Brazil's joker in the pack

Roberto Carlos officially announced his retirement from playing last week, bringing the curtain down on a remarkable career. In over a decade at Real Madrid, the diminutive left-wingback won La Liga four times and the UEFA Champions League three, while he earned 125 caps for Brazil and got his hands on the FIFA World Cup™ Trophy in 2002.

And while Roberto Carlos helped bring joy to fans’ faces with those successes, and through his vicious, swerving free-kicks, he was also renowned for bringing smiles to team-mates on the training ground – as the above photo illustrates! It shows the man who began his career at Uniao Sao Joao poking his finger up Robinho’s nose as he attempted to balance the ball on his forehead during Germany 2006!

A great player, a great prankster!

Usain Bolt celebrates 100m gold with Swedish women's handball team

Usain Bolt didn't need to leave the athletes' village to toast his 100 metres gold, preferring to celebrate with three members of the Swedish women's handball team

Bolt beat his training partner Yohan Blake to retain his 100m title setting a new Olympic record of 9.63 seconds. The 25-year -old decided to enlist the help of Gabriella Kain, Isabelle Gullden and Jamina Roberts, who lost all five of their matches and finished bottom of their group in the handball tournament, to celebrate his victory.

The photo is slightly surprising considering that Bolt had insisted there would be no celebrations as he has still has to try and retain his 200m crown. “This gold means I am one step closer to being a legend so I'm working toward that,” Bolt said. “That's just one step, I have the 200m to go so I can't celebrate.”

A Swedish newspaper reported that the trio asked Bolt’s coach for accreditation so that they could congratulate the sprinter and spent an hour-and-a half in the sprinting legends bedroom.

The Swedish ladies were not his only admirers and after becoming the fastest man on earth he even got a kiss from last night’s silver medallist in the 400m Christine Ohuruogu.

Meanwhile Andy Murray had a more British Olympic celebration after defeating Roger Federer at Wimbledon. A photo of his two dogs wearing his gold and silver medals that he managed to secure yesterday was posted on Twitter.

Martinez: Setbacks make you stop and think

The year 2012 has certainly been incident-packed and filled with mixed feelings so far for Javi Martinez of Athletic Bilbao and Spain. At club level, the versatile midfielder/central defender played a key role in Los Leones’ run to the finals of the 2011/12 Copa del Rey and UEFA Europa League, only to taste defeat in both deciders.
Martinez was then part of the Spanish squad that successfully defended their continental title at UEFA EURO 2012 in Poland and Ukraine, though he played just 25 minutes of La Roja’s glorious campaign. Yet, with winners’ medals from the EURO and the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ safely in the bag, this gritty performer did not want to stop there.
Mere days after victory in the EURO, Martinez agreed to captain Spain's squad at the Men’s Olympic Football Tournament at London 2012, with La Selección heavily backed for a medal despite a 12-year absence from the competition. That particular dream ended almost as quickly as it began, however, as successive 1-0 Group D defeats against Japan and Honduras respectively confirmed Spain’s exit before the first phase was even over.
Nor did their final game in the section provide much consolation, as the Spanish rounded off an ill-fated bid with a 0-0 draw, thus heading for home clutching a solitary point and without having scored a single goal. Despite the disappointment, skipper Martinez agreed to sit down with FIFA.com for an in-depth look at what went wrong for Luis Milla’s charges on British soil.
FIFA.com: Looking back, what was the verdict on the two opening defeats that ended Spain’s hopes at this Olympics?
Javi Martinez: The conclusion we drew is that we’ve wasted a great opportunity, because we had a great team and a great coach. But football’s like that sometimes and we simply didn’t perform to the best of our ability. That said, I do think the team played well and deserved much more than we got, we just didn’t get any luck going our way. For example, in the game against Honduras we racked up 24 shots at goal, we hit the woodwork three times, had ten clear chances and the ball wouldn’t go in the net. And they had two chances and scored once. There’s not much you can do about that.
Against Morocco, with only professional pride at stake, we wanted to bounce back and take all three points before heading for home, but that wasn’t to be either. But, in any case, I think we should be proud of how we played, particularly against Honduras. Sometimes the ball just won’t go in and there’s nothing you can do. The main regret we do have is that a lot of hard work has gone to waste.

We’ve wasted a great opportunity, because we had a great team and a great coach... we simply didn’t perform to the best of our ability.

Javi Martinez on Spain's Olympic failure

Ill fortune aside, do you think any other factor, such as tactics or fitness, played a part?
No, football’s like this. Sometimes matches go well and other times they don't. I don’t think we played so badly to deserve this end result. The team did everything they could but the ball wouldn’t go in, and that’s that.
Do you think that the Spanish contingent will take their fondest memories from sampling the atmosphere in the Olympic Village and taking part in the opening ceremony?
Being at these Games is a very special experience. It’s very difficult just to qualify, and then it’s hard to win a place in the squad. We had a lot of ups and downs on the way here too, while Spain hadn’t appeared at this tournament for 12 years so we should be proud of that as well. To have experienced the opening ceremony first-hand, been part of the athletes’ parade and visited the Olympic Village are memories that we’ll never forget. We were also fortunate enough to bump into several French and Spanish NBA players and had our photos taken with them. It was just a shame that I couldn’t meet Lebron James, Kobe Bryant or Usain Bolt, as they’re all people I really look up to.
It has been a particularly intense summer for you, given you plunged straight into Olympic preparations shortly after the end of EURO 2012.
I could definitely do with a few days’ holiday, to give my mind and body a bit of a rest. It was a long season with my club and then there were two tournaments on top of that, so I need some rest before going back to club duty.
Last season with Athletic, coach Marcelo Bielsa’s first term at the helm, you reached the Copa del Rey and Europa League finals. What are your goals for this coming campaign?
Without a doubt, we’re aiming to improve on last season. The club, the players and the fans are all happy with how we performed but, even though there was a very good vibe surrounding what we achieved, losing those two finals left us with the feeling of unfinished business. We’ve got to keep on working hard to improve as players and keep honing our game.
Despite the Olympics not going to plan, do you think there’s enough talent coming through the Spanish youth national-team ranks to continue the senior side’s run of success?
Without a shadow of a doubt. We’ve had a very good few years. We’re also European champions at U-19 and U-21 level, we’ve got a good production line of young talent and there's total faith in them. It can be very easy for everybody to become accustomed to success, which can very often mean that during a good run of results or a positive period people don’t realise how hard it is to keep winning.
This kind of setback makes you stop and think – it makes you realise how much work it takes [to succeed]. It might appear like we won the EURO easily but that wasn’t the case at all. Bitter experiences like these Olympics make you fully aware how fine a line there is between success and failure.

Wisconsin Sikh temple gunman named as Wade Michael Page

The gunman suspected of shooting six people dead at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Sunday was a US Army veteran, according to US media.

The attacker, shot dead by police during the attack in a Milwaukee suburb, was Wade Michael Page, 40, law enforcement sources reportedly said.
US officials said Page had been discharged from the military after being demoted.
Police will hold a press conference at 11:00 EDT (15:00 GMT).
The gunman, described by witnesses as a bald, white man, entered the Wisconsin Sikh Temple temple in Oak Creek on Sunday morning and opened fire.
He killed six people and critically injured three people, including a policeman, before another officer shot the attacker dead.
'Tattoos investigated' The wounded police officer was shot eight or nine times in the face and extremities at close range with a handgun. But he was expected to make a full recovery, police said.
Authorities said the gunman had used a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, which was recovered at the scene.

Wade Michael Page reportedly served in the US Army between April 1992 and October 1998, ending his career at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

A federal official told the Associated Press news agency that Page was discharged after being reduced in rank from sergeant to specialist, although the official did not give a reason for the demotion.
According to US media, Page was a psychological operations specialist.
He was reportedly disciplined in June 1998 Page for being drunk on duty, and discharged for "patterns of misconduct".
Police said on Sunday they were treating the attack as an act of domestic terrorism.
But FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Milwaukee division, Teresa Carlson, said on Sunday night: "While the FBI is investigating whether this matter might be an act of domestic terrorism, no motive has been determined at this time."
On Sunday night a warrant was issued allowing the authorities to search Page's house in the town of Cudahy, a few miles from the temple.
Special Agent Thomas Ahern, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, told ABC News that Page had tattoos which might suggest the attack was a hate crime.
But a member of the temple told CNN the attacker had a 9/11 tattoo on one arm.
The names of the victims have not yet been made public, although the president of the congregation and a priest were reportedly among the victims.
The temple in Oak creek was founded in 1997 and is said to have a congregation of about 400 worshippers.
Wisconsin, which passed a law in 2011 allowing citizens to carry a concealed weapon, has some of the most permissive gun laws in the US.

NASA Keingintahuan: berhasil mendarat di Mars

The US space agency has just landed a huge new robot rover on Mars.

The one-tonne vehicle, known as Curiosity, was reported to have landed in a deep crater near the planet's equator at 06:32 BST (05:32 GMT).
It will now embark on a mission of at least two years to look for evidence that Mars may once have supported life.
A signal confirming the rover was on the ground safely was relayed to Earth via Nasa's Odyssey satellite, which is in orbit around the Red Planet.
The success was greeted with a roar of approval here at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The first pictures from Mars began to be fed back immediately; high-resolution images will come later

Within minutes, the robot was returning its first low-resolution images - showing us its wheels and views to the horizon. A first colour image of Curiosity's surroundings should be returned in the next couple of days.
Engineers and scientists who have worked on this project for the best part of 10 years punched the air and hugged each other.
The rover's Twitter feed announced: "I'm safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!"
The descent through the atmosphere after a 570-million-km journey from Earth had been billed as the "seven minutes of terror" - the time it would take to complete a series of high-risk, automated manoeuvres that would slow the rover from an entry speed of 20,000km/h to allow its wheels to set down softly.

The Curiosity team had to wait 13 tense minutes for the signals from Odyssey and the lander to make their way back to Earth.

Data suggested the vehicle had hit the surface of Mars at a gentle 0.6m/s.
"It looked at least with my eyeball that we landed in a nice flat spot. Beautiful," said Adam Steltzner, who led the descent operation.
The JPL director, Charles Elachi, added: "Tonight was a great drama that was played. I felt like I was in an adventure movie but I kept telling myself this is real; and what a fantastic demonstration of what our nation and our agency can do."
That sense of national pride was picked up by US President Barack Obama's chief science adviser, John Holdren.
"Landing the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity on the Red Planet was by any measure the most challenging mission ever attempted in the history of planetary exploration," he said.
"And if anyone has been harbouring doubts about the status of US leadership in space, well there's a one tonne automobile-sized piece of American ingenuity sitting on the surface of the Red Planet right now."

This is the fourth rover Nasa has put on Mars, but its scale and sophistication dwarf all previous projects.

Its biggest instrument alone is nearly four times the mass of the very first robot rover deployed on the planet back in 1997.
Curiosity has been sent to investigate the central mountain inside Gale Crater that is more than 5km high.
It will climb the rise, and, as it does so, study rocks that were laid down billions of years ago in the presence of liquid water.
The vehicle will be scouring Mount Sharp in the crater's centre looking for evidence that past environments could have favoured microbial life.
It is a region that Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger told the BBC's Horizon programme reads like a "book about the early environmental history of Mars".
Scientists warn, however, that this will be a slow mission - Curiosity is in no hurry.
For one thing, the rover has a plutonium battery that should give it far greater longevity than the solar-panelled power systems fitted to previous vehicles.
"People have got to realise this mission will be different," commented Steve Squyres, the lead scientist of the Opportunity and Spirit rovers put on the surface in 2004.
"When we landed we only thought we'd get 30 sols (Martian days) on the surface, so we had to hit the ground running. Curiosity has plenty of time," he told the BBC.
Initially, the rover is funded for two Earth years of operations. But many expect this mission to roll and roll for perhaps a decade or more.
Join Jonathan Amos for a special Discovery programme on Curiosity from JPL on the BBC World Service at 19:30 BST, Monday. The programme will be available for download after broadcast.

• (A) Curiosity will trundle around its landing site looking for interesting rock features to study. Its top speed is about 4cm/s
• (B) This mission has 17 cameras. They will identify particular targets, and a laser will zap those rocks to probe their chemistry
• (C) If the signal is significant, Curiosity will swing over instruments on its arm for close-up investigation. These include a microscope
• (D) Samples drilled from rock, or scooped from the soil, can be delivered to two hi-tech analysis labs inside the rover body
• (E) The results are sent to Earth through antennas on the rover deck. Return commands tell the rover where it should drive next

THG Caption Contest: WIN FREE J. LO TICKETS!

Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias fans, listen up.
The pair of music superstars is currently on tour, and THG will be handing out TWO FREE TICKETS to their concert Sunday, August 12, in Anaheim, Calif.

All you have to do? Just follow these simple steps:

1. Register for The Hollywood Gossip or Log-In if you already have an account (ONLY REGISTERED USERS ARE ELIGIBLE TO WIN).
2. Submit your best caption(s) for the pic below.

That's it! The winner will pick up his/her tickets at Will Call and will be responsible for all other expenses related to the trip. We will announce a winner and contact him or her on Wednesday, August 8, at 9:00 a.m. Good luck to all!

Cher Lloyd: The Next Carly Rae Jepsen?

Cher Lloyd's new song "Want U Back" is drawing comparisons to Carly Rae Jepsen's smash hit "Call Me Maybe" with its infectiously bubbly beats.
While Cher, 19, is British, she and the Canadian Carly Rae both got their musical starts on reality shows (X Factor and Canadian Idol, respectively).
Carly Rae holds the #1 spot on the pop chart and has inspired more Call Me Maybe covers than we can count. Safe to say it's the song of the summer.
Cher's "Want U Back" is up to #12 and climbing, though.


In order to boost its popularity, Lloyd will be releasing a bonus version with Snoop Dogg (sorry, Snoop Lion) on her new album Sticks + Stones.
What do you think of Cher Lloyd's track? Hit material?