Members of the Rangers International supporters club staged a peaceful protest on Wednesday to show their displeasure at the team’s woeful performance in the Nigeria Premier Football League this season.
The Flying Antelopes, seven-time champions of the NPFL are yet to record a win from three games this season.
Rangers have drawn one and lost two of their opening three games.
The supporters called for the appointment of a new General Manager as well as a Team Manager.
The two positions remain vacant after Davidson Owumi and Amobi Ezeaku left the post at the end of the last campaign.
The Coal City club will be away to Niger Tornadoes in their next league game on Sunday.
Nigeria’s Super Falcons will intensify their preparations for the forthcoming 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in February as they will be among the teams invited to take part in a 4-Nations tournament in Mexico.
According to the report from Mexico, the competition is tagged Revelation Cup and Super Falcons of Nigeria, Costa Rica, Colombia and host Mexico are the countries invited to participate.
The organiser confirmed this through the Mexico Football Federation’s social media handle.
“The tournament will be a home run with Mexico, Nigeria, Costa Rica and Colombia to be played between February 13 to 22, 2023.
The country with the most points wins the tournament”, Director Arturo Fizsman stated.
Millions of Americans remain under a winter storm watch as a powerful winter storm pushes north east, leaving heavy snow, flash floods and severe thunderstorms in its wake.
The National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings on Wednesday, as the storm moved across north-west Florida and southern Georgia.
It comes a day after a tornado ripped through Texas, causing severe destruction along its route.
There have been no reported deaths.
Dayton, Ohio, broke a 108-year-old record for snowfall after recording 5in (12cm) of snow Wednesday, according to the NWS. The previous record of 4.9in was set in 1915.
Snowfall from Texas to Maine is expected to reach between 4 and 8in, according to NWS, while northern New England and surrounding areas may see eight to 12in, possibly resulting in dangerous travelling conditions in the area.
More than 120,000 homes and businesses in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas were without power as of Wednesday evening, according to PowerOutage.us. Chicago’s Midway International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport accounted for most of the nation’s flight cancellations.
Wednesday’s storms are a continuation of low-pressure systems that developed off the coasts of Texas and Florida that have started to move north, said Rachel Cobb, a meteorologist with the NWS.
“It’s pulling a lot of energy and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and that’s what started the storms yesterday,” Ms Cobb told the BBC.
“And now as it tracks north and north east, it’s meeting the cold air and we’re seeing the heavy snow, one to two inches an hour.”
A council is set to spend £1.35m on a solar farm that is hoped will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50 tonnes a year and cut energy bills.
Oldham Council signed off the 2018 plan to install 2,700 solar panels in Failsworth.
The plan was paused in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic after it was argued forecasted low energy prices meant the farm had “no viable business case”.
The recent energy crisis prompted the council to return to the proposals.
Market testing carried out in 2022 found that one energy supplier’s informal export price was triple the amount of what it was when the solar farm was proposed.
The initiative could see council bills reduced as well as generating a significant amount of renewable energy, said the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Councillor Abdul Jabbar, deputy leader and cabinet member for finance and low carbon, said he was “excited” by the project, which would see panels installed on a currently disused site.
Mr Jabbar added: “This will now help us reduce energy bills and carbon emissions alongside contribution to our carbon neutrality targets we have for council buildings and street lights.
“At the same time, we will improve the previous landfill site and their will be wildflower planting, invasive species of weed will be removed and we will maintain access through the site for wild animals.”
A report made to the council cabinet said the project could in the future “provide electricity for an Oldham Local Energy Market to assist residents and businesses with their energy bills”.
Council leader Amanda Chadderton described Mr Jabbar as Oldham’s “very own Greta Thunberg”.
She added: “The potential for the site is quite significant, we have really ambitious targets in Oldham around carbon neutrality and this will go a long way to ensuring we achieve these.”
Nigeria Super Eagles coach, Jose Peseiro, has declared his goals for the AFCON competition in 2023.
After a string of disappointing performances, including an early departure from the Africa Cup of Nations and the loss of their World Cup ticket to Ghana, the Portuguese succeeded Austin Eguavoen in May of last year.
Since taking charge in the Africa Cup of Nations qualification campaign, the 62-year-old has guided Nigeria’s men’s national team to two wins against Sierra Leone and Sao Tome and Principe.
However, the 2013 AFCON champions have lost five more games against Mexico, Ecuador, Algeria, Costa Rica, and Portugal, raising doubts about his ability to lead the Super Eagles to victory.
However, the 2023 AFCON event is scheduled to take place in the Ivory Coast, and the former Venezuelan coach has revealed that his ambition as the coach of the Super Eagles
The ex-Sporting CP coach tells the Mirror that “Our ambitions when I signed the contract with Nigeria, the big goal and main goal is we want to win the next AFCON,”
Peseiro, who has started burning his midnight oil to understand his players, revealed how convinced he is with the quality of players he has to win the AFCON tournament.
“Of course, we know the power of the national teams who played in the World Cup, like Senegal, Cameroon, Morocco, who had a fantastic tournament. But we know that the quality and capacity of the national teams that didn’t play in the World Cup, like Egypt, Algeria, and others.
Lionel Messi is unwilling to put pen to paper on a new contract with Paris Saint-Germain and could leave the Ligue 1 champions in the summer.
The 35-year-old is out of contract in June, but he was expected to sign a one-year extension with PSG.
Marca reports Messi is not motivated to win more titles in France or the Champions League again, after winning the 2022 World Cup with Argentina.
He may return to Argentina or move to the MLS, with David Beckham’s Inter Miami interested.
Barcelona aren’t expected to try and re-sign their greatest ever player due to their financial woes.
Messi would need to agree to a significantly lower salary if he returns to Barca, but that is also the case if he moves to Argentina.
An emotional return to his boyhood club Newell’s Old Boys has been rumoured.
Miami would also not be able to match Messi’s salary at PSG, but in the past, he has previously spoken about playing in the MLS and owns a property in Miami.
The Lagos State government has said that health insurance is compulsory for all residents of the state regardless of their socio-economic status.
The Lagos State Head of Service, Mr. Hakeem Muri-Okunola, disclosed this during the 2022 Ilera Eko Day organised by the Lagos State Health Management Agency.
In his keynote address at the event which witnessed the unveiling of the Ilera Eko Service Charter, Ilera Eko Enrollee Handbook, and Bill of rights, Muri-Okunola said the state government was determined to make healthcare accessible to all residents.
“Lagos State health insurance plan is not meant for only civil servants but for every resident of the state. The administration of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu made the health sector a focal point of his administration and this is one of the initiatives in the health sector which is to ensure accessibility of healthcare to all the residents.
“It is meant for every resident irrespective of socio-economic status and circumstances. The bill of rights and enrollee handbook will let the beneficiaries know their rights and responsibilities when they are accessing healthcare.
“Ilera Eko is the Social Health Insurance of Lagos State backed by the Lagos State Health Scheme Law of 2015 which makes it compulsory for all residents of Lagos state to have health insurance, regardless of their socio-economic status, regardless of your ethnicity whether they are poor or part of the corporate Lagos, the informal sector, whether you are an adult or a child, everyone is supposed to have health insurance cover,” he said.
Speaking earlier at the event, the state Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi said the government was working to improve the quality of services in the state health facilities.
Abayomi who was represented at the event by the General Manager of LASHMA, Dr. Emmanuella Zamba said, “Since the commencement of the Ilera Eko Social Health Plan, we have taken actionable steps towards improving healthcare service delivery on the Scheme.
“The Agency has increased health benefits on the Ilera Eko plan, and various provider improvement initiatives are also being implemented just to ensure all our customers enjoy quality health services.
“Recently the Agency Launched a diaspora plan, a novel initiative in the Nigerian Social Health Insurance space.”
Commenting on the service charter and enrolees handbook, the commissioner said the documents remain a valuable tool for facilitating a sure progression towards improving the quality of services in the state facilities.
“The Agency has very high expectations as to the positive impact the implementation will have on the quality of service that will be delivered at our health facilities. Great effort must be made to sustain and even improve your level of service charter compliance,” Abayomi said.
UEFA Nations League Semi Final Draw – Nyon, Switzerland – January 25, 2023 The Nations League trophy is seen on display before the draw
The UEFA Nations League will be expanded with a new knockout round after 2024, European soccer’s governing body said on Wednesday following its executive committee’s meeting in Nyon, Switzerland.
The knockout round will be played in March and create continuity between the group phase ending in November and the Finals in June.
League A group winners and runners-up will participate in home-and-away format quarter-finals, with the winners qualifying for the final four.
The third-ranked team in League A and the runners-up in League B, as well as the third-ranked League B side and the League C runners-up will play a home-and-away promotion and relegation playoff.
“By introducing the new knockout phase, teams will be given even more opportunities to progress while keeping the same number of games within the international match calendar,” said UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin.
In another change, the European qualifiers for the European Championship and World Cup will be more consolidated, with teams being drawn in 12 groups of four and five teams.
“The predictability of the European qualifiers has also been addressed and tackled, with a fresh new format that will offer all the teams an equal chance to qualify for major tournaments,” Ceferin added.
The new formats for these competitions will come into effect in September, 2024, UEFA said in a statement.
Russia, which sent officials from its football union to Switzerland to meet UEFA a day ahead of the executive committee meeting, was barred from taking part in or hosting UEFA or FIFA competitions following its invasion of Ukraine last year.
UEFA decided that Russia, which hosted the 2018 men’s World Cup, could not participate in qualifying for Euro 2024, which beings in March.
This year’s UEFA Super Cup has been moved from Kazan, Russia to Athens, Greece.
Jobs in technology, more update on the Spotify story, Spotify executive who signed up harry and Meghan in a multi-million-pound podcast deal is leaving as the company slashes hundreds of jobs.
chief content officer dawn ostroff was driving the streaming business’s move into podcasts. she secured the duke and duchess of Sussex’s archetypes series in a deal that was thought to be worth £ 20 million, but announcing around 600 job cuts and a management shake-up, chief executive Daniel Ek said yesterday Ostroff has ‘decided to depart Spotify.
The group employs almost 10,000 staff worldwide, with around 671 in the UK. The company said cost-cutting efforts in recent months had failed to shift the dial and more drastic changes were needed to boost business, including ‘fundamentally changing how we operate at the top’.
The company said Ostroff helped expand the podcast content by 40 times, signing major contracts with Harry and Meghan and the Obamas. but this shift to podcast and content investment has come at a cost as the firm racked up losses of £ 130 million in the nine months to September 30.
The growing pressure on consumer spending and a broader tech sell-off has also hurt Spotify’s stock. Shares are down more than 70% from their peak in February 2021, eroding the company’s value by over £40 billion.
Spotify’s employment losses, according to Alice Enders, head of research at Enders Analysis, are “inevitable” for a business that depends so largely on advertising.
Since more than half of Spotify’s 456 million monthly users listen for free, any decline in worldwide advertising is expected to have a significant impact on the service.
The same advertising pressure has led to significant job losses recently at Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook-owned Meta.
Paolo Pescatore, a tech analyst at PP Foresight, claimed that layoffs are simply “the flavor of the month” for internet companies. Amazon.
Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet have both announced layoffs just this month. According to the data website Layoffs. over 55,000 people have lost their employment at tech companies so far in 2023, bringing the total number of job losses since the beginning of 2021 to well over 200,000.
26th January 1887 –Origins and Construction of the Eiffel Tower. It was at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the date that marked the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, that a great competition was launched in the Journal Officiel. The first digging work started on the 26th January 1887.
The plan to build a tower 300 metres high was conceived as part of preparations for the World’s Fair of 1889.
The wager was to “study the possibility of erecting an iron tower on the Champ-de-Mars with a square base, 125 metres across and 300 metres tall”. Selected from among 107 projects, it was that of Gustave Eiffel, an entrepreneur, Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, both engineers, and Stephen Sauvestre, an architect, that was accepted.
Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin, the two chief engineers in Eiffel’s company, had the idea for a very tall tower in June 1884.
It was to be designed like a large pylon with four columns of lattice work girders, separated at the base and coming together at the top, and joined to each other by more metal girders at regular intervals.
The tower project was a bold extension of this principle up to a height of 300 metres – equivalent to the symbolic figure of 1000 feet.
On September 18 1884, Eiffel registered a patent “for a new configuration allowing the construction of metal supports and pylons capable of exceeding a height of 300 metres”.
In order to make the project more acceptable to public opinion, Nouguier and Koechlin commissioned the architect Stephen Sauvestre to work on the project’s appearance.
The main structural work was completed at the end of March 1889 and on 31 March, Eiffel celebrated by leading a group of government officials, accompanied by representatives of the press, to the top of the tower.
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