Tuesday

Barca icon Lionel Messi opts to leave Catalan giants after being told by Koeman that his 'privileges were over'


CC™ Breaking News

Lionel Messi finally decided to leave Barcelona after the club's new coach, Ronald Koeman, told him his "privileges in the squad are over."

Messi and Koeman met shortly after the Dutchman's appointment last week amid rumors the Argentine wanted to leave the club following its 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League. 

During the meeting, Messi is understood to have told Koeman that he "does not see his future at Barcelona clearly" and that he was leaning towards leaving rather than staying.

Argentine news outlet Diario Ole now reports that Koeman told Messi: "Your privileges in the squad are over, you have to do everything for the team. I'm going to be inflexible, you have to think about the team."

It is not known exactly what the "privileges" Messi previously received are, although he has previously had a significant amount of influence on the club.

The exchange is believed to be what convinced Messi his time at Barcelona is up, with the Argentine notifying the club of his intention to leave on Tuesday.

The Association Press says Barcelona has confirmed that it received documentation from the 33-year-old saying that he intends to quit.

The move, a shock for the footballing world, is likely to incite a legal battle between Messi's representatives and the club, with Messi's camp believing a clause in his contract will allow him to leave the club for free.

Barcelona, however, believe that the clause expired in June, meaning interested parties would be forced to pay closer to his buy-out clause of $825 million.

Paris Saint Germain and Manchester City are believed to be the frontrunners for Messi's signature.

INSIDER

Sunday

Trump's sister Maryanne Trump Barry calls him cruel and a liar in leaked tapes

CC™ News

In leaked recordings, Donald Trump's sister, Maryanne Trump Barry has painted an unflattering image of U.S. President, describing him as a liar and cruel.

She said Trump lacks principles and could not be trusted.

She is the second family member to give a character portrait of the man who is seeking re-election in November.

Maryanne Trump slammed her brother over his immigration policy that saw children separated from their parents at the border and sent to detention centres.

"All he wants to do is appeal to his base," she said in recordings obtained by the Washington Post. "He has no principles. None.

"His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God."

The recordings were secretly made by the president's niece Mary Trump, who published last month a bombshell memoir of the "toxic family" that produced him.

The president's younger brother Robert, who died last week, went to court to try to block its publication, arguing that Mary was violating a non-disclosure agreement signed in 2001 after the settlement of her grandfather's estate, but to no avail.

Some 950,000 copies were sold the day of the memoir's release, with the White House branding the memoir as a "book of falsehoods".

At one point in the recordings, Barry said to her niece: "It's the phoniness of it all. It's the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel."

The recordings also shed light on the source of an embarrassing claim in the memoir that the president paid someone to take a college entrance exam for him.

"He got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams," Barry said, adding she even remembered the man's name.

The president or the White House did not immediately comment on the recordings.

Saturday

Vested Interest: Bill Gates' backed CureVac jumps 18% on report it's in advanced talks with the EU for 225 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine (CVAC)

CC™ Business Venture - By Carmen Reinicke

Shares of CureVac, a German biotech firm backed by Bill Gates, surged as much as 18% in premarket trading Thursday after the company said it is in talks with the European Commission to supply doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine. 

The potential contract with the European Commission intends to provide European Union member states with up to 225 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine, once it has been proven safe and effective against COVID-19, the company said in a press release.

The contract would also give the European Commission the option to purchase an additional 180 million doses, bringing the total to 405 million doses of the potential vaccine. 

If an agreement is reached, it would mark the company's first bilateral supply deal, according to Reuters.

CureVac's mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate is currently in a Phase 1 clinical trial at different sites in Germany and Belgium, aiming to determine safety and efficacy of the drug in humans, the company said. It expects to have results from the trial early in the fourth quarter of 2020, and move to the next phase soon after. 

CureVac has gained more than 255% since its recent public trading debut through Wednesday's close.

This article was originally published in Markets Insider (Business Insider).

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Sunday

An open letter to Jagaban Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu

CC™ Opinion Letter - By Femi Fani-Kayode

“Even the obstacles on my way, I predict them before those that will bring them will start to think about them. I plan for betrayal, I plan for backstabbing, I also plan for reunion & forgiveness long before they happen. I expect nothing, I expect anything, I expect everything” — Jagaban Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

My dearest Jagaban,

You know very well that I have always liked and respected you. You will also recall that a few years ago I warned you that everything that is being done to you today would eventually be done to you given the choices you made at the time.

I bear you no malice or ill-will but in view of what is happening in your political party and given the fact that your good friend, co-conspirator and collaborator, President Muhammadu Buhari, has finally thrown you under the bus and dumped you, I am constrained to write the following.

The bitter truth is that you predicted NOTHING and you saw NOTHING. The only thing you saw were your own vain delusions and insatiable greed and the only thing you felt and that moved you was your blind ambition.

You sold your body, spirit and soul to the enemy and betrayed your people even though we warned you over and over again that those you were dining with were far smarter and far more astute than you.

Yet even though all the signs were there you dismissed our concerns, vilified us, treated us with contempt, demonized us and sought to destroy us.

Jagaban Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Now the chickens have come home to roost and the writing is on the wall. The signs are there for all to see. You betrayed and sold Lagos. You betrayed and sold the South West. You betrayed and sold the South East. You betrayed and sold the South South. You betrayed and sold the Middle Belt. You betrayed and sold the North East. You betrayed and sold the North West. You betrayed and sold the Muslims and you betrayed and sold the Christians.

Simply put you betrayed and sold EVERYTHING and EVERYONE in Nigeria just to feed and satisfy your psychotic obsession and compulsive ambition.

Like Icarus the Greek, you flew too high and too close to the sun with your wax wings, puffed up and fuelled by your hubris and pride and now you shall meet your nemesis. The spiritual wound that has been inflicted on you is irreversible and terminal and there is no going back.

The dark clouds that lie ahead of you are thick, ugly, frightful, violent and impassable: you cannot make it through them safely or survive them. Your enemies have dug a pit for you and you have already fallen into it.

They have finally stripped you naked, grabbed you by your balls and taken everything from you.

You have lost your mystique, honor, glory, self-respect, following, clout, pride, reputation and so much more.

You have also lost control of the political party that you conceived, formed, nurtured and built. The APC was your baby and now they have taken it from you and are set to kill it.

They fooled you, used you, dumped you and humiliated you and now they are going to expose you, rubbish you, malign you, break you, crucify you, investigate you and utterly crush you.

You dreamed of being Vice President in 2015 and you failed. You are dreaming of being President in 2023 and you will fail.

In all your plans what you failed to appreciate is that God alone rules in the affairs of men. You refused to acknowledge or accept the fact that the Presidency of Nigeria can only be given by God and He gives it to whom He deems fit by prophecy and divine decree.

It is not about money and power and if it were Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’adua, Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, who had neither of the two before being respectively elected as President, would never had made it.

It is about God and God alone. It is for Him alone to give. It is about His purpose, His will, His counsel, His plan and His glory.

He OWNS the Presidency and the minute any man or woman attempts to usurp His role and think that he or she can buy it or manoeuvre his or her way into it by the usage of political intrigues, guile, sagacity, wisdom, power, knowledge, money or anything else, the Lord disqualifies and rejects him.

Such a person will fail woefully and may even end up losing everything he or she values and cherishes in his futile quest.

God will never share His glory with anyone and He will never support a man or woman that is prepared to mislead, betray and sell his own people down the river just to satisfy his vaulting and insatiable ambition of becoming President.

Yet the signs were there but you refused to acknowledge or accept them.

They refused to give you a formal position in the National Executive. They ensured that some of your key loyalists in the South West turned against you and opposed you.

They refused to accept even ONE of your Ministerial nominees both in 2015 and 2019. They humiliated your protegee who you nominated as Vice President and turned him into a pliant and pathetic little errand boy with no testicular fortitude or shame.

They drove your nominee at FIRS out of office unceremoniously and have placed him under criminal investigation.

They have divided the ranks of your loyalists and turned even your hitherto most trusted lieutenants against you.

They insulted, undermined, marginalised you openly and worse of all they made it clear to you privately that they would NEVER give you power.

All this meant nothing to you and you shamelessly continued to support their evil ways and toe their satanic and murderous line.

Yet if you did not care about what they subjected you to you ought to have at least cared about what they did to Nigeria.

For the last five years our nation and people have suffered because of the calamitious choices that you made and the inexplicable and unconscionable alliances that you forged.

You propped up and supported a ruthless, heartless, corrupt, bloodthirsty and cruel regime and tyrant and a President that is clearly beside himself and whose mental and physical faculties reside in another realm and in another world.

Consequently our nation has been utterly and completely destroyed, our economy ruined and our people decimated.

They have been slaughtered, butchered, pauperised, emasculated, humiliated, marginalised, insulted and impoverished.

Hundreds of thousands of them have been murdered in cold blood in their homes, towns, villages and farms and millions have been displaced.

Millions more have been ruined and economically destroyed whilst our country remains weak, divided and the butt of cruel jokes all over the world.

Because of your choices Nigerians are being subjected to persecution, physically attacked, enslaved, humiliated, lynched, scorned, maimed, killed, disgraced, evicted and declared persona non grata both at home and in distant foreign lands whilst our foreign Embassies are being demolished by miscreants and local criminals even in supposedly friendly countries.

I sincerely hope that one day you will reflect on all this and consider the damage you have done to your kinsmen and compatriots.

Whether you do or not is left to you but one thing that is clear: for the choices you have made, for all you have done and for the sheer wickedness and greed that resides in your insensitive and dark heart you will pay a heavy price both in this world and in the world to come and the Lord will hand you over to your political enemies.

Permit me to conclude by quoting the instructive words of a tweet that I posted just yesterday after I heard about the latest developments in your party. I wrote,

“First Oshiomole is kicked out by the Court of Appeal. Then his preferred replacement, Ajimobi, falls into a coma. Then his arch rival, Giadom, is recognised by Buhari as National Chairman.

Conclusion: it is over for Tinubu. He has been thrown under the bus and retired from politics!”

I stand by those words. Happy retirement my dearest Jagaban: may you live long to see the glory of our country restored and the damage that you have done to our people repaired. Shalom.

Saturday

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.

Thursday

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

Tuesday

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

Monday

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

CC™ News

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.

Saturday

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
CC™ Global News

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.

Friday

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

CC™ Newsreel

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.