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Feb 8 (Reuters) - CVS Health Corp is moving deeper into primary care with its planned $9.5 billion deal for Oak Street Health announced on Wednesday, giving it a bigger role in healthcare services in line with many of its rival.

Here is a list of some big companies that are also providing medical services or have announced similar deals:

UnitedHealth Group Inc

UnitedHealth's Optum Health business provides services that range from primary care to specialty care such as cardiology and oncology.

Optum Health served more than 100 million people in the first nine months of 2022, according to a quarterly regulatory filing.

UnitedHealth last year also announced a deal to buy LHC Group, which provides healthcare services at home, for EvDEN EVe NaKLiyat about $5. When you adored this information and also you desire to be given guidance concerning evdeN eVE naKLiyAT i implore you to pay a visit to the web-page. 4 billion. LHC operates at more than 900 service locations in 37 U.S.states.

Walgreens Boots Alliance

Pharmacy chain Walgreens in 2021 took a majority stake in primary care provider VillageMD, which has nearly 400 clinics in the United States including 200 co-located with Walgreens retails stores, as of the end of 2022.

VillageMD completed the acquisition of urgent care provider Summit Health in a deal valued at $9 billion. Together, VillageMD and Summit Health will operate at more than 680 locations.

Cigna Corp

Health insurer Cigna Corp invested $2.5 billion in VillageMD to become a minority shareholder.

Amazon.com Inc

Amazon.com Inc agreed to buy primary care provider One Medical for $3.49 billion in July to expand its virtual healthcare and add brick-and-mortar doctors' offices.

One Medical has around 815,000 members in total and 214 medical offices in 26 markets, according to its latest quarterly filing.

Walmart Inc

Walmart and eVDeN Eve nakLiYAt UnitedHealth Group in September signed a 10-year partnership to provide preventive care for people ages 65 and older, and virtual healthcare services for all age groups.

Walmart's effort with UnitedHealth will target common ailments among aging Americans such as heart disease and diabetes.

Centene Corp

Medicaid provider Centene runs medical centers through its Community Medical Group, EVDEN EVE nAKLiYaT which it acquired in 2018.It runs 16 medical centers in South Florida and EvdEN EVE nAkLiYat five centers in Central Florida, according to its website. (Reporting by Raghav Mahobe and Mariam E Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Two supermarket giants have held onto the trust of Australians while arguably our most iconic home-grown brand dropped almost completely from the hearts and EVdEn eVE nAkLiyAt minds of Aussies.

The latest Roy Morgan poll, which determines the nation's most trusted brands every three months, ranked Woolworths and Coles as Australia's most depended-upon brands.  

But national carrier suffered a devastating drop, EVdeN evE NakLiyat falling from number nine to be ranked 40th after it was plagued by stories of bad customer service and flight delays.

Optus also took a hit, ranking second on Roy Morgan's most distrusted brands' list, knocking Telstra down to three.

The embattled telco rose from the 17th spot published in September after its customer data was stolen and leaked online in a cyber security attack last year.

Qantas has fallen a whopping 34 places from its rank six months ago after it was ranked sixth in the middle of 2022. 

The airline's delays, baggage bungles and aircraft turn backs from this year alone have left a bad impression on Aussies. 

Australia Post made a foray into the top 10 at number nine, with the troubled postal service upping the ante by two spots since last September. 

It comes in the wake of the group's profits before tax spiraling from $199.8 million to $23.6 million in the first half of the financial year to December 31. 

Hardware giant Bunnings stayed at number three. 

Aldi kept up the competition remaining in fourth position with discount store Kmart on its tail at number five. 

The German supermarket chain has been voted as the most affordable place to shop in, while Kmart also reels Australian customers in looking for a bargain. 

Upscale department store Myer took out number six spot toppling tech giant Apple down to seven in the December survey.

Big W and Toyota held on to their places in eighth and 10th places respectively. 

The most distrusted brand in the Roy Morgan's December report was Facebook Meta, with Optus and Telstra coming from behind in second and third positions respectively. 

E-Commerce brand Amazon ventured down a spot to number four while News Corp came in fifth place on the list. 

Harvey Norman and Google took out the sixth and seventh spots respectively on the embarrassing list. 

Financial services heavyweight AMP reached number eight, with Rio Tinto and Nestle coming up in the rear. If you liked this report and you would like to get far more data concerning eVDEn eve NAkLiYaT kindly pay a visit to the web site.  

Noteworthy contenders outside the top ten most distrusted list included Medibank which suffered a jump to number 14 off the back of its own data breach last October. 

Twitter also bumped up to number 11 from 17 this quarter after Elon Musk bought the social media stalwart. 

BP also made an appearance on the shame list at number 16, moving up from 21 from the previous quarter.

As concern grows over social media, U.S.lawsuits stack up

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Surge in mental health problems worst among girls

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Lawyers zone in on algorithm designs, whistleblower leaks

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Others see platforms as scapegoat for society's woes

By Avi Asher-Schapiro

LOS ANGELES, Feb 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - At about the time her daughter reached the age of 12, American health executive Laurie saw her once confident, happy child turning into someone she barely recognized.At first, she thought a bad case of adolescent angst was to blame.

Initially, her daughter had trouble sleeping and grappled with episodes of self-loathing and anxiety, but by the time she was 14, she had started cutting herself and was having suicidal thoughts.

Without Laurie knowing, she had been sneaking away her confiscated smartphone and spending hours online at night, eVDeN eVE NakLiyAT trawling through posts about self-harm and eating disorders on social media platforms.

"One day she said to me: 'Mom, I'm going to hurt myself badly if I don't get help,'" Laurie said as she described the mental health crises that have plagued her daughter for the last two years, disrupting her education and eVdeN EVE nAKliyat devastating the family's finances.

She asked to use only her first name in order to protect the identity of her daughter.

Paying for her daughter's care - therapists, a psychiatrist, and multiple residential treatment facilities across the country - has nearly bankrupted Laurie, who recently sold her house in California and moved to a cheaper home in another state.

In August, she filed a lawsuit on behalf of her daughter against the social media platforms she blames for the ordeal: Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

The case is one of dozens of similar U.S.lawsuits which argue that, when it comes to children, social media is a dangerous product - like a car with a faulty seat-belt - and that tech companies should be held to account and pay for the resulting harms.

"Before (she used) social media, there was no eating disorder, there was no mental illness, there was no isolation, there was no cutting, none of that," Laurie told the Thomson Reuters Foundation about her daughter, who is identified as C.W.in the suit.

Don Grant, a psychologist who specializes in treating children with mental health issues linked to digital devices, said Laurie's predicament is increasingly common.

"It's like every night, kids all over the country sneak out of their houses and go to play in the sewers under the city with no supervision. That's what being online can be like," he said.

"You think just because your kids are sitting in your living room they're safe - but they're not."

Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms Inc, Snap Inc, which owns Snapchat, and TikTok declined to comment on individual lawsuits, but said they prioritized children's safety online.

Meta executives, under criticism over internal data showing its Instagram app damaged the mental health of teenagers, have highlighted the positive impacts of social media, and their efforts to better protect young users.

ASBESTOS, TOBACCO, SOCIAL MEDIA?

Laurie is represented by the Social Media Victims Law Center, a firm co-founded by veteran trial lawyer Matt Bergman, who won hundreds of millions of dollars suing makers of the building material asbestos for concealing its linkage with cancer in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Bergman decided to turn his attention to social media after former Facebook executive Frances Haugen leaked thousands of internal company documents in 2021 that showed the company had some knowledge of the potential harm its products could cause.

"These companies make the asbestos industry look like a bunch of Boy Scouts," Bergman said.

Facebook has said the Haugen papers have been mischaracterized and taken out of context, and that Wall Street Journal articles based on them "conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook's leadership and employees".

Bergman's firm has signed up more than 1,200 clients including Laurie over the past year, taking out television ads asking families who worry about their children's social media use to get in touch on a toll-free hotline.

In addition to more than 70 cases involving child suicide, the firm has collected over 600 cases linked to eating disorders.Dozens more accuse social media firms of failing to prevent sex trafficking on their platforms, or stem from accidental deaths after children attempted viral stunts allowed to spread online.

In late 2022, 80 similar federal suits from 35 different jurisdictions were consolidated together and are now being considered by the U.S.If you have any kind of inquiries concerning where and the best ways to utilize evden evE nAKliYAt, you could contact us at our web site. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Laurie's suit is part of a similar bundle of suits filed in California state courts.

HIDING BEHIND SECTION 230

None of these cases - or any of those filed by Bergman - have yet to be heard by a jury, and it is not clear if they ever will.

First, he has to get past Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a provision that provides technology companies some legal immunity for content published on their platform by third parties.

Courts routinely cite the provision when they dismiss lawsuits against social media firms, which prevents the cases from moving on to trial.

In October, for example, a court in Pennsylvania blocked a lawsuit against TikTok brought on behalf of a child who died after suffocating themselves doing a so-called blackout challenge that was widely shared on the video-sharing site.

When it was enacted in the 1990s, Section 230 was intended to shield the nascent tech industry from being crushed under waves of lawsuits, providing space for companies to experiment with platforms that encouraged user-generated content.

Laura Marquez-Garrett, a lawyer with the Social Media Victims Law Center who is taking the lead on Laurie's case, said she believed her cases could be won if a court agreed to hear them.

"The moment we get to litigate ... and move forward, it's game over," she said.

Bergman and Marquez-Garrett are part of growing cohort of lawyers who think Section 230 is no longer tenable, as political pressure builds on the issue.

President Joe Biden has voiced support for "revoking" Section 230, eVDeN EvE NAkliYaT and politicians in both parties have proposed legislation that would scrap or tweak the provision. But so far, no reform packages have gained traction, shifting the focus of reform efforts to litigation.

"We aren't talking about small companies experimenting with new technology; we're talking about huge companies who have built harmful products," Bergman said.

Bergman and his team say the harm to their clients is not primarily about harmful speech that just so happened to be posted online, but that it can directly be attributed to design decisions made by the tech companies.

His lawsuits focus on the building of algorithms that maximize the amount of time children spend online and push them towards harmful content; the way friend recommendation features can introduce children to predatory adults - as well as the lax controls for parents who want to restrict access.

"These lawsuits are about specific design decisions social media platforms have made to maximize profit over safety," Bergman said.

Asked by the Thomson Reuters Foundation to comment on the company's product designs, Meta sent an emailed statement from its global head of safety, Antigone Davis, who said the company takes children's safety seriously.

"We want teens to be safe online. We've developed more than 30 tools to support teens and families, including supervision tools that let parents limit the amount of time their teens spend on Instagram, and age verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences," the statement read.

A Snap spokesperson did not comment directly on the pending litigation, adding in a statement that "nothing is more important to us than the wellbeing of our community."

"We curate content from known creators and publishers and use human moderation to review user generated content before it can reach a large audience, which greatly reduces the spread and discovery of harmful content," the statement added.

'FOR PARENTS EVERYWHERE'

Laurie's lawsuit - which was filed in late August in the Superior Court of Los Angeles - alleges that TikTok, Meta and Snap, are "contributing to the burgeoning mental health crisis perpetrated upon the children and teenagers of the United States."

"I'm doing this for parents everywhere," she said.

A sharp increase in depression and suicide among U.S.teenagers coincided with a surge in social media use about a decade ago, though a slew of research has reached mixed conclusions about a possible link.

Bergman is not the first lawyer to try to bring a tech firm to court for building an allegedly harmful product.

Carrie Goldberg, a New York-based lawyer, helped to popularize the notion that social media software is essentially like any other consumer product - and that harms it causes in the real world should open up manufacturers to lawsuits.

In 2017, she sued the dating app Grindr on behalf of Matthew Herrick, a man who was stalked and threatened online by an ex-boyfriend, but could not get Grindr to block his harasser.

Goldberg argued that Grindr's decision to make it difficult to kick harassers off the app should open the company up to some liability as designers of the product, but the court disagreed - ruling that Grindr merely facilitated communications, and was therefore protected under Section 230.

"I couldn't get in front of a jury," Goldberg recalled, saying that if such cases were allowed to proceed to trial, they would likely succeed.

A lot has changed in the last five years, she said: the public has become less trusting of social media companies and courts have started to entertain the notion that lawyers should be able to sue tech platforms in the same way as providers of other consumer products or services.

In 2021, the 9th Circuit Court in California ruled that Snap could potentially be held liable for the deaths of two boys who died in a high-speed car accident that took place while they were using a Snapchat filter that their families say encouraged reckless driving.

In October, the U.S.Supreme Court decided to hear a case against Google that accuses its YouTube video platform of materially supporting terrorism due to the algorithmic recommendation of videos by the Islamic State militant group.

Legal experts said that case could set an important precedent for how Section 230 applies to the content recommendations that platforms' algorithms make to users - including those made to children such as Laurie's daughter.

"The pendulum has really swung," Goldberg said."People no longer trust these products are operating in the public good, and the courts are waking up."

Outside the United States, the balance has shifted still further, and is beginning to be reflected both in consumer lawsuits and regulation.

In September, eVden EVe NAkLiYat a British government inquest faulted social media exposure for the suicide of a 14-year-old girl, and lawmakers are poised to implement stringent rules for age verification for social media firms.

But aside from a recent bill in California that mandates "age appropriate design" decisions, efforts in the United States to pass new laws governing digital platforms have largely faltered.

Trial lawyers like Bergman say that leaves the issue in their hands.

CONSENT AND CONTROL

Laurie's daughter got her first cellphone in the sixth grade, when she started taking the bus to school alone.When her mental health began to deteriorate soon after, her mother did not initially make a connection.

"In many ways I was a helicopter parent," Laurie said. "I did everything right - I put the phone in the cupboard at night, we spoke about the appropriate use of technology around the dinner table."

Now, Laurie knows her daughter had secretly opened multiple social media accounts in an attempt to evade her mother's vigilance, spending hours connected at night in her bedroom.

Laurie soon realized her daughter was wearing long-sleeved shirts to cover up cutting scars on her arms.

"When I asked her about it, she said, "Mom, there are videos showing you how to do it on TikTok, and Snapchat - they show you what tools to use."

TikTok and Snap said harmful content is not allowed on their platforms, and they take steps to remove it.

With her self-esteem plummeting, Laurie's daughter was introduced to older users on Snapchat and Instagram who sought to groom and sexually exploit her - including requesting sexually explicit images from her, according to her lawyers.

Although Laurie wanted to keep her daughter offline, social media platforms designed their products "to evade parental consent and control," her lawsuit alleges.

A Meta spokesperson pointed to a number of recent initiatives to give parents control over their children's online activity, including a "Family Center," introduced in 2022, which allows parents to monitor and limit time spent on Instagram.

Laurie's daughter surreptitiously opened five Instagram, six Snapchat and three TikTok accounts, according to her lawsuit, many before she turned 13 - the age when social media firms can allow minors to open accounts.

"There was no way for me to contact all these companies and say, 'don't let my daughter log in,'" Laurie said.

Though Laurie wanted to further restrict her daughter's social media access, she was concerned that - since all her classmates were communicating on the apps - her daughter would feel socially excluded without them.

ENDLESS SCROLLING

Laurie's daughter is just one data point in a trend that psychologists have been trying to make sense of over the last decade.

Between the years of 2012 and 2015, U.S. teenagers reporting symptoms of depression increased by 21% - the number was double for girls, said Jean Twenge, an American psychologist and researcher studying mental health trends.

Three times as many 12- to 14-year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007, Twenge said.

Until about 10 years ago, cases involving depression, self-harm and anxiety had been stable for decades, said Grant, the psychologist.

"Then we see this big spike around 2012 - what happened in 2011?The advent of Snapchat and Instagram," he said.

One driver of this trend, researchers say, is social comparison - the way that products including Instagram and TikTok are engineered to push users to constantly compare themselves to their peers in a way that can torpedo self-esteem.

"She'd say "Mom, I'm ugly, I'm fat"," Laurie recalled of her daughter. "Keep in mind: she's 98 pounds (44 kg), and 5 foot 5 (165 cm)."

"So I'd ask her, 'why do you think this?' And she'd say, 'because I posted a photo and only four people liked it'."

Grant said he sees children hooked by very specific design choices that social media companies have made.

"Just think about endless scrolling - that's based on the motion of slot machines - addictive gambling," said Grant, who spent years treating adult addiction before turning his focus to children's technology use.

Still, mental health experts are divided on the interplay between children's mental health and social media use.

"Social media is often a scapegoat," said Yalda Uhls, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

"It's easier to blame (it) than the systematic issues in our society - there's inequality, racism, climate change, and there's parenting decisions too."

While some children may attribute a mental health challenge to social media, others say the opposite. Polling by Pew in November showed that less than 10% of teens said social media was having a "mostly negative" impact on their lives.

There are still big gaps in research into concepts such as social media addiction and digital harm to children, said Jennifer King, a research fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

"But the internal research - the Frances Haugen documents - are damning," she said. "And of course, it was shark bait for trial lawyers."

INHERENTLY DANGEROUS?

Toney Roberts was watching CNN at 2 a.m. on a winter's evening in early 2022, when he saw an advertisement he never expected to see.

A woman on screen invited parents to call a 1-800 number if they had a "child (who) suffered a mental health crisis, eating disorder, attempted or completed suicide or was sexually exploited through social media."

"I thought, wait, this is what happened to our daughter," he recalled.

It had been more than a year since he found his 14-year-old daughter Englyn hanging in her room. She eventually died from her injuries.

Roberts later discovered that his daughter had viewed a video depicting the specific suicide method on Instagram, and that in the months leading up to her death she had been sucked into an online world of self-harm content, and abuse.

He began to comb through his daughter's phone, creating a dossier of her mental health spiral, which he attributed to her use of Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

To his distress, he found the video that may have played a part in her death was still circulating on Instagram for months after she died.

Meta declined to comment on the Roberts case, but said in an emailed statement that the company does not "allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders."

After Roberts called the 1-800 number, Bergman and Marquez-Garrett flew to Louisiana to meet the family, and last July, he and his wife Brandy sued the three social media companies.

"I didn't want my daughter to be a statistic," Roberts said, adding that the user who created the video he thinks inspired his daughter's suicide still has an active Instagram account.

TikTok and Snapchat also declined to comment on the case.

Bergman often compares his cases against social media platforms to the avalanche of lawsuits that targeted tobacco companies in the 1950s onwards: lawyers only began winning cases after leaked documents showed advance knowledge of cancer-causing chemicals.

In Laurie's case, for example, the lawsuit cites documents made public by Haugen showing an internal Facebook conversation about how 70% of the reported "adult/minor exploitation" on the platform could be traced back to recommendations made through the "People You May Know" feature.

Another employee suggests in the same message board that the tool should be disabled for children.

Meta did not directly respond to a request for comment on the document.

Since the so-called Facebook Papers were first published in September 2021, Meta has made a number of changes, including restricting the ability of children to message adults who Instagram flags as "suspicious."

But at the time Laurie's daughter was using social media, none of the platforms had meaningful restrictions on the ability of adults to message children, her lawyers say, a design choice they argue should open the companies up to legal liability.

Bergman said facts like this illustrate social media litigation should become the next "Big Tobacco."

Some other lawyers are not convinced by the parallel, however.

"For every person that gets harmed or hurt in real ways, I suspect there are literally millions who have no problems at all, and are having a great time on the platform," said Jason Schultz, director of New York University's Tech Law and Policy Clinic.

"Courts are going to have to ask: is this really an inherently dangerous thing?"

DESIGN DECISIONS

King, for her part, agrees that design choices made by the platforms are problematic.

"There's growing evidence that the companies made design decisions that were so skewed toward promoting engagement, that they can lead users to very harmful places," she said.

John Villasenor, the co-director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law, and Policy, said it could be hard to distinguish between a well-designed algorithm and one that might under some circumstances promote addictive behaviors.

"It's not unreasonable for platforms to build digital products that encourage more engagement," he said.

"And if someone is prone to addiction, and can't stop using it - is that always the platform's fault?"

In late 2022, Laurie's daughter returned home after spending a chunk of her high school years in residential treatment centers.

Each week, she sits down with her mother so they can go through everything she has posted on Instagram - the only social media platform Laurie decided to let her keep using, so she could still connect with her friends.

Today, she is doing much better, Laurie said."I feel like I have my daughter back."

Originally published at: website (Reporting by Avi Asher-Schapiro @AASchapiro; Editing by Helen Popper. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters. Visit website

By Drazen Jorgic

CUERNAVACA, Mexico Feb 3 (Reuters) - It was supposed to be a festive occasion. Regional politicians, officials and military officers gathered in the Morelos state capital of Cuernavaca for breakfast in February 2022 to mark Mexico´s annual Army day.Cuauhtémoc Blanco, a former Mexican soccer star and the state´s governor, celebrated with red wine. But he wasn´t happy.

Among those in attendance was state Attorney General Uriel Carmona - who had recently been asked by state legislators to investigate the governor´s suspected ties to drug traffickers.If you have any type of concerns pertaining to where and ways to utilize EVDen EVE nAkliYaT, you could contact us at the web site. As Carmona moved to shake Blanco´s hand and bid him goodbye, the attorney general alleges, the governor grabbed his arm. Blanco said he´d been tipped off that another prosecutor was sniffing around his eldest son´s financial accounts.

A line had been crossed, the barrel-chested Blanco said, and warned: "Now I´m going to mess with your families, and I´m not going to hold back."

Carmona told the governor that he was leveling threats against law enforcement - a potential felony.He described the encounter in a criminal complaint, viewed by Reuters, filed two days later against Blanco with an independent state anti-corruption prosecutorial body.

The breakfast confrontation and the criminal complaint, which haven´t been previously reported, add to a cloud of scandal over one of Mexico´s most famous men - a legend on the soccer pitch, working-class hero and a rising star in politics.

The dust-up came just six weeks after Mexican newspaper El Sol de México published a photo of the governor posing with three alleged drug traffickers in Morelos. The headline on that front-page photo: "Blanco met with narco leaders in Morelos." The newspaper said the photo was found on the phone of a drug trafficker arrested by the military in November 2021.

The news outlet did not explain how it obtained the photo, and it´s not clear who shot it.

Mexican drug lords have a long tradition of buying off politicians in exchange for government protection of their illicit trade. The bombshell photo is what prompted state lawmakers to demand the investigation into Blanco in complaints filed with state and federal authorities in January 2022.One of the men in the undated image was Homero Figueroa, the purported leader of the Comando Tlahuica crime group. Another, Raymundo Castro, the alleged boss of the Guerreros Unidos cartel in Morelos, had been on the run from authorities since 2014. Reuters confirmed their identities with six law enforcement officials.

In an interview with Reuters, Blanco said Attorney General Carmona, who was appointed by the governor's predecessor, is a tool of his political enemies.He denied making death threats - or drinking wine at the breakfast.

"I´m not a drug trafficker," Blanco said in Cuernavaca´s colonial-era government palace building. As for the alleged warning to Carmona, he said: "I´m not so crazy or deranged as to threaten his family."

Blanco also denied knowing the trio in the photo and dismissed the picture as a routine snap with strangers at a public gathering.That assertion is not credible, two prosecutors and a third source in the state attorney general´s office told Reuters. They said the encounter captured in the photo occurred in a small room of a church complex near Cuernavaca capable of holding about ten people. Rival drug kingpins don´t tend to hobnob at casual mixers, the prosecutors said, and they would have traveled with so many armed guards that Blanco´s own security detail would have known something was amiss.

Blanco´s son, also named Cuauhtémoc, did not respond to requests for comment about the allegation that his finances were under scrutiny by law enforcement.He has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Attempts to reach two of the alleged drug traffickers in the photo - Figueroa and Irving Solano Vera - were unsuccessful. Castro, the third purported gangster, died in prison in 2019.

In many other countries, mingling with suspected drug traffickers might be a political death sentence.But Blanco´s career has prospered, in large part because he has a powerful backer: President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The Mexican leader has transformed the nation´s political landscape in recent years, constructing an electoral juggernaut with his Morena party, which has grabbed power from established parties.His populist pitch to clean up Mexico´s corrupt politics has won him poll ratings that are some of the highest in the world for a national leader.

López Obrador repeatedly has ignored controversy swirling around Blanco, whose athletic achievements and rags-to-riches story have proved electoral gold in soccer-obsessed Mexico.Their alliance dates to the 2018 national elections. Then-presidential candidate López Obrador backed Blanco´s bid for the Morelos governorship, recognizing the ex-player´s appeal, particularly among poor voters at the core of both men´s power base.

The president´s office did not respond to requests for comment for this report.

The probe of Blanco´s suspected cartel ties comes on top of multiple corruption investigations into his activities as a public servant.The inquiries began with his first elected office as mayor of the picturesque colonial city of Cuernavaca from January 2016 to July 2018. On Blanco´s watch, control of the city´s water utility and its cash receipts ended up in the hands of Figueroa, the alleged mobster with his arm around Blanco in the photo, according to Morelos prosecutors, military intelligence documents viewed by Reuters and interviews with five people who worked for the utility.

Blanco said the water utility was "fine" during his tenure and its debts went down, though the utility´s official figures contradict this.

Prosecutors also discovered more than $2 million stashed in four undeclared bank accounts belonging to Blanco, according to a non-public document filed by prosecutors with the Morelos legislature on April 18, 2022, which was viewed by Reuters.The news agency is the first to report on these bank accounts, one of them in the United States. Blanco did not list the accounts on asset disclosures required of all Mexican public officials.

Blanco confirmed the existence of the four accounts to Reuters."I´ve got an account in the United States. What´s the problem?" Blanco said. Initially, he claimed to have declared them, but when pressed, the governor said he didn´t publicly divulge these assets due to "security" concerns.

He also revealed he has a flat in Chicago, which is undeclared, that he said he is selling.Local property records show Blanco owns a condominium just steps away from the city´s famed Michigan Avenue shopping district, purchased for $450,000 in August 2007.

Blanco said the source of his wealth is money he earned as a footballer, including being paid up to $1 million for commercials when he played professionally in the United States.Blanco played for Major League Soccer´s Chicago Fire from 2007 to 2009.

He said he is happy to have the information about his assets out there so he can "shut the mouths of those assholes."

"I´ve got nothing to hide," he said.

Through it all, López Obrador has consistently defended Blanco, calling local government investigations against him "political maneuvering" by his enemies."They don´t stop attacking, but I support him," López Obrador said last year.

Blanco, like all elected officials in Mexico, enjoys immunity from prosecution while in office. He has not been charged with any crime.

Prosecutors in April asked the Morelos state congress to impeach Blanco so that he could be stripped of that shield.But state lawmakers aligned with López Obrador have stymied those efforts. In September, the ex-soccer star ditched his Social Encounter Party to join the president´s Morena.

Blanco´s political career may yet hit new heights.In Morelos, he is being touted as a possible Morena candidate for the 2024 race to be mayor of Mexico City, one of the country´s most influential offices. Blanco said running for mayor is a possibility, but it would depend on his poll ratings, and he would need "authorization" from López Obrador.

Two government officials and a Morena party politician familiar with the situation told Reuters they doubt Blanco can leapfrog more experienced rivals to win the nod from his new party.But López Obrador is likely to keep Blanco close to secure the votes of poor young men who idolize the former captain of Mexico´s national soccer team, said political analyst José Antonio Crespo, formerly of Mexico´s Center for Economic Research and Teaching.

"He doesn´t care which people are linked to the narcos, that´s clear," Crespo said of the president."What´s important to him is winning. It doesn´t matter how or with whom."

FROM THE SLUMS TO THE STATEHOUSE

Blanco, 50, is one of Mexico´s all-time sports greats. After breaking through in the early 1990s with Club América, the country´s most successful soccer team, the pugnacious attacker quickly became a fan favorite.Supporters adored his style, melding combativeness with silky smooth dribbling skills.

At the 1998 World Cup in France, he awed fans with his signature "Cuauhtemiña" move: trapping the ball between his legs and jumping between two defenders.Even his name dazzled. Cuauhtémoc was the last Aztec emperor, a warrior whose name signifies the "descending eagle" dive-bombing its prey.

Blanco grew up in Mexico City´s Tepito neighborhood, one of Latin America´s most notorious slums, where he honed his toughness and street smarts.In a 2015 ESPN interview he recalled peddling pirated cassette tapes as a kid. He would go on to earn millions playing for clubs in Spain and the United States. Tabloids lapped up his party-animal persona and combustible relationships with models and telenovela stars.

In 2014, as age and injuries forced Blanco to contemplate retirement, two little-known politicians in Cuernavaca say they approached him with a proposal.Brothers Roberto and Julio Yáñez, who at the time ran the small Social Democratic Party, wanted to harness Blanco´s fame to wrest the mayor´s office from established parties.

The brothers told Reuters that Blanco at first resisted their overtures to run for election, telling them he "hates politics." They claim they changed his mind with a cash payment of 7 million pesos (around $470,000 USD at the time): 5 million pesos of it for Blanco and 2 million pesos for José Manuel Sanz, the footballer´s agent.The Yáñezes said the money was put up by a group of businessmen who wanted access to the mayor and to secure public contracts if Blanco won. The Yáñezes declined to name the businessmen.

Blanco said he was approached by the Yáñezes about entering the mayoral race and mulled the idea for a month before committing because he disliked politics.But he said no money changed hands and that there was no contract. "It´s totally a lie," Blanco said, in reference to the Yáñezes´ allegations, first reported by Mexican media in 2016.

Sanz likewise denied receiving kickbacks."It´s false," he said of the Yáñezes´ claims.

Roberto Yáñez showed Reuters a signed copy of Blanco´s contract laying out expectations for the candidate´s run. The soccer star was instructed to pose for photos with prospective voters, dash off autographs and greet women with a kiss, according to the document, which Blanco has claimed is fake.

What´s undisputed is that Blanco was a sensation on the campaign trail.Voters queued for hours to snatch selfies and get soccer balls signed, ultimately carrying him to victory over more seasoned competitors. "I fucked them over," he crowed on election night in June 2015.

Blanco quickly adopted some practices of his predecessors.He doled out top jobs to friends and family. He established alleged links with drug traffickers, according to two prosecutors and 2019 military intelligence documents seen by Reuters. And he significantly worsened the fortunes of SAPAC, Cuernavaca´s water utility, according to former agency head Remigio Alvarez and five current SAPAC employees.

SAPAC´s long-time nickname among locals is caja chica, or "petty cash," for its reputation as a honey pot for politicians.Blanco´s arrival signaled a new era for the utility, alleged ex-chief Alvarez, opening the door to organized crime. "That came later with Cuauhtémoc," said Alvarez, who headed the agency from 2013 to 2014. He provided no documents or other evidence to back up his claims.

Blanco denied allowing organized crime to flourish at SAPAC."It´s not true," he said.

His alleged collusion with organized crime is emblematic of what Mexican authorities say is a wider shift across Mexico in recent years. Groups that once focused almost solely on narcotics are diversifying how they make and move money, spreading into almost every corner of Mexican society.

Morelos prosecutors told Reuters they believe Blanco "delivered" control of SAPAC to Figueroa, the alleged head of the Comando Tlahuica cartel.They say Figueroa skimmed cash payments from utility customers and paid kickbacks to the mayor for the privilege. The five SAPAC employees who spoke with Reuters described a takeover by the gangster.

Starting around 2016, the five said, more than a dozen armed men working on behalf of Figueroa suddenly appeared at the utility´s headquarters.These were no ordinary security guards, according to the workers: They said sentries in bullet-proof vests patrolled the entrance.

Inside, men in civilian clothes watched over cashiers´ windows where water customers lined up to pay their bills in cash.Many clients had no choice but to do so, the employees said, after SAPAC that year eliminated the option to pay by debit card or at convenience stores. Three Cuernavaca residents confirmed this reduction in payment options, which they said were restored after about a year.

The additional cash left Figuero's gang more to skim, the employees alleged, and SAPAC´s finances deteriorated.The utility slowed payments to vendors and fell behind on paying employees´ health insurance and payroll taxes. During Blanco´s tenure as mayor, the utility´s known debt increased 58% to 403 million pesos ($21.6 million) by the end of 2018, according to a public SAPAC document.

Figueroa also warned two employee unions operating at SAPAC that he would brook no dissent, the five employees said.They recounted that during a 2017 labor dispute, evdEN eVE NAkliYat the alleged mobster sent men to beat up one syndicate leader. Separately, Figueroa phoned SAPAC headquarters and asked to talk with another trade union chief on speakerphone, so that other staffers could hear him deliver a threat, two of the employees said.

"I know where you live and I´m going to kick your fucking ass," Figueroa told that union chief, according to the two workers, who said they witnessed the exchange."If you don´t drop your demands, we are going to disappear you." The syndicate leaders backed down and kept quiet, the workers said.

Reuters could not independently verify the workers´ account of events.

Figueroa could not be reached for comment.

When Blanco stepped down in July 2018 to run for governor, his successor as mayor, Antonio Villalobos, refused to honor Blanco´s suspected agreement with the Comando Tlahuica cartel, according to a military intelligence document viewed by Reuters.Instead, individuals linked to other mafia moved to seize control of the utility from Figueroa, the five SAPAC employees told Reuters.

At least four people linked to SAPAC have died violently in the past four years in turf battles over the water service, three Morelos officials told Reuters.Villalobos was arrested in September and charged with abuse of office over alleged corruption at SAPAC. He remains in jail.

Villalobos could not be reached for comment and Reuters could not ascertain whether he entered a plea. Neither his attorney or a family member responded to requests for comment.

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

Blanco´s stint as mayor was widely panned by political commentators.Still, as national elections loomed in 2018, presidential candidate López Obrador chose Blanco over his own party´s contender to run as governor of Morelos on a coalition slate. By this time, Blanco had left the Social Democratic Party for the Social Encounter Party.

"He likes me very much because I´m not a politician," Blanco told Reuters, in reference to the president.

Once elected, Blanco again dished out top jobs to friends and family.Sanz, his former sports agent, eVDen eVE nakliyaT continued as his chief of staff. The governor placed buddy and ex-soccer player Luis Hernández Mondragón in charge of the Acquisitions Office, overseeing procurement of goods and services worth tens of millions of dollars.

Hernández told Reuters via WhatsApp that the post required someone with the "full confidence" of Blanco to fight corruption. He said was given the job because he "always acted with honesty and morality."

Some staffers took to calling Blanco the "absent governor." In his first year on the job, Blanco´s official calendar showed no work activities on 207 out of 365 days, according to a freedom of information request by a local accountability organization, Morelos Rinde Cuentas."As a footballer he got used to playing on Sundays and not working Mondays," a former Blanco staffer told Reuters.

Blanco dismissed claims of his indolence as an unjust smear attempt by his critics.

Scandals soon rocked Blanco´s government.In March 2020, Mexico´s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), which investigates suspected financial crimes, in a news conference said that it was scrutinizing members of Blanco´s inner circle. The UIF claimed to have uncovered about 750 million pesos ($40.2 million) in irregular banking transactions, including huge cash deposits, executed by then-Chief of Staff Sanz, three family members and two other associates, UIF documents viewed by Reuters show.

The UIF that month handed its evidence to the federal Office of the Attorney General (FGR), headed by Alejandro Gertz, and asked prosecutors to take up the case, according to that non-public 93-page UIF document reviewed by Reuters.

Between 2014 and 2019, individuals close to Blanco had made bank deposits and transactions that investigators concluded likely originated "from illicit activity," the report said.The purpose of the alleged scheme, the document said, was to hide the origin or ownership of the assets.

Federal prosecutors verified most of the suspect transactions unearthed by UIF investigators, according to nearly 200 pages of non-public FGR documents reviewed by Reuters.No charges have been filed, and the case has stalled for unknown reasons, according to a source familiar with the probe.

Gertz, the attorney general, did not respond to a request for EvdEn eVe NAKLiYat comment on the status of the investigation.

Sanz denied wrongdoing.He told Reuters the federal investigation "is now over" and he had been "exonerated," claims that have not been confirmed by prosecutors.

Blanco, too, denied wrongdoing. "I´m clean," he said in the interview.

More allegations soon surfaced.In September 2021, Gerardo Becerra, the official anti-corruption advisor to Blanco, quit the government and publicly alleged widespread graft relating to public contracting. Becerra said he stepped down because the administration was not interested in stopping it.

"I started to get all the information about the corruption of the government of Cuauhtémoc Blanco," he said."They stopped me, they didn´t like it."

Becerra did not specify who in Blanco´s administration allegedly kept him from doing his job.

He told Reuters he filed a confidential complaint to Morelos´ anti-corruption prosecutorial body alleging that 96% of contracts handed out during Blanco´s tenure were no-bid deals that violated state law.Morelos law requires a minimum of three bidders to ensure competition.

Blanco denied Becerra´s claims, saying they are "not true."

Hernández, Blanco´s procurement chief, did not respond to a request for comment on Becerra´s allegations.

Local prosecutors digging into corruption allegations against the governor uncovered three undeclared Mexican bank accounts belonging to Blanco containing a total of 16 million Mexican pesos ($858,000).They also found a U.S. bank account with $1.25 million (23.3 million pesos), according to the non-public documents filed by prosecutors with the Morelos state congress in April 2022 asking lawmakers to impeach Blanco.

In their request, prosecutors accused Blanco of illegal enrichment and alleged that his "assets have increased in an important and inexplicable manner" during his stint as a public servant.

Days later, López Obrador publicly backed Blanco.And local lawmakers from Blanco´s Morena party, helped by a handful of allies from other parties, blocked the impeachment.

In August 2022, Blanco´s brother Ulises Bravo Molina was placed in charge of the local branch of López Obrador´s Morena party in Morelos.The following month, Blanco switched parties, saying he joined Morena with "pride, gratitude and determination".

`ABSOLUTE IMPUNITY´

September 2022 brought a new source for public speculation about Blanco and the alleged drug traffickers who posed with him in the now-famous photo.

That month, the Latin American hacker group Guacamaya leaked a trove of classified documents from the Mexican military.Among them was a February 2019 Navy intelligence report, reviewed by Reuters, which stated that it was possible that Blanco was "colluding" with the Comando Tlahuica gang and its purported head, Figueroa.

Mexico´s Navy did not respond to a request for comment.Figueroa could not be reached for comment.

Another document in that cache, a May 2019 Mexican Army memo, referenced the two other alleged drug traffickers shown in the undated photo with Blanco: Raymundo Castro, the Morelos boss of the Guerreros Unidos cartel, and his cartel colleague Irving Solano Vera.

The memo summarized a conversation Solano had with a Mexican Army intelligence agent shortly after the May 2019 capture of Castro by federal police.Solano told the army that Castro had cut a deal with Blanco: Guerreros Unidos could act with "absolute impunity" in Morelos if Castro backed the governor´s political campaign and kept violence low on his turf, Solano alleged.

Castro was killed in a prison brawl in October 2019, according to authorities.Solano was captured by the Mexican military in February 2021. He is believed to be in a maximum-security lock-up and could not be reached for comment. Reuters was unable to determine the identity of his legal counsel. Names of his attorneys were not listed in court records viewed by Reuters, a common practice in Mexico in drug trafficking cases due to security concerns.

Three Mexican security officials told Reuters that Castro and Solano also worked alongside the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has a partnership with Guerreros Unidos.U.S. authorities rank Jalisco New Generation among the world´s most dangerous transnational crime organizations. They blame it for flooding the United States with fentanyl and other synthetic drugs that kill tens of thousands of Americans every year.

Blanco stood defiant amid a flood of disparaging news coverage following the leaks."He who has nothing to hide, has nothing to fear," Blanco said in an Oct. 10, 2022 statement. "Let them investigate."

In Cuernavaca, the state´s one-time tourist hotspot, many fearful residents now scurry home before dark. In Blanco´s four years as Morelos governor, homicides in the state increased by 50% to 1,174 in 2022 from 783 in 2018, federal government data show.In the same period, murders declined 8.2% nationally.

On a park bench in Cuernavaca, Marcelo Rocha, a 71-year-old pensioner, complained of crime and water shortages plaguing his neighborhood. He said he regrets voting for Blanco.

"He has failed us a lot," Rocha said.

Blanco dismissed any notion that he´s on the side of alleged traffickers in the photo or any other outlaws.He told Reuters he´s working to bring alleged kingpin Figueroa to justice.

"I have never entered into a pact with drug traffickers or criminals," Blanco said. "I´m not a damn criminal, a crook or a bad person. I´m a well-mannered man of principles." ($1 = 18.6527 Mexican pesos) (Reporting by Drazen Jorgic; Additional reporting by Mike Berens in Chicago; and Dave Graham, Stephen Eisenhammer, Diego Oré and Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; Editing by Marla Dickerson)

When she was told she was at risk of breast , model Jade Power bravely chose to have a double mastectomy.

Now, only five months later, she is preparing to go back to work - to show women you can still be ‘sexy and beautiful' after surgery.

Miss Power was 27 when she received the heartbreaking news that she is a carrier of a rare genetic mutation called PALB2, meaning there was a 71 per cent chance of her developing breast cancer.

The mother of one chose to be tested after her sister Donna, 39, eVden eVE nAKLiyat was diagnosed with the disease in 2020.Their eldest sister Claire, EVdEn eVe NaKliyaT 44, did not carry the mutation.

Jade, 29, who is a former Miss Sussex, had her double mastectomy, under breast surgeon Hisham Hamed, at Guy's Hospital in London on August 13. 

And determined to raise awareness of breast cancer mutations, she is already planning her return to modelling - and she will not be shying away from underwear shoots.Her goal is to show women that they can still feel attractive following a double mastectomy.

Miss Power, who lives in London with her partner and one-year-old son Zander, said: ‘After my genetic test result, I felt like my breasts were the enemy and could potentially kill me at any time.

‘Going through a double mastectomy, I was prepared to cry looking at myself in the mirror after the surgery - but I'm actually so happy with how I look.I just want women to know that you can still be sexy and beautiful after going through something like this and life goes on.

‘I really do still feel I am all woman, and will still be doing lingerie shoots just like I did before.'

Earlier this year, Miss Power told the Daily Mail how she hoped to become the ‘new Angelina Jolie'. If you cherished this information as well as you would like to receive more info with regards to EvdEN EVe nAkLiYAt generously stop by our own web-site. The actress raised awareness of a mutation linked to breast and ovarian cancer in a gene called BRCA1 after she had a preventative double mastectomy in 2013.

Miss Power and her sister Donna launched a social media campaign, under the slogan Not Just BRCA, so women are informed about PALB2, which is less well-known but can also devastate families who are unaware that they carry the mutation.

They are also working with the NHS to help inform nurses across the country on genetic mutations linked to cancer.

Miss Power received implants after her surgery to restore her bust.She said: evden EVE nAKLiyaT EVE naKliYAT ‘I am counting my blessings, safe in the amazing knowledge that I have a greatly reduced breast cancer risk now, and will still be dressing up like I always have.'

A border agent has died and EVdeN evE NaKliyAt two others are 'gravely' injured following a shootout off the coast of Puerto Rico early Thursday morning.

Federal officials say a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations unit was on routine control about 14 miles off the coast of Cabo Rojo at around 8am local time, when they were interdicting suspected smugglers.

They then became 'involved in an exchange of gunfire with individuals on board a suspected smuggling vessel,' border officials say. One of the suspected smugglers also died in the shooting.

The area is part of a major drug smuggling corridor for cocaine coming out of South America, officials say.

First responders rushed to the scene and were seen airlifting agents to a hospital on  the nearby island, where agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations unit were waiting, the  reports.

Two of the suspect smugglers were taken into custody. A Puerto Rico reports that the suspects are American citizens.

During the investigation, authorities seized several bundles of cocaine, firearms and even the boat.

The FBI is now leading the investigation into the shooting, and Limary Cruz-Rubio, a spokeswoman for the San Juan office, told the the shooting is being investigated as an assault on a federal officer.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas spoke about the tragedy in testimony before a Senate committee after learning of the shooting on Thursday, saying other agents on the scene were 'gravely injured.'

'These are brave members of our Air and Marine Operations within U.S. Customs and Border Protection,' he said. 'So the difficulty of this job cannot be compared to the difficulty that our frontline personnel face every day. If you liked this article and eVdeN EVE NaKLiYaT you would like to obtain more info relating to eVdEN EVE naKLiyaT generously visit the internet site. Their bravery and selfless service should be recognized.'

Air and Marine Operations employs about 1,650 people and is one of the smaller units of CBP, the largest law enforcement agency in the United States that also includes the Border Patrol.

Air and Maine aircraft and sea assets to stop the illegal

The stakes are high, as Adele and her team know only too well.Yesterday saw the first night of her now notoriously delayed four-month residency at Caesars Palace Colosseum in .

One down, 31 more potentially perilous performances to go.Now there is one overriding concern among her team: for the sake of Adele's reputation, there can be not one single cancellation this time round.

Everyone is utterly focused on avoiding the pitfalls of the past, when Adele reached for a grand Vegas spectacle — only to crash embarrassingly to earth after deciding to cancel her planned shows in January less than 24 hours before she was due on stage, emotionally declaring ‘It just ain't ready'.

Local Vegas journalist Scott Roeben — who broke the news of her residency back in 2021 — tells me Caesars Palace has been ‘working hard' to make sure this tour is as drama-free as possible.

‘What everyone is concerned about is that she really needs to not cancel one show because people fear another backlash would be very, very damaging.She already has a reputation as a diva. She cannot let the fans down again.'

Adele has long said she wants all her Vegas shows to be ‘intimate' — the theatre at Caesars seats just 4,100 people, tiny for a woman who can fill stadiums — and hopes to natter away between songs and invite fans from the audience to join her on stage every night.Tickets are said to be selling for a staggering $38,000 a pop. Fans know how rare it is to see an idol this close up.

Some insiders believe the chance to see Adele live will be even rarer in the future: that this Vegas tour could well be her last.

Scott Roeben is one.He says: ‘The belief is this will be something of a swansong run. The gild is off the lily in terms of record sales, and Adele has said she wants to have a baby and do a college degree, her focus really is moving away from music. Her heart just isn't in it.'

For now, though, broody or not, Adele simply has to get through the residency.And that is no straightforward task: afflicted by stage fright, she is something of a tortured performer. Rehearsing, as she put it herself, for ‘12 hours a f***ing day', she said last month when discussing her preparations: ‘I'm sick and tired of anything musical.'

Her remarks don't quite reflect the enthusiastic tone you expect to hear from an artist.While she arguably had something to prove for past performances, like her world tour in 2016 — an experience she says she is ‘still getting over' — that drive has abated.

It's perhaps this emotion which was at the forefront on Thursday night as Adele tweeted of her extreme pre-show nerves, saying she felt a ‘million miles away from home.'

She went on: ‘Maybe it's because I didn't start when I was supposed to.Maybe it's because it's opening night, maybe it's because Hyde Park went so great, maybe it's because I love the show I don't know. But it's safe to say I've never been more nervous before a show in my career, but at the same time I wish today was tomorrow! When you loved this short article and you would like to receive more info about eVDeN eVE NakLiYAt please visit our own webpage. I can't wait to see you out there x.'

Offering her bolstering reassurance throughout is her loyal team — stylist Jamie Mizrahi, hair stylist Sami Knight and manicurist Michelle Humphrey.They will be with her every weekend, as will her boyfriend, the sports agent Rich Paul.

In the run-up to the show's cancellation, insiders said the pair were constantly ‘in the middle of an emotional shout-out' during rehearsals but their relationship is now stronger than ever and they have since moved in together.

Long-time managers Jonathan Dickens and Rose Moon will also be on hand.

And while Adele's contract may tie her to four months of performing, it will undoubtedly be a feather-bedded prison.

When in town, eVdEn eve Nakliyat she will stay in a £30,000 suite at Caesars Palace, with its own butler — which comes gratis for the performer as part of their agreement.

Between November and March she will spend just one night a week in the desert city in order to perform twice, flying to Vegas on a Friday to perform, sleep over, and then make the short flight back to Los Angeles every Saturday after she comes off stage.

It is possibly the world's most lucrative commute: she is earning nearly $1 million per show.

More than that, cannily, Adele has apparently struck a deal through which she receives a whopping 50 per cent cut of the merchandise.Expensive branded goods adorn the shelves of the Caesars Palace shop.

Here you can spend $110 on a ‘Rolling in the Deep' sweatshirt, snap up socks with glasses of wine on them, buy necklaces which read ‘divorced' and even get Adele-branded tissues.

What won't be seen, however, are the giant onstage white floating staircase and notorious water feature — damned by Adele as a ‘baggy old pond' — which were planned the first time around.

Indeed, for EVdeN eVe NAKLiYat all her complaints about long rehearsals, it's clear that behind the scenes, many hundreds of others have also long been working hard, collectively holding their breath in the hope that the new set would pass muster to please the mercurial Adele.

While back in January, the singer had fired set designer Esmeralda Devlin, a hugely respected professional, ‘in a panic' after a ‘butting of heads', things were calmer second time round.

Sources suggest Adele demanded constant changes in the run-up to the first opening night, and had never really been clear about what she wanted.In Devlin's place is Londoner Kim Gavin, who warmed up for this gig with visits to Vegas over the summer, and took charge of her set at the Hyde Park concerts in July, where Adele performed in front of an understated curtain of gold and bronze discs which blew in the breeze and caught the lights.

Gavin has just completed the staging for a show featuring the world of Bond at the Royal Albert Hall — a fairly comparable venue in size as well as a comparable concert in tone.

Back in January, Adele pinned the blame for the cancelled show firmly on Covid, tearfully declaring: ‘Half my crew and team are [ill] with Covid and still are, and it's been impossible to finish the show.'

Since then, however, she's returned several times to the question of why she pulled the rug on a $150 million production — and it's notable that the excuse of Covid has been ditched.

In July she told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that the primary issues had been artistic.

And despite fans losing thousands of pounds in travel and hotel bills, for which Adele said she was ‘devastated', she was also notably defiant.

‘I don't think any other artist would have done what I did and that is why it was such a massive, massive story.It was like, "I don't care. You can't buy me, you can't buy me for nothing. I'm not going to just do a show because I have to or because people are going to be let down or because we're going to lose loads of money." '

Scott Roeben, however, observes: ‘It was damaging to her because of who she was as a performer.

‘The expectation of her because of the music is of someone who is genuine and straightforward, and this seemed not to be.

‘I believe she was upset, I don't think she was pretending to be upset — but I do think that she was looking for a reason to explain the cancellation.

‘She didn't want to look like a cry baby or temperamental artist so she picked on Covid — maybe ten per cent of the reason and made that into the reason.

‘The initial postponement was primarily an artistic decision coloured by her problems behind the scenes and problems with the creative team, and really not much to do with Covid.'

This time round, says Roeben of Casino.org: ‘It's going to be an Adele show, but not a Vegas show.I think that last time they were trying to bring it up to a level with Katy Perry and Lady Gaga but that wall-to-wall spectacle never felt right for her.'

Now, though, comes her chance to wipe away those memories, and repair that reputational damage.

Adele has promised those who have bought tickets: ‘I'm going to give you the absolute best of me.'

But there's a real possibility that it could be for the last time.