Wigan 4-0 New Castle

Wigan made it five wins out of seven as they moved three points clear of the relegation zone and dented Newcastle's hopes of finishing in the top four.

Victor Moses headed home to open the scoring and fired a second past Tim Krul less than two minutes later.

Shaun Maloney slotted in to extend the lead and Franco di Santo curled a brilliant fourth just before half-time.

Papiss Cisse struck the bar and post but Newcastle were soundly beaten as Wigan secured three vital points.

The Latics looked destined to go down for much of the season but incredibly they have taken 15 points from a possible 21, with two games remaining.

Roberto Martinez's men have lost just three of 13 fixtures since the start of February and will be confident of extending their Premier League stay to eight years.

Their feat was all the more remarkable given that Newcastle arrived at the DW Stadium following a run of six consecutive wins.

They remain in fourth place but know if Tottenham beat Blackburn at White Hart Lane they will drop to fifth on goal difference

Fourth spot could ensure qualification for the Champions League - but only if Chelsea lose this year's final against Bayern Munich on 19 May.

Wigan passed and moved with pace and intent from the very first minute, utilising their wide players to pin their opponents back.

Their reward came when Emmerson Boyce crossed from the right and Moses held off Mike Williamson to nod the opener.

It was the first goal Newcastle had conceded in four games and they looked shell-shocked.

Yet that was no excuse for the space they afforded Wigan on their next attack as Maloney and Moses combined to feed Jean Beausejour.

The Chilean's cross was only partially cleared by Fabricio Coloccini and an on-rushing Moses slotted first-time into the bottom corner.

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Newcastle tried to respond - Hatem ben Arfa curling a set-piece narrowly off target - but the visitors were horribly out of sorts.

Further punishment arrived when Di Santo threaded a pass behind Davide Santon for Maloney to race clear and finish across Krul.

Newcastle complained that James McCarthy was only cautioned for a challenge on Yohan Cabaye and then went close as Demba Ba drilled wide.

However, that was their only period of in the ascendancy all half and two minutes into stoppage time Wigan struck again.

Maloney shifted possession to Di Santo and with Cheik Tiote standing off, the Argentine unleashed a sensational curling chip.

Newcastle memorably came from 4-0 down at half-time to draw 4-4 with Arsenal last season and boss Alan Pardew would have sought a similar response on this occasion.

Yet it was Wigan who started the second half with greater urgency and Moses sliced wide before drawing a one-handed save from Krul.

Newcastle eventually generated some momentum and Cisse's curling effort came back off the bar, Ben Arfa shot just wide and Cisse inexplicably headed Ben Arfa's cross against the post from five yards.

It took a goal-line clearance from Coloccini to deny Wigan substitute Conon Sammon, but the result was never in doubt.

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Suarez lifts Liverpool ahead of final meeting with Chelsea

(CNN) -- A Luis Suarez hat-trick earned Liverpool a 3-0 win against Norwich City in the English Premier League on Saturday to give the Merseysiders a boost ahead of next weekend's FA Cup final against Chelsea.

Two clinical first-half strikes by the Uruguayan put Liverpool in charge.

The first coming from a Steven Gerrard layoff in the 24th minute, the second drilled low past Norwich goalkeeper John Ruddy four minutes later.

But the game will be remembered for Suarez' outrageous third in the 83rd minute which saw him lob Ruddy with a looping drive from just inside the Norwich half.

The win keeps Liverpool in eighth place with 49 points while Norwich slip to 13th.

Newcastle United's chances of Champions League football next season suffered a setback as they were thrashed 4-0 by Wigan at the DW Stadium.

After recent momentous wins over Manchester United and Arsenal, Roberto Martinez's men edged a little closer to safety with a commanding display.

The home side went 2-0 up within 15 minutes as Victor Moses found the target in the 13th and 15th minute and three points were effectively sealed before the half was out.

Shaun Maloney made it 3-0 nine minutes before the break and Franco Di Santo made the game safe moments before half time.

Fifth-placed Tottenham Hotspur will move ahead of Newcastle on goal difference if they beat Blackburn Rover at White Hart Lane on Sunday.

Wigan move ahead of Queens Park Rangers who travel to Chelsea in Sunday's other Premier League fixture.

League leaders Manchester United face second-place Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Monday night.

A win for Alex Ferguson's side (who are currently three points ahead of City) would all but guarantee a 20th league title.

Third-placed Arsenal also dropped points after only managing a 1-1 draw away to Stoke.

Peter Crouch put the home side ahead in the ninth minute but the lead only lasted six minutes as Robin van Persie notched up his 35th goal of the season in all competitions.

Everton cruised to a 4-0 win over Fulham at Goodison Park to consolidate seventh place in the table. A brace from Nikica Jelavic and one each for Marouane Fellaini and Tim Cahill ensured a comfortable win for the Toffees.

Bolton Wanderers remain in the bottom three after a draw 2-2 at Sunderland.

Kevin Davies opened the scoring for Bolton in the 26th minute only for Danish striker Nicklas Bendtner to equalize 10 minutes later.

James McClean put Martin O'Neill's side ahead in the 55th minute but Davies' second goal 20 minutes from the end salvaged a point.

The Midlands derby between Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion ended goalless, leaving Villa perilously close to the relegation zone with 37 points, three points ahead of 18th-placed Bolton.

Wolverhampton Wanderers, who were relegated last weekend, wound up drawing 4-4 with Swansea City at the Liberty Stadium.

Swansea had the best of a first half goal-fest, heading into the break 4-2 up. But two second half goals from the visitors saw Wolves salvage an unlikely draw

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Facebook: Parents 'help children break age limits'

Children under the age of 13 are not supposed to have Facebook accounts 

Parents are helping their children to set up under-age profiles on social networking site Facebook, Children's Minister Tim Loughton has said.

This meant that children were getting involved in social media at too young an age, he suggested.

He added that parents had a responsibility to monitor youngsters' online activity.

The comments came in a debate on "sexting" - youngsters sending explicit pictures to each other.

Mr Loughton, who has three teenage children, said parents had a responsibility to monitor youngsters online, adding: "Having a Facebook page, you should be at least 13 to do that. That is not legally enforceable.

"We know, and I know from personal experience, the temptations for younger children to set up a Facebook site and get involved with those social media.

"And I also know that in too many cases they do that aided and abetted by parents. So it's not just a question of giving information to parents, it's making sure parents are acting responsibly on behalf of their children too."

When individuals set up Facebook accounts, they are asked to certify that they are 13 or over by entering a date of birth. If the date of birth shows them to be younger they are prevented from continuing.

A Facebook spokeswoman said it set the age limit for setting up accounts to comply with international regulations on children accessing social media.

It also said it applied more stringent protections and security settings for its younger users aged between 13 and 17.

'Risk'

This involves limiting who can see what teenagers post on their accounts to people in their social networks - Facebook friends, friends of friends, and people they have a prior connection with.

"We maintain added protections and security settings for teens (age 13-17) that ensure their timelines and posts don't show up in public search results," Facebook says on its website.

Mr Loughton's comments came as a Labour MP Ann Coffey urged the government and mobile phone companies to do more to combat "sexting" during a Westminster Hall debate.

The Stockport MP said youngsters who sent explicit images to their boyfriends and girlfriends risked having those pictures shown around playgrounds.

She said: "Once taken and sent, the sender loses control of these images and they could end up anywhere from being passed all around school to being viewed and passed on by paedophiles."

'No silver bullet'

She also claimed pornographic pictures willingly uploaded to the internet could be shared with the world without the subject's consent, a practice known as "doxing".

She added: "A key problem is that young people see the texts as harmless fun but they quickly lead to sexualised conversations and grooming.

"Because it is not face-to-face interaction, young people will also behave in a different way without realising the risks they are exposing themselves to until it is too late."

She called on mobile phone firms to pay for advertising campaigns warnings youngsters about the dangers of sexting, and demanded more training for shop workers selling handsets.

Mr Loughton said there was "no silver bullet" to combat the problem, but added: "The concept of peer-to-peer sexting is now really raising its head and can have far-reaching consequences. That needs to be addressed."

He said the government took "very seriously our responsibility to ensure the response in all areas of child protection and safeguarding is as effective as possible".

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Samsung takes cell phone market lead from Nokia

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Nokia is now the world's second-largest cell phone company, ending a 14-year run at the top.

Samsung took over the top spot, shipping 92 million cell phones in the first quarter, compared to the 83 million that Nokia shipped, according to IHS iSuppli. It was the first time since 1998, when Nokia surpassed Motorola (MMI), that Nokia was outpaced in cell phone shipments.

Making matters worse for Nokia (NOK), S&P downgraded the Finnish company's debt rating to "junk" on Friday. That follows Fitch's similar downgrade earlier in the week.

Nokia's decline has been a long time in the making, with shipments sinking by nearly 30% since their peak just after Apple's iPhone first went on sale in 2007.

Samsung's rise mirrored Nokia's fall from grace. The South Korean company controlled just a third of Nokia's cell phone market share in 2008, and it has been rising steadily ever since.

The overall cell phone market includes popular smartphones like Apple's iPhone but also older and less expensive phones that don't feature as many apps or other bells and whistles. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) sold35 million iPhones in the first three months of this year.

Nokia was the smartphone leader as recently as a year ago, but it has since fallen to a distant third place.

But Samsung has also vaulted to near the top in smartphones. It was in fourth place in the smartphone race a year ago, behind Nokia, Apple and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM). This past quarter, Samsung sold just 2 million fewer smartphones than market leader Apple, according to IHS iSuppli.

Samsung has made a huge marketing push, and its fast, thin and unique devices have rivaled the iPhone in design and functionality. That has helped Samsung surpass HTC and Motorola as the Google (GOOG,Fortune 500) Android leader over the past year.

"It's clear that the company's continued investments in smartphone hardware and software research and development are paying off," said Wayne Lam, senior wireless analyst at IHS.

Next month, Samsung is expected to unveil the third generation of its very successful Galaxy S lineup. It has also embraced a number of different styles and sizes of devices, including its heavily marketed Galaxy Note tablet-smartphone hybrid, which comes with a pen.

"The company is not only cashing in on the market's shift to smartphones, but is also succeeding in other cell phone product categories," Lam continued. "Samsung is likely to make further progress in market share in 2012."

Meanwhile, Nokia's transition to Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) Windows Phone is just getting underway, and its feature phone business is stalling.

That's not surprising, since the smartphone category is forecast to be the only part of the cell phone market to grow this year: Global smartphone shipments are set to rise by 35% this year, IHS iSuppli expects, while feature phones, entry-level phones and ultra low-cost phones will all decline.

That's a problem for Nokia: Smartphones accounted for just 14% of the company's cell phone shipments last quarter, compared to 34% for Samsung. 

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Iraqi artist inspired by George W Bush shoe thrower

London (CNN) -- To Iraqi artist Hanaa' Malallah her shoes are weapons of mass destruction that appear in many of her works.

Her inspiration is an incident in 2008, when Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at former president George W. Bush, five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The invasion was aimed at rooting out Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, but U.S. inspectors eventually conceded that he did not have any.

Malallah's exhibition, "Iraq -- How, Where, For Whom?" held jointly with the British duo kennardphillipps, opens in London on Friday April 20.

Her shoes appear in a photograph labeled I.W.M.D (Iraq's Weapon's of Mass Destruction). They are also embroidered on an American flag, on an Iraqi flag, and the originals are in a glass display case.

"They are my shoes," said Malallah. "I bought them after I arrived in Britain and I used them for three years."

She added: "Shoes are our way of resistance. It's all we have. My resistance is through art."

Malallah, formerly a university art lecturer in Baghdad, says she left Iraq in late 2006 after two of her colleagues were killed and she received threats from militias. She now lives in Britain.

"They started to kill a lot of academics," she said. "I was a woman without a headscarf, teaching in the university and I received threats, so I had to leave.

"Two months after I left, a group of militias entered my home and stole everything. My sister called to say my flat had gone.

"I don't have anyone left there now and I think I would lose my life just like that if I went back. It's hard. There are no words to describe it, so I use my art to explain."

Malallah said her art reflects three decades of living with war in Iraq, from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s through the first Gulf War in 1991 and subsequent sanctions, to the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 and the chaos that followed.

Much of her work uses what she describes as the "ruins technique," using burnt fabric to depict destruction, often on abstract canvases.

She said she experienced the war by "tasting" it, as there was no electricity or media to provide information.

Describing life in Baghdad since 1991, Malallah said: "Baghdad was heavily bombed in the First Gulf War. It was hell out of the world. I saw destruction every day and I lived with death every day.

"There was a shortage of food, water and electricity, but you have to survive. Many managed to survive and a lot didn't. Three of my students were killed working in the artistic area.

"I speak to my colleagues by phone and there are still big problems and people dying every day for lots of reasons."

She added: "I hated Saddam Hussein, but we were better off than now. At least there was a government. If we want to remove a dictator, we have to do it by ourselves."

Malallah's work is shown alongside that of the British duo kennardphillipps, Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps, who started collaborating in late 2002 in opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq.

"We were going on all the anti-war demos, but it was evident the invasion was going to happen anyway and we wanted to find another way to protest against it," said Phillipps.

They create work from media images of the war, such as photo montages and collages from newspaper clippings.

Their most famous work, a photomontage called "Photo Op," is a digitally altered image that shows a smiling Tony Blair, the British prime minister at the time of the invasion, in front of an explosion.

Another, called "Presidential Seal," shows the American president's empty podium, with the microphones pointing to a backdrop of newspaper clippings and photos which have been smashed with a hammer, creating an impression of debris and chaos.

Malallah hopes the exhibition will eventually be shown in Iraq. She said most professional artists had fled the country, leaving a dearth of new talent.

"It's a very bad situation for artists in Iraq at the moment," said Malallah. "They have no contact with the outside world.

"There are a lot of good artists who have left the country and it has really affected those who are left."

"Iraq -- How, Where, For Whom?" opens at The Mosaic Rooms, in London, on Friday April 20 and runs until June 8, 2012.

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Spanish unemployment hits record 5.64 million

Spanish unemployment has hit a new record high, official figures have shown.

The number of unemployed people reached 5,639,500 at the end of March, with the unemployment rate hitting 24.4%, the national statistics agency said.

The figures came hours after rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Spanish sovereign debt.

Official figures due out on Monday are expected to confirm that Spain has fallen back into recession.

Earlier this week, the Bank of Spain said the economy contracted by 0.4% in first three months of this year, after shrinking by 0.3% in the final quarter of last year.

Other figures released on Friday showed that Spanish retail sales were down 3.7% in March from the same point a year ago, the 21st month in row sales have fallen.

'Huge crisis'

In the first three months of the year, 365,900 people in Spain lost their jobs.

The country has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union and it is expected to rise further this year.

The rate has risen sharply since April 2007, when it stood at 7.9%.

"The figures are terrible for everyone and terrible for the government... Spain is in a crisis of huge proportions," Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said.

The new government has announced reforms to the labour market, including cutting back on severance pay and restricting inflation-linked salary increases, that it hopes will ease the problem.

These measures have angered unions, which have organised widespread general strikes in protest.

The government has also introduced drastic spending cuts designed to reduce its debt levels and meet deficit targets agreed with the European Union. These cuts are contributing to Spain's economic contraction.

"In Spain today, a cycle similar to Greece is starting to develop," said HSBC chief economist Stephen King.

"The recession is so deep that when you take one step forward on austerity, it takes you two steps back."

The interest rate, or yield, on Spanish government bonds traded in the secondary market rose following the release of the unemployment figures and the S&P downgrade.

The yield on 10-year bonds rose to 5.96%, up from 5.81%, suggesting investors were becoming more wary of Spain's ability to repay its debts.

Also on Friday, the interest rate Italy has to pay to borrow money from international investors rose. In a sale of 10-year bonds, the government offered a rate of 5.84% compared with 5.24% at a similar sale a month earlier.

However, the government raised 5.95bn euros ($7.88bn; £4.85bn), towards the top end of its target range.

'Comprehensive' reforms

Late on Thursday night, the ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut Spain's rating by two notches to BBB+, warning that the country might have to take on more debt to support its banking sector.

S&P predicts the Spanish economy will shrink by 1.5% this year, having previously forecast 0.3% growth.

However, the agency did make a number of positive comments about the government's attempts to bolster Spain's economy.

"We believe that the new government has been front-loading and implementing a comprehensive set of structural reforms, which should support economic growth over the longer term," S&P said.

"In particular, authorities have implemented a comprehensive reform of the Spanish labour market, which we believe could significantly reduce many of the existing structural rigidities and improve the flexibility in wage setting."

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