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Business

European Tremendous League met with widespread fury

European Super League met with widespread fury

SALFORD, ENGLAND – MARCH 16: Salford City co-owner Gary Neville oversees the Sky Bet League Two game between Salford City and Colchester United at Moor Lane on March 16, 2021 in Salford, England. Sports stadiums across the UK remain tightly restricted due to the coronavirus pandemic as government social distancing laws ban fans in venues, resulting in games being played behind closed doors. (Photo by James Gill – Danehouse / Getty Images)

James Gill – Danehouse | Getty Images Sports | Getty Images

LONDON – A new breakaway football competition known as the European Super League has received widespread criticism and opposition from former players, politicians, governing bodies, experts and fans.

The ESL, announced on Sunday, should keep up with the UEFA Champions League format, which is currently Europe’s best annual club competition.

Twelve of Europe’s richest teams have signed up to be founding members of the new league, and JPMorgan has provided $ 6 billion in debt funding.

Teams that have agreed to play in the league are as follows:

  • England: Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal.
  • Spain: Barcelona, ​​Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid.
  • Italy: Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan.

“I’m disgusted … utterly disgusted,” said Gary Neville, a former Manchester United defender, regarding the Super League during an interview on Sky Sports News on Sunday.

Notable absences at ESL include French Paris Saint Germain and German Bayern Munich. However, three more teams will join the league ahead of the inaugural season, which will take place “as soon as it becomes practical”.

The ESL will eventually have 20 clubs and 15 of them will be permanent which means they cannot be relegated. This is controversial as teams currently have to qualify for the Champions League every year and can be promoted and relegated from the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga and Italian Serie A.

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has been named the first chairman of the Super League.

“We will help football at all levels and bring it to its rightful place in the world,” Perez said in a statement on Sunday. “Football is the only global sport with more than 4 billion fans. As large clubs, we are responsible for responding to your wishes.”

The already wealthy founding teams of ESL will receive a total of 3.5 billion euros for infrastructure investments. According to The Financial Times, they will receive a welcome bonus of up to EUR 300 million each for joining the Super League.

At the same time, they plan to keep playing and making money in their existing leagues where some other clubs have struggled to stay in business.

New York-listed shares of Manchester United rose 8% in the pre-market due to the ESL announcement, while Juventus shares in Italy rose nearly 14%.

“Anti-Soccer Pyramid Scheme”

“If the fans are one against this anti-football pyramid scheme, it can be stopped,” said former English striker Gary Lineker, who is now presenting the BBC’s “Match of the Day” TV highlights.

Neville, now an expert and commentator on Sky Sports News, said he was particularly “disgusted” with Manchester United and Liverpool, which have long had close ties to the working-class communities that surround their northern England grounds.

“You’re leaving in an unrivaled league that you can’t relegate from,” said Neville. “We have to take back power in this country from the clubs at the top of this league, and that includes my club.”

The billionaire owners of the clubs who signed up as part of the ESL have been accused of being greedy.

“They have nothing to do with football in this country,” said Neville. “There is more than 100 years of history in this country of fans who have lived and loved these clubs and who need to be protected.”

An independent regulator should be put in place to ensure checks and balances are maintained in the English Premier League, he added.

Liverpool fan Tom Cook told CNBC: “It is transforming football into a US sports model where there is no relegation / promotion and the biggest teams control the broadcast rights.”

As a result, they are “getting richer and richer – with a questionable amount of that wealth supposedly trickling down the football pyramid,” added Cook.

UEFA is fighting back

UEFA said in a statement on Sunday that it is united with the top European leagues in its “efforts to stop this cynical project. This project is based on the self-interest of some clubs at a time when society is more than ever Solidarity needs. ” “”

It added: “We will look at all the measures available to us at all levels, both in the judiciary and in sport, to prevent this from happening. Football is based on open competition and athletic merit; it cannot be otherwise.”

The ESL was announced the day before the plans for an expanded and restructured Champions League were signed by UEFA. Planned changes reportedly include 100 more games per season and more financial ties between top clubs.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he supported the position of the European football association UEFA in rejecting the prospect of a breakaway Super League.

“The President of the Republic welcomes the position of French clubs to refuse to participate in a European Super League football project that threatens the principle of solidarity and sporting merit,” the French Presidency said in a statement sent to Reuters.

“The French state will support all steps taken by the LFP, the FFF, UEFA and FIFA to protect the integrity of national or European federal competitions,” added the Elysee, referring to the national, European and global governing bodies for football.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote on Twitter that the Super League “would be very harmful to football and we are helping football authorities to take action”.

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Business

ERCOT Managers Resign After Widespread Storm Outages

ERCOT Managers Resign After Widespread Storm Outages

Five officials will step down from the board of directors that oversee Texas’s electricity grid after it has been pushed to the brink of collapse by the recent winter storm. Some of the coldest temperatures the state has seen in generations leave millions of people without electricity.

The Texas Electric Reliability Council, which regulates the flow of electricity to more than 26 million people in the state, was blamed for the widespread outages, prompting the governor, lawmakers, and federal officials to investigate, particularly into system failures, in preparation for cold Weather.

The five board members who plan to resign at a meeting scheduled for Wednesday morning were all from outside Texas, a point of contention for critics who questioned the wisdom of outsiders who play such an influential role in the state’s infrastructure.

In a statement filed Tuesday with the Public Utility Commission, four board members said they would resign “to give leaders a free hand in future directions and to remove distractions.” In a footnote, the filing added that a fifth member also resigned.

The departing are Sally Talberg, the chairperson and former state utility who lives in Michigan. Peter Cramton, vice chairman and professor of economics at the University of Cologne and the University of Maryland; Terry Bulger, a retired bank clerk who lives in Illinois; Raymond Hepper, a former officer with the agency that oversees the New England power grid; and Vanessa Anesetti-Parra, who oversees regulatory affairs for a company headquartered in Canada. Another person who should fill a vacant seat, Craig S. Ivey, has retired from the 16-member board.

The board became a target of blame and control after last week’s winter storm precariously brought the state’s power grid close to a total blackout that could have taken months to recover. To prevent this from happening at the last minute, the council known as ERCOT ordered rolling outages that plunged much of the state into darkness and skyrocketed electricity prices. Some customers had bills well over $ 10,000.

The weather crippled the system when power plants were taken out of service and pumps used to produce the natural gas needed for refueling were frozen over.

State officials said ERCOT had given assurances that the energy infrastructure was prepared for winter conditions.

“But those assurances turned out to be devastatingly false,” said Governor Greg Abbott in a statement, adding, “When the Texans needed power urgently, ERCOT didn’t do its job and the Texans shivered in their homes with no power.”

When the state was struck by the crisis, the realization that some board members lived outside the state became a source of outrage, so ERCOT initially removed information about them from its website. Officials said the members had been harassed and threatened.

A state lawmaker said it is considering proposing laws that would prevent non-Texas residents from serving on the board.

“If you don’t live here, if you don’t see what we are experiencing, and you are still tasked with making decisions on our behalf, it is unacceptable,” said Jeff Leach, a state official whose district includes part of the suburbs from Dallas said in a recent interview.

The resignations come as lawmakers prepare to hold hearings on the blackouts on Thursday. The Harris County attorney, whose jurisdiction includes Houston, said Tuesday that he was opening a civil investigation into decisions made by ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission, among others, and the Travis County district attorney, which also includes Austin said he had opened a criminal investigation.

In a statement, ERCOT said: “We look forward to working with Texan legislation and thank the outgoing board members for their services.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said late Monday that its enforcement department would be reviewing natural gas and electricity wholesale activities in Texas, presumably to determine if there was any illegal anti-competitive or price manipulation.

The grid outages caused wholesale electricity prices to rise from $ 1,200 per megawatt hour to about $ 9,000.

Energy analysts said the outage affected not only oversight from ERCOT, but also power utilities across the state who hadn’t prepared their systems for harsh weather conditions.

“Heads had to roll, but I don’t think that’s going to change,” said Michael E. Webber, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s easy to blame the non-government board members of the network operator, rather than the government gas producers and power plant owners.”

These operators failed to spend the money on weathering their instruments, pipelines and electrical wiring to withstand cold weather because they were not required to do so by government regulations.

Ivan Penn and Clifford Krauss contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Health

Widespread Covid vaccines will likely be accessible within the spring, says Walgreens exec

Widespread Covid vaccines will be available in the spring, says Walgreens exec

Walgreens pharmacist Jessica Sahni is preparing a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at The New Jewish Home long-term care facility on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York on December 21, 2020.

Bryan R. Smith | AFP | Getty Images

Covid vaccines are still hard to come by, but that should change by spring, said Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and healthcare at Walgreens.

“I would say the end of March and the beginning of April will be the schedule for you to have more general use of it in all of our branches across the country of pharmacies and other places where you can start vaccinations,” he said Tuesday at CNBC’s “Healthy Return” virtual event.

Walgreens is part of a federal pharmacy program that is delivering cans direct to drug stores this week. The pharmacy chain plans to start vaccinations in some of its stores in 15 states, as well as Chicago and New York City, on Friday. However, all of these pharmacies will have limited supplies and vaccines will only be available to Americans who are high priority due to factors like age or health.

On Tuesday, the Biden government announced it would also begin shipping vaccines to community health centers next week – part of their strategy to reach out to black and low-income families who may or may not have a grocery or drug store nearby other barriers have access, such as a lack of transportation.

Around 43.2 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine were administered across the country on Tuesday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 9.8 million people received two doses of the shot. Both vaccines currently under emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration – Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines – require two doses.

Gates said he was confident that a vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson could increase supply. The drug company filed for emergency approval with the FDA last week after data was released showing its vaccine was about 66% effective against the virus. It’s a one-shot vaccine and can be stored in the refrigerator for months.

“It’s just good news for all of us that there will be more vaccines,” he said.