WEST Ham are in the race to sign Nigeria international Paul Onuachu in the summer transfer window, according to a new report.
All Nigeria Soccer reports that the Racing Genk striker is also wanted by Brighton, as they both look to bring in attackers this summer.
Onuachu had a fantastic season for Genk, scoring 29 goals in 33 games in the league.
The 27-year-old has been with the club since 2019, and has a contract until 2024.
Brighton may have an advantage given they have cultivated a relationship with Genk over the past few seasons, signing Leandro Trossard from the club, and could table an offer in the coming weeks.
The former head of England’s exam regulator has said that last year’s grading fiasco was caused by “human-decision making” rather than a controversial algorithm.
According to Roger Taylor, who led Ofqual through the first set of exam cancellations due to the coronavirus fiasco, the problem was not with the algorithm itself but rather “what we were trying to do with it.”
Thousands of A-level results were downgraded last year under the original grading system set up in the absence of exams, which saw an algorithm used to moderate teacher-predicted grades.
Following backlash after A-level results day, a government turn around allowed students to take their initial grades estimated by teachers.
Taylor, who stepped down as Ofqual chair towards the end of last year, said the government’s initial plan for grading “did not work” in a new report offering a personal reflection on what went wrong last year.
He said “by blaming the algorithm, we risk missing the most important lessons on mistakes that were made.”
The algorithm used in exam moderation last year has faced heavy criticism, with student protesters holding signs condemning it after moderated results came out last year.
After exams were cancelled this year due to the disruption to education caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the government has said no algorithm will be used in determining grades.
The former exam regulator head said no-one thought algorithmically moderated grades would be uncontroversial, adding there that was “widespread unease about the chances” of the system working.
He said relatively few people saw obviously wrong grades but that the “much wider sense of injustice” comes from how the majority of students were affected by moderation using the algorithm, which was by having one or more of their results reduced by one grade.
He said this problem was known from the outset, with Ofqual raising it publicly on two occasions and explaining how lowering grades moderation through moderation could see many with lower than they would have got in an exam, and others with higher.
Before stepping down as chair at the end of last year, Taylor told the education select committee that Ofqual had warned that the algorithm was the worst-case scenario for determining grades.
However, a Department for Education spokesperson said: “All decisions taken on assessments in 2020 were based on delivering the fairest outcome for students. At all times the department worked closely with Ofqual to find solutions that would allow young people to progress to the next stage of their education or career.”
Teachers Profession Board (TPB) and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), saying the two organs were established under separate laws.
Minister for Education, Science and Technology Prof Joyce Ndalichako cleared the air yesterday during the forum that brought together education stakeholders to discuss regulations of the newly created TPB.
The board, among other things, will focus on professionalising teaching by registering teachers, regulation of standards as well as maintaining professional conducts
The board is also expected to establish and promote the teaching professional standards and file charges on allegation of improper conduct against any registered teacher under the Tanzania Teachers’ Professional Act of 2018.
The minister gave the clarifications following the confusion that emerged among participants who were rejecting formation of the board, saying the new organ will be a burden to teachers since it has the same responsibility as TSC.
According to her, there is a clear demarcation of functions to be performed by the board against those of the TSC, since the two organs are made under separate laws.
Speaking during the event, the Tanzania Teachers Union (TTU) President Leah Ulaya said the formation of the board is a burden to teachers as they will have to pay for registration fees, licences and annual fees.
She was of the view that the board would increase a number of deductions to teachers’ salaries, reducing their individual final incomes.
She also spoke on the need to have an institution “that will cover all the expectations of teachers who are the majority of civil servants in Tanzania, our expectations are that the government will understand our concerns and come up with fair decisions on the matter.”
Upon establishment, the board shall also have powers to caution, censure, suspend from practice or erase from the registry any professional teacher who has been convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced for a period of not less than six months
State commissioners, permanent secretaries and other critical stakeholders have commended efforts by USAID in ensuring that states in Nigeria record up to 90 per cent annual budget implementation.
The stakeholders, who were participants at a three day workshop organised by the (USAID) under its Nigeria Accountability, Transparency and Effectiveness (State2State) project, made this known to journalists in Abuja.
They said the technical assistance by State2State in drafting Medium Term Expenditure Framework(MTEF) would enable states across Nigeria, achieve huge budget implementation in education, health and other critical sectors.
The participants, who were drawn from six states including Sokoto, Ebonyi, Bauchi, Akwa Ibom Adamawa, Gombe, stressed that proper budget planning would not only ensure accountability and transparency in governance but equitable distribution of resources.
Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development, Ebonyi, Orlando Nweze, said that the state’s partnership with USAID on the project had yielded a lot of impact, particularly on the people.
He said the programme is all about having a credible physical planning to enable the government have better strategy for sourcing and implementing the budget for 2020 to 2024, adding that it is a medium term plan that will help the ministries, the sectors and the state in general make proper fiscal planning.
Nweze said the Ebonyi State government is very appreciative that this is happening at this time because the government is already running a whole lot of process restructuring in the state which links up to the engagement of the citizenry, the openness that is required in operating government activities.
He said that as part of effort to impact positively on the people, particularly in the various sectors, Ebonyi state had come up with the audio version of the 2021 budget as well as a video version.
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Bauchi State, Yahuza Haruna, stated that the technical support provided by the State2State project would go a long way in enhancing livelihood of the people in different sectors.
He also noted that when a budget is realistic, “the citizens will be happy because government is budgeting what it will do and at the end of the day the budget will be implemented maybe 90 per cent or 95 per cent and then the dividends of democracy will be felt.”
Haruna stressed that the knowledge gained at the workshop would enable the state prepare effective, inclusive and implementable budget.
Executive Chairman, Adamawa State Planning Commission, Mary Paninga, said that the knowledge gained from the workshop would go a long way in preparing realistic and achievable budget.
She emphasised the importance of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper. According to Panima, the MTEF is the foundation for preparing a reliable budget.
On transparency in financial management system, Paninga said, “that is the bedrock of every budget and every expenditure of every state.
“Budget must be reliable and once it is reliable, you will be held accountable, and that transparency in executing the total document will be the watch word.
She said that the emphasis is on education, agriculture, health and the like but these are the topmost and definitely security.
According to her, that is why we have citizens engagement. So the package of the budget in the state has to encompass all these.
The chairman said the USAID programme was one of the best thing to happen to the state because it had provided the avenue to gain more knowledge on how to get reliable MTEF.
The State2State project is a five year project meant to run from 2020 to 2025. It is designed to enable states of the federation run accountable financial systems that would provide quality service in basic education, health and other priority sectors.
The focal states are Akwa Ibom, Adamawa, Bauchi, Ebonyi, Gombe, Sokoto.5
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to embark on an industrial action if the 13 months’ salaries of over 1,000 of its members across the country were not paid.
Chairman of the University of Jos chapter of the union, Lazarus Maigoro, who revealed this in a statement on Saturday, in Jos, added that the Federal Government had also withheld the check-off dues of the affected members.
He accused the Accountant General of Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, for systematically denying the lecturers their remuneration, even after government and the union had reached an agreement on non-victimisation of its members following their last strike.
The chairman alleged that the affected members were being threatened to either enrol into the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) platform, or have their salaries withheld.
He explained that despite the directives of President Muhammadu Buhari, that members of the union be paid their full remuneration, the AGF had denied the affected union members their pay, in complete violation of the terms of the agreement signed between the union and government.
Maigoro said that the office of the AGF had continued to feed the public and some sections of government with false reasons over the matter, such as incorrect BVN numbers, incorrectly spelt names and their sequential arrangement, among others.
He, however, added that such excuses were not tenable, because the bursary departments of their various institutions had submitted the names severally to the authorities, but the problem had continued to persist.
Maigoro also said that the inability of government to pay other allowances, such as sabbatical, visiting, part time and contract staff was also destroying the university system in the country.
He said that apart from the refusal to pay the salaries of members, the lack of payment of allowances of sabbatical, visiting, part-time, contract staff is further impacting negatively the federal universities in Nigeria, and this is all because of IPPIS.
Maigoro called on President Buhari to wade into the matter, in order to save the affected members, as well as the future of education in Nigeria.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has commenced the conduct of 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) which is expected to run till July 3 nationwide.
About 1.3 million candidates registered to sit for the examination while some were unable to take it due to the compulsory requirement of National Identification Number (NIN).
In some of the examination centres monitored in Abuja, there was delay in some centres due to some technical glitches while majority of the centres conducted the exam without any hitch.
At the Global Distance Learning Institute, Central Business District, Abuja, which is one of the accredited CBT centres, the first session of the examination started at about 8.15 am with 195 students.
An opinion leader supervising the centre, Abduraman Balogun, said the examination was free of hitches at the centre. He commended the board for ensuring that the examination was successful in most of the centres.
“Students are finishing the examination ahead of the time and the arrangement and the facilities are so perfect. It is a commendable effort from JAMB. We really have to commend the board for that wonderful work in terms of anticipatory challenges and how they are able to fix it,” he said.
Noting that there was no malpractice, he said that was made possible by the mock UTME which helped the candidates to prepare well.
At the Junior Secondary School in Jikwoyi, Abuja where 244 candidates registered with six absentees, some kind of technical hitches were experienced as some of the systems sparked off, thus delaying the normal kick off of the examination.
However, it was gathered that a technical staff was brought in to fix the problem.
One of the candidates, Aisha Moukhtar who sat the first session of the examination at Global Distance Learning Centre, said there were no technical issues apart from one person who complained that he could not submit.
After 16 seasons, 671 games, 101 goals and four Champions Leagues, walking in a teenager and walking out a legend, a comic book captain who embodied the club like no one else, Sergio Ramos’s farewell wasn’t the way he had planned. Not least because he hadn’t planned to depart at all.
Almost the first thing he said as he took his seat in the press room at Valdebebas for the last time on Thursday was: “I would like to say that I never wanted to leave Real Madrid. I always wanted to stay here.” A brief event had already taken place: a couple of short speeches, a few forced smiles and some applause in front of maybe 20 people. But now the room was virtually empty: just Ramos, Emilio Butragueño, the press officer, Carlos Carbajosa, a cameraman and a TV with a Zoom screen on it. Florentino Pérez, the president, wasn’t there. “It might have been good for him to be,” Ramos said, a little pointedly. “He’ll have the opportunity to speak if you have more questions.”
It is not an opportunity Pérez is likely to take up publicly, and one question lingers above all: how did it come to this? In terms of the basic mechanics Ramos answered that, effectively admitting that this time he had misplayed his hand during contract negotiations with the club, not realising as much until it was too late. If there was a phrase that recurred it was “fecha de caducidad”: a best before date. There was a deadline and Ramos and his brother and agent, René, missed it, or never believed it would really matter – not for a player of his status. In different circumstances, it might not have done.
According to Ramos, who had said in 2019 that he wanted to retire at Real and would “play for free”, this wasn’t about money; it was about the length of the contract. The club offered him a one-year deal on his existing salary, minus 10% because of the coronavirus crisis. He wanted two, for stability’s sake. Rejecting that “wasn’t a definitive no”, rather “part of the negotiations”. He also admitted to telling Real to get on and “plan without me”. That wasn’t a declaration of departure either, he insisted; it was a way of saying that “no one is more important than the club.” Not even him.
Sergio Ramos bids emotional farewell to Real Madrid – video
In the meantime, Real signed David Alaba. Interest in Ramos from other clubs appeared in the media. Details filtered out, but inside nothing much was happening, silent but for the sound of the clock ticking. There was no second offer for Ramos who because of injury barely played in 2021 and was ultimately left out of the Spain squad for Euro 2020, his hand not exactly strengthened. There was no improved offer and barely any communication, just mutual distrust. When he finally went back to Real to say, OK, he would accept a single year, the offer had been withdrawn.Advertisementhttps://02793b787696be977ca8665b6bdbbd63.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
It could have been put back again had they wanted to, which Ramos suspected they never had, but the response was cold. “It’s not on the table any more, and that’s it,” he said. Onda Cero radio had reported a March deadline but Ramos claimed: “No one told me there was a fecha de caducidad. I thought it was part of a negotiation like many others. I don’t know why there’s a fecha de caducidad without notifying me. Maybe I misunderstood but I didn’t know. I was surprised. They told me there is no longer an offer. They said: it’s over.”
And so it was, after 16 seasons. It felt sudden but it had been coming, and not just all spring. In 2015, Ramos told Pérez he wanted to leave for Manchester United but Iker Casillas had just gone in traumatic fashion and the president wouldn’t release him too. If Ramos left, Pérez said, he would be compelled to follow him. When it came to it, Ramos lacked the nerve to force it through. That proved a good thing: now the captain, he lifted the Champions League for the next three years in a row. But in 2019 Ramos ask Pérez to let him leave for China on a free. The president publicly said he couldn’t do that, invited any suitors to offer a fee and eventually handed Ramos another extension.
It wouldn’t happen again. This time there was no way back – in part because of those times. Ramos talks about Pérez and himself as “father and son” and says: “In families there are arguments.” But the relationship had been strained, two men of status and power who were implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) a threat to each other, those struggles played out in public and via proxies in the press. Those episodes have not been forgotten when there are better moments to remember. “I will hold on to the last embrace [Pérez] gave me,” Ramos said, repeatedly insisting that he did not want any confrontation now.
There is a lot more to hold on to. Twenty-two trophies, for a start. Plus a World Cup and two European Championships. More Spain games than anyone else, at 180. And yet Ramos’s significance is not just about that; it’s about the symbolism, what he represents.
Sergio Ramos tussles with Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah in the 2018 Champions League final, leading to an injury for the Egyptian that put him out of the game. Photograph: Efrem Lukatsky/AP
For more than a decade, that was Real Madrid – an idea he internalised himself – and it will not feel the same to see him anywhere else. He admitted, incidentally, that he has nowhere to go yet. “Values matter and the key value of this club is commitment, doing everything to win,” Zinedine Zidane once said, summing it up. “Ramos, our captain, epitomises that better than anyone. He has that commitment, he has nobility.”
At one point in his farewell, Ramos referred to the “Ramos brand”, to accepting everything that comes with him, the fact that he does everything “full on”. There was something almost Homer Simpson playing Max Power about that – a little silly – and yet it kind of fits, too. He is almost a cartoon figure. From the kid with the Claudio Caniggia fixation to this latest incarnation as a Viking, like some Norse god, there’s the taste for the absurd and the epic, driven by some sense of duty. Or better still, destiny. And no club seems attached to an idea of destiny like Real Madrid.
“People know me well because I have not created a role that I play; this is me,” Ramos has said, although it can feel like a role too. The grand gestures. The status. The self-consciousness, which is more playful and less serious than people think and yet also somehow very serious still, a figure built by the media as well as by himself. There was that Panenka penalty, redemption writ large. And yes, the shithousery too. He has more caps than anyone, and more red cards as well.https://www.theguardian.com/email/form/plaintone/the-fiverThe Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.
There may be no one with his force of personality, his leadership, chest puffed out, that sense of performance, of responsibility as a very visible badge of honour. Few project the idea of going into battle quite like him, standing there in the ring before everyone. During lockdown, his was the voice you heard echoing round grounds, even when he wasn’t playing. Especially when he wasn’t playing. All of which underlines why the end felt so strange, so unlike him: a quiet, empty room. This time, he did not look so powerful, so imposing, as if this was his stage.
For so long it has been, somehow in control as if able to bend those big moments to his will, and purely by will. Ramos Time. Never more so than in Lisbon; that header with the clock at 92.48 in the 2014 Champions League final might just be the most significant single moment in Real history.
Ramos has a tattoo on his ribs. “I am the master of my own destiny,” it says. Not this time, he wasn’t, unable to get there before the final whistle blew.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen set the pace ahead of the Mercedes cars of Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton in second practice at the French Grand Prix.
The Dutchman led Bottas by just 0.008 seconds, with Hamilton 0.253secs off the pace and complaining that there was “something not right with the car”.
Verstappen and Hamilton set their fastest times – as expected – on the soft tyre while Bottas was on mediums.
Alpine’s Fernando Alonso was fourth from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
The session raised many questions about the weekend to come as the teams were finding their cars behaved very differently across the different tyre compounds.
Bottas’ fastest time was set on the theoretically slower medium tyre as he failed to improve on the soft.
And while Verstappen found an extra second’s worth of lap time when he switched to the soft tyre, Hamilton improved by only 0.1secs.
The world champion, who trails Verstappen by four points in this year’s title chase, was struggling to match Bottas all day and his radio message to engineer Peter Bonnington mid-session suggested he felt something fundamental was wrong.
However, Hamilton was losing time on the straights compared to both Bottas and Verstappen, which suggests he was running in a lower power mode and could well account for the performance difference.
When the drivers ran their race-simulation runs on full fuel loads later in the session, Verstappen appeared to have a slight edge on Hamilton but the overall indications were that the two cars were closely matched.
Hamilton also appeared to be struggling when the drivers did their race simulation runs on full fuel loads later in the session, when he was also slower than Verstappen.
Bottas ran a different tyre strategy for his race runs so his times were not directly comparable to the other two.
It was the first time Mercedes had been outpaced in a practice session at the Paul Ricard track since it returned to the calendar in 2018. There was no French race last year as a result of the pandemic.
After the session, Hamilton said: “Quite a struggle this weekend. Probably for everyone.
“I don’t know if it’s the track surface or the track temperature, or these inflated tyres – they have put the pressures up higher than ever before, one of the highest, but we are all sliding around and it’s a struggle out there for everyone.”
Hamilton was referencing an increase in mandatory minimum tyre pressure imposed by supplier Pirelli following two tyre failures at the last race.
Pirelli have raised the level by 2psi over the figure they had intended before the failures in Baku.
In addition, there are more stringent checks on tyre pressures.
Another technical change this weekend is tougher rear-wing flexibility tests, after accusations that Red Bull and other teams have been running rear wings that flex back on straights in ways that contravene the intention of the rules.
The only cloud over Verstappen’s day was that he damaged his front wing running wide over the kerbs at Turn Two. That promoted Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley to ask whether the kerbs could be removed to avoid car damage and police track limits with an electronic timing loop.
Wheatley’s message echoed one from his opposite number at Mercedes, Ron Meadows, who asked the same after Bottas ran wide in the first session. Both pointed out that the damage was costing hundreds of thousands of pounds for a small indiscretion.
Race director Michael Masi pointed out that several team bosses had asked for physical track limits but said he would look at the issue before Saturday’s running.
Perhaps the most impressive day came from the Alpine team, for whom Esteban Ocon added sixth fastest time to Alonso’s fourth.
Leclerc, after a difficult morning for Ferrari, improved in the afternoon to split the Alpines, with Pierre Gasly’s Alpha Tauri in seventh, ahead of the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, Kimi Raikkonen’s Alfa Romeo and McLaren’s Lando Norris.
The Aston Martins of Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll were down in 15th and 16th.
This weekend’s race takes place against the backdrop of two significant rule changes.
There are more stringent checks on both tyre pressures and rear wing strength after two controversies this year – the tyre failures suffered by Verstappen and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll at the last race in Azerbaijan, and accusations that Red Bull and other teams have been running rear wings that flex back on straights in ways that contravene the intention of the rules.
Japan’s Naomi Osaka will not play at Wimbledon this year but is planning to return in time for the Tokyo Olympics.
The four-time Grand Slam champion will spend time with friends and family having also withdrawn from the French Open in May.
At the time, Osaka, 23, said she would be taking a break from tennis after experiencing depression and anxiety.
The world number two says she is “excited to play in front of her home fans” in Tokyo.
Osaka was fined $15,000 (£10,570) for not taking part in a news conference following her first round match at Roland Garros.
Grand Slam organisers said she could face expulsion from the tournament should she refuse to take part in media duties.
But the player withdrew from the tournament the following day, saying she needed to “protect her mental health”.
“When the time is right I really want to work with the Tour to discuss ways we can make things better for the players, press and fans,” she added at the time.
Wimbledon’s chief executive Sally Bolton had earlier revealed the All England Club (AELTC) had been in contact with Osaka’s team and was actively looking at ways to improve its media operations.
“We have started a consultation,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.
“Of course, that consultation needs to include not just the players, but the media and all of those engaged in that space.”
Wimbledon tournament director Jamie Baker said on Wednesday that he had told Osaka’s entourage that the phone lines were always open to discuss any issues that might arise.
Another blow for SW19 – analysis
BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller
A Wimbledon appearance by Naomi Osaka has seemed extremely unlikely ever since she withdrew from the French Open.
But what is very encouraging is that the 23-year-old feels able to represent her country at her home Olympics in just six weeks’ time.
The shorter-than-usual two-week gap between the French Open and Wimbledon may not have made any difference to Osaka’s decision, but has repercussions for others – most notably Rafael Nadal.
The 35-year-old ultimately had to choose between the two Grand Slams.
Roger Federer is one who will empathise. The 39-year-old withdrew from Roland Garros after three rounds to protect his knee, but also his chances of being truly competitive at Wimbledon.
The US Open takes place in August at Flushing Meadows in New York.
New York state has lifted most lockdown restrictions as over 70% of adults have received at least one does of vaccine.
United States Tennis Association chief executive Mike Dowse said: “While we were proud that we were able to hold the event in 2020, we missed having our fans on-site, because we know that they are a large part of what makes the US Open experience unlike any other.”
The 2020 Australian Open was the last Grand Slam to have 100% attendance throughout the tournament, weeks before the country shut its borders because of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball side the New York Mets have announced they will return to full capacity next week.
A sell-out crowd of 52,078 attended a baseball game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Tuesday night after restrictions were eased in California.
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