U.S. Is Paying European Teams to Hunt Stray Munitions in Libya

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is paying British and Swiss mine-clearing groups nearly $1 million to search for loose antiaircraft missiles in Libya and dispose of them, so they do not fall into the hands of terrorist groups.

The State Department’s hiring of the teams was prompted by fears that terrorists could use scavenged man-portable air defense systems, known as Manpads, to attack civilian aircraft around the world.

The Libyan military had amassed nearly 20,000 of the weapons before the popular uprising began in March. Most of them are still held by the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but some bases and ammunition dumps in contested or rebel-held areas have been looted, and an unknown number of the weapons have gone astray.

The search teams, who will also keep an eye out for mines and other deadly munitions, will be allowed to work in rebel-held areas away from active combat zones. American and allied authorities have told Libyan opposition figures that their cooperation would be a factor in decisions about future aid, according to American and United Nations officials who are familiar with the discussions.

“From the U.S. point of view, it was an issue of paramount importance,” said Justin Baker, officer-in-charge of the United Nations Mine Action Service, which is overseeing the weapons disposal effort in Libya. “The Libyans seemed to get the big picture of what was necessary to present a credible international face.”

The disposal effort will not affect areas or munitions still under the Qaddafi government’s control. “I can’t imagine the U.S. can do anything about Qaddafi’s inventory until they defeat him or negotiate his exit,” said Matthew Schroeder, an arms expert with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. “But even without that, securing any Manpads loose in Libya is a good thing.”

The Obama administration mentioned the anti-Manpads effort in its report to Congress this week defending the legality of its intervention in Libya. The report included classified documents detailing a “threat assessment of Manpads, ballistic missiles and chemical weapons in Libya.”

Most American and NATO warplanes have electronic evasion systems and can fly above the range of the portable missiles, but most civilian aircraft do not, and are vulnerable to attack. Nearly a dozen cargo and passenger planes have been brought down in Africa and Asia in the past decade using the missiles.

Reports have surfaced in recent weeks from officials in Algeria and Chad, and recently in the Russian news media, saying that antiaircraft missiles and launchers looted from Libyan government caches were already in the hands of a North African terrorist group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. American officials have yet to confirm any of those reports.

The two groups hired by the State Department are the Mines Advisory Group of Britain and the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action.

Officials with the groups said that almost all of the Libyan weapons depots they had surveyed in recent weeks showed clear signs of looting. Libyan opposition forces took anything they could use from the depots in the opening weeks of the conflict, they said, and there were few surviving inventory records, making it impossible to account for the depots’ contents or say what was missing.

“The ammo dumps we’ve seen are either partially destroyed or picked clean,” said Alexander Griffiths, director of operations for the Swiss group, which now has 35 disposal experts working in rebel territory under a $470,000 American grant. “We haven’t seen Manpads so far, and my guess is we won’t see many, because they’re such a high-value item. They would be the first items to go.”

The British mine disposal group located and destroyed two of the portable missile systems last week near Ajdabiya in rebel-held northeastern Libya, according to Kate Wiggans, a spokeswoman. Two other stray antiaircraft missiles were found in May and destroyed, she said. All four were SA-7s — Russian-made portable missiles that date from the 1970s. Experts say that many of the Libyan Manpads were probably of similar vintage, and that some may be too decayed to use.

The Mines Advisory Group has three workers in Libya but plans to expand to at least 20, operating with $486,000 from the State Department and $290,000 in British government aid, Ms. Wiggans said.

View the original article here

U.S. Is Paying European Teams to Hunt Stray Munitions in Libya

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is paying British and Swiss mine-clearing groups nearly $1 million to search for loose antiaircraft missiles in Libya and dispose of them, so they do not fall into the hands of terrorist groups.

The State Department’s hiring of the teams was prompted by fears that terrorists could use scavenged man-portable air defense systems, known as Manpads, to attack civilian aircraft around the world.

The Libyan military had amassed nearly 20,000 of the weapons before the popular uprising began in March. Most of them are still held by the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but some bases and ammunition dumps in contested or rebel-held areas have been looted, and an unknown number of the weapons have gone astray.

The search teams, who will also keep an eye out for mines and other deadly munitions, will be allowed to work in rebel-held areas away from active combat zones. American and allied authorities have told Libyan opposition figures that their cooperation would be a factor in decisions about future aid, according to American and United Nations officials who are familiar with the discussions.

“From the U.S. point of view, it was an issue of paramount importance,” said Justin Baker, officer-in-charge of the United Nations Mine Action Service, which is overseeing the weapons disposal effort in Libya. “The Libyans seemed to get the big picture of what was necessary to present a credible international face.”

The disposal effort will not affect areas or munitions still under the Qaddafi government’s control. “I can’t imagine the U.S. can do anything about Qaddafi’s inventory until they defeat him or negotiate his exit,” said Matthew Schroeder, an arms expert with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. “But even without that, securing any Manpads loose in Libya is a good thing.”

The Obama administration mentioned the anti-Manpads effort in its report to Congress this week defending the legality of its intervention in Libya. The report included classified documents detailing a “threat assessment of Manpads, ballistic missiles and chemical weapons in Libya.”

Most American and NATO warplanes have electronic evasion systems and can fly above the range of the portable missiles, but most civilian aircraft do not, and are vulnerable to attack. Nearly a dozen cargo and passenger planes have been brought down in Africa and Asia in the past decade using the missiles.

Reports have surfaced in recent weeks from officials in Algeria and Chad, and recently in the Russian news media, saying that antiaircraft missiles and launchers looted from Libyan government caches were already in the hands of a North African terrorist group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. American officials have yet to confirm any of those reports.

The two groups hired by the State Department are the Mines Advisory Group of Britain and the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action.

Officials with the groups said that almost all of the Libyan weapons depots they had surveyed in recent weeks showed clear signs of looting. Libyan opposition forces took anything they could use from the depots in the opening weeks of the conflict, they said, and there were few surviving inventory records, making it impossible to account for the depots’ contents or say what was missing.

“The ammo dumps we’ve seen are either partially destroyed or picked clean,” said Alexander Griffiths, director of operations for the Swiss group, which now has 35 disposal experts working in rebel territory under a $470,000 American grant. “We haven’t seen Manpads so far, and my guess is we won’t see many, because they’re such a high-value item. They would be the first items to go.”

The British mine disposal group located and destroyed two of the portable missile systems last week near Ajdabiya in rebel-held northeastern Libya, according to Kate Wiggans, a spokeswoman. Two other stray antiaircraft missiles were found in May and destroyed, she said. All four were SA-7s — Russian-made portable missiles that date from the 1970s. Experts say that many of the Libyan Manpads were probably of similar vintage, and that some may be too decayed to use.

The Mines Advisory Group has three workers in Libya but plans to expand to at least 20, operating with $486,000 from the State Department and $290,000 in British government aid, Ms. Wiggans said.

View the original article here

Germany and France Bolster the European Economy

 

As a result, the European Commission said in its spring forecast that prospects for 2011 looked “slightly better” than six months ago.

But it also raised some caveats, noting that the pace of recovery would be uneven across the 17-nation bloc for some time to come, that inflation remained a worry and “moreover, despite some improvement in labor markets, the prospect is for a rather jobless recovery.”

The powerhouse in Europe in recent months has been Germany, but the latest data showed that France was catching up. The two countries together account for nearly half the euro zone’s economic output.

The German Federal Statistics Office reported that gross domestic product grew 1.5 percent over the previous quarter, when harsh weather held growth to just 0.4 percent.

The figure was well above analysts’ estimates and showed that Germany’s economy had recovered fully from its worst recession since World War II. “The precrisis level of early 2008 has been exceeded,” the office said.

France, too, surpassed expectations with growth of 1 percent, the steepest increase since spring 2006, according to the statistics office Insee. That compared with an increase of just 0.3 percent in the last quarter of 2010, and a median forecast of economists surveyed by Reuters and Bloomberg News of 0.6 percent.

Over all, G.D.P. grew 0.8 percent in the euro area compared with the pace in the previous quarter, according to the European Union statistics office, Eurostat, somewhat better than economists had expected.

But the strains of austerity measures to rein in gaping deficits were evident as well.

Spain’s economy grew only 0.3 percent from the previous quarter, according to the National Statistics Institute in Madrid. Although that was slightly better than expected, it was largely attributed to exports amid weak domestic demand and high unemployment.

Portugal posted its second quarter of contraction, with its G.D.P. dropping 0.7 percent, according to Eurostat. The country is bracing for continued economic struggles as it awaits a 78 billion euro ($112 billion) bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. With the Finnish Parliament approving the bailout on Friday, European finance ministers are expected to sign off on the package early next week.

That approval had been threatened by the True Finn Party, which opposes bailouts.

Another struggling country, Greece, registered its first quarter of growth since 2008. Output grew 0.8 percent in the first quarter, according to Eurostat, compared with a decline of 2.8 percent in the final quarter of last year.

European stock markets and the euro both slipped lower. While economists called the reports encouraging, especially for Germany and France, they warned that keeping up the momentum would be difficult.

“Looking forward, we expect growth to slow down to more moderate rates, as world trade growth loses some momentum and fiscal policy tightening and higher oil prices kick in,” Aline Schuiling, senior economist at ABN Amro Bank in Amsterdam, wrote in a note. “Nevertheless, the German economy should continue to outperform the euro zone average by a wide margin.”

Oscar Bernal, an economist at ING Bank in Brussels, said that the pickup in industrial activity in France in particular “might just be a catch-up” after the year-end lull.

“All in all, we believe that the first-quarter G.D.P. growth acceleration will only be temporary,” he said, adding that the French government will still face difficulties meeting its budget-deficit reduction targets.

Strong demand for exports like automobiles has fueled the recovery in Germany, as in past recoveries. Domestic demand has typically trailed, leading to criticism from Germany’s trading partners. However, German consumers seem to be gaining confidence this time as unemployment falls sharply.

The German statistics office noted that compared with the last quarter of 2010, domestic consumption was up “markedly,” along with investment by businesses in machinery and equipment and construction.

“The growth of exports and imports continued, too,” it said. “However, the balance of exports and imports had a smaller share in the strong G.D.P. growth than domestic uses.”

The French statistics office noted that manufacturing production soared 3.7 percent in the first quarter, the strongest growth for at least 30 years. Household consumption was also up, but only slightly. Imports grew more rapidly than exports, weighing on the overall growth figure.

 

European Ventures Seek to Fill a Void in World News

As a result, readers seeking international news are increasingly spoiled for choice — especially if they read English, the common second language of many Europeans and the favored tongue for many of the new outlets.

Worldcrunch, a Web-based start-up in Paris, offers English translations of newspaper articles from around the world. Presseurop, another new site edited from Paris, does something similar for European newspapers, translating articles into 10 languages, including English.

The Huffington Post, one of the most popular American news aggregators on the Web, has Europe in its sights, saying it plans to introduce a British edition soon. In Brussels, a site called Europe Today aggregates news from across the region, gathering snippets from a variety of European sources and translating them into English. Its founders want to start a pan-European newspaper — in print, no less.

Why the flurry of activity? European readers seeking international news in English could already choose from a variety of sources, including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe and The International Herald Tribune, which is the global edition of The New York Times. British newspapers and their Web sites are available across the Continent. Other publications, like the German magazine Der Spiegel, long ago introduced Web sites in English.

“I’m not so sure there is such a big market that needs to know what is happening in Berlin or Athens or Paris, all at the same time, and those that do already have several choices,” said Piet Bakker, a journalism professor at Hogeschool Utrecht in the Netherlands and author of a blog called Newspaper Innovation. “If you ask people in Europe what kind of information they want in a newspaper, local information almost always comes out on top.”

But the people behind the ventures say there is room for new entrants, as they aim to fill underserved journalistic niches or to replace coverage that has disappeared. They also want to develop new business models or tap financing from new sources.

English-speaking media have thought “they can do it all themselves,” said Jeff Israely, editor of Worldcrunch. “Now it’s becoming clear they cannot. Professional journalists are being brought home from foreign bureaus, and that is not going to be reversed.”

Mr. Israely, a former correspondent for Time magazine in Rome and Paris, had no job last year after Time closed much of its European operation.

He founded Worldcrunch with Irene Toporkoff, a former chief executive of the French unit of Ask.com, and investments from three French Internet entrepreneurs. The site, which set up a beta version last year, made its official debut last week.

Using freelance journalists, Worldcrunch plans to publish several dozen English translations of articles from newspapers like Le Monde, Die Welt and La Stampa every week. While most of the papers are European, Hurriyet in Turkey and The Economic Observer in China are included, and Mr. Israely said he was seeking more global partners.

Some of the partner publications, like the French business daily Les échos, have English-language sections on their sites where they post the articles Worldcrunch has translated.

Worldcrunch is exploring revenue-generating ideas, including selling the translated articles via syndication networks, Mr. Israely said. The income would be shared with originating papers.

“We don’t want to kill traditional media,” he said. “We are a start-up that relies on them.”

Revenue is not something that Presseurop has to worry about, for now. The site was set up in 2009 with financing from the European Commission in Brussels, which was worried by reports of growing skepticism about the European Union in member states.

While Presseurop compiles its contents from some of the same newspapers as Worldcrunch, its mission is more focused — to “bring the European Union to life,” as its Web site puts it.

“Europeans are interested in what happens in their close neighbors almost as much as what happens in their own country,” said Gian Paolo Accardo, deputy editor of Presseurop. “There is also growing interest in what happens at the European level. Yet the media tend to cover national topics more.”

Christofer Berg, co-founder of Europe Today, said young European expatriates, who move among European capitals with an ease that their parents never felt and communicate with one another in English, were poorly served by news outlets. Mr. Berg, a Swede, said he got the idea for Europe Today while he and a friend were studying in Paris. He now lives in Brussels and is an assistant to a member of the European Parliament.

These readers find the American- and British-owned papers that are available in Europe not Continental enough, he said.

“We just want to give that mobile, educated European individual something to read, because it’s not out there,” he said.

Mr. Berg said he and his friend, Johan Malmsten, a management consultant, have invested “tens of thousands of euros” of their money in the project, which was set up in 2008. They are looking for substantial additional investment to finance their vision of creating an ink-on-paper publication with its own journalists.

In anticipation of moving into print, they plan to change the name of their Web site to The European Daily.

For would-be publishers with a pan-European vision, there is a cautionary tale: the story of The European, a London-based newspaper created by the Fleet Street baron Robert Maxwell in 1990. Under new owners, the paper was closed in 1998, seven years after his death at sea, as sales dwindled and losses piled up.

Still, the name of Mr. Maxwell’s creation has retained its allure. A German journalist, Alexander G?rlach, created a Web site two years ago under that name, offering news analyses and opinion. The site, originally published in German, recently added an English version.

 

European Ventures Seek to Fill a Void in World News

As a result, readers seeking international news are increasingly spoiled for choice — especially if they read English, the common second language of many Europeans and the favored tongue for many of the new outlets.

Worldcrunch, a Web-based start-up in Paris, offers English translations of newspaper articles from around the world. Presseurop, another new site edited from Paris, does something similar for European newspapers, translating articles into 10 languages, including English.

The Huffington Post, one of the most popular American news aggregators on the Web, has Europe in its sights, saying it plans to introduce a British edition soon. In Brussels, a site called Europe Today aggregates news from across the region, gathering snippets from a variety of European sources and translating them into English. Its founders want to start a pan-European newspaper — in print, no less.

Why the flurry of activity? European readers seeking international news in English could already choose from a variety of sources, including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe and The International Herald Tribune, which is the global edition of The New York Times. British newspapers and their Web sites are available across the Continent. Other publications, like the German magazine Der Spiegel, long ago introduced Web sites in English.

“I’m not so sure there is such a big market that needs to know what is happening in Berlin or Athens or Paris, all at the same time, and those that do already have several choices,” said Piet Bakker, a journalism professor at Hogeschool Utrecht in the Netherlands and author of a blog called Newspaper Innovation. “If you ask people in Europe what kind of information they want in a newspaper, local information almost always comes out on top.”

But the people behind the ventures say there is room for new entrants, as they aim to fill underserved journalistic niches or to replace coverage that has disappeared. They also want to develop new business models or tap financing from new sources.

English-speaking media have thought “they can do it all themselves,” said Jeff Israely, editor of Worldcrunch. “Now it’s becoming clear they cannot. Professional journalists are being brought home from foreign bureaus, and that is not going to be reversed.”

Mr. Israely, a former correspondent for Time magazine in Rome and Paris, had no job last year after Time closed much of its European operation.

He founded Worldcrunch with Irene Toporkoff, a former chief executive of the French unit of Ask.com, and investments from three French Internet entrepreneurs. The site, which set up a beta version last year, made its official debut last week.

Using freelance journalists, Worldcrunch plans to publish several dozen English translations of articles from newspapers like Le Monde, Die Welt and La Stampa every week. While most of the papers are European, Hurriyet in Turkey and The Economic Observer in China are included, and Mr. Israely said he was seeking more global partners.

Some of the partner publications, like the French business daily Les échos, have English-language sections on their sites where they post the articles Worldcrunch has translated.

Worldcrunch is exploring revenue-generating ideas, including selling the translated articles via syndication networks, Mr. Israely said. The income would be shared with originating papers.

“We don’t want to kill traditional media,” he said. “We are a start-up that relies on them.”

Revenue is not something that Presseurop has to worry about, for now. The site was set up in 2009 with financing from the European Commission in Brussels, which was worried by reports of growing skepticism about the European Union in member states.

While Presseurop compiles its contents from some of the same newspapers as Worldcrunch, its mission is more focused — to “bring the European Union to life,” as its Web site puts it.

“Europeans are interested in what happens in their close neighbors almost as much as what happens in their own country,” said Gian Paolo Accardo, deputy editor of Presseurop. “There is also growing interest in what happens at the European level. Yet the media tend to cover national topics more.”

Christofer Berg, co-founder of Europe Today, said young European expatriates, who move among European capitals with an ease that their parents never felt and communicate with one another in English, were poorly served by news outlets. Mr. Berg, a Swede, said he got the idea for Europe Today while he and a friend were studying in Paris. He now lives in Brussels and is an assistant to a member of the European Parliament.

These readers find the American- and British-owned papers that are available in Europe not Continental enough, he said.

“We just want to give that mobile, educated European individual something to read, because it’s not out there,” he said.

Mr. Berg said he and his friend, Johan Malmsten, a management consultant, have invested “tens of thousands of euros” of their money in the project, which was set up in 2008. They are looking for substantial additional investment to finance their vision of creating an ink-on-paper publication with its own journalists.

In anticipation of moving into print, they plan to change the name of their Web site to The European Daily.

For would-be publishers with a pan-European vision, there is a cautionary tale: the story of The European, a London-based newspaper created by the Fleet Street baron Robert Maxwell in 1990. Under new owners, the paper was closed in 1998, seven years after his death at sea, as sales dwindled and losses piled up.

Still, the name of Mr. Maxwell’s creation has retained its allure. A German journalist, Alexander G?rlach, created a Web site two years ago under that name, offering news analyses and opinion. The site, originally published in German, recently added an English version.

 

European Regulators Investigate Banks for Credit Swaps

European regulators in Brussels announced two sweeping antitrust investigations into the world’s largest banks on Friday, opening a second front in the battle to rein in a $600 trillion business that until now has operated mostly in the shadows. The regulators are focusing on whether the banks have shut out competitors in recent years in a bid to keep profit margins high.

The European investigations mirror one already under way by the United States Department of Justice, and follow an examination of derivatives market last year by The New York Times that highlighted efforts by large banks to control this lucrative corner of finance.

The European officials said they were investigating whether financial institutions, including international giants like Barclays, JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, used important industry committees to influence pricing and rules for a product known as a credit-default swap. These swaps provide a type of insurance against the risk of corporations or other borrowers being unable to pay off their debts.

The concern, the European Commission said, was that the banks had “an unfair advantage” in this largely opaque market. None of the banks cited by the European regulators commented on the inquiry.

“Lack of transparency in markets can lead to abusive behavior and facilitate violations of competition rules,” the European Union competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, said in a statement. “I hope our investigation will contribute to a better functioning of financial markets and, therefore, to more sustainable recovery.”

Antitrust rules in Europe tend to be tougher in these types of cases than in the United States, experts said, and the efforts in Europe may increase the pressure on Washington to open this marketplace up to more competition. The investigations also differ from other prominent antitrust cases recently because they involve many big players in the industry, rather than a single company, and the outcome will be determined by laws covering collusion rather than monopolies.

“Our big time, famous antitrust cases over the past couple years have involved a single dominant firm, like Microsoft,” said Keith N. Hylton, a professor of law at Boston University. “This is a story of a secretive group that controls the market and they’re excluding competitors.”

The result of the investigations could affect broad swaths of the economy, because banks dominate the market for many sorts of derivatives, not just credit-default swaps.

As in Europe, American regulators have expressed worries that buyers are paying higher prices for these complex instruments than they would in a more competitive market. That can affect products like airline tickets that include the cost of hedges on oil prices or local tax bills that reflect the fees cities pay to manage the risk of swings in interest rates.

The investigation announced on Friday was twofold.

One part focuses on a larger set of banks — 16 in total — that work with a data provider called the Markit Group, based in London, designing pricing procedures and indices related to these swaps. Many of the banks also hold stakes in Markit.

Markit, which the European regulators are also looking at, said in a statement that it “has no exclusive arrangements with any data provider and makes its data and related products widely available to global market participants.” And, the company said, it was “unaware of any collusion by other market participants as described by the commission.”

The second part of the investigation centers on nine banks that play a major role in a procedure called clearing that regulators in the United States and Europe have promoted for several years as a better way to manage the risks posed by derivatives.

The nine banks gained power in part through regulators’ efforts in 2008 to improve transparency in the market. At the time, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York ordered the banks to help build clearing houses for derivatives.

In return for partnering with the Intercontinental Exchange, a publicly traded company, the banks got a favorable deal with ICE that persists today. Not only did they get a major say in ICE’s rules on derivatives, the banks also share in ICE’s profits from clearing and enjoy a cap on the fees they pay for clearing.

The European Commission said the deal between ICE and the nine banks might be unfair to other players in the market. In particular, the commission criticized the cap on clearing fees. The banks are not obligated to pass on the benefits of the caps to their customers and could use part of their savings to undercut bids from new competitors.

“This could potentially constitute an abuse of a dominant position by ICE,” the commission said in a statement.

ICE declined to comment. But officials inside the banks say privately they are entitled to the caps on the fees at ICE because as part of their partnership, they sold a jointly owned clearing business to ICE. The caps, they argue, are part of the payment for that deal.

Alisa Finelli, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Washington said on Friday that the department’s investigation of the derivatives market was still underway. Last fall, she said the department was focused on “the possibility of anticompetitive practices in the credit derivatives clearing, trading and information services industries.”

Also late last year, Christine A. Varney, assistant attorney general in the department’s antitrust division, urged the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to create regulations that spur more competition in the derivatives market.

The banks named in the ICE clearing investigation are JPMorgan, Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Crédit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS. In addition to those nine, the Markit inquiry also includes Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Crédit Agricole and Société Générale.

 

Goal: This Weekend's Top European Matchups

 Albert Gea/Reuters Barcelona’s Xavi, right, will be matched up with against Xabi Alonso, Spanish teammates in midfield, now on opposite sides.

The outstanding matchups in European soccer this weekend:

Saturday

Real Madrid vs. Barcelona

On Saturday night, Spanish fever at the Bernabéu kicks off a three-week period?that will decide all of the prizes available?to the two dominant clubs of the country that currently leads world soccer.

‘‘Mes que un club’’ is the motto that ?defines Barcelona as more than a club, an expression of Catalan separatism?from Madrid rule. And this is more than a game.

Barcelona tops La Liga by 8 points; it has won all five “clásicos” against Real since Pep Guardiola became the Catalan team’s coach –- including by 6-2 in Madrid in 2009, and by 5-0 at the Camp Nou this season.

The player matchups include Xavi against Xabi Alonso, Spanish teammates in midfield, now on opposite sides. And the scoring phenomenon, Lionel Messi, on 29 goals, and Cristiano Ronaldo on 28.

Once battle is done Saturday, the teams do it all again in the Copa del Rey final next Wednesday, and then home and away in the Champions League semifinals on April 27 and May 3. Four games, each a conflict in ideology.

Manchester City vs. Manchester United

The Manchesters, 10 minutes apart, ?travel south to contest their F.A. Cup semifinal at Wembley Stadium in London.

‘‘We must take the fruit from the ?tree,’’ City’s coach, the Italian Roberto Mancini, said at the start of this past ?week, before his team lost heavily, 3-0, at Liverpool in the Premier League.

So now, if there is fruit left to pick for?the blue half of Manchester, it has to come against its nearest neighbor in the Cup.

City is without the hamstrung Carlos Tévez. United lacks the suspended Wayne Rooney. That leaves maybe only a billion dollars’ worth of talent to fight ?out a semifinal that represents an awful ?lot of envy, and enmity, now fueled by the American ownership of United and the Abu Dhabi riches of City.

Sunday

Arsenal vs. Liverpool

More Americans in both boardrooms, ?but still a very British affair on the field. ?Arsenal simply has to win to sustain a ?challenge to Manchester United atop ?the Premier League, and Liverpool is ?making a late charge toward at least ?qualifying for the Europa League next ?season.

Both sides have reason to pause in silence before the game. Arsenal’s former ?major shareholder, Danny Fiszman, ?died from throat cancer in Geneva on ?Wednesday, just two days after it was ?announced that he was selling his stake ?to the American Stan Kroenke.

For Liverpool, the weekend is the ?22nd anniversary of its darkest day,

when 96 Liverpool supporters were ?crushed to death in an overcrowded, steel-fenced pen behind a goal at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield.

When, finally, the game starts, Liverpool’s new duo of Andy Carroll and Luiz ?Suárez will attempt to expose the flaws ?in Arsenal’s defense.

Napoli vs. Udinese

Experienced judges now think that Napoli can usurp A.C. Milan and Inter Milan to take Italy’s national title south for the ?first time since Diego Maradona’s stint ?with the club.

‘‘Napoli is right to believe in the Scudetto,’’ insists the 72-year-old Giovanni Trapattoni, now the Republic of Ireland ?team coach. ‘‘The secret is to keep a cool ?head, because the last six rounds are a ?world apart.’’

Trapattoni, who won the league as both ?player and coach, views Napoli coach ?Walter Mazzarri as similar to himself. ?‘‘He’s volcanic, dynamic and effusive,’’ Trapattoni said. ‘‘And his goal-scorer, ?Edinson Cavani, is a real champion.’’

Bayern Munich vs. Leverkusen

You want personal intrigue? Jupp ?Heynckes is in the thick of it. He coaches Leverkusen, which still has a chance of ?catching Dortmund atop the Bundesliga. But next season, Bayern will be his ?team — and Bayern is desperate for ?points to try to qualify for the Champions League, with income from that competition vital toward ?any rebuilding Heynckes requires.

‘‘The public interest will be huge, perhaps even more in me because I’m switching to Bayern,’’ Heynckes told ?Kicker magazine.

Bayer has not won at Bayern since ?1989, but Heynckes predicts a 2-1 win for Leverkusen. ‘‘I’ll jump for joy when it ?happens,’’ he said.

Bolton vs. Stoke City

The second semifinal of the F.A. Cup, ?again at Wembley Stadium in London, will seem like the Lord Mayor’s show ?compared with the battle of the Manchesters. But not in Bolton or ?Stoke, where Cup glory is rare.

Note to Americans who deride soccer ?because outfield players cannot use their hands: Stoke’s principle tactical ?weapon is Rory Delap propelling the ?ball into the goalmouth from throw-ins ?on the touchlines 40 meters away.