LISBON: Hope Solo told a Portuguese newspaper that former FIFA President Sepp Blatter sexually assaulted her at the Ballon d’Or awards ceremony in 2013.
In an interview published Friday in the newspaper Expresso, Solo said Blatter grabbed her rear end shortly before the two appeared onstage at the annual soccer awards event.
A representative for Solo confirmed Friday to The Associated Press that the report was accurate and said the former goalkeeper for the US women’s national team had no further comment on the matter.
Blatter could not immediately be reached for comment by the AP, but the embattled former head of soccer’s governing body told the Guardian newspaper: “This allegation is ridiculous.”
Solo has been dogged by a number of off-the-field controversies. Notably, a domestic violence case stemming from a 2014 altercation at a family member’s home in Washington state.
Solo anchored the US team in goal during its 2015 Women’s World Cup championship run, allowing just three goals in seven games with five shutouts during the tournament.
For her career, Solo has made 202 total appearances with the national team, with 153 wins and an international-record 102 shutouts.
Solo’s tenure with the national team ended following last year’s Olympics in Brazil, when the Americans were ousted by Sweden in the quarterfinals. Afterward, Solo called the Swedish team “cowards” for their defensive style of play.
She was suspended from the team shortly thereafter and has not returned.
Blatter was suspended from office and banned from soccer for six years following allegations of a widespread corruption scandal that came to light in 2015. Both US and Swiss officials cooperated in the investigation, which is ongoing, and more than 40 people have been indicted.
Blatter has also had a history of what many consider to be sexist behavior concerning the women’s game.
US forward Alex Morgan has said that Blatter failed to recognize her at the annual award event in 2012, even though she was one of three nominees for the women’s Player of the Year.
Blatter also famously argued in 2004 that players could boost the popularity of the women’s game by wearing tighter shorts.
Solo accuses former FIFA President Blatter of grabbing her
Solo accuses former FIFA President Blatter of grabbing her
UK High Court hears legal challenge over British government's role in arming Israel
The legal challenge was brought by human rights groups, which argue that the government is breaking domestic and international law and is complicit in atrocities against Palestinians by allowing essential components for the warplanes to be supplied to Israel.
The government said in September that it was suspending about 30 of 350 existing export licenses for equipment deemed to be for use in the conflict in Gaza because of a “clear risk” that the items could be used to “commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.” Those equipment included parts for helicopters and drones.
But an exemption was made for some licenses related to components of F-35 fighter jets, which have been linked to Israel’s bombardment campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Rights groups argue that the United Kingdom shouldn't continue the export of the parts through what they call a “deliberate loophole” given the government's own assessment of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law.
Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq and the U.K.-based Global Legal Action Network, which brought the legal challenge, say the components are indirectly supplied to Israel through the global spare parts supply chain.
U.K. officials have argued that stopping the export of F-35 fighter jet components would negatively impact international peace and security.
Compared to major arms suppliers such as the U.S. and Germany, British firms sell a relatively small amount of weapons and components to Israel.
The Campaign Against Arms Trade nonprofit group estimates that the U.K. supplies about 15% of the components in the F-35 stealth combat aircraft, including its laser targeting system.
“British-made F-35s are dropping multi-ton bombs on the people of Gaza, which the U.N. secretary-general has described as a ‘killing field,’” said Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe, a lawyer for the Global Legal Action Network.
“The U.K. government has expressly departed from its own domestic law in order to keep arming Israel. This decision is of continuing and catastrophic effect," she added.
The hearing is expected to last four days and a decision is expected at a later date.
Israel resumed its bombardment in Gaza in March, shattering a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. More than 52,800 people, more than half of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry. The ministry’s count doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed thousands of militants, without giving evidence.
The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas’ military chief, accusing them of crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.
Police raid conspiracy theorist group 'Kingdom of Germany'
BERLIN: German authorities on Tuesday banned an extremist group called the "Kingdom of Germany", raided multiple locations nationwide and arrested four of its leading members.
The group is part of a right-wing conspiracy theorist movement known as the "Citizens of the Reich" ("Reichsbuerger"), which rejects the legitimacy of the modern German republic.
Among those detained was the group's self-proclaimed "king" Peter Fitzek, 59, a former chef and karate instructor.
He founded the organisation, which has claimed to have about 6,000 members.
Long dismissed as malcontents and oddballs, the Reichsbuerger have become increasingly radicalised and are considered a security threat by German authorities.
Hundreds of security forces searched properties in seven states linked to the group, known in German as "Koenigreich Deutschland".
The interior ministry said that over the past 10 years, the group had established "pseudo-state structures and institutions", issuing its own currency and identity papers and running an insurance scheme for its members.
The ministry declared the dissolution of the group, which it accused of "attacking the liberal democratic order" of the federal Republic of Germany.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that the members of the group had "created a 'counter-state' in our country and built up economic criminal structures".
"In this way, they persistently undermine the legal system and the Federal Republic's monopoly on the use of force."
Authorities said the association had financed itself primarily through prohibited banking and insurance transactions for its members as well as donations.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe said Fitzek was arrested along with three other suspected ringleaders of the group, which was classified as a criminal organisation.
As the "so-called supreme sovereign," Fitzek had "control and decision-making power in all key areas", the Prosecutor's Office said.
"The Kingdom of Germany considers itself a sovereign state within the meaning of international law and strives to extend its claimed 'national territory' to the borders of the German Empire of 1871," it added in a statement.
Fitzek, who once ran unsuccessfully to enter parliament, anointed himself as "king" in 2012 in an elaborate ceremony complete with a crown and sceptre.
He told AFP in an interview in 2023 that founding the organisation was the only answer to the "mass manipulation" he saw in German society.
His followers tend to be people with a "pioneering spirit" who "want to make a positive change in this world", Fitzek told AFP in Wittenberg, the group's original base in eastern Germany.
In Tuesday's raids, police searched locations in the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.
There were around 23,000 members of the Reichsbuerger movement in 2022, according to Germany's domestic intelligence agency.
More than 2,000 of them were considered potentially violent.
While Reichsbuerger members subscribe to an ideology similar to that of the Kingdom of Germany, the Reichsbuerger movement is made up of many disparate groups.
In 2022, members of a group including an ex-MP and former soldiers were arrested over a plot to attack parliament, overthrow the government and install aristocrat and businessman Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss as head of state.
Another high-profile case saw a group of Reichsbuerger members charged with plotting to kidnap the then health minister, Karl Lauterbach, in protest at Covid-19 restrictions.
Conservatives cautiously hopeful Pope Leo XIV will restore rigor to papacy
- Traditionalist Catholics are cautiously optimistic over the historic election of Pope Leo XIV, hopeful that he will return doctrinal rigor to the papacy,
VATICAN CITY: They went into last week’s conclave vastly outnumbered and smarting after being sidelined by Pope Francis for 12 years.
And yet conservatives and traditionalist Catholics are cautiously optimistic over the historic election of Pope Leo XIV, hopeful that he will return doctrinal rigor to the papacy, even as progressives sense he will continue Francis’ reformist agenda.
Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, a titan of the conservative bloc, said Monday he was very pleased with the election and expected that Leo would heal the divisions that escalated during Francis’ pontificate. Mueller, who was fired by Francis as the Vatican’s doctrinal chief, suggested as a first step that Leo should restore access to the old Latin Mass that his predecessor had greatly restricted.
“I am convinced that he will overcome these superfluous tensions (which were) damaging for the church,” Mueller said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We cannot avoid all the conflicts, but we have to avoid the not necessary conflicts, the superfluous conflicts.”
His sense of hope is significant, given that conservative cardinals went into the conclave at a numerical disadvantage. Francis appointed 108 of the 133 electors, including the former Cardinal Robert Prevost and other pastors in his image.
But in the secret dynamics of the conclave, the Augustinian missionary who spent most of his priestly life in Peru secured far more than the two-thirds majority needed on the fourth ballot in an exceptionally quick, 24-hour conclave. The speed and margin defied expectations, given that this was the largest, most geographically diverse conclave in history and the cardinals barely knew each other.
A ‘good impression’ in the conclave
“I think it was a good impression of him to everybody, and in the end it was a great concordia, a great harmony,” Mueller said. “There was no polemics, no fractionizing.”
Speaking in an interview in his apartment library just off St. Peter’s Square, Mueller said Francis’ crackdown on traditionalists and the old Mass created unnecessary divisions that Leo knows he must heal.
Pope Benedict XVI had loosened restrictions on celebrations of the Latin Mass, which was used for centuries before the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council, which allowed the liturgy to be celebrated in the vernacular. Francis reversed Benedict’s signature liturgical legacy, saying the spread of the Latin Mass had created divisions in dioceses. But the crackdown had the effect of galvanizing Francis’ conservative foes.
“We cannot absolutely condemn or forbid the legitimate right and form of the Latin liturgy,” Mueller said. “According to his character, I think (Leo) is able to speak with people and to find a very good solution that is good for everybody.”
A pleasant surprise over the name ‘Leo’
Mueller is not alone in his optimism.
Benedict’s longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, who also was fired by Francis and exiled from the Vatican, said he was pleasantly surprised by Leo’s election and hopeful for the future.
In an interview with Corriere della Sera, Gaenswein said the new pontiff’s choice of his name, referencing Pope Leo XIII, who led the church from 1878-1903, as well as Leo the Great and other popes, sent a signal that he would respect tradition, restore doctrinal clarity and pacify divisions.
“Pope Prevost gives me great hope,” Gaenswein was quoted as saying.
In newspaper stories, social media posts, TV interviews and private conversations among friends, some of Francis’ most vocal critics also are sounding cautiously optimistic, rejoicing over some of the smallest — but to them significant — gestures.
They liked that Leo read a written statement when he emerged from the conclave on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, rather than improvise. They liked that his first words referenced Jesus Christ. They loved that he decided to wear the formal red cape, or mozzetta, of the papacy, which they viewed as a show of respect for the office that Francis had eschewed.
Another plus: He sang the noontime Regina Caeli Latin prayer on Sunday, instead of reciting it.
Many point to a report in Corriere that one evening before the conclave began, Prevost was seen entering the apartment building of Cardinal Raymond Burke, another tradition-minded cardinal whom Francis fired as the Vatican’s supreme court chief. Burke, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, could have played the role of a “kingmaker” in the conclave, rallying conservative votes behind a particular candidate.
Mueller said he knew nothing about such a meeting and insisted he was unaware of behind-the-scenes pushing of Prevost. Such lobbying occurred when Jorge Mario Bergoglio had more progressive cardinals promoting his candidacy in 2005 and 2013.
Asked if he voted for Prevost, Mueller demurred.
“Oh, I cannot say. But I am content, no?” he replied.
And yet Prevost also pleased moderates, with many seeing in his first words a continuation of Francis’ priorities to build bridges. The buzzwords signal to some a pope who reaches out to the LGBTQ+ community and people of other faiths. But to others, it is the literal meaning of “pontifex” and a sign of internal bridge-building to heal divisions.
“The pope, as successor of St. Peter, has to unite the church,” Mueller said.
Mueller said he expected Leo would move into the papal apartments at the Apostolic Palace, which he said was the proper place for a pope. Francis chose to live in the Vatican’s Domus Santa Marta hotel because he said he needed to be around people. But the decision had the practical effect of taking over the entire second floor of the hotel, reducing rooms for visiting priests.
Both progressives and conservatives see what they want in Leo
Part of the dynamic at play in these early days of Leo’s papacy is that it appears progressives and conservatives can see in Leo what they want. He has virtually no published history, and played his cards very close to his vest while in Rome as head of the Vatican’s bishops office. He granted few interviews and shied away from the public appearances that fill Vatican cardinals’ days after hours: book presentations, conferences and academic lectures.
George Weigel, the biographer of St. John Paul II and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said Leo’s doctrinal position should be self-evident: that “a man who spent a lot of his life in the Peruvian missions believes in the truth of the Gospel and the truth of the world.”
As for the papal cape and stole, it means “we have a pope who understands the nature of the Petrine Office, which should not be bent to personal idiosyncrasies,” Weigel said in an email.
Australia's conservative opposition picks Ley as first woman leader
SYDNEY: Australia's conservative opposition picked Sussan Ley as its first woman leader on Tuesday, charting a fresh course after a humiliating election loss partly blamed on hardline Trump-esque policies.
The 63-year-old replaces former police officer Peter Dutton as leader of the conservative Liberal Party, which was trounced by left-leaning Labor in May 3 national elections.
Dutton's failure to win votes in Australia's cities -- and his deep unpopularity with women -- have been blamed as major factors in the heavy election loss.
Ley, a former stock-mustering pilot who has spent more than 20 years in national politics, is seen as a more moderate voice within the right-leaning Liberal Party.
She is the first woman to lead the Liberal Party at a national level in its 80-year history.
"I am humbled, I am honoured and I am up for the job," she said in her first press conference as leader.
Ley refused to be drawn on whether she would keep a highly contentious policy to embrace nuclear energy in place of renewables.
"I committed to my colleagues that there would be no captain's calls from anywhere," she said.
"Unsurprisingly in our party there are many different views, and we will listen and we will take the positions that we need to at the appropriate time."
Ley was born "Susan" but changed to "Sussan" in her youth because it gave a better numerology reading -- an astrology-like belief that charts fate through letters and numbers.
Dutton cultivated a "hard man" image with tough talk on crime and immigration and a pledge to slash the public service.
Some critics dismissed his policies as "Trump-lite".
Detained Philippines ex-President Duterte poised to win mayoral race in his home city
MANILA: Despite his detention thousands of miles away in the International Criminal Court, former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte appeared to have been elected as mayor in his home city by a landslide, according to preliminary results on Tuesday.
At least five candidates backed by his family were also among those leading the race for 12 Senate positions, in a stronger-than-expected showing in Monday’s midterm elections. Pre-election surveys had indicated only two of them would emerge victorious.
The results come as a boost for Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, ahead of an impeachment trial in the Senate in July over a raft of charges including alleged misuse of public funds and plotting to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife and the House speaker.
Sara Duterte is considered a strong contender for the 2028 presidential race. But if convicted by the Senate, she will lose her job and be disqualified from holding public office forever. To be acquitted, she needs at least nine of the 24 senators to vote in her favor.
The official election results will be known within a week. But the partial and unofficial count by election watchdog Parish Pastoral Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting showed Duterte garnering more than half a million votes in his stronghold Davao City, nearly eight times more than his closest rival.
His youngest son, Sebastian, the incumbent mayor of Davao, is also leading the unofficial vote count in the race for Davao vice mayor. His eldest son, Paolo, who is seeking reelection as a member of the House of Representatives, and two grandsons in local races were also in the lead, in an indication of the family’s continued influence.
“Duterte landslide in Davao!” his youngest daughter Veronica posted on Facebook.
Duterte, nicknamed “the Punisher” and “Dirty Harry,” served as Davao’s mayor for two decades before becoming president. He has been in the custody of the International Criminal Court since March, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity over a brutal war on illegal drugs that left thousands of suspects dead during his 2016-2022 presidency.
The impeachment and Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest and transfer to the tribunal in The Hague came after Marcos and Sara Duterte’s ties unraveled over political differences and their competing ambitions. Duterte supporters slammed Marcos’s government for arresting and surrendering the former leader to a court whose jurisdiction his supporters dispute.
Under Philippine law, candidates facing criminal charges, including those in detention, can run for office unless they have been convicted and have exhausted all appeals.
Sara Duterte had told reporters after voting on Monday that she was in talks with her father’s lawyers on how he could take his oath as mayor despite being behind bars. She had said the vice mayor, widely expected to be Sebastian, would likely be the acting mayor.
