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Lionel Messi has been named No 1 in Sports Pro's 2020 list of the World's 50 Most Marketable Athletes. The Barcelona superstar and six-time Ballon d’Or winner claimed the top spot ahead of Juventus striker Cristiano Ronaldo who was placed in second spot. American basketball star LeBron James, Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli, and Canadian tennis player Bianca Andreescu completed this year’s top five, with Bianca named as the top-ranked female athlete. According to SportsPro, this year’s 50 Most Marketable (50MM) Athletes list is powered by Nielsen’s proprietary athlete marketability assessment methodology. The methodology draws on vast amounts of social media data to generate an Athlete Influencer Score comprising four key data points: relevance, reach, return, and resonance.

With the coronavirus crisis putting a chill on travel, European airlines are reducing fares to attract passengers and fill the planes that are still flying. Travel restrictions adopted by many countries to stem the spread of the disease have clobbered airlines, bringing air traffic to a near halt in the spring. And while traffic picked up during the summer, it is now falling off again. According to Euro-control, which coordinates air traffic in Europe, traffic has been slowing over the past couple of weeks, and is now 54 per cent below its comparable level last year. A European airline trade association has put August traffic even lower, at just 30 per cent of 2019 levels. Euro-control is now more pessimistic about a recovery for the sector. In the spring it had expected traffic to be 30 per cent below 2019 levels in October, but it now sees a 57-per cent drop. While the pandemic has left airlines starved for cash, they have begun to cut fare prices. According to Forward Keys, a compan...

Turkish prosecutors have indicted six new Saudis suspected of involvement in the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, local media reported on Monday. Istanbul prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment for two of the suspects and up to five years in jail for the remaining four, the official Anadolu news agency reported. The Washington Post contributor, Khashoggi, 59, was killed and dismembered at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, in a case that tarnished the reputation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Khashoggi went inside the consulate to obtain paperwork for his marriage to Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz. The six Saudi suspects, indicted just days ahead of the second anniversary of the journalist’s death, are not in Turkey and should be tried in absentia, according to local reports. In a separate case launched in July, an Istanbul court began to try in absentia 20 other Saudis over the murder, including two former aides to the Saudi prince. Tur...

British actor, Henry Cavill has expressed his interest in becoming the next James Bond now that the role is open after Daniel Craig finished his last Bond movie. Cavill is popular for his role as Superman in DC’s Man of Steel which was released in 2013. However, Craig’s last outing as Agent 007 is in “No Time To Die” which will be released on Nov. 11. The quest to find a suitable replacement has had fans placing bets on their favourite actors from Tom Hardy, Sam Heughan, Idris Elba, and more, Ibtimes reports. Interestingly, he auditioned for the chance to play James Bond in “Casino Royale” against Craig. While he was the second choice for the role, he was only 22 years old and he was on the chubby side. Now, the 37-year-old actor has a great muscular build and he can easily be the top contender if the producers want him to play James Bond. He said, “We will see what happens. I would love to play Bond, it would be very, very exciting.” This is not the first time that the Superman star s...

TikTok won a last-minute reprieve late Sunday as a US federal judge halted enforcement of a politically charged ban ordered by the Trump administration on downloads of the popular video app, hours before it was set to take effect. District Judge Carl Nichols issued a temporary injunction at the request of TikTok, which the White House has called a national security threat stemming from its Chinese parent firm’s links to the Beijing government. The opinion was sealed, so no reason for the decision was released in a brief order by the court in Washington. The judge may unseal portions of the order after consulting with lawyers from both sides. The Trump administration order had sought to ban new downloads of the app from midnight (0400 GMT Monday) but would allow use of TikTok until November 12, when all usage would be blocked. The judge denied TikTok’s request to suspend the November 12 ban. The decision represents a temporary win for TikTok, which has 100 million US users. But the cour...

The United Nations human rights experts have called on Nigerian authorities to immediately release a 22-year-old singer, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, sentenced to death over an allegedly blasphemous song shared on social media. The experts made the call on Monday in a joint statement titled ‘UN rights experts urge Nigeria to overturn death sentence for singer who shared song on WhatsApp’. They noted that Sharif-Aminu was given a death sentence on August 10 by a Sharia court in Kano State over a song judged blasphemous that he performed and shared in a WhatsApp group. The experts called for the death sentence to be overturned and for authorities to guarantee his safety and due process rights while he is appealing his conviction. “We are deeply concerned over the serious lack of due process in Mr Sharif-Aminu’s case so far, especially reports that he has been held incommunicado and that he did not have access to a lawyer during his initial trial, a trial that was not open to the public,” they sa...

American model, Chrissy Teigen has been hospitalized in Los Angeles after suffering heavy bleeding during her pregnancy. The television personality, who is expecting her third child with singer husband John Legend, was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Sunday, CNN reports. Her admission into the hospital comes hours after she complained of being ‘so bored’ stuck at home because of her latest pregnancy being ruled as high-risk. The host of Lip Sync Battle shares updates on her health complications via a series of posts on Instagram, revealing that she had been bleeding for about a month. “We all know I’ve been on bed rest for a few weeks and that’s like super serious bed rest. I get up to quickly pee and that’s it. I would take baths twice a week, no showering, just as little as possible,” she said from her hospital bed. Teigen continued, “But I was always, always bleeding. I’m about halfway through pregnancy and the blood has been going on for like a month. Maybe a little bit les...