Rolling Stones play $20 surprise gig in Paris

PARIS (Reuters) – The Rolling Stones performed an energetic warm-up gig in Paris on Thursday for a few hundred fans after announcing on Twitter that tickets would go on sale for 15 euros ($ 19.45) just hours in advance.

“I can’t believe we’re all still standing up, you’d think by now one or two of us would be sitting down, but we’re not,” lead singer Mick Jagger, 69, told fans at the Trabendo, a 700-capacity venue in northern Paris, during the 75 minute surprise show.

Fans said the small space created an optimal setting for the show which kicked off with “Route 66″ and ended with “Brown Sugar”.

“We were right next to them, we could see them perfectly,” said one French fan who gave his name as Gianni. “It was a very small room and they were running all over the stage…they seemed really happy.”

Some got an additional perk after the show, as Jagger signed autographs before being whisked away in a black Mercedes sedan.

Earlier this month, the band announced they would perform four concerts at large arenas – two in London and two near New York – to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Their last world tour ended in 2007.

But fans have complained about high ticket prices, which range from 95 pounds ($ 150) to as much as 950 pounds for a “VIP hospitality” seat. Tickets have been offered online for several thousands pounds each, British media has reported.

The Paris music scene has been awash with rumours that the Stones will also play to bankers invited by Paris-based investment house Carmignac Gestion at a theatre in the heart of Paris on Monday.

In recent years, Carmignac has recruited former Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed and British rocker Rod Stewart to play similar gigs, usually to an exclusive audience.

Carmignac sent out mystery invitations giving the date and location of what it called “the biggest secret event of the year” without identifying the performer. The investment house has declined to comment.

On Thursday, the band banned mobile phones, cameras, video equipment and recording devices from those going into the gig.

Some fans drove to Paris from as far away as Germany.

Sebastian Baaske said he set off in his car from Hanover, Germany on Wednesday afternoon in hopes of securing a ticket.

“My girlfriend said I’d regret it if I didn’t… It’s all worth it,” the 35-year-old Baaske said.

The Rolling Stones will play the O2 Arena in the British capital on November 25 and 29 before crossing the Atlantic to perform at the Prudential Center, Newark, on December 13 and 15.

($ 1 = 0.7711 euros)

(Writing by Mike Collett-White and Alexandria Sage, Additional Reporting by Anca Ulea. Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Hacking claims hit Mirror shares

26 October 2012 Last updated at 15:36 ET

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Shares in Trinity Mirror slid 16% on Friday as the media group’s newspapers face allegations of phone hacking.

Ex-England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson is among four people taking legal action against the group’s print business, Mirror Group Newspapers.

The claims against the publisher of the Daily and Sunday Mirror and the People were filed at the High Court on Monday.

Mr Eriksson’s claim relates to a time when Piers Morgan edited the Daily Mirror. Mr Morgan denies phone hacking.

Trinity Mirror, which owns Mirror Group, has declined to comment.

Trinity Mirror’s shares have fallen a total of 30% in the last week and a half.

It reverses half of the stock market gains enjoyed by the media group since announcing the departure of its controversial chief executive Sly Bailey and a surprise bounce in profits over the summer.

Ms Bailey has since been replaced by the former HMV boss Simon Fox.

Friday’s share price drop came after High Court judge Mr Justice Vos, who has presided over similar cases brought against News International, said that he would handle all four of the cases against Trinity Mirror, according to reports in the Guardian and Independent newspapers.

The three other claimants are Coronation Street actress Shobna Gulati, who plays Sunita Alahan; Abbie Gibson, a former nanny for the Beckham family; and Garry Flitcroft, the former captain of Blackburn Rovers football team.

Piers Morgan at the Leveson Inquiry: December 2011

Until now, the UK phone-hacking scandal has centred on Rupert Murdoch’s News International and the now defunct Sunday tabloid the News of the World.

This is the first legal action in the scandal against another newspaper group.

Mr Morgan, who is now a chat show host for US broadcaster CNN, was questioned about phone hacking during his appearance at the Leveson Inquiry – the independent probe set up by the government into the culture and ethics of the UK newspaper industry.

During his appearance, he repeated his denials of any knowledge or involvement in the illegal practice.

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Baseball-Pitch counts don’t add up to more injuries, says study

NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters Health) – It is impossible to watch a Major League Baseball (MLB) game nowadays – such as those in the World Series now underway – without hearing about how many pitches a player has thrown.

But a new study suggests that when it comes to preventing injuries, the obsession of many teams with those kinds of numbers may be misplaced.

“I don’t necessarily think that pitch counts or innings pitched are the best way to measure the demands of pitching,” Thomas Karakolis, the lead author on the study, told Reuters Health.

Karakolis, a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and two colleagues looked at data from every MLB pitcher from 2002 to 2007, focusing on a given year’s pitch count, innings pitched and whether the player ended up injured the following year.

In that second year, more than a quarter of major league pitchers spent time on the disabled list. That rate jumped to nearly two in five pitchers for those who tended to throw six or seven innings.

But that difference – which would seem to support the idea of using pitch counts and innings pitched to pull pitchers – was more than likely due to chance, Karakolis said.

The injuries were significant enough that disabled list players were out for an average of 78 days – more than a third of the annual baseball season.

“If we can’t predict injuries based off of these metrics, how are we going to use them to prevent injuries?” asked Karakolis.

Perhaps the most famous case is Stephen Strasburg of the Washington Nationals, whose managers made it clear at the beginning of this year’s season, following surgery in 2010 and less than a month of play in 2011, that he would be allowed to pitch only 160 innings.

They shut him down after 159 and a third innings, meaning he was unavailable to play in the Nationals’ first-ever playoff appearance in nearly 80 years.

Strasburg did not debut in the majors until 2010, so his data are not included in the research, which is published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

“The Karakolis study indicates that Strasburg faced very little danger from continuing to pitch,” said J.C. Bradbury, of Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

The Nationals declined to comment.

Bradbury, who was not involved in the new study, published research earlier this year showing that pitch counts did seem to have a real effect on performance, but so small as not to be practically relevant.

TODAY’S PITCHERS VS. YESTERDAY’S

Because of the pitch count obsession, such numbers have been falling for more than two decades, Bradbury told Reuters Health by email.

“In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the maximum number of pitches you’d see a pitcher throw would be in the 160s. Now that maximum is normally in the 130s,” Bradbury said.

Although excessive pitching can obviously lead to injury, he added: “The relevant question is, can we say that cutoffs at 90, 100, 110, etc. are safer than each other? I don’t think there is any evidence (for that).”

Another factor in the mix is pitches and workouts on off days – often 30-40 pitches a few days after each start, plus strength training – which are not reflected in game-day pitch counts, said Karakolis.

One of Karakolis’s co-authors, Ryan Crotin, pointed out that some of the strain on pitchers is emotional and psychological, and would not show up in typical measures.

For their stress hormone-producing adrenal glands, said Crotin, who works with the Baltimore Orioles, it’s “almost like they’ve run a marathon”.

Karakolis said that pitch counts and innings pitched were “definitely part of the future but on their own they’re not going to be effective”.

He suggested that teams might look into a “piggy back” system such as that used in the minor leagues, in which pitchers do not throw more than 75 pitches before being taken out of the game, and rotate between starting and relieving.

But he is clear that the data are “not conclusive yet, and I don’t have any idea how that would affect performance”. His study only looked at injuries.

Bradbury agreed that baseball needs better metrics.

“There have been many studies on youth pitchers that find pitches thrown are correlated with injury,” he said.

“However, very little work had been done on adults or professionals, and there are many reasons to expect the impact will differ between children and adults.” (Editing by Frederik Joelving and Mark Lamport-Stokes)

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Economy is healing – Chancellor Osborne

LONDON (Reuters) – Chancellor George Osborne said on Thursday the latest GDP data showed the economy was on the mend but there were still challenges ahead due to weak data coming from the euro zone.

Figures released on Thursday showed Britain pulled out of recession in the third quarter, posting its strongest quarterly gross domestic product growth in five years.

“There is still a long way to go, but these figures show we are on the right track,” Osborne said in a statement. “This (is) another sign that the economy is healing …”

He added however: “Yesterday’s weak data from the euro zone were a reminder that we still face many economic challenges at home and abroad.”

The Office for National Statistics said Britain’s gross domestic product rose by 1.0 percent between July and September, beating forecasts for a 0.6 percent gain, after shrinking by 0.4 percent between April and June.

On the year, the economy was flat, better than expected.

(Reporting By Maria Golovnina; editing by Steve Addison)

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