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Qatar tribune agencies Conakry At least 56 people have been killed in Guinea and many injured after a mass panic among football fans, the government said on Monday. That death toll is disputed by many in the country, who believe the true number of dead is closer to 100. Clashes between rival fans broke out in the city of Nzerekore on Sunday after a red card was shown to a Labe player with the score at 0-0 late in the game. Fans of Labe started throwing stones and security forces then used tear gas, sparking the mass panic. It is not yet clear if the deaths were mainly caused by a stampede. Prime Minister Bah Oury expressed his condolences to the families of the victims on behalf of the government of the West African country and announced an investigation into the accident. The football match was part of a political campaign by the ruling military junta in Guinea. Copy 03/12/2024 10
AMESBURY, Mass. , Dec. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Provident Bancorp, Inc. (the "Company") (Nasdaq:PVBC), the holding company for BankProv (the "Bank"), today announced that its Board of Directors has adopted a new stock repurchase program. Under the repurchase program, the Company may repurchase up to 883,366 shares of its common stock, or approximately five percent of the current outstanding shares. The repurchase program was adopted following the receipt of non-objection from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston . The repurchase program permits shares to be repurchased in open market or private transactions, through block trades, and pursuant to any trading plan that may be adopted in accordance with Rule 10b5-1 of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Repurchases will be made at management's discretion at prices management considers to be attractive and in the best interests of both the Company and its stockholders, subject to the availability of stock, general market conditions, the trading price of the stock, alternative uses for capital, and the Company's financial performance. Open market purchases will be conducted in accordance with the limitations set forth in Rule 10b -18 of the Securities and Exchange Commission and other applicable legal requirements. The repurchase program may be suspended, terminated or modified at any time for any reason, including market conditions, the cost of repurchasing shares, the availability of alternative investment opportunities, liquidity, and other factors deemed appropriate. These factors may also affect the timing and amount of share repurchases. The repurchase program does not obligate the Company to purchase any particular number of shares. About Provident Bancorp, Inc. Provident Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PVBC) is the holding company for BankProv, a full-service commercial bank headquartered in Massachusetts . With retail branches in the Seacoast Region of Northeastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire , as well as commercial banking offices in the Manchester / Concord market in Central New Hampshire , BankProv delivers a unique combination of traditional banking services and innovative financial solutions to its markets. Founded in Amesbury, Massachusetts in 1828, BankProv holds the honor of being the 10th oldest bank in the nation. The Bank insures 100% of deposits through a combination of insurance provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Depositors Insurance Fund (DIF). For more information, visit bankprov.com . Forward-Looking Statements This news release may contain certain forward-looking statements, such as statements of the Company's or the Bank's plans, objectives, expectations, estimates and intentions. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as, "expects," "subject," "believe," "will," "intends," "may," "will be" or "would." These statements are subject to change based on various important factors (some of which are beyond the Company's or the Bank's control), and actual results may differ materially. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements (which reflect management's analysis of factors only as of the date on which they are given). These factors include: general economic conditions; interest rates; inflation; levels of unemployment; legislative, regulatory and accounting changes; monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. Government, including policies of the U.S. Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank; deposit flows; our ability to access cost-effective funding; changes in liquidity, including the size and composition of our deposit portfolio and the percentage of uninsured deposits in the portfolio; changes in consumer spending, borrowing and savings habits; competition; our ability to successfully shift the balance sheet to that of a traditional community bank; real estate values in the market area; loan demand; the adequacy of our level and methodology for calculating our allowance for credit losses; changes in the quality of our loan and securities portfolios; the ability of our borrowers to repay their loans; our ability to retain key employees; failures or breaches of our IT systems, including cyberattacks; the failure to maintain current technologies; the ability of the Company or the Bank to effectively manage its growth; global and national war and terrorism; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic or any other pandemic on our operations and financial results and those of our customers; and results of regulatory examinations, among other factors. The foregoing list of important factors is not exclusive. Readers should carefully review the risk factors described in other documents that the Company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Annual and Quarterly Reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, and Current Reports on Form 8-K. Investor contact: Joseph Reilly President and Chief Executive Officer Provident Bancorp, Inc. jreilly@bankprov.com View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/provident-bancorp-inc-adopts-stock-repurchase-program-302320082.html SOURCE Provident Bancorp, Inc.
In fact, he argued, it could have been a culinary conspiracy concocted by criminals, whose actions led to the cooking wine used to prepare the noodles being laced with a banned heart drug that found its way into an athlete's system. This theory was spelled out to international anti-doping officials during a meeting and, after weeks of wrangling, finally made it into the thousands of pages of data handed over to the lawyer who investigated the case involving 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for that same drug. The attorney, appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, refused to consider that scenario as he sifted through the evidence. In spelling out his reasoning, lawyer Eric Cottier paid heed to the half-baked nature of the theory. "The Investigator considers this scenario, which he has described in the conditional tense, to be possible, no less, no more," Cottier wrote. Even without the contaminated-noodles theory, Cottier found problems with the way WADA and the Chinese handled the case but ultimately determined WADA had acted reasonably in not appealing China's conclusion that its athletes had been inadvertently contaminated. Critics of the way the China case was handled can't help but wonder if a wider exploration of the noodle theory, details of which were discovered by The Associated Press via notes and emails from after the meeting where it was delivered, might have lent a different flavor to Cottier's conclusions. "There are more story twists to the ways the Chinese explain the TMZ case than a James Bond movie," said Rob Koehler, the director general of the advocacy group Global Athlete. "And all of it is complete fiction." In April, reporting from the New York Times and the German broadcaster ARD revealed that the 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine, also known as TMZ. China's anti-doping agency determined the athletes had been contaminated, and so, did not sanction them. WADA accepted that explanation, did not press the case further, and China was never made to deliver a public notice about the "no-fault findings," as is often seen in similar cases. The stock explanation for the contamination was that traces of TMZ were found in the kitchen of a hotel where the swimmers were staying. In his 58-page report, Cottier relayed some suspicions about the feasibility of that chain of events — noting that WADA's chief scientist "saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities." But without evidence to support pursuing the case, and with the chance of winning an appeal at almost nil, Cottier determined WADA's "decision not to appeal appears indisputably reasonable." A mystery remained: How did those traces of TMZ get into the kitchen? Shortly after the doping positives were revealed, the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations held a meeting on April 30 where it heard from the leader of China's agency, Li Zhiquan. Li's presentation was mostly filled with the same talking points that have been delivered throughout the saga — that the positive tests resulted from contamination from the kitchen. But he expanded on one way the kitchen might have become contaminated, harkening to another case in China involving a low-level TMZ positive. A pharmaceutical factory, he explained, had used industrial alcohol in the distillation process for producing TMZ. The industrial alcohol laced with the drug "then entered the market through illegal channels," he said. The alcohol "was re-used by the perpetrators to process and produce cooking wine, which is an important seasoning used locally to make beef noodles," Li said. "The contaminated beef noodles were consumed by that athlete, resulting in an extremely low concentration of TMZ in the positive sample. "The wrongdoers involved have been brought to justice." This new information raised eyebrows among the anti-doping leaders listening to Li's report. So much so that over the next month, several emails ensued to make sure the details about the noodles and wine made their way to WADA lawyers, who could then pass it onto Cottier. Eventually, Li did pass on the information to WADA general counsel Ross Wenzel and, just to be sure, one of the anti-doping leaders forwarded it, as well, according to the emails seen by the AP. All this came with Li's request that the noodles story be kept confidential. Turns out, it made it into Cottier's report, though he took the information with a grain of salt. "Indeed, giving it more attention would have required it to be documented, then scientifically verified and validated," he wrote. Neither Wenzel nor officials at the Chinese anti-doping agency returned messages from AP asking about the noodles conspiracy and the other athlete who Li suggested had been contaminated by them. Meanwhile, 11 of the swimmers who originally tested positive competed at the Paris Games earlier this year in a meet held under the cloud of the Chinese doping case. Though WADA considers the case closed, Koehler and others point to situations like this as one of many reasons that an investigation by someone other than Cottier, who was hired by WADA, is still needed. "It gives the appearance that people are just making things up as they go along on this, and hoping the story just goes away," Koehler said. "Which clearly it has not."