COVID-19
Arsenal make transfer decision on Dani Ceballos
Arsenal are understood to have no plans of extending the stay of midfielder Dani Ceballos beyond the current campaign, a report from El Confidencial claims. The Spain international joined the north London club on a season-long loan from Real Madrid last summer and he made a lively beginning to the season with two assists on his home league debut against Burnley. However, he could not sustain the same level of performance thereafter and picked up a hamstring injury in November which kept him out of action until the turn of the year. In that period, the Gunners opted to dismiss Unai Emery from the head coach position and his successor Mikel Arteta was initially reluctant to play him in January. Ceballos managed to change the manager’s opinion of him during the warm-weather training camp in D...
Toyota predicts 79.5% drop in profit
Agence France-Presse Toyota on Tuesday said it expected a 79.5 percent drop in its annual operating profit this fiscal year as it suffers “significant” fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The Japanese auto giant declined to give a net profit forecast for the fiscal year to March 2021 but noted that the impact of the crisis on its business was “wide-ranging, significant and serious”. The company now expects an annual operating profit of 500 billion yen ($4.6 billion), down 79.5 percent from the 2.44 trillion yen logged in the past year to March. Toyota forecast a near-20 percent drop in annual sales to 24 trillion yen, compared with 29.93 trillion yen achieved in the past fiscal year. The company’s net profit for the past year to March came to 2.076 trillion yen, up 10.3 percent on the y...
Abuja doctor explains coronavirus treatment regimen
The COVID-19 Team Leader at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Dr. Yunusa Thairu, has given a rare insight into the treatment regimen for the COVID-19, explaining how a cocktail of an anti-retroviral drug, Aluvia, as well as Zinc and Vitamin C tablets are deployed. Dr. Thairu disclosed this on Monday, while answering questions after the official opening of the 506-bed space COVID-19 Isolation and Treatment Centre in Idu, Abuja. According to him, the regimen was adopted at a meeting with the World Health Organisation, WHO, and the United Nations, UN, alongside with some other unnamed stakeholders. The meeting, according to him, resolved to use Chloroquine or Aluvia which is a combination of antiviral therapy and other management techniques that can be used to make COVID-19 patients ...
Nigeria to receive Madagascar ‘herbal coronavirus medicine’
Nigeria is expected to receive samples of COVID-Organics, a herbal medicine used by Madagascar to treat COVID-19 patients. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, made this known at the daily Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 briefing on Monday. Mustapha said the medicine has been sent to Guinea Bissau from where it will be sent to different countries. “The herbal medicine has been freighted to Guinea Bissau by the president of Madagascar and certain allocations have been made to different countries. “We have an indication of the quantity that has been allocated to Nigeria and we are supposed to make an arrangement to freight it out of Guinea Bissau to Nigeria,” he said. Since its launch by the President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, in April, the use of the h...
Cannes Film Festival 2020 Officially Canceled Due to COVID-19
Tomorrow was supposed to mark the first day of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. However, back in March, the event was postponed in light of the coronavirus, with plans to stage the cinematic celebration in July. Now, though, festival director Thierry Frémaux has told Screen Daily that the 73rd annual Cannes Film Festival has officially been canceled altogether. Frémaux and the Cannes team seem to have come to a conclusion that’s becoming increasingly evident around the entertainment industry: hosting major events in 2020 appears to be impracticable. “Under the circumstances, a physical edition of Cannes 2020 is hard to envisage, so we’ll have to do something different,” Frémaux said. “A ‘festival’ is a collective party, a spectacle that brings together an audience in a given location, in thi...
Bryan Adams Blames Coronavirus on People Not Going Vegan
A decidedly not-in-“Heaven” Bryan Adams took to Instagram tonight to condemn *puts on glasses* “fucking bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards” for the cancellation of his intended Royal Albert Hall shows in London this week so that “the whole world now is on hold.” That certainly cuts like… some kind of sharp object. But wait, there’s more: “My message to them other than ‘thanks a fucking lot’ is go vegan.” These are decidedly not the best days of Adams’ life. Read the entire post below and either give this man an “amen” or enjoy your dinner of bratwurst.
Nigeria records 242 new coronavirus cases, total now 4,641
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), on Monday, confirmed 242 new COVID-19 cases bringing the total confirmed cases to 4,641. The centre made this known via its verified Twitter handle on Monday night. It tweeted: “242 new cases of #COVID19; 88-Lagos 64-Kano 49-Katsina 13-Kaduna 9-Ogun 6-Gombe 4-Adamawa 3-FCT 1-Ondo 1-Oyo 1–Rivers 1-Zamfara 1-Borno 1-Bauchi.” 242 new cases of #COVID19; 88-Lagos64-Kano49-Katsina13-Kaduna9-Ogun6-Gombe4-Adamawa3-FCT1-Ondo1-Oyo1–Rivers1-Zamfara1-Borno1-Bauchi 4641 cases of #COVID19 in NigeriaDischarged: 902Deaths: 150 pic.twitter.com/2eK1cRJeH0 — NCDC (@NCDCgov) May 11, 2020 Get more stories like this on Twitter
Harry Potter Actress Miriam Margolyes Admits She Wanted Boris Johnson to Die from Coronavirus
Miriam Margolyes, the veteran actress best known as Professor Sprout from the Harry Potter franchise, admits to wishing that Boris Johnson had died of the novel coronavirus. Margolyes, who also won a BAFTA Award for her work in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, said, “I had difficulty not wanting Boris Johnson to die. I wanted him to die,” in an interview with the British TV show The Last Leg. She nearly got her wish. The UK Prime Minister contracted COVID-19 in April, and as his symptoms worsened he was moved into intensive care. Less than a week later he had recovered enough to be released from the hospital. In the tug-of-war between public health and economic strength, Johnson has been more aggressive about bolstering the markets than other world leaders. On the same day...
Rammstein and Guns N’ Roses Both Call Off European Tours Due to COVID-19 Pandemic
Rammstein’s Till Lindemann (photo by Jens Koch), Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose (photo by Amy Harris) Two of rock’s biggest live acts will not be touring Europe this spring and summer, as planned, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rammstein and Guns N’ Roses have each announced that they’ve called off their respective outings. Rammstein were scheduled to embark on a new leg of their “Stadium Tour” on May 25th in Klagenfurt, Austria, and remain on the European run until August 4th in Aarhus, Denmark. As of now, there has been no official announcement regarding the band’s late summer North American run, which is slated to kick off August 20th in Montreal. Rammstein, who’ve been touring in support of their 2019 untitled album, explained the European tour cancellation: “Due to local eve...
Seoul Shuts Down Nightclubs After Briefly Reopening
After briefly reopening clubs and bars due to a dramatic drop in South Korean COVID-19 cases, the Seoul nightlife industry is once again being shut down. In the Itaewon district of the capital city, a string of new infections occurred, with at least 17 being linked to a single club-goer. Officials expect the number to rise in the near future as more than 1,500 people were in the same venues as the individual. In a quote obtained by Yonhap News Agency, the mayor of Seoul, Park Won-soon, spoke on the recent infections and why the venues must shut down. “Such facilities have to suspend business immediately and will face strict punishment if they breach (the order),” he said. “Carelessness can lead to an explosion in infections – we clearly realized this throu...
Minister: Plant extract in Madagascar’s coronavirus ‘remedy’ grows in Nigeria
The Federal Government has said the “Artemisia annua”, the plant extract in Madagascar’s announced ‘remedy’ for coronavirus also grows in Nigeria. The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, revealed this during a briefing by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja on Monday. Ehanire said samples of the said plant would be got from Madagascar and compared with the ones which grow here in the country. He said, “The cure from Madagascar has been making the news and we have promised to get samples of the herb or the botanical products that is there for analysis and (also) use (that) as an opportunity to speak with the health authorities, particularly the scientific community, on how they use it. “We will give that to the research community with us here to examine and see what they can...
Borno discharges four coronavirus patients
The Borno State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Salisu Kwaya-Bura, on Monday, said four more COVID-19 patients have been treated and discharged, bringing the number of those so far discharged to 18 in the state. Kwaya-Bura, who is also the Secretary of the State High Powered Response Team on COVID-19, made this known while briefing newsmen in Maiduguri on Monday. He said the state had also set up an additional 500-bed capacity Isolation Centre to contain any increase in the number of cases. According to him, the initiative was to forestall any development that could overwhelm the already existing 100-bed capacity Isolation Centres at the Brigadier Abba Kyari Memorial Hospital and the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. “The 500-bed capacity isolation Centre will be put to function in p...
