. But why do we expect so little from the US? Why do we treat the world's most powerful and innovative nation as if it were a failed state, rejoicing at even the faintest suggestion of common sense?
You have only to read the comments that follow this article to find out. Thanks to the lobbying work of the coal and oil companies, and the vast army of thinktanks, PR consultants and they have sponsored, thanks too to the domination of the airwaves by loony right shock jocks, the debate over issues like this has become so mad that any progress at all is little short of a miracle. The ranking Republican on the House energy and commerce committee is Joe Barton, the man who . Like those of many of his peers, . He returns the favour by vociferously denying that manmade climate change exists.
A combination of corporate money and an unregulated corporate media keeps America in the dark ages. This bill is the best we're going to get for now because the corruption of public life in the United States has not been addressed. Whether he is seeking environmental reforms, health reforms or any other improvement in the life of the American people, this is Obama's real challenge.
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Amnesty reports apparent attempt to implicate defeated presidential candidate in conspiracy to overthrow regime
Jailed Iranian reformists are believed to have been tortured in an attempt to force them into TV \"confessions\" of a foreign-led plot against the Islamic regime.
According to Iranian websites, the \"confessions\" are aimed at implicating Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the defeated reformist candidates in this month's presidential poll, in an alleged conspiracy.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh and Mohsen Aminzadeh, all Mousavi supporters, are reported to have undergone \"intensive interrogation\" sessions in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since being arrested in a following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.
The three, who all served in the government of the former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, are among several hundred activists, academics, journalists and students detained in a crackdown coinciding with the brutal suppression of street protesters who believe the election was stolen.
Fellow prisoners are reported to have heard screams of pain from Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister, and Ramezanzadeh, who was Khatami's government spokesman, during interrogations at Evin's section 209, which is reserved for political prisoners and run by the hardline intelligence ministry.
Aminzadeh, an ex-deputy foreign minister, was heard shouting \"I am not going to give interviews.\"
A spokesman for Amnesty International said the reports came from \"very credible sources\".
The Iranian authorities have used this technique before to humiliate and discredit opponents. In 2007, state television aired \"confessions\" by US-Iranian academics Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh and Ramin Jahanbegloo in which they said they had worked with pro-democracy groups that the regime claimed were plotting its downfall.
This week, state television broadcast interviews with several people admitting to being \"terrorists\" after purportedly taking part in street demonstrations.
Tajzadeh's wife, Fakhrosadat Mohtashamipour, told the pro-reform website Emruz that she and a lawyer had been denied access to him since his arrest the day after the 12 June election. \"Any quote or remarks made by these people in the current situation has no credibility. My husband's only crime is his efforts to secure a high turnout,\" she said.
Tajzadeh, 53, a member of the pro-reform Islamic Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organisation, has been a staunch critic of Ahmadinejad. After the president was first elected four years ago, Tajzadeh told the Guardian that Ahmadinejad's leading supporters wanted to create an atmosphere similar to that under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Renewed fears have been voiced over the health of another jailed reformist, Saeed Hajarian, a former Khatami adviser who is severely disabled from a failed assassination attempt nine years ago.
Reports of Hajarian's death on blogs and Twitter were dismissed by the reformist website Parlemannews, which quoted \"informed sources\" as saying he was in \"relative health\" and being given essential medication and care.
Meanwhile, state TV reported that the head of Mousavi's information committee, Abolfazl Fateh, had been prevented from leaving Iran for Britain, where he is a PhD student. Fars, a pro-Ahmadinejad news agency close to the country's Revolutionary Guard, said he had been banned from travelling to allow the authorities to investigate \"recent gatherings\", a reference to the pro-Mousavi demonstrations.
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Social networking site hopes increase influence with world authorities
Facebook is hiring lobbyists to push its agenda on internet privacy and data sharing in Brussels and Washington, as the social networking site attempts to increase its influence with authorities around the world.
The company has appointed Richard Allan, who was previously the head of European regulatory affairs for the technology giant Cisco, to lead its efforts in lobbying EU governments.
The move to create a dedicated European lobby team comes after the company hired Timothy Sparapani, a former lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, as the second member of its Washington operation. Sparapani had previously been linked to campaigns critical of Facebook's targeted advertising systems.
According to Chris Kelly, the Californian web company's chief privacy officer, the five-year-old startup has been engaging in talks with government officials in various countries for some time, but its growing size and importance means it is essential they \"understand our philosophy\".
He said: \"There is a concern we've had for some time that - in a well-meaning attempt to protect consumers - legislators or regulators would end up passing laws that would keep people from the beneficial sharing of information.\" Jim ÂKillock, the executive director of the Open Rights Group, which campaigns for the rights of British citizens online, says technology companies are increasingly choosing to exert pressure at European level, rather than in more tightly monitored environments, such as Westminster.
\"It is much easier for commercial concerns to lobby Brussels, which is distant from public attention but shapes very important legislation,\" he said. \"Businesses will pay to make sure their views are heard, and it's difficult for citizens to match that.\"
Facebook's political manoeuvres mark the latest phase in the site's ascent. It is now officially the world's largest social networking website with more than 200 million users around the globe. In the process, the company has outpaced its Silicon Valley rivals, and delivered a surprise defeat to Rupert Murdoch and his social networking site, MySpace.
Technology corporations are increasingly flexing political muscle in an attempt to mould government legislative reform in their favour. In recent years, Google has stepped up its efforts on both sides of the Atlantic and the company has taken a more disciplined approach to lobbying.
That approach appears to have paid off: Barack Obama openly backed a number of internet policies championed by Google during the US EUelection and has handed Eric Schmidt, the Google chief executive, a place on his presidential advisory board for science and technology.
More recently, Google's head of global public policy, Andrew McLaughlin, joined the White House as deputy chief technology officer.
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• Moves to ban Muslim face coverings gather force
• Human rights groups warn of growing discrimination
In the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, with its busy market, fast-food joints and bargain clothes shops, Angelica Winterstein only goes out once a week - and only if she really has to.
\"I feel like I'm being judged walking down the street. People tut or spit. In a smart area west of Paris, one man stopped his car and shouted: 'Why don't you go back to where you came from?' But I'm French, I couldn't be more French,\" said the 23-year-old, who was born and raised in bourgeois Versailles.
Once a fervent Catholic, Winterstein converted to Islam at 18. Six months ago she began wearing a loose, floor-length black jilbab, showing only her expertly made-up face from eyebrows to chin. She now wants to add the final piece, and wear full niqab, covering her face and leaving just her eyes visible.
\"But this week, after Sarkozy announced that full veils weren't welcome in France, things have got really difficult,\" she said. \"As it is, people sometimes shout 'Ninja' at me. It's impossible to find a job - I'm a qualified childminder and get plenty of interviews because of my CV, but when people see me in person, they don't call back. It's difficult in this country, there's a certain mood in the air. I don't feel comfortable walking around.\"
This week, France plunged into another bitterly divisive national debate on Muslim women's clothing, reopening questions on how the country with western Europe's biggest Muslim community integrates Islam into its secular republic. A parliamentary inquiry is to examine how many women in France wear full Islamic veils or niqab before a decision is made over possibly banning such garments in the street. More than 50 MPs from across the political spectrum have called for restrictions on full veils, called \"degrading\", \"submissive\" and \"coffins\" by politicians. Yet the actual numbers of niqab wearers in France appears to be so small that TV news crews have struggled to find individuals to film. Muslim groups estimate that there are perhaps only a few hundred women fully covering themselves out of a Muslim population of over 5 million - often young French women, many of them converts.
That such a marginal issue can suddenly take centre stage in a country otherwise struggling with major issues of mass unemployment and protest over public sector reform shows how powerful the symbol of the headscarf and veil remains in France.
Human rights groups warned this week that the row over niqabs risks exacerbating the growing problem of discrimination against women wearing standard Muslim headscarves. Five years on from the heated national debate over France's 2004 law banning headscarves and all conspicuous religious symbols from state schools, there has been an increase in general discrimination against adult women who cover their heads.
\"Women in standard headscarves have been refused access to voting booths, driving lessons, barred from their own wedding ceremonies at town halls, ejected from university classes and in one case, a woman in a bank was not allowed to withdraw cash from her own account at the counter. This is clear discrimination by people who wrongly use the school law to claim that France is a secular state that doesn't allow headscarves in public places. It's utterly illegal and the courts rule in our favour,\" said Renee Le Mignot, co-president of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples. \"Our fear is that the current niqab debate is going to make this general discrimination worse.\"
Samy Debah, a history teacher who heads France's Collective against Islamophobia, said 80% of discrimination cases reported to his group involved women wearing standard headscarves.
He had rarely seen any instances of women wearing niqabs, even in the ethnically mixed north Paris suburb where he lives. \"From our figures, the biggest discriminator against Muslim women is the state and state officials,\" he said. \"What people have to understand is that the concept of French secularism is not anti-religion per se, it is supposed to be about respecting all religions.\"
The current initiative against full Islamic veils began in Venissieux, a leftwing area on the industrial outskirts of Lyon. Its communist mayor, André Gerin, led proposals for a clampdown, saying he saw increasing numbers of full veils in his constituency.
\"I call them walking prisons, phantoms that go past us, it's that visual aspect that's an issue,\" Gerin said. \"There's a malaise in the general population faced with the proliferation of these garments. I sense that on the part of Muslims, too.\"
Gerin said women in niqab posed \"concrete problems\" in daily life. \"We had an issue in a school where a headteacher at the end of the school day didn't want to hand back two children to a phantom,\" he said. Gerin has refused to conduct the town-hall wedding of a woman wearing niqab. Another woman wearing a full veil was refused social housing by a landlord in the area. The mayor said that when women haven't removed their face covering, it has resulted in conflict with public officials who often felt insulted or under attack. But he denied stigmatising the wider Muslim population.
\"The current situation [where women wear niqabs] is stigmatising Muslims,\" he said. His aim was to \"establish a debate with the Muslim community, integrate Islam properly into French life\" and expose fundamentalist practices.
Two previous calls for a law restricting full veils have been left to gather dust. This time, the debate is gathering force. There are divisions in the government itself - the feminist Muslim junior minister, Fadela Amara, supports a niqab ban while the immigration minister, Eric Besson, warns it would create unnecessary tension.
Horia Demiati, 30, a French financier who wears a standard headscarf with her business suits, said: \"I really fear an increase in hatred.\" She recently won a discrimination case after she and her family, including a six-month baby, were refused access to a rural holiday apartment they had booked in the Vosges. The woman who refused them argued that she was a secular feminist and didn't want to see the headscarf, \"an instrument of women's submission and oppression\", in her establishment.
Demiati said: \"This niqab debate is such a marginal issue, yet it risks detracting from the real issues in France.\"
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Speculation grows that star's death was linked to longstanding use of painkillers
A doctor who has apparently gone missing after treating Michael Jackson before his sudden death is being sought by the Los Angeles police and coroner's office.
The doctor's car, which was left outside Jackson's rented mansion in Bel Air, has been impounded. A police spokesman said they wanted to talk to Dr Conrad Murray, a cardiologist who practises in California, Nevada and Texas, because he had not signed a death certificate, as is normal procedure. It was reported last night that police were in contact with Murray.
Speculation was mounting that the star's death may be linked to his longstanding use of painkillers. Family friends have confirmed he was taking drugs to help him deal with the stress of preparing for his series of London concerts.
Last night the Los Angeles coroner said initial examination of the body indicated \"no foul play or external trauma\". He said a ruling on the cause of death would be deferred for detailed toxicology and neuropathology tests, which could take between four and six weeks.
The singer's body was released to his family late last night and was taken to a mortuary at their request. The family have yet to confirm their plans for the 50-year-old's funeral.
Charlie Beck, the assistant chief of the Los Angeles police department, said it was \"way too early\" to draw any conclusions about Jackson's death.
He said the doctor's car was seized because it may contain drugs or other evidence. Beck said officers had spoken to the doctor immediately after Jackson's death but wanted to carry out \"an extensive follow-up interview\".
\"I'm confident that will happen,\" he said.
Media reports have suggested that Jackson, 50, was injected with a morphine-like drug shortly before he collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead shortly after being taken to a Los Angeles hospital on Thursday.
Last night, his good friend Liza Minnelli suggested the postmortem examination might provide uncomfortable revelations. \"When the autopsy comes, all hell's going to break loose, so thank God we're celebrating him now,\" she told CBS.
Also last night, the transcript of the 911 call made from Jackson's house was released to the media. In it, a caller says Jackson is not breathing and is being given CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] by a personal doctor. \"He's pumping and pumping his chest. He's not responding to anything,\" the caller tells an emergency operator. The male caller, who has not been identified, tells the dispatcher the doctor was the only one with Jackson when he became distressed.
Brian Oxman, a Jackson family lawyer, confirmed that the star had been taking drugs to deal with a variety of pain problems. He said there had been longstanding concerns about Jackson's drug use and the people he had surrounded himself with.
\"I do not know the extent of the medications that he was taking, but the reports we have been receiving in the family are that it was extensive. This is something that I feared. This family has been trying for months to take care of Michael Jackson. The people who have surrounded him have been enabling him.\" Enabling is a psychological term for allowing or helping a person to continue their addiction.
TMZ, the website that reported Jackson's demise within 15 minutes of the official time of death, reported yesterday that the star received an injection of the painkiller Demerol on Thursday morning.
The Los Angeles police department would not comment on the report about the injection and would not name the doctor. They confirmed they impounded the car because \"it may contain medications or evidence that may assist the coroner in determining the cause of death\".
An LAPD spokesman stressed the doctor is not under criminal investigation: \"When an attending physician is unwilling or unable to sign a certificate, it immediately triggers a coroner's investigation. It's now part of the overall investigation.\"
Jackson had a long history of taking painkillers, including Demerol. Medical experts said Demerol could lead to the sort of cardiac arrest suffered by Jackson, particularly if taken with other drugs.
Jackson's brother Jermaine told a news conference that the doctor - the one sought - made extensive efforts to revive Jackson 40 minutes or so before an ambulance came to take him to the University of California medical centre, a few minutes' drive away. Jermaine Jackson described how paramedics continued to try to revive Michael in the ambulance and how staff at UCLA did the same thing.
\"Upon arriving at the hospital at 1.14pm a team of doctors, including emergency physicians and a cardiologist, worked to resuscitate him for a period of more than one hour but were unsuccessful,\" he said. Jackson was pronounced dead at 2.26pm, two hours and four minutes after the emergency call.
He had been rehearsing hard for a 50-date concert residency at the O2 arena in London starting on 13 July. Colleagues who saw him at his last rehearsal said he showed no signs of major distress, although he looked thin and frail.
Family and members of his concert entourage had expressed concern over the past two months that Jackson was not physically up to the tour. The first concert was put back by six days.
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Death of Michael Jackson prompts Sacha Baron Cohen's spoof interview with sister LaToya to be pulled from film
The death of Michael Jackson forced a last-minute cut to Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy Brüno, which premiered in Los Angeles yesterday evening. As the news broke, a scene in which Cohen interviews the singer's sister, LaToya, was hastily removed from the film. Sources at Universal, the studio behind Brüno, said the decision had been made \"out of respect for Jackson's family\".
The offending scene features Cohen, in the guise of Brüno, attempting to find Michael Jackson's phone number on LaToya's BlackBerry. After Brüno reads aloud what he claims to be the singer's number, an apparently enraged LaToya terminates the interview and storms off the set. Reports suggest that the scene will not be restored for its official release on 10 July.
Despite this concession, the Brüno premiere still appears to have thwarted fans' attempts to pay tribute to the singer. With Jackson's star on the Walk of Fame cordoned off ahead of the premiere, confused followers reportedly gathered around the nearby star of another Michael Jackson, a veteran LA-based radio commentator.
At 7pm, local time, Sacha Baron Cohen made his grand arrival atop a glitterball and straddling a cannon. The Brüno premiere took place at Grauman's Chinese theatre, just eight miles from Jackson's current resting place at the University of California at Los Angeles medical centre.
A video shows how Twitter's trends were captured by the breaking news about the famous star's collapse and death
, which watches trends in hashtags on that messaging service you've all heard about, has a video of how the realisation that something was seriously wrong with Michael Jackson (though many, for unknown reasons, spelt it \"Micheal\").
Watch the video to see a relatively quiet Thursday evening in the UK suddenly turn into an explosion of \"Jackson\" and TMZ - the site which was first with the news that he had been rushed to hospital with a heart attack.
It would be interesting to see what Twitscoop thinks of the number of tweets that were flowing around about Jackson's collapse and then death, but it doesn't have a blog (not even at its parent company ). Is that actually legal for a web 2.0 company? I thought they all had to have a blog.
Still, perhaps it shows the arc of technology, thus:
\"Where were you when you heard about Kennedy being shot?\" (Media: radio, TV)
\"Where were you when you heard about Princess Di?\" (Media: radio, TV, text message, mobile phone call)
\"Which messaging service did you hear about Michael Jackson's death on?\" (Facebook, Twitter, Twitscoop...)
Hands up all those who found via a piece of paper...
Update: there's also Last.fm's graph of Michael Jackson tracks played on its service. Though it's not clear the royalties will be enough to pay off the debts...
Source: Last.fm on Flickr.
..And inevitably, now you can get a video of the Wikipedia page for Jackson, showing how it changed during the night as the news came in. Jackson's death is added 9 seconds in, but then the edit wars take off, and the page is locked to unregistered users, but the categories keep expanding - \"2. Death\". Best viewed full screen, if you can.
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Ayatollah Khamenei's support for President Ahmadinejad has led both moderates and hard-liners to start plotting against him
The power struggle inside Iran appears to be moving from the streets into the heart of the regime itself this weekend amid reports that Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani is plotting to undermine the power of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Rafsanjani's manoeuvres against Khamenei come as tensions between the speaker of the parliament, Ali Larijani, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also appeared to be coming to a head.
Mass demonstrations on the streets against the election results have been effectively crushed by a massive police and basiij militia presence that has seen several dozen deaths and the arrests of hundreds of supporters of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. But the splits within Iran's political elite are deepening.
In the past few days, Larijani - who was fired by Ahmadinejad as chief negotiator on nuclear issues with the west - has announced his intention of setting up a parliamentary committee to examine the recent post-election violence in an \"even-handed way\". In response, Ahmadinejad supporters within the parliament have discussed the possibility of impeaching Larijani.
In a move with even greater potential significance, according to several reports Rafsanjani has been lobbying fellow members of the powerful 86-strong Assembly of Experts, which he chairs, to replace Khamenei as the supreme leader with a small committee of senior ayatollahs, of which Khamenei would be a member. If Rafsanjani were successful, the constitutional change would mean a profound shift in the balance of power within Iran's theocratic regime.
\"Although Hashemi Rafsanjani is not a popular politician in Iran any more, he is the only hope that Iranians have ... for the annulment of the election,\" said an Iranian political analyst who asked not be named. \"He is the only one who people think is able to stand against the supreme leader.\"
The membership of the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to appoint the supreme leader, is split between those supporting Rafsanjani and those who have gravitated around the highly influential ultra-hardline cleric Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, who is widely seen as both a supporter of Ahmadinejad and the president's religious mentor. Yazdi is also believed to have his own ambitions to succeed Khamenei as supreme leader. Like Ahmadinejad, he is fiercely opposed to the push by reformists for more democratic representation in Iran.
Yazdi is also understood to have a large following among both the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the basiij militia, both also sources of support for Ahmadinejad.
Rafsanjani has long been a proponent of weakening the power of the supreme leader. He is understood to be arguing in favour of replacing Khamenei with a leadership council of three or more senior clerics.
The splits in the Assembly of Experts - the least visible aspect of the present crisis - will be critically important to its eventual outcome. Even avowed conservatives are reported to have sided with Rafsanjani against Yazdi and his faction, suggesting that there are real limits to the power it has been exercising in the past few weeks.
The complexity of the present political manoeuvres has meant Iran's elites have been made to take sides, reflected in the decision by almost half the members of the parliamentary assembly to boycott the celebration dinner called by Ahmadinejad to mark his \"re-election\".
The largely behind the scenes moves have come as Iranians opposed to the regime have been forced to go underground with their protests, despite the threats of Khamenei and the brutal attacks of the Revolutionary Guards and basiij militia.
The challenge to the street protests entered a new phase last week when Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called for the execution of protest leaders at Friday prayers in Tehran in a further move seen as intending to intimidate the opponents of Ahmadinejad.
Despite that, the nightly defiant cry of \"Allah-o-Akbar\" (God is great) has increased since Khatami's warning.
In a further sign of defiance, large numbers of people have switched from wearing green to black, to mourn those killed by the security forces during demonstrations.
\"Before this, black was an ordinary colour; now it has a different meaning,\" said Soheil, a 22-year-old student. \"It means that you are angry with the government and you want re-election.\"
Others keep their car headlights on, also in protest. \"It's not important for me whether the riot police destroy my car or not; the important thing is to continue my protest despite the huge censorship on the internet and SMS networks and TV channels,\" said 45-year-old Mina, as she drove - lights ablaze - through Tehran yesterday. \"This is the only way I can show my protest.\"
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• British women's No1 Keothavong loses 7-5, 6-2 to Mayr
• Teenager Evans shows grit in defeat to Davydenko
Tears, valiant efforts, a disappointing display and an inevitable defeat. All in a day's work for Britain's tennis players at Wimbledon yesterday as hope and belief turned to dejection and wounded pride.
The tears and disappointing display belonged to Anne Keothavong, whose rise up the rankings had raised expectations of a good run. The valiant efforts came from Katie O'Brien, Georgie Stoop and Josh Goodall, all of whom took higher-ranked opponents to a final set. And the inevitable defeat came from Dan Evans, who was unsurprisingly outclassed 6-2, 6-3, 6-3 by the Russian No12 seed, Nikolay Davydenko.
Having broken into the world's top 50 this year, Keothavong would have expected to beat Patricia Mayr, an Austrian ranked 80 who was appearing in her first Wimbledon. But it seems that her 6-0, 6-0 defeat by the world No1 Dinara Safina in the first round of the French Open last month affected her more than first thought.
After going up by an early break in the first set she completely lost her way and slipped to a 7-5, 6-2 defeat, before breaking down in the press conference.
\"I feel like I've let myself down more than anything,\" Keothavong said. \"Wimbledon is such a special tournament to me. This year, especially, I just felt ... I've overcome so much just to get where I am.
\"I felt like I was on the way to winning that first set and was doing what I had to do, and then it all just kind of seemed to fall apart. There's no way around it. It's been disappointing. I have higher expectations for myself as well. I feel like I'm a better tennis player compared to where I was this time last year, but maybe that match in Paris actually dented my confidence more than I realised at the time.\"
Keothavong had been troubled by a shoulder problem in recent weeks and, although she said she only had herself to blame for the loss, she was determined to look forward. \"Although right now it's really hard to look at all the positives, I've still got a lot to look forward to in the summer and have another bash at it.\"
Stoop, the world No185, resumed her match with the seventh seed Vera Zvonareva yesterday morning at one set apiece but eventually succumbed 7-6, 4-6, 6-4, a superb effort against a player who reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open earlier this year. In the end, Zvonareva's greater experience showed and one break, in the ninth game of the final set, was enough as the Russian served out for victory.
\"I'm feeling pretty down,\" the 21-year-old said. \"But on the other hand, that was a great experience for me today. I fought as hard as I possibly could and I thought I gave a really good performance. Obviously I'm a bit disappointed because obviously I would love to have won.\"
O'Brien looked on course for a shock win when she led Iveta Benesova, a Czech ranked 73 places above her at No35, 3-1 in the final set. But Benesova broke back immediately and then broke once more on her way to a 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 win.
The British men's No2 Goodall, who resumed at one set apiece with Michael Llodra, pushed the Frenchman hard before being beaten 4-6, 7-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4. \"I was disappointed but I think in general I'm pretty proud of myself,\" he said. \"I've improved massively, even in the last couple weeks since Queen's so I can take that match and obviously look at what I need to work on. I'm quite happy with the performance.\"
Evans, at 19 the youngest of the British men, had the toughest draw of all against Davydenko but acquitted himself well enough, even if it was rather one-sided. \"On paper, it's horrible for me,\" he said. \"He hits quite hard. It could have been a nasty first-round scoreline but I think I did well out there.\"