Women win legal clarity—but Britain's gender wars intensify
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Indian Super League in turmoil with domestic game on brink of collapse
Crystal Palace may be disappointed the court of arbitration for sport ruled against them on Monday but at least they now know their fate. Imagine if all Premier League clubs were waiting for a court decision that would, in effect, determine whether the season would go ahead at all. That is the situation the 14 Indian Super League (ISL) teams find themselves in. The whole of football there has been waiting for a ruling from the supreme court. It was expected in mid-July but has still not arrived. The season is due to start in September. Or at least, it was. The ISL, formed in 2013, has grown from eight teams to 14, becoming the top tier along the way. Football Sports Development Ltd (FSDL) runs the competition but put the 2025-26 season on hold on 11 July. At the time, despite the shock, most stakeholders felt it would go ahead but confidence, trust and bank balances have taken a turn for the worse. Sunil Chhetri, the biggest name in the Indian game and the third-highest active international men's goalscorer, summed it up. 'When my phone went off a few weeks ago informing us of a delay in pre-season by a fortnight, I must admit it made me smile,' the 41-year-old wrote on social media. 'And that's because I was on vacation … I had more time than I had bargained to get in shape. 'That 'fortnight' has now changed to 'indefinitely' and that smile's been wiped out … Everybody in the Indian football ecosystem is worried, hurt, scared about the uncertainty we are faced with.' On Monday, the president of the All India Football Federation (AIFF), Kalyan Chaubey, used the c-word. 'It is true that we are going through crisis for which we are not responsible,' he told the Press Trust of India. 'Some self-claimed reformers with vested interests have created this situation. I believe, by the grace of God, we will collectively be able to tide over this crisis.' It all stems from the fact that the 15-year Master Rights Agreement (MRA) between FSDL and the AIFF, which received more than £4m annually from its commercial partner, is due to end in December, before the season's halfway point. There were discussions earlier this year and new proposals from FSDL but no deal was reached. Then the supreme court told the federation not to negotiate until it rules on the AIFF's constitution. So nothing is happening. The AIFF did not comment when contacted by the Guardian. A source close to FSDL said its hands were tied by the court. 'FSDL made a leap of faith in Indian football 15 years ago,' the source said. 'The current structure is atypical in football. Moving forward, there is a requirement to move to a structure in line with global best practices such as the Premier League, where the clubs are full or majority owners of the league themselves. The proposal was that clubs become majority owners of the league, with FSDL and the AIFF still involved as equity holders, so everyone has skin in the game and aligned incentives. AIFF prefers to continue with the fixed fee every year and that was the situation in April when the supreme court said that the AIFF needs to pause.' Limbo, however, can be costly, as people still need to be paid. Even when there is football, most ISL clubs lose money. Revenue from a central broadcasting and sponsorship pool is pretty much cancelled out by the franchise fee that the owners – who range from the City Football Group to cricket stars such as Virat Kohli and Bollywood's John Abraham – have to pay. Discussions on how the league is organised are welcome and necessary but are on the back burner for now. There are more pressing issues. Three clubs have suspended salaries, football operations or both: Bengaluru, Chennaiyin and Odisha. The owner of Odisha, Rohan Sharma, gave his reasons. 'It becomes harder to justify to my stakeholders to sink Crs upon Crs [tens of millions of rupees] with nothing to show for it, and no end in sight,' he wrote on social media. 'We have: no clarity when the League will Start, nowhere to practise/play/work in Odisha, no way to get sponsorship since there's no season, no way to engage investors with an expiring participation agreement. We hoped something would give, but sadly it hasn't.' Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion That applies not only to those who work for the clubs. The Times of India reported that nine concerned match officials had written to the AIFF. 'The lack of certainty regarding continuation of ISL has created uncertainty around our future and could compel us to seek alternative employment,' the referees said. '[This] would not only impact our livelihoods but also affect the continuity and development of professional refereeing in India.' On Friday, 11 ISL clubs wrote to the governing body in New Delhi to urge it to bring the seriousness of the situation to the attention of the supreme court, threatening legal action if this does not happen. It has become a big mess. Ideally, the court rules sooner rather than later and then everything can fall into place. Sources say about six months are needed to play the league, which must finish by the last day of May, so there is some leeway. But with extra time needed for negotiations between the AIFF and FSDL, and then with broadcasters, sponsors, clubs and players, plus international windows, there is not much.
Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Death row prisoner gauges out both his own eyes to delay execution
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Andre Thomas was sentenced to death in 2005, but his execution date was postponed due to his mental state. A man on death row for killing his wife and children before removing both of their hearts, gouged both of his eyes out and ate them in a desperate attempt to avoid execution. Andre Thomas was sentenced to death in 2005, but his execution date was postponed after he pulled out his own eyeballs. Thomas was found in his cell covered in blood before his day in court in 2004, reports The San Diego Union-Tribune. The man gouged out his other eye and ingested his second eye in another incident, which left him fully blind. His attorneys said he thought the act of mutilation would stop the government hearing his thoughts. To this day the 39-year-old, is imprisoned in Texas for a triple murder he committed and has confessed to. He admitted to murdering his estranged wife, Laura Christine Boren, his four-year-old son and Boren's 13-month-old daughter. He told police God had told him to commit the murders and he'd believed the three of them were demons. Thomas also removed the hearts of both children, Associated Press reported. He was found guilty in 2005 and was automatically given the death penalty. He was to be executed on April 5, 2023. An agency spokesperson, Jason Clark, said: "Thomas said he pulled out his eye and subsequently ingested it." In March 2023, Judge Jim Fallon issued an order withdrawing Thomas' warrant of execution, which came after his lawyers asked for additional time to review his mental state to see if he passed the competency threshold for the death penalty. According to the Supreme Court, while the death penalty is not illegal for those with severe mental illnesses, it rules a person must be competent. Marie Levin, Thomas' attorney, wrote in a statement: "We are confident that when we present the evidence of Mr. Thomas's incompetence, the court will agree that executing him would violate the Constitution. "Guiding this blind psychotic man to the gurney for execution offends our sense of humanity and serves no legitimate purpose." Levin said Thomas was 'one of the most mentally ill prisoners in Texas history … not competent to be executed, lacking a rational understanding of the state's reason for his execution.' Following the ingestion of his first eyeball, Thomas was treated at a medical centre before being transferred to a prison psychiatric ward. His trial attorney, Bobbie Peterson-Cate, said here he would 'finally be able to receive the mental health care that we had wanted and begged for from day 1.' In March 2023, a call for clemency was issued by more than 100 faith leaders amongst others to stop his execution, however, J. Kerye Ashmore, with the Grayson County District Attorney's Office who prosecuted the case, said they know 'nothing about the case' and had not read any reports or evaluations regarding his mental state. Thomas remains on death row.
Spectator
10 hours ago
- Spectator
Of course shoplifters are scumbags
A familiar cliché, which in history has been disproved time and again, is that a police force cannot operate without the consent of the people. Tell that to the residents of what was once East Berlin. But that old canard raises a different problem. Which people are giving the consent? The ones who abide by the law, or the ones who are disposed to breaking it? I wondered about this when I read two stories over the weekend, both of which suggested to me that the police have long since lost the support of that first group of people, that more numerous community, the people who don't habitually break the law. The first case concerned a nutter on the Tube, somewhere on the Hammersmith and City line, who decided to drop his trousers and underpants and display his pork truncheon to the various women, children and men who were his fellow passengers. There is a video online of what happened next. A male passenger remonstrates with the bloke and tells him to pull his trousers up. The nutter shouts 'fuck off' repeatedly and becomes aggressive – at which point three or four men wrestle him to the ground and out of the train at the next station, pinioning him with his hands behind his back. He is taken into custody by an off-duty copper and decanted into a convenient booby hatch. After the incident, British Transport Police revealed they were investigating the matter with a view to prosecuting the vigilantes for assault. Part of the statement read as follows: 'The man had been assaulted by a number of other passengers and was initially arrested by an off-duty officer, before being detained under the Mental Health Act and taken to hospital.' I am assuming you agree with me that it is not OK to drop your drawers and start waving your gremlins around at other passengers on public transport and that the men who intervened did the right thing, even if they were perhaps a little brusque. I would further venture that the nutter was remarkably lucky he didn't get a good beating. And I suspect most people would agree with this assessment – but not the police. They are once again more interested in preserving the dignity and security of the offender than they are with the sensibilities of the public. The same applies to the frankly astonishing case of Rob Davies, who owns a retro clothing store in Wrexham called Run Ragged. He put up a notice in his window which read as follows: 'Due to scumbags shoplifting, please ask for assistance to open cabinets.' Somebody reported this little sign to the police and, true to form, a couple of dense coppers turned up at his shop and advised him to remove the notice lest it give offence to people. Mr Davies told me that he asked the coppers to whom the notice might give offence – shoplifters, for example? He also asked if the police's view was that shoplifters were not actually scumbags, but did not receive an intelligible answer. The irony in this particular case is quite exquisite. Mr Davies said that his store had been the target of shoplifters on five occasions so far this year, and on only one occasion did the police turn up to investigate. In that instance they caught the shoplifter and returned to Mr Davies the shirt that had been stolen, but let the thief off without so much as a warning. The only good news to come out of this is that Mr Davies has rejected the advice to take down his notice – or, rather, he has taken the original scrawled sign down and rewritten it five times the size on a larger piece of paper. He believes – and I agree with him – that the police behaviour in this episode suggests that not only has shoplifting been decriminalised, but that the shoplifters constitute a 'vulnerable' community and that their sensibilities should not be disquieted by being called mildly nasty names. Again, I would suggest that a good 90 per cent of the country would be on Rob Davies's side in this dispute, just as I would imagine a similar proportion would lament the fact that the coppers no longer give a monkeys about shoplifting. I daresay a few idiots will insist that it is not a crime for the starving to steal to save their lives – and that would seem to be the premise upon which the police operate: that shoplifters are the downtrodden, the poor, the 'vulnerable', and that one should give them every inch of leeway available. Both stories also indicate how our society is breaking down and both stories make life in the UK that little bit more perilous and dismal. The consequence of what happened in the first story is that surely fewer people will be minded to intervene if they see someone committing an illegal act, because they fear that they themselves might end up getting prosecuted by the old bill. And so instead they will sit and watch, rendered passive by a police force which has forgotten the reason it exists. And in the second case? What you will see is exactly what has happened in those liberal American cities which have more or less officially decriminalised shoplifting. The former streets of commerce will be a vista of boarded-up shopfronts, with countless small enterprises forced out of existence. And as a consequence of that, our economy will show even less inclination of growing. Like the landlords forced out of business because the fashionable view today is that all landlords are bastards and all renters downtrodden angels and owners of property should therefore not be able to do what they like with their houses, so the shop owners will go bust because we – or our authorities – have decided that shoplifters are nicer than shop owners and should never, ever, be called scumbags.
