China footballer dies on eve of 19th birthday after head injury in Spain
A promising Chinese footballer who suffered a serious head injury while playing in Spain has died a day short of his 19th birthday, his club said Thursday.
Guo Jiaxuan fell into a coma last month after an accident during a training match between a Beijing U-20 team and Spanish side RC Alcobendas in Madrid.
The youth international was declared "brain dead" by local doctors before being flown to a Beijing hospital after his condition deteriorated, where he died on Wednesday evening.
The teenager's family have accused the Beijing Football Association of withholding information about the incident and failing to communicate with them.
Guo with part of the youth set-up at Beijing Guoan and the top-tier club vowed to "do its utmost to properly handle the aftermath and provide all necessary help and support to Guo Jiaxuan's family".
"We've lost a child who loves football. May Jiaxuan rest in peace!" the club said in a post on social media.
The specific circumstances that led to Guo's fatal injury remain unclear.
His family have demanded video footage of the match, details on Guo's medical treatment before he reached hospital and information about his insurance.
Guo's brother posted on social media a black and white photo of the young defender with the caption: "He'll forever be frozen on the last day of his 18th year."
His family "just want the truth and justice", the brother wrote earlier this week.
Guo played for the U-19 team of Beijing Guoan and was selected for China's U-17 side in 2023.
The same year he was also part of the FC Bayern World Squad project run by Germany's largest club for talented players around the globe.
"The club's thoughts are with his family and friends," Bayern Munich said in a statement.
In an online statement, the Beijing FA said it had refrained from "disclosing information" since the incident to "avoid irrelevant personnel interfering with medical work, and taking into account the feelings of family members".
It added they had now obtained video footage of the match and organised experts to analyse it.
"We have made every effort to coordinate medical resources for treatment and meet the needs of his family as much as possible", the Beijing FA said.
Hundreds of social media users offered condolences.
"It's a loss of such a bright future at such a young age," one user wrote.
"I wish him happy playing in heaven," another said.
sam-mya/pst
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
WA farmworkers fear reporting sexual harassment to federal agency under Trump
Marlen, right, a peer trainer for the BASTA Coalition of Washington, and Isabel Reyes-Paz, the coalition's director, lead trainings primarily for Mexican immigrant women about sexual harassment of farmworkers in the Yakima Valley, an agricultural region in Central Washington. (Photo by Jake Parrish/InvestigateWest) Marlen, a 35-year-old mother from Mexico, knows what farmworkers like her are supposed to do if they're sexually harassed on the job: Tell the harasser to stop, document it, then report it to company leadership. If none of that works, get legal help. This could mean filing a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the government agency responsible for enforcing federal employment discrimination laws. Marlen leads training sessions in Spanish for other Latina farmworkers in central Washington about sexual harassment, following guidance drawn from the EEOC. In agricultural areas like Yakima County, where more than half the population is Hispanic or Latino, many victims are immigrants who speak little English, while many perpetrators are supervisors with the power to punish those who report them or refuse their demands. So at the end of 2023, when Marlen's supervisor at a large fruit farm in the Yakima Valley started leering at her, making crude comments about women's bodies like 'nice camel legs,' and filming her as she stood on a ladder cutting tree branches, she reported it to a manager, she said. Then she was assigned to more physically demanding jobs, such as digging holes in rocky ground and moving heavy wooden posts — work that typically only men would do and that isolated her from co-workers, according to her documentation of the incidents. 'It makes me feel like it was wrong of me to report him,' Marlen said in Spanish. She asked to go by her first name for this article because she still works for the company. 'Like I made a mistake, when the one who made the mistake was him.' But if things get worse for Marlen, she probably wouldn't report it to the EEOC, the commission that for nearly three decades has defended immigrant farmworkers like her against workplace sexual harassment and abuse — no matter their immigration status. 'What are they going to do with the information we give them? Are they going to help us or make things worse for us?' she said. 'I feel like — not just in cases of harassment, but with anything happening with someone right now — people won't report it because of fear.' As the Trump administration's immigration crackdown reaches into agricultural communities across the country and the EEOC shifts priorities to align with those of the president, it's unclear to these farmworkers and their attorneys whether the agency will continue to protect them. In one of several actions contributing to a growing fear that the EEOC is being politicized by President Trump, the commission's Trump-appointed acting chair, Andrea Lucas, announced in February that the commission will help deter illegal migration by enforcing employment antidiscrimination laws against employers that 'illegally prefer non-American workers.' And in the name of protecting women from workplace sexual harassment, Lucas also vowed to roll back the Biden administration's 'gender identity agenda.' The commission then moved to dismiss several lawsuits against companies alleging discrimination against transgender and nonbinary workers. The commission declined to comment when InvestigateWest asked if workers can continue filing complaints without fear that their immigration status will be used against them. 'The EEOC was playing a very critical role in being able to protect survivors of workplace sexual harassment, including egregious rape. The sense that we're getting is that they're no longer going to be that kind of an agency,' said Blanca Rodriguez, deputy director of advocacy for Columbia Legal Services, a nonprofit legal aid program in Washington. 'They're going to be an agency that immigrant communities are going to fear. And that is not only going to do harm during the Trump administration, but for years to come.' While it's unclear whether the federal commission would in fact share people's immigration information with other agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the uncertainty alone is deterring farmworkers from reporting sexual harassment and abuse to government and legal organizations, according to attorneys and advocates in the region. The Northwest Justice Project, a nonprofit law firm that represents low-income people in Washington, recorded 16 cases involving sexual harassment of a farmworker in 2024. It had 21 such cases in 2023 and 17 in 2022. So far in 2025, as Trump returned to the White House, the firm has recorded only two cases (although the Northwest Justice Project cautioned this could be an undercount because the data is not yet fully entered in its system). These cases may also take a back seat as the Washington Attorney General's Office, an alternative to the federal government for combating sexual violence against farmworkers, spends more of its limited resources pushing back against the Trump administration's actions, leaving these workers with few — if any — options for recourse. The state Attorney General's Office has sued the Trump administration more than a dozen times over issues like birthright citizenship, gender-affirming care for youth, education funding and health funding. 'It's a terrible outcome if we have to spend all of our energy responding to the federal government, and thus leaving workers in Washington without any protection because the EEOC may not do its job,' said the office's Civil Rights Division Chief Colleen Melody. 'Resources are a major concern, and burnout will be a huge concern if we don't get additional resources to help do this work.' In 1991, a federal court case in California shaped the future of undocumented workers' rights. In a victory for immigrant rights, the judge ruled that undocumented workers are covered under Title VII, a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination against employees based on national origin, race, sex and more. The ruling opened the door for millions of immigrant workers to file discrimination charges with the EEOC. For William Tamayo, a now-retired attorney who represented the plaintiff, a woman from Mexico, it was just the beginning of a trailblazing career protecting immigrants from sex-based discrimination. When Tamayo joined the EEOC as a regional attorney in 1995, the agency had never before sued an agricultural company over sexual harassment of a farmworker. 'Largely, the presence of the federal government was the immigration service. So I had to figure out, 'How would they trust me and trust the EEOC?'' Tamayo said. 'It was really hard work.' His first major breakthrough came in 1999. One of the nation's largest lettuce growers, Tanimura & Antle, settled a case with the EEOC involving a single mother from El Salvador who said that a hiring official forced her to have sex to get a seasonal job picking crops. Since then, the EEOC has brought more than 50 agricultural companies to court over such allegations, primarily under Tamayo's leadership, leading to improved sexual harassment trainings and over $35 million awarded to farmworkers throughout the country. This doesn't include the many cases resolved through mediation and settlements before a lawsuit was filed. Allegations range from pervasive verbal harassment to violent assaults: A woman whose supervisor held pruning shears to her throat and repeatedly raped her at a tree farm in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Managers and employees at a California raisin company who, for over a decade, groped and demanded sex from female workers. A pregnant woman whose manager, after she rejected his almost daily sexual advances at a fruit packing warehouse in central Washington, fired her husband and assigned her to lift 40-pound boxes without help. In most cases, the women who reported sexual violence also reported consequences for doing so — they lost their jobs, were demoted, isolated from co-workers. Sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal under federal and state law. Yet studies estimate that 65% to 80% of farmworker women in the U.S. agricultural industry experience workplace sexual harassment. The nationwide issue, spotlighted by a 2013 PBS Frontline documentary, 'Rape in the Fields,' has been especially scrutinized in California, Washington and Oregon, which have among the highest employment levels in agricultural industries of all states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The commission's commitment to protecting people's immigration information is key to farmworkers' ability to speak out about sexual abuse and harassment, according to Tamayo, who retired from the EEOC in 2021 after 20 years as a regional attorney and another six years as district director overseeing investigations across the western United States. 'Certainly, if the EEOC started asking about immigration status, that would be the end of these farmworker cases,' he said. 'It has nothing to do with whether she was raped or not.' Attorneys like Rodriguez and Michael Meuter, vice president of legal affairs and general counsel at California Rural Legal Assistance, say their farmworker clients in Washington and California are now deciding not to file sexual harassment charges with the commission. The level of fear among immigrant clients is unmatched even compared to the first Trump administration when anti-immigrant rhetoric escalated, they say. 'I think during the last administration, it was harder to get cases approved for litigation. But I think partly because Bill Tamayo — people who care about immigrant workers like him — were still at the EEOC, I still saw the EEOC conduct investigations,' Rodriguez said. 'Things are completely different now. There is no trust at all in the EEOC.' Despite the successes that the EEOC had under Tamayo's leadership, filing complaints with the commission has never been a silver bullet. Strict filing deadlines, language barriers and fear of reporting have long stood in the way of farmworkers facing sexual harassment on the job, attorneys say. Of 8,191 sexual harassment charges resolved through the EEOC in fiscal year 2024, 26.7% were closed for administrative reasons like untimeliness, according to the commission's enforcement and litigation statistics. Nearly half (47%) were dismissed because the commission didn't find reasonable cause to support the discrimination claim. In Oregon, the EEOC hasn't litigated a farmworker sexual harassment case since 2013, court records show. Reporting to the commission, however, can still prove beneficial because it preserves workers' Title VII rights — they receive a 'Right to Sue' notice when the agency closes its investigation, enabling them to file their own Title VII lawsuits. In states with stronger worker protections like Washington, California and Oregon, farmworkers can instead take complaints to their state governments, an option that might feel safer for immigrants who distrust the current federal administration. But those routes have limitations as well. In Washington, for example, the Washington State Human Rights Commission enforces state law prohibiting sexual harassment. While the state commission itself doesn't bring cases to court, it can negotiate agreements with companies and refer cases to the state Attorney General's Office. 'We want every farmworker — regardless of immigration status, job type, or background — to know that they have the right to live and work free from sexual harassment and discrimination,' said Washington State Human Rights Commission Executive Director Andreta Armstrong in an email statement to InvestigateWest. But workers have just a six-month window from the date of the harm to file a complaint with the state commission, and a backlog of cases means that complaints can take years to be investigated. Of 44 sexual harassment complaints against agricultural companies received by the Washington commission since 2015, just eight ended in resolutions through settlements or agreements with their employers, according to InvestigateWest's review of data provided by the agency. Nearly 70% of cases were closed for administrative reasons or after the commission found 'no reasonable cause.' Another avenue that has proven committed to combating sexual violence against farmworkers — the Washington Attorney General's Office — is also narrowing under the Trump administration. Since launching its civil rights unit in 2015, the office has sued five different agricultural companies on behalf of farmworkers who alleged sexual harassment or sexual abuse on the job. Although state law protects everyone from sexual harassment, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, many farmworkers still fear that coming forward may put them at risk for attention by immigration officials, said Melody, the office's civil rights division chief. This fear has been 'noticeably true' since the 2024 election, Melody added. 'Witnesses tell us that they have a story to tell, but they're afraid and unwilling to come forward and tell it,' she said. 'They may have family members who are impacted. They may have colleagues who are impacted, and they fear that coming forward may expose any of those people to retribution.' For immigrant farmworkers who are weighing the risks of speaking out, Melody recommends they ask questions like: Will my immigration status be necessary for this investigation? Will it be shared? With whom will it be shared? 'In the Washington State Attorney General's Office, the answer is, 'We almost always don't need to know, and we don't share it with anyone,'' she said. 'I'm not sure what the answer is at the EEOC right now.' On a Saturday morning in May, Marlen gathered with seven other women in a classroom in Sunnyside, a small city in the heart of the Yakima Valley. Over a table of tamales and coffee, they painted bandanas for the BASTA Coalition of Washington, which provides sexual harassment trainings for farmworkers in the state. They filled the white cloth with messages in Spanish and English like, 'Farmworker women's voices are key!' The women, who each found agricultural work in central Washington after leaving Mexico, spoke about how to weigh the importance of reporting sexual harassment against people's fear of losing their jobs or being deported for doing so. Marlen said the harassment she experienced in the apple orchards has improved recently, after she took some time off from work for a family matter. A few months ago, when she was being isolated from her co-workers in what she believes was retaliation for reporting her supervisor, she would've said she regretted reporting the harassment. But now, despite the risks, she stands by her decision. 'There comes a time when you get overwhelmed and say, 'Why did I report it? I should've just kept quiet,'' Marlen said. 'But if tomorrow it happens to my daughter, I feel like no — someone has to make the change.' That decision, however, may not be right for everyone. BASTA, which means 'enough' in Spanish, currently lists the EEOC as a resource for workers facing sexual harassment. The coalition's director, Isabel Reyes-Paz, said they might need to reconsider that recommendation, or at least provide a caveat: 'We don't know what's going to happen with the current administration. We can't guarantee that your legal status information is protected or not,' Reyes-Paz said. The coalition is also grappling with federal funding cuts, as grants that it had relied on to grow — like those administered by the Department of Labor to support women's employment — are being slashed. 'What are we going to do?' one woman said in Spanish at the meeting in May. 'How are we going to encourage them to seek help if we're also thinking the same thing? We're all afraid.' InvestigateWest ( is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Kelsey Turner can be reached at kelsey@ or 503-893-2501.
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
We're only just beginning to suffer the consequences of Biden's disastrous open-border policies
The spiteful open-borders legacy of Joe Biden will plague America for generations to come, long after the former president is a fading bad memory. Somewhere between 10 million and 12 million foreign nationals are believed to have entered the United States illegally under his watch, to add to the existing 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens. Almost all were unaudited. 4 America is only just beginning to feel the effects of Joe Biden's disastrous border policies. AFP via Getty Images They stormed the border for four years without background checks of the sort that American citizens must undergo to purchase a firearm or take out a loan. At a time when citizens were expelled from the military for not submitting to the experimental mRNA COVID inoculations, millions of foreign nationals, with the Biden administration's encouragement, crossed the southern border, exempt from any vaccination requirement or medical examination. When Americans were required to present multiple forms of identification to apply for a mandatory 'real ID' to fly in 2025, millions of illegal entrants were flown across the country, often stealthily and under the cover of night, without any valid ID at all. On some days, the Trump administration has managed to deport 800 of Biden's illegal aliens. But 10 times that many entered illegally each day under President Joe Biden. President Donald Trump's border patrol would have to deport over 8,000 people every day of his four-year tenure just to undo what Biden wrought by his dismantling of federal immigration law. Some 500,000 illegal entrants are believed to have criminal records — a number greater than the population of Oakland, Calif. 4 A large group of migrants cross the U.S.-Mexico Border at the Rio Grande river on Tuesday, October 3, 2023 in El Paso, Texas. NYPJ Indeed, new reports relate almost every day that another illegal alien has murdered, raped or assaulted an American citizen. The culpable left often champions violent illegal-alien criminals facing deportation. Their apparent assumption is that hurting Trump politically justifies hurting Americans even more by protecting criminals instead of sending them home. Thousands of these unknown criminals are deadly land mines waiting to explode. There are nearly 300,000 Chinese nationals in American universities, the vast majority admitted without serious background checks. They are welcomed by elite campuses because they pay the full cost and at a premium, with few questions asked about why exactly they came or what they are doing. No wonder, then, that in the last decade, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government is reported to have trained and graduated hundreds of Chinese nationals who were either Communist Party members or the children of prominent Chinese communist apparatchiks. 4 A member of the Texas National Guard uses a riot shield to block the passage of the parents of two small children as they crawl through the concertina wire after crossing the U.S.-Mexico Border at the Rio Grande river on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 in El Paso, Texas. NYPJ In other words, at a time when the United States is locked in an escalating Cold War with China, our universities find great profit in enrolling and educating the communist elite who threaten Taiwan, imprison and oppress the Uyghurs, jail Hong Kong dissidents and send both bio- and agro-terrorists into the United States. Not a day went by during the last two years without Middle Eastern, pro-Hamas visa students on some campus swarming students in libraries, assaulting and bullying Jews, trashing iconic buildings, illegally camping out in student quads and screaming to bring the intifada home to the United States. Neither the Biden administration nor spineless college presidents took any action, despite such flagrant violations of both the terms and spirit of student visas. Most recently, Yunqing Jian, a 33-year-old Chinese national with ties to the University of Michigan, was arrested as an 'agro-terrorist.' The alleged mission of Jian, along with his girlfriend, was to seed toxic fungus into Midwestern farmland as a way of destroying the American food supply and thereby starving his hosts. Sometimes the baleful Biden immigration inheritance was simply a matter of allowing 'tourists' and 'visitors' to stay far after their visas had expired — without consequences. 4 Egyptian national and terrorist, Mohammed Sabry Soliman, along with his entire family, deliberately overstayed their visas. So, for example, Egyptian national and terrorist, Mohammed Sabry Soliman, along with his entire family, deliberately overstayed their visas. They were all residing here illegally when Soliman allegedly firebombed Jews, crying out 'Free Palestine' as he tried to burn them up. Americans overwhelmingly polled against this Biden border nihilism. Indeed, the House impeached his henchman, Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of Homeland Security. Yet Biden, or his handlers in the shadows, would not stop destroying the borders and immigration law. So why would a president deliberately cause such mayhem that will cost hundreds of lives and billions of dollars in the years to come? Was the reason Biden's characteristic incompetence or dementia? Or did Biden simply want to alter the demography to find a constituency for his otherwise unpopular agendas? Did he wish to grow the welfare state? Was Biden hoping to expand the DEI agenda by bringing in the poor and supposedly oppressed as new fodder in the Left's Marxist binary of victimized versus victimizer? No one knows why Biden did it, only that he did — and we will suffer his nihilist legacy for years to come. Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
2 hours ago
Chinese hackers and user lapses turn smartphones into a 'mobile security crisis'
WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — Cybersecurity investigators noticed a highly unusual software crash — it was affecting a small number of smartphones belonging to people who worked in government, politics, tech and journalism. The crashes, which began late last year and carried into 2025, were the tipoff to a sophisticated cyberattack that may have allowed hackers to infiltrate a phone without a single click from the user. The attackers left no clues about their identities, but investigators at the cybersecurity firm iVerify noticed that the victims all had something in common: They worked in fields of interest to China's government and had been targeted by Chinese hackers in the past. Foreign hackers have increasingly identified smartphones, other mobile devices and the apps they use as a weak link in U.S. cyberdefenses. Groups linked to China's military and intelligence service have targeted the smartphones of prominent Americans and burrowed deep into telecommunication networks, according to national security and tech experts. It shows how vulnerable mobile devices and apps are and the risk that security failures could expose sensitive information or leave American interests open to cyberattack, those experts say. 'The world is in a mobile security crisis right now,' said Rocky Cole, a former cybersecurity expert at the National Security Agency and Google and now chief operations officer at iVerify. 'No one is watching the phones.' U.S. authorities warned in December of a sprawling Chinese hacking campaign designed to gain access to the texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. 'They were able to listen in on phone calls in real time and able to read text messages,' said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois. He is a member of the House Intelligence Committee and the senior Democrat on the Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, created to study the geopolitical threat from China. Chinese hackers also sought access to phones used by Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance during the 2024 campaign. The Chinese government has denied allegations of cyberespionage, and accused the U.S. of mounting its own cyberoperations. It says America cites national security as an excuse to issue sanctions against Chinese organizations and keep Chinese technology companies from the global market. 'The U.S. has long been using all kinds of despicable methods to steal other countries' secrets,' Lin Jian, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, said at a recent press conference in response to questions about a CIA push to recruit Chinese informants. U.S. intelligence officials have said China poses a significant, persistent threat to U.S. economic and political interests, and it has harnessed the tools of digital conflict: online propaganda and disinformation, artificial intelligence and cyber surveillance and espionage designed to deliver a significant advantage in any military conflict. Mobile networks are a top concern. The U.S. and many of its closest allies have banned Chinese telecom companies from their networks. Other countries, including Germany, are phasing out Chinese involvement because of security concerns. But Chinese tech firms remain a big part of the systems in many nations, giving state-controlled companies a global footprint they could exploit for cyberattacks, experts say. Chinese telecom firms still maintain some routing and cloud storage systems in the U.S. — a growing concern to lawmakers. 'The American people deserve to know if Beijing is quietly using state-owned firms to infiltrate our critical infrastructure,' U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich. and chairman of the China committee, which in April issued subpoenas to Chinese telecom companies seeking information about their U.S. operations. Mobile devices can buy stocks, launch drones and run power plants. Their proliferation has often outpaced their security. The phones of top government officials are especially valuable, containing sensitive government information, passwords and an insider's glimpse into policy discussions and decision-making. The White House said last week that someone impersonating Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff, reached out to governors, senators and business leaders with texts and phone calls. It's unclear how the person obtained Wiles' connections, but they apparently gained access to the contacts in her personal cellphone, The Wall Street Journal reported. The messages and calls were not coming from Wiles' number, the newspaper reported. While most smartphones and tablets come with robust security, apps and connected devices often lack these protections or the regular software updates needed to stay ahead of new threats. That makes every fitness tracker, baby monitor or smart appliance another potential foothold for hackers looking to penetrate networks, retrieve information or infect systems with malware. Federal officials launched a program this year creating a 'cyber trust mark' for connected devices that meet federal security standards. But consumers and officials shouldn't lower their guard, said Snehal Antani, former chief technology officer for the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command. 'They're finding backdoors in Barbie dolls,' said Antani, now CEO of a cybersecurity firm, referring to concerns from researchers who successfully hacked the microphone of a digitally connected version of the toy. It doesn't matter how secure a mobile device is if the user doesn't follow basic security precautions, especially if their device contains classified or sensitive information, experts say. Mike Waltz, who departed as Trump's national security adviser, inadvertently added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief to a Signal chat used to discuss military plans with other top officials. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had an internet connection that bypassed the Pentagon's security protocols set up in his office so he could use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer, the AP has reported. Hegseth has rejected assertions that he shared classified information on Signal, a popular encrypted messaging app not approved for the use of communicating classified information. China and other nations will try to take advantage of such lapses, and national security officials must take steps to prevent them from recurring, said Michael Williams, a national security expert at Syracuse University. 'They all have access to a variety of secure communications platforms,' Williams said. "We just can't share things willy-nilly.'
