Monaco are ready to sell Kylian Mbappe to Ligue 1 archrivals Paris Saint-Germain in a deal that will cost the Parisians €150 million, plus one of their players, according to the reliable L’Equipe sports daily.
The 18-year-old’s future has been the topic of intense speculation throughout the summer, with several clubs reportedly, including Real Madrid and Barcelona, courting him over the past months.
Conversations between PSG and Monaco over the signing of Kylian Mbappe have taken “significant steps forward’ and the only thing missing is for a player from the Parisian side to agree to join Monaco, L’Equipe said.
German international Draxler has already been told he is surplus to requirements despite only joining the club in January, and Di Maria could also be set to leave to make way for Mbappe.
Mbappe will not play against Marseille on Sunday, ASM said. Meanwhile, Mbappe has been selected for the French squad for the two qualifying matches for the 2018 World Cup against the Netherlands next Thursday at the Stade de France and against Luxembourg on Sunday 3 September in Toulouse.
A rented yacht recently-arrived from Italy caught fire spectacularly off the Nice-Côte d’Azur airport on Thursday, August 17.
At about 2 pm in the afternoon the crew of “If Only”, a 39-metre yacht with a steel hull and aluminium superstructure, alerted the French authorities. Maritime police boats from Nice, Cagnes-sur-Mer and Antibes attended the incident.
A total of 15 people on board the boat were rescued, including four crew. During the fire, a large plume of smoke was visible from the beaches and from aircraft taking off from and landing at Nice Airport. The yacht was within five miles of the coast when the fire broke out. The cause to the blaze is under investigation.
Built by Dutch-based Feadship in 1974 as Wallanka, the yacht was later renamed to If Only.
Monaco yacht builder Dynamiq has announced its official sponsorship of the Yacht Club de Monaco Malizia team led by skipper Pierre Casiraghi.
The initiative consolidates Dynamiq’s sponsorship of some of the world’s most thrilling sailing regattas as official supplier of the 35th America’s Cup and the Melges 40 Grand Prix team Synergy GT. Dynamiq, which has a showroom on the 4th floor of the yacht club, also supports the Monaco solar boat annual races.
“Dynamiq has a strong sailing spirit and supports innovation in the world’s most thrilling sailing regattas, both in its hometown of Monte Carlo and globally,” said Sergei Dobroserdov, company founder and CEO.
“Our sponsorship of the Malizia team is just the latest example of our close relationship with the Yacht Club de Monaco and Pierre Casiraghi, who share our passion for benchmarking innovation and performance.”
Pierre Casiraghi, Vice-President of the Yacht Club de Monaco, with Bernard d’Alessandri, YCM Secretary General, at Dynamiq’s Viareggio shipyard
Pierre Casiraghi is Vice-President of the Yacht Club de Monaco and together with Bernard d’Alessandri, YCM Secretary General, attended the keel laying at the company’s shipyard in Viareggio of the new Dynamiq GTT 115 designed by Studio FA Porsche, which will be presented during the upcoming Monaco Yacht Show.
Knight Frank has listed Shanghai, Sydney, Singapore, Monaco and Dubai as the top destinations for luxury property investment for the superrich, leaving Hong Kong out of the top five altogether.
Knight Frank’s Prime International Residential Index (PIRI) ranks luxury property prices in 100 cities worldwide.
According to PIRI last year, the value of urban luxury property increased on average by 2.4 per cent year-on-year, while beach or coastal property slipped marginally by 0.5 per cent. Average prices on the world’s prime residential market rose 1.4 per cent as compared to a 1.8 per cent growth in 2015.
Luxury property prices in Shanghai, the top commercial and most expensive city in China, are expected to rise by eight percent this year, whereas luxury property prices in the city soared by 27 percent for investors.
Sydney, Australian, the top city in terms of value of luxury real estate, is expected to increase by five per cent, according to various estimates. In 2016, Sydney posted a 9.3 percent price growth in high-end property and was ranked 11th in Knight Frank’s PIRI rating.
Monaco makes an appearance in third place in terms of the desirability for investment purposes. The general view is that the Principality’s top-end properties will rise by five percent this year after rising 1.03 per cent last year.
Dubai and Singapore took fourth and fifth place respectively.
In an open letter to the founder of easyJet, Monaco resident Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, France’s National Union of Airline Pilots (SNPL) has said that it believes that the airline “has reached the limits of low cost”.
SNPL members who are easyJet pilots said that the company reduces “the employee to a (specific) cost and the passenger to a (specific) profit”.
In particular, they complain that pilots are faced with an unrealistic flight programme, that fatigue levels are too high, and there have been multiple payroll errors. They further assert that the budget airline suffers from “serious structural dysfunctions”.
“The crews are pushed daily to their limits, limits that have become targets,” they claim. And the consequences are directly felt by the customers, inevitably “affected by the decline of the quality of the service, the punctuality, by the state of the planes and the lack of information of which they are victims”.
“When asked to do a Nice-Olbia round trip, then a Nice-Marrakech round-trip with 25-minute stops at overloaded airports during the summer, disembarking and embarking 186 passengers plus luggage, the last flight of the day is impossible to do,” said SNPL representative Michaël Van Til.
According to the union, the number of cancelled easyJet flights has jumped from 350 in the single month of July 2016 to 541 this year.
“We are now calling on you to intervene … to restore the values that have built the image of our company,” the union’s letter said.
While Sir Stelios, the easyJet’s largest shareholder, did not directly comment, the company acknowledged in a statement the letter sent by SNPL and “is surprised as the airline is engaged in a continuous constructive dialogue with the Union, namely during the last annual negotiation”.
Stating that the airline operates “one of the largest number of flights in France, flying over 78 million passengers per year including 17 million in France, with less than 0.8% delayed by more than three hours from a network perspective”, the company was clear to point out: “easyJet would never compromise on safety and has in place a series of rigorous processes when it comes to safety, including crew training.”
Furthermore, easyJet said it’s structured to be able to manage normal levels of disruption in this busy summer period. “Unfortunately a number of external factors can increase disruption including congested airspace, particularly in the London area impacting the rest of the network and also in France, adverse weather and Air Traffic Control delays”, the airline commented, insisting that “all airlines flying the French airspace have been impacted by these issues with a disproportional impact depending on their flying pattern”.
Citing that easyJet has “invested significantly this year” to hire extra crew and make schedules more resilient while continuing to work with air traffic control across Europe to help ease congestion, the company maintains, “We work hard to minimise disruption and on the occasions when it happens we will always assist customers with their immediate requirements at the airport regardless of the cause of the event as well as always paying compensation when passengers are entitled to it.”
According to easyJet’s European PR Manager Carinne Heinen, on average, easyJet pilots based in France carry out 7.1 hours of service per day, or 3 flights per day, and flew 16 days during the month of July, “our busiest month of the year”.
easyJet is in line with European and French regulations regarding maximum flight times and their pilots based in France are the most protected of the easyJet network.
“Safety is our first priority and we have in addition to the regulations in force collective agreements with SNPL concerning flight times,” Ms Heinen told Monaco Life.
Article first published August 14, 2017.
READ ALSO: easyJet releases “Jet Sounds”
easyJet announced a new route to the “land of nod” with the release of ‘Jet Sounds’; a ground-breaking charity single and album comprised entirely of engine noise recorded at 39,000ft en-route from Gatwick to Nice and features the sublime harmonics of a pair of CFM56, twin spool, high bypass, turbo fan engines. The album and single were released on Friday 11th August – available to buy on iTunes and usual outlets such as Amazon and Google Play.
All proceeds will be donated to The Children’s Sleep Charity, to help further support children and families with sleep issues and provide accredited training for professionals.
