Guardiola again falters in Champions League knock-out stages without Messi.....

 CC™ Sportswire

Again, Pep Guardiola, much like he did at Bayern Munich, has failed to advance past the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League with Manchester City. There are those who will continue to say that he can't win without Leo Messi and they just might be right. Manchester City have spent close to $1 billion since Guardiola was hired but have nothing but a pair of 'tin cups', other than two Premier League titles, to show for it. That is not a viable return on investment as he was primarily hired to win the UEFA Champions League trophy.

Oblivious to the death of almost 200,000 Americans from COVID-19, Trump forces changes to showerhead rules for the sake of his hair

CC™ National News 

The U.S. government has proposed changing the definition of a showerhead to allow increased water flow, following complaints from President Donald Trump about his hair routine.

Under a 1992 law, showerheads in the U.S. are not allowed to produce more than 2.5 gallons (9.5 litres) of water per minute.

The Trump administration wants this limit to apply to each nozzle, rather than the overall fixture.

Consumer and conservation groups argue that it is wasteful and unnecessary.

The changes were proposed by the Department of Energy on Wednesday following complaints by Mr Trump at the White House last month.

"So showerheads - you take a shower, the water doesn't come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn't come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair - I don't know about you, but it has to be perfect. Perfect," he said. 

Andrew deLaski, executive director of the energy conservation group Appliance Standards Awareness Project, said the proposal was "silly".

With four or five or more nozzles, "you could have 10, 15 gallons per minute powering out of the showerhead, literally probably washing you out of the bathroom," he told the Associated Press news agency.

"If the president needs help finding a good shower, we can point him to some great consumer websites that help you identify a good showerhead that provides a dense soak and a good shower," he added.

David Friedman, vice president of advocacy at the organisation Consumer Reports, said showerheads in the U.S. already "achieve high levels of customer satisfaction", while saving people money.

The proposal could face court battles if it advances, Reuters news agency reports.

REUTERS

Leadership: New Zealand has now gone 100 days with no new local COVID-19 cases and absent of a lockdown since June

(L-R) New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with former U.S. President Barack Obama

CC™ Global News - By Aaron Holmes

New Zealand just marked 100 days with no new domestic COVID-19 cases. 

The country of 5 million people implemented strict lockdown measures in April. All restrictions on New Zealand businesses were lifted by June, but its borders remain closed to outside visitors.

Now, bars, restaurants, and sporting events are open for business across New Zealand — but health officials say they're staying vigilant for another possible outbreak.

New Zealand has made it 100 days without a single new local case of COVID-19, the country's Ministry of Health announced Sunday.

The public health milestone comes as coronavirus cases are spiking in other countries, including nearby Australia. The total number of cases in the US surpassed 5 million Sunday — by contrast, New Zealand has only reported 1,219 cases of the virus, most in April and May, and 23 of those cases remain active.

"It has been 100 days since the last case of Covid-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source," the health ministry said in a statement Sunday. "No additional cases are reported as having recovered, so there are still 23 active cases of Covid-19 in managed isolation facilities."

New Zealand took an early, aggressive approach to stop the spread of the virus. The country of 5 million people entered a hard lockdown in April that closed schools and nearly all businesses, including food delivery. By June, most restrictions were lifted in the country, but New Zealand's borders remain closed to foreigners and incoming New Zealanders are required self-quarantine for two weeks after arriving.

Now, life has returned to normal for most New Zealanders, with bars, restaurants, and sporting events open for business — but public health officials said they're staying vigilant for the possibility of another outbreak.

"Achieving 100 days without community transmission is a significant milestone," Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said in a statement on Sunday. "However, as we all know, we can't afford to be complacent."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Huge crowd defies COVID-19 protocols as erstwhile Senator and fugitive Buruji Kashamu is buried

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Sympathisers and supporters defied COVID-19 protocols to pay their last respects as the remains of the late former senator, Buruju Kashamu was laid to rest on Sunday.

Kashamu, who represented Ogun East Senatorial District in the 8th National Assembly was buried at about 12:55 pm at his Ijebu-Igbo home.

Kashamu died at the First Cardiology Consultants, in Lagos on Saturday after he was struck by the deadly COVID-19 (Coronavirus).

However, a huge crowd of sympathisers and loyalists who were at the event could be seen to have defied the recommended COVID-19 protocols amid the burial rites.

Kashamu, born on 19 May, 1958 served as a Senator representing Ogun East in the 8th National Assembly.

He was a chieftain of the People's Democratic Party, PDP in Ogun State. He was appointed as the chairman, Organization and Mobilization Committee of the PDP in the South West zone of Nigeria.

In 2018, he was expelled from the People's Democratic Party, a decision later voided by an Abuja High Court in October 2018.

He was the 2019 Ogun State gubernatorial election candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party.

Kashamu started his education at Ansarudeen Primary School, Ijebu Igbo and left in 1972 to complete his primary school education at St. John Modern School, Lagos. He then attended evening classes at Igbobi College while working as a licensing agent.

He later went to London where he took courses in Business Management at Pitman College, London. He was awarded a Honorary PhD by the unaccredited, diploma-mill Cambridge Graduate University, located in Massachusetts, at a privately organised ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria.

Kashamu's legal case, Criminal Action No. 94 CR 172-15. (United States of America, v. Buruji KASHAMU) remains on file at the United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.

Tinubu, Kashamu's brethren in corruption, berates Obasanjo over his 'disparaging' remarks on Kashamu's death

Buruji Kashamu was wanted for drug trafficking in the United States

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Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress Leader may have sent an unmistakable reaction to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s condolence message on the death of Senator Buruji Kashamu.

In Tinubu’s condolence message, he underscored the need to show kindness to the dead, a quality missing in Obasanjo’s own.

Tinubu said Kashamu’s death demonstrated the “transience of human life and rekindles the fact that death is inevitable for every mortal.”

Without addressing Obasanjo directly, Tinubu dropped a line of moral lesson to the former president:

“It behoves on us to be kind to the dead”.

On Saturday, Obasanjo had issued a controversial condolence message to Ogun governor, Dapo Abiodun, by dredging out the past of the senator.

“The life and history of the departed have lessons for those of all us on this side of the veil. Senator Esho Jinadu (Buruji Kashamu) in his lifetime used the maneuver of law and politics to escape from facing justice on alleged criminal offence in Nigeria and outside Nigeria.

“But no legal, political, cultural, social or even medical maneuver could stop the cold hand of death when the Creator of all of us decides that the time is up”, Obasanjo wrote.

His message triggered debate, as to whether he had not broken the cultural norm, by speaking ill of the dead.

The jury is still out to decide whether he was right or wrong.

Tinubu in his own message, expressed deep shock and sadness about Buruji’s death.

According to him, Buruji’s death has lengthened the grotesque list of important personalities that have been lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Texas man jailed for spending COVID-19 loans on Lamborghini, strip clubs

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Instead of speeding off in a $200,000 Lamborghini Urus, a Texas man, Lee Price III got a slower ride to jail this week. 

This was after U.S. authorities arrested him for using $1.6 million in government pandemic aid to go on a spending spree.

Lee Price III, 29, was charged with fraud after he secured two government loans under the Paycheck Protection Program to pay employees he did not have, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Instead he spent the funds on lavish goods like a sports car and a Rolex watch, as well as real estate, an F-350 pickup truck, and thousands of dollars at Houston strip clubs, the statement said.

Price secured two loans: Price Enterprises Holdings allegedly received more than $900,000, while 713 Construction was approved for over $700,000.

Neither firms has employees and "the individual listed as CEO on the 713 Construction loan application died in April 2020, a month before the application was submitted," according to the complaint.

Congress approved the PPP program in late March to help small businesses survive the coronavirus pandemic, granting loans that could be forgiven if they were used to pay wages, rent and utilities.

U.S. election 2020: Trump says opponent Biden will 'hurt God'

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U.S. President Donald Trump has said Joe Biden is "against God", ramping up attacks on his Democratic rival and foreshadowing an ugly election battle.

The remarks, during a trip to Ohio, came as Mr Trump tries to make up ground in the crucial Midwestern states that were his path to victory in 2016.

"He's against God. He's against guns," said the president, a Republican.

Mr Biden, an avowed Catholic, will take on Mr Trump in November. Opinion polls suggest the Democrat currently leads.

The former U.S. vice-president has spoken frequently about how his faith helped him cope with the deaths of his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car accident.

His campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement on Thursday: "Joe Biden's faith is at the core of who he is; he's lived it with dignity his entire life, and it's been a source of strength and comfort in times of extreme hardship."

The president said of Mr Biden earlier in the day in Cleveland, Ohio: "He's following the radical left agenda.

"Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God.

"He's against God, he's against guns, he's against energy, our kind of energy."

Mr Trump has been accused of using the platform of the presidency for political gain by injecting campaign-style rhetoric into taxpayer-funded official engagements intended to communicate U.S. government policy.

At a washing machine factory later on Thursday, the president kept up the onslaught on his challenger.

"I wouldn't say he's at the top of his game," the president said.

Both the Trump and Biden campaigns have traded accusations that their candidate has dementia. Mr Trump is 74 and Mr Biden 77.

In an advertisement released by the Trump campaign this week, the Democrat was depicted as "hiding" alone in his basement, using an image that had been edited to remove several other people.

Religion has previously come up in this campaign. Mr Biden accused the president of cynically using a Bible for a photo op outside a church in early June after protesters - who were described by journalists at the scene as peaceful - had been forcibly dispersed by law enforcement outside the White House.

Throughout his tenure, Mr Trump has enjoyed a mostly strong backing from evangelical Christians.

In his list of "six promises" for a second term unveiled in Ohio on Thursday, Mr Trump focused heavily on economic recovery, vowing to turn the U.S. into a premier medical manufacturer, launch "millions" of manufacturing jobs and bring back American jobs and factories from abroad.

The pledges echo many of those from his 2016 campaign, a platform of economic populism often credited with his wins in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

But the president's message of prosperity has been thwarted this time around by the coronavirus outbreak. The U.S. economy shrank at a 32.9% annual rate between April and June as the country faced lockdowns and spending cuts during the pandemic, marking the steepest decline since the government began keeping records in 1947.

Now, polls show Mr Biden with leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - three industrial states his Republican rival won by margins of less than 1% to claim victory in 2016. And in Iowa, Ohio and Texas, where Mr Trump won last time by 8-10%, he is currently neck-and-neck with Mr Biden.

Source: BBC News

POLL: Trump in trouble as nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of his handling of COVID-19, protests, Russia.....

CC™ Politico

Nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of President Donald Trump‘s handling of three major challenges facing the country — the coronavirus pandemic, nationwide unrest over racial inequality and relations with Russia — in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, a sign of the obstacles that his reelection bid faces just three months before Election Day.

With the White House confronting the most significant reckoning on race since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the worst public health crisis in a century, and a hostile Russia reminiscent of the Cold War, Americans have little confidence in the job Trump is doing in all three of these major areas.

Trump closes out the month of July the way it began, with his approval on the coronavirus in the low 30s. His approval sits at 34%, right about where it was earlier this month (33%) when it reached a new low since ABC News/Ipsos began surveying on the virus in March.

In the new poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, Trump’s approval is also deeply underwater — at 36% — for how he is handling both the protests over racial inequality and relations with one of the country’s greatest geopolitical foes, Russia.

An election that comes down to be a referendum on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, his response to the race movement or his dealings with foreign adversaries spells trouble for the incumbent president. With all three crises, Trump only consistently has the support of his own party and his base.

Republicans back Trump’s handling of the coronavirus (74%), the protests (78%) and Russia (80%) by overwhelming margins. Democrats are almost uniformly in opposition to Trump’s managing of the three issues, with approval of the president in single-digits on the pandemic (7%), the unrest (8%) and Russia (8%).

Roughly 1 in 5 Republicans disapprove of the president on coronavirus (26%), the protests (22%) and Russia (20%), and just over 9 in 10 Democrats disapprove on all three matters.

Independents trace the country’s attitudes, with his approval falling between 30% to 33% and his disapproval landing between 66% and 69% on COVID-19, the demonstrations and his approach to Russia. About half of Trump’s base — white, non-college educated Americans — approve of his leadership on the outbreak (50%), the protests (51%) and Russia (51%).

The latest numbers for Trump are particularly problematic on his combative response to the nationwide protests — as his approval is in dire straits across racial lines. Only 45% of whites, 7% of Black Americans and 28% of Hispanics approve of Trump’s handling on this specific issue.

Over half of whites (55%), and clear majorities of Black Americans (92%) and Hispanics (72%), disapprove.

Meanwhile, less than one-third of the country believes that sending federal officers to respond to demonstrations in cities makes the situation better.

A slight majority (52%) view the response as exacerbating the situation, and 19% say it doesn’t have an effect either way.

Even among Americans who are supposed to be Trump loyalists, only 42% of white non-college educated Americans say that the presence of federal agents improves the situation. Over a third (37%) of this demographic see the move as making the situation worse.

The new poll comes after the president made a hard pivot back to pushing for an unproven treatment for the virus, hydroxychloroquine, against the advice of top health experts — after appearing to break from months of downplaying the virus’s severity by encouraging the country to wear masks and practice social distancing last week.

It also comes amid the backdrop of clashes in Portland, Oregon, where the president dispatched federal agents into the city to halt the nightly protests that were sparked two months ago by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis in May. On Wednesday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said that she was assured that officers would begin a phased withdrawal from the city — an announcement that Trump appeared to contradict by Thursday morning, arguing that the officers would only leave once “safety” was restored.

His disapproval on his handling of relations with Russia, in particular, comes at a precarious time for the president, who has dismissed U.S. intelligence that indicates Russia paid the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan.

Trump, in an interview with Axios earlier this week, said he “never discussed” the matter in a July 23 phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and when pressed on why he didn’t raise it, he said, “That was a phone call to discuss other things and frankly that’s an issue that many people said was fake news.”

This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs‘ KnowledgePanel® July 29-30, 2020, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 730 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.0 points, including the design effect. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.

Trump in trouble as nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of his handling of COVID-19, protests, Russia: POLL originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Four car crash in South Federal Way on 288th and Military road

CC™ Breaking News

There has been a multiple car crash (four vehicles in total including a Federal Way Police Department patrol vehicle) in South Federal Way on 288th and Military road. 

There are no known reports of any fatalities and several police and State Patrol vehicles are currently on the scene as well.

The incident occurred shortly before 2pm PST and as of the time of this reporting (3:30 pm PST), no ambulance or EMT personnel have been sighted at the scene. 

That again is surpirisng (although not uncommon) but the the level of police activity at the scene (there were close to ten patrol vehicles including those of the Washington State Patrol) at the time of this reporting certainly raises some eyebrows.

We will update with more details as they come in. 

U.S. President Donald Trump in another show of executive and personal intemperance says he will ban TikTok in the United States

CC™ Breaking News 

During a flight from Tampa on Friday, the president told press pool reporters traveling on Air Force One he plans to ban the Chinese-owned social media platform from operating in the United States as soon as Saturday.

In response, TikTok’s U.S. General Manager Vanessa Pappas recorded a message saying, “We’re not planning on going anywhere.”

This is another glaring example of a man who just can't help himself as it relates to his lack of comportment, personal discipline, requisite civility and basic restraint.

More to follow.....