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The Indian owners of relegated Premier League club Blackburn Rovers, chicken farm operators Venky's, ducked the media on Tuesday amid a storm of criticism of their disastrous 18-month management.

British press reports slammed the absence of the Venky's family at the club's make-or-break Monday night clash with Wigan which saw the club lose 1-0 and confirm their drop from England's money-spinning top division.

Fans, who have vented their anger at Venky's and hapless manager Steve Kean all season, released a chicken onto the pitch during the game wrapped in a Blackburn flag with a one-word message for the owners: "Out."

The rain-soaked evening featured chants calling for Venky's to sell the club. One banner held by a fan standing on the pitch after the final whistle decried the management and owners as "Cowboys & Indians".

Arvind Chauhan, spokesman for the company based in the western city of Pune which paid 23 million pounds (37 million dollars) for Blackburn in November 2010, declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Reaction in the Indian media was muted, with pundits saying Venky's had failed to generate any excitement in their home market despite interest in the English Premier League (EPL) taking off.

Their main promotional effort was in October last year when Blackburn travelled to the subcontinent for an exhibition match, becoming the first EPL team to play in the vast market of 1.2 billion people.

But barely 6,000 fans turned out for the game against a local side, and the trip was noted mostly for an advertising campaign that featured leading players eating fried chicken in the dressing room.

"There was really no Indian connection with Blackburn," India's best-known football writer Novy Kapadia told AFP. "Venky's ownership did not help our football in any way.

"I am not surprised Venky's are not popular in England. Their biggest mistake was to remove Sam Allardyce as manager as soon as they took over the club."

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Venky's ducks press over Blackburn relegation

By Frank Thorp NBC News

Two congressional leaders vowed Tuesday to investigate how word of a successful operation to foil a bomb plot by a Yemen-based al-Qaida affiliate leaked to reporters for the Associated Press.

This leak could have been devastating and still could have significant long term damage, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said after a closed door briefing on the operation. I believe it's absolutely essential a full investigation is carried out as to who was responsible for this leak.

I can't emphasize how closed this was, how compartmentalized it was, and how secret it was, and yet the fact that it could have gotten out in any kind of detail at all, that even a hint of it could have gotten out, is really, really shocking.

When you have a leak it could cost American lives, your allies lives, he told reporters at the Capitol. It also deters people from giving information. So, it's very important that we make sure that we have a sensitive investigation, it has to be a classified, need-to-know type of situation.

The Associated Press broke the story Monday of the foiled plot by members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to detonate on a U.S.-bound airliner a refined version of an underwear bomb used in two previous failed terror plots.

Insider thwarted underwear bomb plot, triggered drone strike, US officials say

The news service said it had learned about the plot last week but agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish a story immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way. Once officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP said it decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday.

If word of the operation had leaked out prior to the weekend, it could have disrupted an attack in Yemen by a U.S. Predator drone that U.S. officials say killed Fahd al-Quso, whom they described as director of external operations at AQAP, who was involved (in the bomb plot) in an intimate fashion.

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Lawmakers vow investigation of bomb plot leak

Robert Blaha says he's asked Congressman Doug Lamborn to debate no fewer than 16 times.

"I can't get him to respond," says Blaha. "I can't get him to debate."

Consider it the incumbent advantage. No matter how much your opponent presses for a debate, you generally can just ignore the issue.

"There's lots of people who would say that's good politics," says Jeff Crank, head of Americans for Prosperity in Colorado, "and you probably would find lots of strategists who would say that.

"I think that it's a bit disrespectful to voters."

When Crank ran against Lamborn in 2008, he couldn't get the congressman to debate then, either.

According to the Blaha campaign's spokeswoman, Ashlee Springer, they are willing to accommodate Lamborn's wishes for time, venue, you name it. KOAA-TV has made a standing offer to moderate any debate.

Lamborn's spokeswoman, Catherine Mortensen, declined to respond to requests for comment. But on Friday, the Indy caught up with Lamborn at a prayer meeting on the steps of Colorado Springs City Hall. When asked if he knew how many times Blaha had asked him to debate, Lamborn responded, "I don't care what his count is; I don't keep track of the guy."

The third-term congressman went on to question why his challenger would even want to step into the ring. "I'd think that he'd be afraid to debate," he says, "after I trounced him at the Pikes Peak Firearms Coalition."

At the only forum the two have shared since Blaha announced his candidacy four months ago, the longtime businessman made a gaffe. While answering questions from the crowd of guns' rights supporters last month, Blaha stated that he opposes the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller a decision that maintained the individual right to bear arms. Blaha has since clarified that he misspoke, and that he supports the Supreme Court's decision.

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Mum's the word

Austerity politicians may have been given the boot in Europe, but austerity measures will remain.

Europeans voted for change over the weekend, and some politicians even promised it. But the reality of today's Europe is that little change is possible.

While voters in France and Greece clamored for government stimulus and an end toausteritymeasures that have cut hundreds of thousands of government jobs, economists come back to a simple fact: Only Germany might have the needed cash, and it has no intention of sending it around the continent.

Despite French President-elect Francois Hollande's proclamation that growth, notausterity, is the new path for Europe, there's little chance of that becoming true in the near term. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday invited Hollande to Berlin for economic talks expected next week _ the new president's first international trip _ but she noted that the European fiscal treaty that mandates spending cuts and strict discipline won't be renegotiated. European growth, Merkel said, requires first getting Europe's spending and debt under control.

And while Greeks plead for a path out of their ruined economy, there is only political paralysis. The leader of the party that finished a weak first place in Sunday's voting abandoned his attempt to form a new coalition government after just six hours.

Richard Whitman, a European policy expert at the University of Kent in England, said German opposition _ and fiscal sanity _ mean European leaders don't have many options.

"It's clear that we'll see a lot of lip service to stimulus growth spending, but it will all be politics," Whitman said. "Germany has done the maximum of what they're going to do."

If Merkel offers some concessions to Hollande and the pro-stimulus camp, however, experts say that Greece, with all its structural problems, shouldn't expect even that much. France may have serious debt issues, but Greece's per capita debt is almost double France's While France is a founding member and central player in the new Europe, Greece from the start has been little more than a sentimental member, allowed into the eurozone despite widespread sentiment that it's a nation with a great history but a bleak future.

Holger Schmieding, chief economist of Berenberg Bank, Germany's oldest private bank, said that it would be a mistake to lump Germany's willingness to listen to the plans of the new French president with pleas for a lesser demands on Greece. Greek voters on Sunday tossed out the two parties that had backed a plan ofausteritymeasures under the terms of an international economic bailout, but it wasn't clear what a new government in Athens would be able to do differently.

"Greece is a separate issue _ they have been told what is expected and there will be no change of course," Schmieding said. "But for Hollande, there will be something from his visit to Berlin. To justify falling in line with a course ofausterity, he has to come away with something. It won't be much, but it will look good in headlines."

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Austerity: Dirty word or hard truth?

Press freedom celebrated with unity talks and ethics review

By Bob Howarth

DILI (Pacific Scoop / Pacific Media Watch): The tiny new nation of East Timor, now known as Timor-Leste, has celebrated World Press Freedom Day with an hour-long forum involving its leading journalists and in-house gatherings at media houses.

The most positive news to come from Timor-Leste came from the forum in Tetum language on the national network TVTL.

Moderated by TVTL anchor, Elitorio Souza , veteran journalist and head of the Syndicate of Journalists Ote Otelio was joined by Mouzhino Lopes, director of the new daily newspaper Independente, and the head of the Association of TL journalists, Tito Felipe.

Lopes, who is secretary-general of the TL Press Club, is well-known to many Pacific journalists after graduating in 2005 from Divine Word University in Madang, PNG.

The wide-ranging forum covered issues such as salary ranges (where the average reporter earns about US$120 monthly), ethics and political and commercial challenges and the rights of media workers.

The forum on May 4 found virtually no examples of outright political pressure or threats to reporters during the recent presidential elections, apart from an incident where a candidate seized a tape in Los Palos from reporter who failed to understand the concept of off-the-record briefings.

Training and access to internet was also a major issue.

Limited internet access For example the University of Timor-Lestes journalism students have no on-campus internet access and have to pay $1 an hour at internet cafes for research and communication.

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Press freedom celebrated with unity and ethics review