A tense calm has taken hold of the town of Jisr al-Shoghur in northwestern Idlib province after days of bombing and shelling by forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Residents on Wednesday reported that the shelling and air raids had stopped but a number of reconnaissance drones were flying above the town and surrounding areas. 

On Tuesday, Russian and Syrian jets bombed the town and its outskirts, killing 10 civilians and injuring 20 others, Abu al-Fadl Ahmad, a member of the White Helmets, a civil defence organisation, told Al Jazeera. 

Among the victims were five children from the same family, Ahmad reported.

Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the stated toll.  

The bombardment campaign sent much of the local population fleeing towards the border with Turkey, said Ahmad, while a number of people with serious injuries were also transported across the border for treatment.

The bombings also targeted branches of the White Helmets in the area which did not result in any injuries among its members, he added.

The Syrian army, aided by Russia, has been preparing for an offensive on the last major stronghold of the Syrian opposition, which some fear will start after an upcoming Tehran summit between Turkey, Russia in Iran on September 7. 

In remarks published by Turkish media on Wednesday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that dropping bombs and missiles on Idlib could cause a “massacre”.

“God forbid, a serious massacre could take place if there is a rain of missiles there,” Erdogan told journalists on his plane after an official visit to the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan, media reports said.

Russian officials have justified the planned military operation in Idlib with the presence of Jabhat al-Nusra (now known as Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham or HTS), an armed group formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda. 

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Damascus would have become “the capital of the ISIL caliphate” if Russia hadn’t intervened. 

“Idlib is the last remaining de-escalation zone where a few tens of thousands of terrorists are concentrated, headed mainly by Jabhat al-Nusra,” he said during a political talk show on the state-owned First Channel “One of the main element of the de-escalation agreements was the commitment to pull out the moderate armed opposition from the territories controlled by terrorists, so they face what they deserve.”

Lavrov suggested that Russia’s “partners, including the Americans” did not fulfill commitments to separate the moderate Syrian opposition from “terrorists”.

Over the past several months, the Turkish authorities engaged in unsuccessful efforts to dissolve the HTS. On August 31, Turkey designated HTS a terrorist organisation. 

 

‘Every inch’

Al-Assad has sworn to recapture “every inch” of Syria and has made big gains against rebels since Russia joined his war effort three years ago.

His forces have been amassing around Idlib, presumably in preparation for the assault to seize the bastion of the rebel groups who have been trying to oust Assad since the start of the war in 2011.

Turkey, whose army controls a string of military posts around Idlib, has for weeks been engaged in diplomatic efforts to prevent a Syrian government attack on Idlib.

In Geneva, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura on Tuesday called on the leaders of Russia and Turkey to draw up a solution in the coming days to prevent a major battle for Idlib.

“A telephone call between the two of you would make a big difference,” de Mistura said, addressing Russian President Vladimir Putin and Erdogan directly in a media briefing.

Moscow and Ankara should be given more time to negotiate a way to prevent an offensive, he added.

De Mistura, who has mediated several rounds of Syria talks in recent years, without making any progress, said he was “determined” to hold discussions with high-level envoys from Turkey, Iran and Russia on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, despite concerns the offensive may begin before then.

The UN has previously warned that an all-out assault on Idlib could spark a humanitarian catastrophe on a scale not yet seen in Syria’s conflict.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump late on Monday warned Syria against “recklessly” attacking Idlib, which he said could trigger a “human tragedy”.

WASHINGTON – “KOREAN WAR TO END!”

President Donald Trump may have been getting ahead of himself with that April 27 tweet. A peace declaration in the 65-year-old war now appears to be a central sticking point in the U.S.-North Korea nuclear negotiations.

“North Korea for decades has wanted to talk about a peace treaty, or a peace regime, to end the war officially,” said Michael Fuchs, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration. “So it seems very likely that the North Koreans are making this a top ask.”

The answer, for now, is no – at least from Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He wants North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons first.

“We believe that denuclearization has to take place before we get to other parts,” State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters on Wednesday. Asked if that included a peace declaration, she said yes.

On Tuesday, the White House said Trump had spoken with South Korean President Moon Jae, “including our ongoing efforts to achieve the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea as agreed to by Chairman Kim Jong Un.” Moon told the president he was sending a Special Envoy to Pyongyang on Wednesday to meet Kim and the two men agreed to meet later this month in New York during the U.N. General Assembly.

The formal hostilities in the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, after three years of brutal conflict that claimed the lives of nearly 3 million soldiers and civilians, including more than 36,000 Americans. Although not a full-fledged peace treaty, the agreement signed by the U.S., North Korea, and China stopped the fighting and established the demilitarized zone dividing the Korean Peninsula.

Why does the North Korean regime want an official peace declaration now?

It would be a propaganda win, as well as a geopolitical one, Fuchs and others say. It would allow North Korean leader Kim Jong un to say he persuaded the U.S. to finally end its “imperialist” stance against North Korea. And it could bolster North Korea’s case for the withdrawal of 28,000 American troops now stationed in South Korea.

“North Korea believes that the United States and its military presence on the Korean Peninsula … is the most potent threat that it faces,” Fuchs said.

Trump has made his openness to a peace declaration clear on several occasions. He said he talked about the issue in June with a top North Korean envoy at the White House.

“We talked about ending the war,” Trump said after that June 1 meeting. “And you know, this war has been going on … almost 70 years, right?”

South Korean leaders are also eager to take that step. TheAtlantic magazine reported last week that the South Korean government has circulated a draft declaration that would, among other things, formalize the end of hostile relations between the U.S. and North Korea. The South Korean embassy did not return a message seeking comment.

But Pompeo and other U.S. officials are opposed to the move, even if it’s largely symbolic. (A declaration would not carry the same legal or political weight as a formal treaty.)

Military hawks in both parties would likely view such a move as yet another concession – the first being Trump’s decision to meet with Kim in June – to a communist dictatorship that has failed to live up to past promises. After their high-profile June summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim signed a vaguely worded agreement in which North Korea promised to work toward a “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

But the North Koreans have not taken any visible, concrete steps toward fulfilling that pledge. A United Nations watchdog organization reported on Aug. 20 that Kim Jong Un’s government has not stopped its nuclear weapons activities.

Michael Madden, a north Korea expert with the Stimson Center, equated the current negotiations to dating an old girlfriend again, even after she cheated and spurned you previously.

“People are wary,” Madden said. “No one’s going to third base yet.”

Harry J. Kazianis, a North Korea expert with Center for the National Interest, a Washington-based foreign policy think tank, said giving North Korea a peace declaration is a smart diplomacy. It would establish America’s good faith in the negotiations and put the onus on North Korea to respond with real denuclearization.

“President Trump has held a legitimizing summit with Kim Jong Un,” he wrote in a July 26 Fox News opinion piece. “Now it’s time to give a peace treaty a chance. The effort to officially end the Korean War may go nowhere – or it could be an important step on the road to denuclearization.”

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Thirty more people are sick after eating Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal, which was recalled in June over salmonella concerns. That brings the total number of cases to 130, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. 

In an update Tuesday, the CDC told retailers not to sell any Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal and customers not to buy or eat it. This update follows a CDC advisory in July, when the health agency also told people not to eat the cereal. 

The latest illnesses were reported across 19 states. Three of those states were not on the CDC’s previous update: Delaware, Maine and Minnesota. In total, at least 36 states have been affected by the tainted cereal. 

Eating cereal contaminated with salmonella can cause serious illness, including fatal infections, fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain, especially for young, frail or elderly people, according to the CDC. Healthy individuals typically recover in four to seven days with treatment.

More: All the things that were recalled this week: ground beef, nose sprays, homeopathic drugs

Reported illnesses linked to Honey Smacks date back to March, and affected children less than a year old to those as old as 95, according to the CDC. 

More than 30 people have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported. 

More: How salmonella may have ended up in Honey Smacks cereal and Goldfish crackers

Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets

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Yola, Nigeria – The field is wide and scorching under dry midday heat. Dozens of children kick up the sand underneath their sandals. 

Their shrieks echo as they roll their heads back in carefree laughter. They’re playing, but not with toys or balls.

They are playing a game called “Boko Haram versus soja (soldier)”.

They scamper around screaming, “shoot!”, ramming their fingers into each other’s bodies. Their pointed fingertips are supposed to be the barrels of rifles or blade of swords.

They are pretending to kill each other.

Some “die”, falling over like felled trees.

One child collapses with his hand pressed over his heart as imaginary blood gushes out.

A tall boy jumps over the “dead” body and runs into another with a yellow t-shirt, who aims straight for his head.

“Boom!” the boy shouts, a gunshot.

This is playtime at a private primary school organised by a local NGO called Education Must Continue Initiative (EMCI) in Yola, the capital of Adamawa state in northeastern Nigeria.

All of the children are now displaced after fleeing their home communities to escape from Boko Haram.

‘I saw Boko Haram chop my grandfather’s head’

These children have seen the brutality of the armed group firsthand. 

“Boko Haram, I see them use knife, chop my grandfather’s head,” said Ibrahim Daniel, a 13-year-old boy from Gwoza in neighbouring Borno State.

Gwoza was, and is still, a notorious hideout for the fighters. Boko Haram captured the town of nearly 300,000, in August 2014, and declared it the headquarters of what it called its Islamic Caliphate.

The group’s black flags were mounted around the town and underneath them, Boko Haram members executed anyone who failed to obey their rules, dumping corpses in wells and streams.

Hundreds hid in the Gwoza Hills, a set of rocky outcrops on the northeastern end of the volcanic Mandara Mountains that straddle the Nigerian-Cameroonian border.

The Nigerian army flushed Boko Haram out of Gwoza nine months later, but Daniel is still too afraid to go back. 

“The Boko Haram is something that you won’t like to see,” the young teenager says in a gruff voice.

Speaking in Nigerian slang English, he continues: “I’d like to be a soldier because anything that them [Boko Haram] do, I’d like to do back to them. If me, I see them, me I go carry them. Me I kill am.”

The other kids huddle around Daniel, laughing at his last remark about killing Boko Haram. Many of them want to become soldiers, too. 

They have seen the fighters invade their villages and they want revenge.

“I can help government. I can help my parents with being soja,” says Chinda John in the same slang, sitting beside Daniel.

Across the Lake Chad region, where Boko Haram’s campaign is approaching its tenth year, a generation of young people are dreaming of becoming soldiers, nurturing their hopes of inflicting bloody vengeance on the group for its atrocities, which includes killing at least 30,000 people, kidnapping thousands and setting ablaze untold numbers of villages.  

Operating on its manifesto that condemns Western education, Boko Haram has destroyed nearly 1,400 Western-style schools, killed more than 2,000 teachers and caused $9bn worth of destruction. 

The transnational group carries out attacks in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and in the islands on Lake Chad. A faction of the group boasts of an affiliation with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). 

Dreams of being a soldier

The growing thirst for revenge from children worries Rebecca Gadzama, the cofounder of EMCI. 

She launched the NGO with her husband in the wake of the February 2014 Chibok Girls abduction. Reaching more than 1,600 children. EMCI has set up two schools for internally displaced children and partners with six existing schools in central Nigeria.

She stops by to visit the EMCI school in Yola, entering a math class where Daniel, John and other students are learning about ratios. When she walks into the classroom everyone stands up. 

“Good morning, grandmother,” they say in unison.

“How are you?” Gadzama replies. 

She stands in the doorframe and asks how they’re doing, and how many of them want to become doctors. One student raises his hand.

“Who wants to be an economist? I am one,” she asks. No one raises a hand. 

“Who wants to be a soldier?” 

Most of the students in the classroom raise their hand while giggling.

Gadzama lifts her head, looking around the room. Then she speaks again, gently yet firm.

“Before you grow up, you need to learn that even if you kill Boko Haram, will it bring back what you lost? Will it change what has happened to you? How many lost their parents to Boko Haram? How many people lost their loved ones?” she asks the children.

Everyone looks around. The room buzzes with tension. One by one, hands go up, one in the rear, another by the window, the kid sitting by the teacher, also.

‘They need psycho-social support’

Boko Haram’s campaign has had an acute impact on children. 

Some of the nine-year-old students have been hearing the words Boko Haram ever since they were born. 

Out of the 2.6 million people who fled their homes in fear of Boko Haram, 1.4 million of them were children, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The agency also reports that nearly one out of four suicide bombers is a child.

For many children in the area, fear is a daily part of their lives. But the fear is often hidden under complex emotional layers.

“Some children are very shy,” said Marzia Vigliaroni from the Italian organisation Cooperazione Internazionale. The group partnered with UNICEF in Niger to help rehabilitate local communities attacked by Boko Haram. “They won’t speak or participate in our activities; they need psychosocial support.”

Apart from dreaming of killing Boko Haram, children draw pictures of them, too. 

In a 2015 UNICEF report called Missing Childhoods, Vigliaroni said: “We ask them to make drawings of their experience during the attack. They draw people with slit throats and people drowning in the river.”

Danladi Saleh, a medical doctor from Chibok where Boko Haram carried out its most infamous kidnapping, said many children see the violence as something fun that they want to be a part of. 

“With gunshots and explosions, naturally you will find people running away and hiding but I have observed children in this part of Nigeria running with joy and jubilation towards it, the violence. It is highly abnormal. They want to see the explosion; they want to see Boko Haram; they want to see the fight. So the whole thing is fun for them,” Saleh explains to Al Jazeera. 

For years, Saleh has helped to coordinate psychosocial counselling in the area.

When a volunteer counter-Boko Haram civilian group called the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) emerged in the northeastern Nigerian city of  Maiduguri – where Boko Haram began – in 2013, adolescents eagerly joined. Amateur videos of CJTF operations showed adolescents and teenagers beating people with guns.

Saleh said he remembers what he saw on the day when the CFTF had successfully repelled Boko Haram when the fighters tried to enter Maiduguri.

“You can see a child who looked to be 12 years old carrying the head of a Boko Haram member, the head of a human being, a Boko Haram member,” Saleh explains. “Imagine the future of a child who is carrying a human head and the psychological impact of that child. What will his future look like?”

The CJTF signed an agreement with UNICEF in 2017 to prevent children from participating.

Rehabilitation, psychosocial support and de-radicalisation programmes are cropping up, but mental trauma is often misunderstood, particularly in children.

It is not an issue of fighting back. It’s an issue of how do we get over this? How do we become one again because some of the guys in the Boko Haram are also children. When will it stop?”

Rebecca Gadzama, cofounder of Education Must Continue Initiative

Nigeria’s war against Boko Haram continues with no end in the near future. In recent weeks, the fighters have killed Nigerian security forces and stolen military equipment. But the government has downplayed these incidents, opting to present stories of military might and success against Boko Haram.

In this false narrative, children are growing up believing that being a soldier means being invincible, observers have noted.

Back in Yola, Gadzama winces at the sight of students wielding imaginary guns and throwing bombs. 

“It is not an issue of fighting back. It’s an issue of how do we get over this? How do we become one again because [some of] the guys in the Boko Haram are also children,” Gadzama says. “When will it stop?” 

Associated Press

Published 5:00 a.m. ET Sept. 5, 2018

Lancashire’s cricket director Paul Allott wasn’t particularly complimentary about Somerset’s pitch after the first day.

“To be honest, the pitch is below average and verging on poor in my view,” he told BBC Radio Lancashire.

“It looks like a fifth-day Test match pitch – it’s warm, it’s pitted, and there are some areas in that are obviously hugely conducive for spin bowling.

“It’s disappointing to come all the way down to Taunton and be confronted with those conditions in such an important game.”

You can hear more about what the former England seamer had to say below…

US President Donald Trump wanted to have Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed after the Syrian government reportedly carried out a chemical attack in April 2017, a new book by renowned journalist Bob Woodward alleges.

The attack, which was widely blamed on forces loyal to the Syrian government, was carried out on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing more than 80 people.

According to the book ‘Fear: Trump in the White House’, by Woodward, Trump wanted the US military to go into Syria and assassinate al-Assad.

“Let’s f*****g kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the f*****g lot of them,” Trump said according to Woodward’s book. 

Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the Pentagon would “get right on it” after Trump made his request, according to Woodward, but after getting off the phone with Trump, Mattis made it clear to his staff that they were not going to follow through with Trump’s plan.

“We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured,” Mattis said according to Woodward’s book.

Instead of targeting al-Assad personally, the Pentagon drew up plans for air strikes to take out Syrian military infrastructure.

Following those air strikes on 7 April 2017, Trump praised the US military, saying the military personnel “represented the United States and the world so well”.

Congratulations to our great military men and women for representing the United States, and the world, so well in the Syria attack.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2017

In an official response to the allegations, Mattis called the quotes used in Woodward’s book “fiction” and “a product of someone’s rich imagination,” adding that the publication was “a uniquely Washington brand of literature”.

“In serving in this administration, the idea that I would show contempt for the elected Commander-in-Chief, President Trump, or tolerate disrespect to the office of the President from within our Department of Defense, is a product of someone’s rich imagination,” Mattis’ statement said.

Statement from Secretary of Defense, James Mattis: pic.twitter.com/OneaxKCneV

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2018

Trump also responded to the book, calling the quotes in the book “made up by frauds, a con on the public”.

The Woodward book has already been refuted and discredited by General (Secretary of Defense) James Mattis and General (Chief of Staff) John Kelly. Their quotes were made up frauds, a con on the public. Likewise other stories and quotes. Woodward is a Dem operative? Notice timing?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2018

When asked about the allegations, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley denied ever hearing threats made by Trump against al-Assad.

“I have not once ever heard the president talk about assassinating Assad,” Haley told Al Jazeera correspondent James Bays.

The Syrian government has always denied it was involved in the chemical attack, but an independent United Nations panel concluded the attack was carried out by al-Assad’s forces.

‘We’re in Crazytown’

Woodward’s book also details several other encounters in the Trump White House between senior staff and the president.

According to the book, sources told Woodward that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly regularly lost his temper with Trump, calling him “unhinged” and “an idiot”, the Washington Post reported.

“It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had,” the book quotes Kelly as saying according to unnamed sources.

Trump himself also railed against the people he appointed, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the book states.

Rob Porter, former staff secretary, was told by Trump to ignore whatever Priebus said, saying that Priebus was “a little rat”, Woodward wrote.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has recently been targeted by Trump on Twitter for his recusal in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election, was also alleged to have been criticised regularly by Trump. 

“This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner,” Trump said about Sessions, according to the book.

Another allegation made in the book is that former top economic adviser to Trump Gary Cohn stole a letter off Trump’s desk to prevent the US from withdrawing from a trade agreement with South Korea.

“I’ll just take the paper off his desk,” Cohn, who has since quit the White House, said to his staffers.

Woodward is considered one of the most renowned investigative political journalists in recent decades.

He became famous after he and his colleague Carl Bernstein revealed the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration in the 1970s.

Their reporting eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Since then, Woodward has written several books about the inner workings of presidential administrations.

Editors, USA TODAY
Published 3:57 a.m. ET Sept. 5, 2018

Round 2: Confirmation hearings for Trump Supreme Court pick Kavanaugh

Will it be “mob rule” again in the Senate? Confirmation hearings resume Wednesday for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a day after the proceedings erupted into shouting and partisan skirmishes. On Tuesday, Democrats angry over a last-minute document dump by Republicans pushed to postpone the meeting, while dozens of protesters were dragged out by the Capitol Police, prompting Republican Sen. John Cornyn to declare it “unlike anything I’ve seen before in a confirmation hearing.”

Tropical Storm Gordon makes landfall

Gulf Coast states are taking a punch from Tropical Storm Gordon on Wednesday, with heavy rains, high winds and storm surge in the forecast. Authorities said that one child was killed after a tree fell on a mobile home near Pensacola as strong winds and heavy rain from Gordon, which made landfall late Tuesday, swept through the Florida Panhandle.The storm is expected to dump 4 to 8 inches of rain over the western Florida Panhandle, southwest Alabama, southern and central Mississippi, eastern Louisiana and southern Arkansas as it moves inland, the National Weather Service said. The National Hurricane Center has described Gordon as “life threatening” and warned that it could spawn tornadoes. September is generally the peak month of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June 1 to Nov. 30.

Congress to question Facebook, Twitter executives

Top executives from Facebook and Twitter are likely to get grilled on Capitol Hill Wednesday on how their companies run their social media platforms. First up will be the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will question Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey during a hearing focused on Russian interference in US elections. Later, Dorsey will face the House Energy and Commerce Committee for a hearing entitled, “Twitter: Transparency and Accountability.” The hearings come amid growing allegations that Facebook, Google and Twitter limit the reach of conservative voices and viewpoints on their platforms.

Trump targets NAFTA as trade talks resume with Canada

Trade talks between the U.S. and Canada are set to resume Wednesday as the Trump administration pushes for an overhaul of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Last week, the U.S. and Mexico reached a new trade deal and President Donald Trump said he was prepared to terminate the quarter-century-old, three-country trade agreement and replace it with a deal involving only Mexico. Trump suggested that a separate trade deal could be reached with Canada “if they’d like to negotiate fairly,” or that the Canadians could be brought into the new agreement with Mexico. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said that Canada wouldn’t be rushed into a bad deal, but is optimistic an agreement is within reach.

Preliminary hearings for New Mexico compound suspects

Detention and preliminary hearings for five members of a disbanded New Mexico compound where a young boy was found dead are scheduled Wednesday, a day after they appeared in federal court. During a raid last month, authorities found malnourished children, ranging in age from 1 to 15, living in a compound and also discovered a cache of at least 11 firearms, including an AR-15 rifle, and loads of ammunition. Haitian immigrant Jany Leveille, 35, charged with being in the US illegally and unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition, was at the forefront of Tuesday’s court hearing. The other four suspects — Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 40; Hujrah Wahhaj, 37; Subhannah Wahhaj, 35; and Lucas Morton, 40 — are charged with aiding and abetting with Leveille and conspiring with her. 

Also on Wednesday: USA TODAY’s Facebook support group

From mental illness, loneliness and intimate partner violence to grief or sexual assault, millions of Americans struggle every day with health problems that may be invisible or easy to miss. USA TODAY’s Facebook support group, “I Survived It,” is here to provide a community for people who have overcome some of life’s most traumatic events. You can join here.

 

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Premiership Rugby owners will hold a board meeting next week to discuss a potential £275m takeover of the league.

The deal, first revealed by The Times, would be the biggest of its kind in club rugby history.

Former F1 owners CVC Capital Partners is looking to buy a 51% share, and value Premiership Rugby at £550m.

“The board is always considering options for further expansion and the best ways to support that,” said a Premiership Rugby spokesperson.

The prospective deal would mean a windfall for the 12 Premiership clubs, many of whom have endured severe financial losses recently.

Worcester Warriors lost £8m and Harlequins £6m in the past accounting year, while only Exeter Chiefs made a profit.

However, there are concerns that a deal of this kind could drive a further wedge between the club game and the Rugby Football Union.

Financial equity firm CVC would also be unwilling to make such a play without seeing a sizeable return for its investment.

It is understood the clubs have long sought a means to raise extra capital in order to take the league to the next level.

But CVC’s valuation of the league falls short of the clubs’ expectations.

Club sources have indicated that the approach is one of a handful of options.

The Premiership Rugby spokesperson added: “This interest is of course very good news for Premiership Rugby and is a reflection of its growing international appeal. But a decision is not imminent.”