Champions League - Paper Round: Wenger out of a job?

This morning's papers make dismal reading for Arsenal fans after their Champions League humiliation against Bayern Munich.

 Out of the FA Cup - Out of the League Cup - Out of title race - Almost out of CL - Should Wenger be OUT OF A JOB? Oliver Holt: The righteous anger of Arsene Wenger gave way to something more poignant at the Emirates. Outraged by newspaper headlines on Monday, he was humbled in front of the fans who once adored him. Sure, the supporters grew angry now and again at the impotence of their team against the might of Bayern Munich. But they have been angry for so long here that it is almost as if they are burned out with it. This is becoming a place of constant sorrow and the mood towards Wenger at times during this 3-1 mauling felt dangerously like pity. The Sun - Kiss good Bayern to another season Steven Howard: The loyalists still preach the Wenger mantra, that Arsene still knows best. But the once great man looks to have run out of both ideas and inspiration. It happens to them all — even the mighty Brian Clough. Even the best have a shelf life. So in many ways this was the result Arsenal Football Club probably needed. To show them exactly where they stand in the grand scheme of things. The Times - Arsenal left with no way back Matt Dickinson: We came to the Emirates Stadium wondering if this might be a watershed evening in the decline, and fall, of the Arsene Wenger empire. But that would load the occasion with historic significance when this, depressingly, was just more of the same. Terrible defending, an absence of leadership (the admirable Jack Wilshere aside), a team without a striker. So far so predictable. When the supporters have seen it all against Bradford City and Blackburn Rovers, it was hardly a surprise that Bayern Munich should brutally expose all the same fragilities. Daily Telegraph - Down and out Paul Hayward: Bayern are a pretty good approximation of how Wenger would probably like Arsenal to look, but in the same domestic league there would be 15-20 points between them. Jack Wilshere was one of the very few who carried the battle to Bayern in a way that Tony Adams or Vieira might have recognised. There was no turning point, no relief for Wenger and very little hope of Arsenal overturning this deficit in Bavaria, unless they can summon the spirit of Chelsea in last season’s Champions League final and somehow treble it. As Wenger himself said: “Let’s not hide the truth." The Guardian - Wenger concedes trophy hopes David Hytner: Jack Wilshere stuck to his task impressively, never hiding and always seeking to push his team. There was the creation of a couple of half-chances before the interval and he inspired a little more in the second-half. Even to the last, he gritted his teeth, burst into the area and forced Neuer into a rare safe. This, however, was Bayern's evening. They were too good for Arsenal. The worry is that Wilshere might be, as well. Independent - Don't blame Wenger James Lawton: (The possibility of a recovery) was put to the sword when Bayern’s marvellously fecund striker Mario Mandzukic ran beautifully to deliver a third goal. On the touch-line, Wenger sagged again. He had talked of the mental strength of his team and their deep-seated ability before this trial and no doubt he will walk again to create something from the debris of defeat. It is a forlorn task for a great football man for whom the weight of pressure had reached still another level.. Daily Mail - Hurtling towards oblivion Martin Samuel: Only seven clubs have overturned a first-leg home deficit in the Champions League, and a two-goal margin gapes like a chasm. Arsenal require a backs-to-the-wall performance as great as anything Chelsea pulled off last season; greater, really, considering Wenger’s team need to reverse not just form, but recent history.

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NKorean propaganda video shows Obama in flames

A new North Korean video portrays President Barack Obama and American troops in flames and says the North conducted its recent nuclear test because of U.S. hostility. The video follows a string of critical rhetoric against the United States. Another video posted earlier this month showed an American city being attacked by missiles. The most recent video, posted Sunday by a YouTube account affiliated with a pro-reunification government agency, shows a blazing fire superimposed over footage of Obama, and ends with a generic simulation of a nuclear device exploding underground. The United States currently is negotiating in the Security Council for stronger U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang following a Feb. 12 nuclear test in the far northeast, the country's third since 2006.

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Syria "Scud-type" missile said to kill 20 in Aleppo

A Syrian missile killed at least 20 people in a rebel-held district of Aleppo on Tuesday, opposition activists said, as the army turns to longer-range weapons after losing bases in the country's second-largest city. The use of what opposition activists said was a large missile of the same type as Russian-made Scuds against an Aleppo residential district came after rebels overran army bases over the past two months from which troops had fired artillery. As the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, now a civil war, nears its two-year mark, rebels also landed three mortar bombs in the rarely-used presidential palace compound in the capital Damascus, opposition activists said on Tuesday. The United Nations estimates 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict between largely Sunni Muslim rebels and Assad's supporters among his minority Alawite sect. An international diplomatic deadlock has prevented intervention, as the war worsens sectarian tensions throughout the Middle East. A Russian official said on Tuesday that Moscow, which is a long-time ally of Damascus, would not immediately back U.N. investigators' calls for some Syrian leaders to face the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Moscow has blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have increased pressure on Assad. Casualties are not only being caused directly by fighting, but also by disruption to infrastructure and Syria's economy. An estimated 2,500 people in a rebel-held area of northeastern Deir al-Zor province have been infected with typhoid, which causes diarrhea and can be fatal, due to drinking contaminated water from the Euphrates River, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. "There is not enough fuel or electricity to run the pumps so people drink water from the Euphrates which is contaminated, probably with sewage," the WHO representative in Syria, Elisabeth Hoff, told Reuters by telephone. The WHO had no confirmed reports of deaths so far. BURIED UNDER RUBBLE In northern Aleppo, opposition activists said 25 people were missing under rubble of three buildings hit by a several-meter-long missile. They said remains of the weapon showed it to be a Scud-type missile of the type government forces increasingly use in Aleppo and in Deir a-Zor. NATO said in December Assad's forces fired Scud-type missiles. It did not specify where they landed but said their deployment was an act of desperation. Bodies were being gradually dug up, Mohammad Nour, an activist, said by phone from Aleppo. "Some, including children, have died in hospitals," he said. Video footage showed dozens of people scouring for victims and inspecting damage. A body was pulled from under collapsed concrete. At a nearby hospital, a baby said to have been dug out from wreckage was shown dying in the hands of doctors. Reuters could not independently verify the reports. Opposition activists also reported fighting near the town of Nabak on the Damascus-Homs highway, another route vital for supplying forces in the capital loyal to Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since the 1960s. Rebels moved anti-aircraft guns into the eastern Damascus district of Jobar, adjacent to the city centre, as they seek to secure recent gains, an activist said. "The rebels moved truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns to Jobar and are now firing at warplanes rocketing the district," said Damascus activist Moaz al-Shami. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told a news conference a U.N. war crimes report, which accuses military leaders and rebels of terrorizing civilians, was "not the path we should follow ... at this stage it would be untimely and unconstructive." Syria is not party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC and the only way the court can investigate the situation is if it receives a referral from the Security Council, where Moscow is a permanent member.

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Man goes on shooting rampage in Calif.; 3 killed

The early morning commute was just getting under way on suburban Orange County's network of freeways when Melvin Lee Edwards pulled up to a stop sign near a busy off-ramp. It was just after 5 a.m. and Edwards, 69, was on his way to work when, police say, a fleeing murder suspect forced him out of his BMW at gunpoint, marched him across the street and shot him three times from behind as horrified commuters watched. The shooting was the second of three murders in a trail of carnage early Tuesday that spanned 25 miles — but lasted just an hour. The shooter, 20-year-old Ali Syed, killed a woman in the home he shared with his parents, killed two drivers during carjackings, injured two others and shot up cars on a busy freeway interchange before committing suicide as police closed in, authorities said. Syed, an unemployed part-time community college student, had no known motive and acted alone, said Tustin police Chief Scott Jordan. The first victim, a woman in her twenties, has not been identified and was not related to Syed, he said. The violence began at 4:45 a.m., when deputies responded to a call from Ladera Ranch, a sleepy inland town about 55 miles southeast of Los Angeles. They found the woman shot multiple times. Syed's parents were in the house at the time, fled the residence when shots were fired, and reported it, Jordan said. From Ladera Ranch, the gunman headed north and pulled off Interstate 5 in Tustin, about 20 miles away, with a flat tire, police said. A man who was waiting in a shopping center parking lot to carpool with his son saw Syed had a gun and tried to escape in his Cadillac, Jordan said. Syed ran after the car as it drove away and fired his shotgun through the back window, striking the driver in head but not killing him. The driver "noticed that he was loading his shotgun, so he simply gets back in his car and tries to escape," Jordan said. "He's driving through the parking lot trying to get away and the suspect is actually chasing him on foot, taking shots at him." Syed then crossed the street to a Mobil gas station, where he approached the driver of a pick-up who was filling his tank and asked for his keys, Jordan said. "He says something to the effect of, 'I've killed somebody. Today's my last day. I don't want to hurt you. Give me your keys,'" the police chief said. "He hands over the keys and he gets in the truck and leaves." Syed got back on the freeway, where he pulled to the side of the road at the busy I-5 and State Route 55 interchange and began firing at commuters, Jordan said. One driver was struck in the mouth and hand. He didn't have a cellphone, but was able to drive home and call police. Two other cars were hit but their drivers weren't injured, Jordan said. "All of this is happening so quickly," he said, estimating that Syed shot at drivers from the side of the freeway transition for about a minute. The shooter then exited the freeway in nearby Santa Ana but ran the curb and got his car stuck, authorities said. He approached Edwards, of Laguna Hills, who was on his way to his Santa Ana business. Syed shot Edwards three times, including in the back of the head and the back, Jordan said. Onlookers "tried to get away. They saw what was going on, they tried to get away and they called police," he said. Syed took Edwards' BMW and next popped up at the Micro Center, a Tustin business, where he shot and killed construction worker Jeremy Lewis, 26, of Fullerton. Lewis' co-worker rushed to intervene and was shot in the arm, Jordan said. Syed took the second construction worker's utility truck and fled to Orange, this time with California Highway Patrol officers in pursuit. He jumped from the moving utility truck at an intersection in Orange, about five miles away, and shot himself in the head, Jordan said.

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Family threatened by ex-cop recalls 6-day ordeal

Christopher Dorner's threats to kill officers and the families of those linked to his 2008 firing from the department was backed up with deep research that included surveillance of possible victims, officials said Tuesday. Chief Charlie Beck told reporters Tuesday that the former Los Angeles police officer "did a lot of homework." Authorities believe he even conducted surveillance near the homes of those who were threatened. Many officers lived in fear after the threats in Dorner's 11,000-word manifesto were found on Facebook on Feb. 6. Titled "Last Resort," it led the police to place about 50 officers and their families under protection. Dorner was spotted circling the neighborhood of Sgt. Emada Tingirides, who feared for the lives of her six children. Her husband, Capt. Phil Tingirides, 54, headed the three-person disciplinary panel that unanimously decided Dorner should be fired for making a false report. "I know that our family was a target, that my husband was a direct target, and for the first two or three hours, I was in disbelief," Tingirides said Tuesday as she recounted how her family spent the six days as authorities searched for Dorner. The family's six children, plus a daughter's boyfriend, were under police protection. Officers stood guard throughout the night, escorting the children to sports events and other non-routine activities that Dorner could not have anticipated. The family slept little as they awaited word on Dorner's whereabouts. Some targets decided to leave town, but the Tingirideses stayed in their Irvine home because of the logistics. Beck said the department's review of Dorner's firing is under way and will take several months. Dorner, who was black, had claimed he was subjected to racism and was targeted for reporting misconduct. He died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound during a siege of a mountain cabin near Big Bear Lake. Authorities say he went on a spree of violence that included killing four people, including two law enforcement officers, and wounding three other people. The wait was made worse by the hype about Dorner's police and military prowess in the manifesto and the media. "I had this vision of him climbing through the manholes and coming up and slitting the officers' throats and coming in silently to kill us all," Phil Tingirides said. A neighbor of the Tingirideses said he thinks he spoke with Dorner three or four days before Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence were found murdered in a condo parking lot in Irvine, where the Tingirides family lives. The man had been circling the neighborhood in a pickup truck. When the neighbor saw Dorner's photo and truck on TV, he called the police. The Tingirideses received strong support for their community, who welcomed them at sporting events despite the presence of armed officers. Phil Tingirides, a captain at Southeast Area for six years, said a group of active gang members even offered to stand guard. The family didn't know whether it would last six months or two years. After nearly a week under protection, they talked about long-term plans and considered a move to Colorado or New York. Both agreed they wouldn't return to work until Dorner was captured. It was early afternoon when Tingirides received a text message from his ex-wife, who was also under protection, alerting him to the standoff with Dorner in the San Bernardino mountains. Emada Tingirides called the children in to join them in the bedroom and they watched the end together. The Tingirideses had few contacts with Dorner prior to the mention in the manifesto. Phil Tingirides, who has been with Los Angeles police for 33 years, had never met Dorner before the disciplinary hearing and was not in touch with him afterward. Emada Tingirides, an 18-year member of the force, recalled a single conversation with Dorner in 2007, when he was dealing with the disciplinary process and brought it up to her. "He had spoken about being bummed about the incident and that he was telling the truth and he hoped it wasn't being turned into a race thing because he was black," said Emada Tingirides, who is also black. "I remember flat-out telling him this is a process; you're not going through this process because you are black. This has nothing to do with your color," she said. "If you're being honest, stick to that." Phil Tingirides said the incident has helped give him perspective about the community he polices. At 9 square miles, Southeast Area has roughly 45 homicides each year. Some residents asked why he "hunkered down" under such a threat, and he said he realized more so now what it's like to live with the threat of violence.

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