CaaC (John)

Incredible new details of proposed Newcastle takeover emerge involving billionaire Reuben brothers A day of frustration on the field was matched at boardroom level as news of another takeover broke Newcastle United have maintained their "no comment" status on talk of a takeover deal being pushed through by a consortium that would see Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund as the majority partner. Ashley is currently out of the UK on other business, but sources at United say he is unimpressed that the takeover talks have leaked into the public domain. The same sources have indicated to Chronicle Live that there is no bid in place or agreement and that it is business as usual at St James' Park. Since the Magpies' 0-0 draw with Oxford United in the FA Cup, it has emerged that the Public Investment Fund would fund 80% of the deal and the other 20% would be covered by PCP Capital Limited, headed by Amanda Staveley, but ultimately back on the scene having failed to buy the club from Ashley two years ago. But while Ashley is not happy that the discussions have leaked out before an agreement was made, there has been no denial from the powers that be that the talks took place in the last four months. The news broke via the Wall Street Journal who has since updated their story to indicate British billionaires David and Simon Reuben are also part of the consortium. They say that Jamie Reuben, 33, David’s son, would play an "executive role at Newcastle". Toon owner Ashley previously lost patience with Staveley in 2017 after a proposed takeover from PCP Capital Partners failed to get off the ground. Back then sources close to him passed on a statement which read: "Attempts to reach a deal have proved to be exhausting, frustrating and a complete waste of time." But even though Staveley is involved again, the reality is Ashley will sell at the right price. A sum of £350million was supposedly the magic figure last time around, but nobody at the club is prepared to put an exact price on it at the moment. Even then, if it is stood up that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s investment tool - the Public Investment Fund - is at the heart of the deal, they certainly have the capacity to pull it off. But that overall package is yet to land on the table in the eyes of the Sports Direct magnate. Ashley has previously insisted he will not stand in anybody's way if they have the money. He said in the summer: "The day someone buys Newcastle, they'll do their due diligence - and finished. "It will happen like Manchester City. By the time the media find out, it's already complete. "There's no need for a delay with Newcastle. It is, honestly, a very well-run football club." https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/incredible-new-details-proposed-newcastle-17632343

Happy now, imagine, Mbappe, Neymar, Ronaldo etc could be heading for your beloved Newcastle

Astronauts, complete 4-spacewalk marathon to fix space station's $2 billion antimatter detector It took four entire spacewalks to fix. It took four years of planning, 20 new tools shipped by spacecraft and an unprecedented four-part repair job, but a $2 billion experiment on the International Space Station is all patched up after a spacewalk by astronauts Saturday (Jan. 25). NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano spent 6 hours, 16 minutes working outside the station to finish repairs on the ailing Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a 9-year-old cosmic ray detector designed to seek out dark matter and antimatter. The instrument, launched in 2011, had lost two of four critical coolant pumps, which the spacewalkers restored. NASA aims to run a series of tests in upcoming days to make sure the repair worked. It wasn't an easy job to perform. Parmitano and Morgan were on the fourth of four spacewalks to fix AMS, completing work that began on the instrument in November. The astronauts were using tools to fix an instrument that was initially, never even designed for spacewalking repairs. On this spacewalk, which was broadcast live on NASA Television, leak drama dominated the early hours of the work. FULL REPORT

Aye, true, the only thing I can really drink nowadays with my health and the tablets I am on is red wine, had a bottle last night and there was our son sitting there drinking whisky and cans of lager, the last time I had a whisky was about 3 years ago.

Err, no your not, it's good to have conversations like this and air your thoughts, that what TF is all about and that's why I like posting in here, it's like if someone mentions Dortmund I straight away think about my army days before I got married in Germany, I got pissed as a newt one night and climbed the battery flagpole in the drill square for a bet, got to the top, waved to the guy below that he owed me a pint as I completed the bet. Then the flagpole bent and snapped and I fell to the parade square below and ended up in the hospital for six months with a fractured skull, broken jaw in 3 places, I broke my wrist and ankle, but the good thing about that was that's where I met the wife as she was working there and now we have been married for 40 odd years... ouch to all that

I can't remember when I had a good session on the booze, it must have been way back before I retired from work.

Not really, especially at my age, things like that can trigger a thought in the back of your mind and you think thank fuck it never happened last year when I was there.

Got a hangover then

Lol, no thanks, all I can say is the last time I was in the Royal for 2 weeks it stopped me smoking so something good came out of it.

Naby Keita could be available for Sunday's FA Cup clash with Shrewsbury Town but Liverpool await further news on Sadio Mane's hamstring injury. Dejan Lovren is in contention for the fourth-round tie at New Meadow, though James Milner and Xherdan Shaqiri are unlikely to be involved. The manager was asked for an update on Mane, who was withdrawn after ‘feeling something’ in the first half of Thursday’s win at Wolverhampton Wanderers, at his pre-match press conference. “No, I think he is in the scan at this moment,” replied Klopp. “They didn’t call me out of the scan, so, no. [Fingers crossed], yes.” On other fitness concerns in his squad, the boss said: “Dejan trained completely normally, until the game it’s a week [back] so should be fine. “For Shaq and Millie, I think it’s too early. Naby, we will have to see. My information is that he will be part of training today and then we have to see. “It was not too long, but how he looks and so on. For the boys that didn’t play longer than a half yesterday, today will be a very, very important session and kind of an intense session. “It’s minus two [days] to the game so there is always intensity. We will see if he can be part of that completely – then he would be an option. If not, then not.” https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/first-team/384219-lfc-injury-update-mane-keita-lovren-milner-and-shaqiri

Newcastle United takeover: Saudi Arabia in talks to buy the club from Mike Ashley in £340m deal The purchase would represent the biggest move yet by Saudi Arabia into the world of sport Saudi Arabia is in talks to buy Newcastle United from Mike Ashley for around £340m and a takeover could be completed within a matter of days, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The Public Investment Fund is leading the purchase on behalf of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, together with a group of investors organised by Amanda Staveley, the British businesswoman based in Dubai who has previously failed in a bid to buy the football club. The purchase would represent the biggest move yet by Saudi Arabia into the world of sport, having recently hosted the boxing heavyweight world title fight between Andy Ruiz Jr and Anthony Joshua. The country hopes to use sport as a means of leveraging influence in the West and could be set to begin a rivalry with UAE-owned Manchester City, the reigning Premier League champions. FULL REPORT

Stokes and the media will say he was uptight and frustrated about getting out on 2 or he was worrying about his father's ill health or whatever, but apparently he has apologized as per normal, cough, cough

News from this neck of the woods, two of the hospitals used were ones I have been in, The Royal Infirmary & The Western. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ "BBC Scotland understands that one of those tested in Edinburgh was a Chinese student who had become unwell after visiting family in Wuhan. He was believed to have first been in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary before being transferred to the Western, where the Regional Infectious Diseases Unit is located. It is not known where the other patients were being treated." China coronavirus: Two tested in Scotland given all-clear Two of the five people people being tested for coronavirus in Scotland have been given the all-clear. The chief medical officer for England said on Friday that 14 people tested in the UK had been found to be free of the virus. The Scottish government said this included two of the Scottish cases. The three other patients being treated in Scotland are awaiting test results. Four out of the five are Chinese nationals. All of those tested had recently visited Wuhan where the outbreak originated. Checks are ongoing on other people. FULL REPORT

Roma are interested in signing Real Sociedad's former Manchester United winger Adnan Januzaj, the 24-year-old Belgium international. (Calciomercato)

Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain are closing in on a swap of full-backs with Mattia De Sciglio and Layvin Kurzawa set to switch clubs. Talks over a deal have grown rapidly, with L’Equipe first reporting the news seemingly out of nowhere on Friday. (FORZA)

Ants have taken up 'farming' aphids to ensure an endless supply of honeydew Farming has taken a new direction in Britain with the discovery humans are not the only ones domesticating animals for their own needs. Ants have cornered the micro-farming world, herding and shielding a previously undiscovered aphid about oak trees in exchange for a sugary water it excretes called honeydew. “It is farming – they are milking the animals, moving them from high to low pastures and building shelters for them when there’s not enough protection", Matt Shardlow, chief executive of conservation charity Buglife, told The Guardian. The aphid and its 'farmed' existence were made by naturalist and photographer Julian Hodgson in May 2018 as he was trying to find bark flies on Monks Wood national nature reserve near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. Ants 'farming' aphids But getting a sample for identification proved tricky as the insects are mostly nocturnal, which is why they have remained undiscovered for so long and had to be gathered from the oak trees in darkness using a head torch. The giant pale aphid, with a projecting mouth almost twice as long as its 5-7mm body, was identified by entomologists at the Natural History Museum and in Poland as stomaphis wojciechowskii and has since been found in five other sites in Cambridgeshire. They are thought to have been living in Britain for thousands of years. These aphids are looked after exclusively by brown ants, which live in the decaying parts of living trees and feed off the aphid-produced honeydew. Undiscovered for thousands of years Some ants stroke the aphids with their antennae to encourage the production of honeydew, others guard the aphids against potential predators such as beetles. If the aphids, normally hidden in crevices are exposed to light, the ants will escort them to a place of safety within the moss-covered base of the trunks. And occasionally ants will pick up the smallest aphids and carry them in their jaws. In bad weather, the ants keep the aphids underground and in summer when the sap rises the aphids are herded up the tree trunk to feed and produce honeydew for the ants. Reporting the aphid discovery in the British Journal of Entomology and Natural History, Mr Hodgson and his co-authors highlighted the fact no aphids have been given conservation status in Britain. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/ants-have-taken-up-farming-aphids-to-ensure-an-endless-supply-of-honeydew/ar-BBZj1wf?li=BBoPWjQ

Space cookies: First food baked in space by astronauts Chocolate chip cookies have become the first food to be baked in space in a first-of-its-kind experiment. Astronauts baked the cookies in a special zero-gravity oven at the International Space Station (ISS) last month. Sealed in individual baking pouches, three of the cookies returned to Earth on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on 7 January. The aim of the experiment was to study cooking options for long-haul trips. The results of the experiment, carried out by astronauts Luca Parmitano and Christina Koch, were revealed this week. FULL REPORT

I would rather have the 2 of them than Shaw, I agree with you on William's but I still say Cameron should stay and move Shaw on.

Tuttosport and it's only gossip anyway, he can bloody stay there.

Nah, McTominay is 23 and he was associated with the United youth academy when he was 5, Cameron Jackson was the same, associated with the United youth academy when he was a 6-year-old, 2 good youth products to me and I have said in here before that McTominay would make a great future United captain. It seems that Ole is relying too much on Shaw as a left-back that's Cameron Jackson's position and I would rather bed him in the first team than Shaw, the later is too much of an injury liability and can be a big sook if he gets any criticism, these are my thoughts only though, @DeadLinesman what's your thoughts on this?

He is a good young lad and Ole should be playing him with the others instead of shunting him off or maybe Woody had something to do with it.

Walking along the Great Wall of China with Pogba singing and dancing would do.

So much for Ole bedding in the young lads, this one is off again on loan

PMSL listening to a lady on the ITV News reporting Ben Stokes appears to be involved in an altercation during the fourth Test, she said "apparently Ben Stokes was walking off the pitch after getting bowled out for two and had an altercation with an Sth African supporter and said come and say that outside you expletive 4 eyed expletive..." in other words "come outside you **** and say that you 4 eyed ****ard..."