– As noted, Linda McMahon has been confirmed by the US Senate in a 81-19 vote to be the Small Business Administrator for President Donald Trump. We have photos of Linda at The White House with Trump and the entire McMahon family, including Vince McMahon, at this link. Below is video of Linda’s swearing-in with her grandkids and Vice President Mike Pence:
– Jonathan Coachman noted on Twitter that there was no “Off The Top Rope” segment on ESPN SportsCenter this week due to West Coast TV programming. The segment will return next week. Coach also confirmed that he will be in attendance for WrestleMania 33 this year but he wasn’t sure if ESPN and SportsCenter will be with him to cover the event as they did last year.
– As seen below, WWE Shop will be releasing a new “Glorious” t-shirt for WWE NXT Champion Bobby Roode soon:
This new @REALBobbyRoode tee is coming soon to #WWEShop. And it will be #Glorious! #WWE #NXT #BobbyRoode pic.twitter.com/tsbBwcy43d
— WWEShop.com (@WWEShop) February 16, 2017
Follow Marc on Twitter at @this_is_marc. Send any news, tips or corrections to us by clicking here.
WWE Considering Big Turn, Must See New Maryse & Noelle Foley, Triple H Ready to Push Former TNA Star on RAW, WrestleMania 33 Main Events, WWE Star Gets Backstage Heat, New GIFs & Galleries, More
As noted, WWE Studios and The Rock’s Seven Bucks Productions were filming “Fighting With My Family” after last night’s RAW went off the air in Los Angeles.
The movie, inspired by Paige and her family of pro wrestlers, features a scene based on when Paige defeated AJ Lee to become the WWE Divas Champion. That scene was filmed after RAW at the Staples Center with former TNA Knockout Thea Trinidad (Rosita) playing the role of AJ. We noted earlier that actress Florence Pugh is playing the role of Paige while indie women’s wrestler Tessa Blanchard is acting as her in-ring stunt double.
For those who missed it, Rock also appeared after RAW for a dark segment that saw him call CM Punk and leave a voicemail. We have video from that segment at this link. We also have earlier “Fighting With My Family” updates from Los Angeles at this link and this link. Rock also did a pre-RAW dark segment with Vince McMahon, which you can see at this link.
Below are photos and videos from the post-RAW movie filming:
That “Aj lee” actress just needed to wear shorts chucks and cut up a shirt to look like AJ but nah, gimme a Nikki Bella outfit.. #WWE #RAW pic.twitter.com/EPA4iGnyCb
— Handsome Rusev (@BotchISLife) February 21, 2017
Aj Lee? Hm.. were jean shorts and converse sold out? ?? #WWELA #wwe #raw pic.twitter.com/tSFAdSG8na
— Josy (@josy0710) February 21, 2017
AJ LEE ! I mean kinda.. #WWE #RAW #WWELA pic.twitter.com/8zDu39z422
— Handsome Rusev (@BotchISLife) February 21, 2017
Weird hearing this song again.. but this character is more… Bella twin less AJ Lee. I’m disappointed #RAW #wwelosangeles pic.twitter.com/75nkNNEsgs
— Josy (@josy0710) February 21, 2017
Reenacting the Paige vs AJ Lee match pic.twitter.com/tuwbfv81zi
— Zach Ducks 31-20-10 (@ZachMartin619) February 21, 2017
So they’re filming Paige’s movie produced by The Rock. Here’s Paige vs. AJ Lee. pic.twitter.com/W7hH4ILXNW
— dangerously? (@mrdangerously) February 21, 2017
Now time to film the match with stunt doubles #wweraw #WWELA @REALGoingInRaw @TheMattFowler pic.twitter.com/ZmPgaJph68
— Gerardo Sanchez (@yko4life) February 21, 2017
Your first look at @Florence_Pugh as @RealPaigeWWE in #WrestlingWithMyFamily
CC: @Variety @Deadline @THR @TheWrap pic.twitter.com/AHVOaHCTeL
— ProWrestlingSheet (@WrestlingSheet) February 21, 2017
.@teamTblanchard dressed as Paige for stunt work on #FightingWithMyFamily pic.twitter.com/bbm9ryO90l
— ProWrestlingSheet (@WrestlingSheet) February 21, 2017
Another shot of @Florence_Pugh as @RealPaigeWWE in #FightingWithMyFamily pic.twitter.com/IyCe12gWqq
— ProWrestlingSheet (@WrestlingSheet) February 21, 2017
Follow Marc on Twitter at @this_is_marc. Send any news, tips or corrections to us by clicking here.
WWE Considering Big Turn, Must See New Maryse & Noelle Foley, Triple H Ready to Push Former TNA Star on RAW, WrestleMania 33 Main Events, WWE Star Gets Backstage Heat, New GIFs & Galleries, More
Police said they are hunting Imran Khan’s nephew after he took part in a lawyers’ protest against hospital doctors in Pakistan which saw three patients die after medical staff fled the violence.
Hassan Niazi was one of around 250 black suited-lawyers in a protest that descended into a rampage through the cardiac hospital in Lahore.
Government officials earlier this week said the protest had been sparked by lawyers’ accusations that one of their comrades had been beaten by a group of doctors.
Police said they had raided Mr Niazi’s home after the unrest was widely condemned as hooliganism. Three patients died as intensive care patients were abandoned by doctors and nurses fleeing the mob.
Television reports showed some of the lawyers armed with handguns while riot police fired tear gas to try to quell the mob. There is no suggestion that Mr Niazi had a gun.
Lawyers could be seen standing on the bonnet of a burning police vehicle and scuffling with officers. Lawyers inside the hospital smashed doors, windows and equipment. Mr Niazi could be seen in photographs and video of Wednesday’s trouble, but The Telegraph has seen no footage suggesting Mr Niazi was involved in these actions.
"His residence in Lahore was raided by the police last night and also this morning to arrest him, but he was not found there and has possibly gone into hiding," a police spokesman, told the BBC.
But the police account was questioned after witnesses said Mr Niazi had been seen being apprehended during the protest and being led off. Mr Niazi himself appeared to apologise for taking part in the protest outside Lahore’s Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC).
“After watching this clip I feel ashamed of myself,” a message on his Twitter account said after sharing footage of the unrest. “This is murder!!! My support and protest was limited to initiation of legal action against the concerned doctors. I only stand for peaceful protests. It’s sad day and I condemn my own self for supporting this protest now.”
Pakistan’s main opposition bloc, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) called for his immediate arrest.
"They said that the police raided the residence of Imran Khan’s nephew, but he was not found,” spokeswoman Marriyum Aurangzeb said, according to Dawn newspaper.
“There is no case registered against Hassaan Niazi despite his clear involvement in the incident. He must be arrested immediately. The incident must be thoroughly probed and the hospital unsealed," she said.
The violence this week was initially sparked by an earlier incident, in which doctors allegedly beat a lawyer at the hospital when he would not queue with other patients, according to a Reuters report.
The lawyers were particularly angry that the doctors filmed and shared the beating on social media, Lahore government official Kamran Ali said.
Harvey Weinstein’s legal team has agreed a tentative $25 million (£18.6m) settlement with the dozens of women who filed a civil lawsuit against him, in a deal which sees him escape personal liability and avoid admission of wrongdoing.
Weinstein, 67, is set to go on trial in New York in January in a separate criminal case involving two women.
One woman accused Weinstein of raping her at a Manhattan hotel in 2013, and the other claimed he forced oral sex on her at his townhouse in 2006. Weinstein has denied any nonconsensual sexual activity.
But the disgraced film producer’s team are likely to be celebrating the agreement reportedly reached in his civil suit, in which Weinstein will not pay anything to his accusers himself.
The money would be paid by insurance companies representing the producer’s former studio, the Weinstein Company, which is in bankruptcy proceedings.
Harvey Weinstein was arrested in May 2018
The pay out to the accusers would be part of an overall $47 million settlement intended to finalise all the company’s obligations.
A spokesman for Weinstein told The Telegraph that they were unable to comment on the specifics of the financial agreement.
More than $12 million — a quarter of the overall settlement package — would go toward some, but not all, legal costs for Weinstein; his brother, Bob; and other former members of their company’s board, the lawyers told The New York Times.
The board members would be insulated from future liability, and the alleged victims would drop their claims against Weinstein and other executives.
Katherine Kendall, 50, an actress who accused Weinstein of chasing her around his apartment naked during what she thought would be a work meeting in 1993, said she was disappointed in the agreement.
“I don’t love it, but I don’t know how to go after him,” she told the paper, adding that she agreed to it to avoid blocking other women from receiving compensation.
“I don’t know what I can really do.”
Harvey Weinstein with his brother Bob and Madonna at The Weinstein Company's Golden Globes party in 2012
Genie Harrison, a sexual harassment lawyer representing Sandeep Rehal, a former Weinstein assistant who is part of the proposed settlement, said that holding out for more favourable terms might have left the alleged victims empty-handed.
“I don’t think there’s a markedly better deal to be made,” she said.
“We have really, truly done the best we can under the circumstances, and it’s important for other victims to know this, come forward and be able to get the best level of compensation we were able to get.”
Since The New York Times first published its accusations against Weinstein, in October 2017, dozens of women have come forwards to accuse him of sexual harassment and assault, including some of the highest-profile women in the entertainment world, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek.
None of the stars are part of this civil suit.
Ashley Judd was among the first women to publicly accuse Weinstein
The two-year battle for compensation has involved lawyers for the women, Weinstein, his former board members, creditors, insurers and the New York attorney general’s office.
Last year, when the Weinstein Company entered bankruptcy, the accusers watched a potential settlement payout dwindle from a projected $90 million victims’ fund that had been discussed as part of a possible sale of the studio.
Under the deal agreed now, the New York Times said, 18 of the alleged victims would split $6.2 million, with no individual getting more than $500,000.
A separate pot of money, $18.5 million, would be set aside for those who were part of a class-action case, the New York attorney general’s suit and any future claimants, with a court-appointed monitor allocating payments based on the severity of the harm alleged.
Zoe Brock, 45, a former model who has accused Harvey Weinstein of sexually inappropriate behaviour, told the paper that agreeing to the settlement terms made her feel “sick and defeated and hopeless,” because neither Weinstein nor his former board members would be required to pay the alleged victims.
Weinstein's disgrace sparked the MeToo movement
“Many of us are outside the statute of limitations, and we can’t have our day in criminal court with Harvey,” said Caitlin Dulany, 56, who has accused Weinstein of sexually harassing and assaulting her in the mid-1990s.
Even a flawed settlement, she said, might “bring some justice and relief.”
Two women who have brought civil suits against Weinstein — Alexandra Canosa, a producer who used to work for him, and Wedil David, an actress — have walked away from the tentative deal and intend to challenge it, according to their lawyers.
Douglas Wigdor and Kevin Mintzer, who represent Ms David and other accusers, said they did not think it was the best agreement possible.
“It is shameful that $12 million of the settlement is going to the lawyers for the directors, who we alleged enabled Harvey Weinstein, and it is even more outrageous that the proposed settlement will seek to bind non participating members by providing a release to the insurance companies and the directors of the Weinstein Company itself,” they said in a statement.
They said they intend to “proceed with holding Harvey Weinstein accountable for his actions”.
Lawyers will now begin working on turning the preliminary term sheet into an official settlement agreement, which will require approval from at least two judges – one from the federal court in Delaware overseeing the Weinstein Company’s bankruptcy and the other from a federal court in New York.
It could still fall apart because of objections by lawyers representing the dissenting women.
The passport of a mysterious Maltese academic implicated in the leaking of Hillary Clinton’s emails to the Trump campaign and accused of being a spy, turned up in a lost and found office in Madeira, it is claimed.
Joseph Mifsud, 59, an enigmatic law professor with links to universities in the UK and Italy, has not been seen in public for two years.
His apparent disappearance is one of the strangest aspects of the scandal over alleged Russian interference in the US election process.
His passport and wallet were handed to a lost and found office in Madeira airport in August 2017 and languished there for 17 months, according to BuzzFeed News.
They were found in the coastal town of Câmara de Lobos on the coast of Madeira in August 2017 – three months before Prof Mifsud vanished – and presumably handed in to the authorities.
Six months previously, he had been questioned by the FBI about allegations of Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election.
It is not known whether the passport and wallet had been lost or were dumped but the academic was successfully issued with a new passport, on which he traveled to Moscow, according to BuzzFeed.
Former FBI director James ComeyCredit:
Reuters
Prof Mifsud held meetings with George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, on several occasions in the spring of 2016.
They met at Link Campus, a private university in Rome where Prof Mifsud worked.
According to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into alleged Russian interference in the US election, in April of that year Prof Mifsud had found out during a trip to Moscow that the Russians had obtained “dirt” on Mrs Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails”.
The last time Prof Mifsud was seen in public was November 2017, when he was spotted in Rome and spoke to a journalist from La Repubblica, an Italian daily.
He disappeared within days of being identified as an allegedly key player in the leaking of the Clinton emails to the Trump campaign.
It has been claimed Prof Mifsud was working as a Russian spy, notably by James Comey, the former FBI director, who referred to him as a “Russian agent” in an opinion piece in The Washington Post in May this year.
Last month, two Italian newspapers and a news agency received audio recordings purporting to be of Prof Mifsud, in which he denied having any links to intelligence agencies.
In the November 11 recording, he denied being an intelligence agent. His alleged involvement in the Trump campaign had been “blown up”.
“I have been a networker all my life and this what I’m good at. I try to bring one group in contact with another – not, I repeat, nobody in any secret service or intelligence service or anybody of this sort.”
He said it had never been his intention to pass information “from one side to the other.”
He said he had been living in hiding, “without human contact”, and was hoping to be able to “come back to life”.
Voice analysis suggested the recording was made by Prof Mifsud and his former girlfriend also said she thought it was authentic.
The Chinese twin girls controversially genetically engineered in 2018 to be immune to HIV may not be immune to the virus, according to scientists reviewing research around the project.
The embryo alteration resulted in biophysicist He Jiankui being investigated by Chinese authorities and placed under house arrest over ethics concerns.
The results of Dr He’s research were published on Tuesday for the first time by the MIT Technology Review. Scientists who studied the research said that as well as not being HIV immune, the girls may have unintended mutations resulting from the gene editing.
Dr He claimed that his work with the world’s first genetically modified children could lead to the control of HIV worldwide.
Damning comments from the scientists scrutinising his papers have cast further doubt on both his results and his ethical standards.
During the gene editing process, for which Dr He used a tool called Crispr, he targeted a gene called CCR5, mutations of which can result in HIV immunity.
Targeted genome editing | What does it all mean?
Fyodor Urnov, genome editing scientist at the University of California’s Innovative Genomic Institute, said that Dr He’s data did not support the claim that the process had worked.
Dr Urnov told the MIT Technology Review: “The claim they [Dr He and colleagues] have reproduced the prevalent CCR5 variant is a blatant misrepresentation of the actual data and can only be described by one term: a deliberate falsehood.
“The study shows that the research team instead failed to reproduce the prevalent CCR5 variant. The statement that embryo editing will help millions is equal parts delusional and outrageous, and is akin to saying that the 1969 moonwalk ‘brings hopes to millions of human beings seeking to live on the moon’.”
Using Crispr in humans is controversial as it sometimes causes unplanned gene edits.
Dr He’s research stated that one of the embryos he edited potentially had one unplanned – although largely biologically insignificant – mutation, and that the other embryo “did not show any off-target mutations.”
Dr Urnov called the claim “an egregious misrepresentation of the actual data that can, again, only be described as a blatant falsehood.
"It is technically impossible to determine whether an edited embryo ‘did not show any off-target mutations’ without destroying that embryo by inspecting every one of its cells.”
The review also raised concerns about the selection of parents for the experiment.
As the twins’ father is HIV positive, some question whether social stigma in China about the virus prompted the parents to turn to Dr He as they may have struggled to get conventional fertility treatment.
Dr He’s manuscript was submitted to journals including Nature and the Journal of the American Medical Association, but has not been officially published.
On Twitter Dr Urnov wrote that his “delusion and hubris are a tragic lesson – a negative example for the ages.”
Selon une étude réalisée en Chine, voyager en train à côté ou à proximité d’une personne infectée par le Covid-19 augmente considérablement le risque de contracter le virus, en particulier si le trajet dure plusieurs heures.
Sommaire
Le risque de transmission augmente en fonction de la proximité des sièges
Si vous voyagez dans un train avec une personne touchée par le Covid-19, quels sont les risques de vous faire contaminer ? C’est pour répondre à cette question précise que des chercheurs de l’université de Southampton (Angleterre) ont réalisé une étude en collaboration avec l’Académie chinoise des sciences, L’Académie de l’électronique et des technologies de l’information, et le Centre chinois de contrôle et de prévention des maladies. La recherche, dont les résultats sont publiés dans la revue
Clinical Infectious Diseases, s’est basée sur un système de modélisation élaboré à partir d’une cartographie des lignes ferroviaires à grande vitesse en Chine. Les données couvrent une période comprise entre le 19 décembre 2019 et le 6 mars 2020 et incluent 2.334 patients infectés (également appelés patients index), ainsi que 72.093 contacts proches. La durée des voyages étudiés variait entre moins d’une heure et huit heures.Les auteurs des travaux ont constaté que pour les passagers du train assis à moins de trois rangées (dans le sens de la largeur) et cinq colonnes (dans le sens de la longueur) d’une personne infectée, entre zéro et dix pour cent (10,3) attrapaient la maladie. Le taux moyen de transmission pour ces voyageurs “en contact étroit” était de 0,32%.Le risque de transmission augmente en fonction de la proximité des sièges L’étude a également montré que les passagers voyageant dans des sièges directement adjacents à un patient index souffraient du plus haut niveau de transmission, avec une moyenne de 3,5% contractant la maladie. Pour ceux assis dans la même rangée, le chiffre était de 1,5%.En revanche, les risques de contracter le virus en voyageant dans le siège qu’une personne infectée aurait occupé avant ne s’élèvent qu’à 0,075%, s’étonnent les chercheurs à l’origine de l’étude. “Notre étude montre que, bien qu’il existe un risque accru de transmission de Covid-19 dans les trains, l’emplacement du siège d’une personne et la durée du voyage par rapport à une personne infectieuse peuvent faire une grande différence quant à la transmission“, commente dans un communiqué le Dr Shengjie Lai, auteur principal de l’étude.”Cette recherche montre que le risque de transmission ne concerne pas seulement la distance par rapport à une personne infectée, mais aussi le temps passé en sa présence. Nous espérons que cela pourra contribuer à informer les autorités du monde entier sur les mesures nécessaires pour se prémunir contre le virus et contribuer à réduire sa propagation“, renchérit le Pr Andy Tatem, directeur de l’entreprise WorldPop, qui a participé aux travaux.Click Here: Cheap FIJI Rugby Jersey
The fall of one of Hungary’s last major independent media outlets has exposed how Brussels lacks both the political will and the legal tools to help preserve a vibrant free press in EU member countries.
The vast majority of reporters and editors at Hungary’s largest news site, Index, quit their jobs in July, following the dismissal of their editor-in-chief, who had warned that the publication was at risk of losing its independence. The demise of Index comes two years after some 400 media were consolidated into a conglomerate that increasingly dominates the media landscape with coverage sympathetic to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling party.
European Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová has voiced concern about both cases but the EU is increasingly finding that it is ill-equipped to take action.
The European Parliament has triggered an Article 7 procedure over concerns about democratic backsliding in Hungary. While this could theoretically lead to sanctions, the process is stuck in limbo because it can be blocked by any other EU member country with its own rule of law problems. Efforts to link EU funding to rule-of-law criteria resulted in a political fudge at the last European Council, and it remains unclear whether such measures can be enforced.
Given these limitations in tackling Hungary head-on in the arena of democratic values, some have pinned their hopes on a more technical power at the EU’s disposal: Competition law, which is intended to stop unfair business concentrations and prevent governments from pouring state cash into favored businesses.
But efforts to use merger and state subsidy rules in the Hungarian media cases have hit numerous obstacles, and Jourová acknowledged it was far from obvious that they were a suitable weapon. “We will review the competition rules and I cannot tell you now that we will be able to address the situation by EU competition rules, but we have to look into the mergers which might be dangerous not only for the single market but also for democracy and the freedom of speech.”
More fundamentally, however, Brussels has traditionally preferred to regard media as an issue best left to national capitals.
“The Commission has been rather reluctant to put their hands in media,” said Pablo Ibáñez Colomo, a professor of law at the London School of Economics.
Magyar merger
Hungary’s media consolidation in 2018 certainly triggered an interest in EU merger rules among Orbán’s opponents. More than 400 pro-government outlets were merged into a nonprofit media conglomerate known as KESMA — the Hungarian acronym for Central European Press and Media Foundation.
In a report published on July 23, the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom found that the creation of KESMA “represents a huge and unprecedented concentration of media in the hands of oligarchs who are friendly to the ruling party.”
What’s more, Budapest excluded the creation of KESMA from scrutiny from the Hungarian competition authority via a decree in which it declared its “national strategic importance in the public interest” — a move that the country’s Constitutional Court this year ruled legal.
A Commission spokesperson said that “the creation of KESMA itself, as well as the concentration of the media outlets, fall outside the Commission’s jurisdiction under the EU merger regulation.” EU merger rules have very high financial thresholds to qualify for oversight from Brussels, in the hundreds of millions and billions of euros. The tie-ups should also have a cross-border dimension in the European single market to merit a look by Brussels.
“With competition law tools it’s very hard to address the Hungarian situation,” said one Commission official.
As Jourová noted, EU merger rules are under review but she was right to remain cautious over whether the law would be revised to integrate media plurality as a criterion. Countries do have a right to block mergers under EU law to preserve media diversity, but it would be difficult for Brussels to incorporate such openly political factors into its own merger reviews, which are supposed to be more objectively technical, based on squarely economic questions of market dominance.
When asked about the KESMA case, a Commission spokesperson sought to put clear water between the sphere of merger reviews and the political question of media freedoms.
“Media freedom and pluralism raise many important issues that go beyond the remit of EU competition law. It is for member states to ensure that their national media ownership and plurality rules are up-to-date and properly enforced,” the spokesperson said.
Dole outs on the Danube
Subsidies are a hot topic in discussions of the transformation of Hungarian media. Over the past few years, Hungarian journalists and media experts have raised concerns over vast sums of state funding being channeled to pro-government outlets.
The Commission received two complaints in 2016 and 2019 about alleged illegal state aid by the Hungarian government in the media sector. The 2019 complaint argued that Orbán has been granting cash illegally to favored media outlets in the form of public advertisements.
“The EU is looking for effective new tools for defending democracy and rule of law. However, it has really effective existing tools in its hand,” said Gábor Polyák, an academic and leader of think tank Mérték Media Monitor, one of the signatories of the complaints.
The 2019 complaint, seen by POLITICO, cites data from Kantar Media showing, for example, that one pro-government KESMA entity, the magazine Figyelő, received 74.1 percent of its total advertising revenue in 2018 from state advertising, whereas state ads made up only 3.5 percent of the advertising revenue at independent magazine HVG that year.
In one instance, in its 2017 “Let’s stop Brussels” campaign, the Hungarian state spent approximately €10.3 million in the print market (in 2019 prices), according to the complaint, which cites government data obtained by investigative website Átlátszó through a freedom of information request. The Mediaworks company — which is now part of KESMA — received €4.3 million.
The Hungarian government, KESMA and Mediaworks did not respond to requests for comment on the high share of state advertising.
State aid enforcement is a complex tool, however, as the Commission looks for ways to prove the aid is “selective” and could distort trade between EU member countries by, for example, offering a local company a perk that makes a foreign investor unable to compete.
The 2019 complaint seeks to build a case for selectivity.
The Hungarian government’s advertising is “selective and discriminative, in fact it is not based on any economic rationale, since its practice is not even remotely related to the audience measurement data of the market players,” the complaint said, noting that according to Kantar Media data one of the country’s most popular TV channels, RTL Klub, received 3 percent of the total amount of state television advertising in 2018 when measured in seconds, while its competitor — the pro-government TV2 — received 43 percent of the total.
“The advantage of state aid is that you can tackle something which can have broader implications on the base of technical criteria … Whether the Commission may want to go there is a different case,” said Ibáñez Colomo from the LSE.
The state aid complaint comes at an unfortunate time politically for the complainants, however, as the EU’s state aid enforcers have faced a run of defeats over their methodology in the Court of Justice of the European Union. Brussels is still reeling from a recent court decision that shot down its attempt to tackle Apple’s tax affairs in Ireland as a state aid issue.
Repackaging the political grenade of Hungary’s media landscape as a state aid matter could also prove unappetizing.
Indeed, the Commission is highly cautious on whether it sees any case after receiving the first complaint back in 2016. Brussels “has been in continuous contact with Hungarian authorities,” said a Commission spokesperson, adding that “these contacts are ongoing.”
That foot-dragging has fueled frustration.
“They see the problem, that’s why they can’t close it,” said Benedek Jávor, a former Hungarian member of the European Parliament and one of the signatories of the complaints. “But they’re not courageous enough to jump into the conflict.”
This article is part of POLITICO’s new coverage of Competition and Industrial Policy. This coverage includes the must read Fair Play newsletter every weekday morning.Email [email protected] to request a complimentary trial.
The South Dakota State wrestling team has released its 2013-14 schedule, a slate that includes six home dates, including the 21st Annual Warren Williamson/Daktronics Open.
“We are very excited with this year’s schedule,” said head coach Chris Bono. “We’ll be competing all over the country, including duals against Pac 12 and Big 10 opponents.”
SDSU will make its season debut by hosting the Warren Williamson/Daktronics Open (Nov. 3). Other open tournaments on the docket include the Cyclone Open (Nov. 16), the UNI Open (Dec. 14) and the highly competitive Southern Scuffle hosted by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (Jan. 1-2).
The Jackrabbits will open their dual season with three consecutive home outings in November, including alumni weekend vs. Drexel (Nov. 9), Nebraska (Nov. 24) and North Dakota State (Nov. 30). Other home duals on the schedule include Air Force (Jan. 26) and Northern Illinois (Feb. 14).
Following the three-dual homestand, SDSU will travel for a pair of neutral site duals. SDSU will travel to Sioux Falls to wrestle Augustana at the Sioux Falls Pentagon (Dec. 8) and Gillette, Wyo., to take on Wyoming (Jan. 19).
Other road opponents include Northern Iowa and Ohio (Feb. 1) in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Utah Valley (Feb. 6), along with Cal Poly and Stanford (Feb. 8) in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
SDSU will close out its regular season with a pair of road duals against Northern Colorado (Feb. 16) and North Dakota State (Feb. 23).
The postseason slate begins March 8 when SDSU travels to Orem, Utah to compete in the WWC Championships/NCAA West Regional. The Jacks will then travel to the NCAA Championships (Mar. 20-22) in Oklahoma City, Okla.
“The schedule has its challenging points,” Bono said. “It will really get us ready for the conference tournament and the national championships.”
Matside season tickets will be available for $50, plus a Jackrabbit Club donation. These seats will be allocated based on priority points with a max of four. General admission tickets can be bought for $35. Season tickets will go on sale Oct. 1.
– Xavier Woods plays WWE 2K17 against Gamer Vince in this new video from IGN. Their match features Papa Shango against against The Godfather.
– The t-shirts recently released for RAW Tag Team Champions Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson have already sold out on WWE Shop.
– Triple H posted the following video of Mojo Rawley at the WWE Performance Center this morning. He wrote, “Just watched @MojoRawleyWWE do a 60 inch approach hurdle straight off the red eye…I love this place! @WWEPerformCtr”
Just watched @MojoRawleyWWE do a 60 inch approach hurdle straight off the red eye…I love this place! @WWEPerformCtr pic.twitter.com/G3NIpO9Pzo
— Triple H (@TripleH) February 22, 2017
Follow Marc on Twitter at @this_is_marc. Send any news, tips or corrections to us by clicking here.
WWE Considering Big Turn, Must See New Maryse & Noelle Foley, Triple H Ready to Push Former TNA Star on RAW, WrestleMania 33 Main Events, WWE Star Gets Backstage Heat, New GIFs & Galleries, More