Category: US

CNN
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Less than six weeks after the national team’s remarkable performance at the World Cup, Morocco finds itself at the center of world soccer as it hosts the FIFA Club World Cup.

Since 2005 the Club World Cup has been held annually, featuring the six winners of each continent’s equivalent to Europe’s Champions League tournament, plus an additional club from the host nation.

Over the last decade, European teams have dominated the tournament, last losing a match when Brazilian club Corinthians beat Chelsea in the 2012 final. Fourteen-time European Cup winner Real Madrid will enter the 2023 competition as heavy favorites.

Unlike the World Cup where there is a group stage, the clubs play a straight knockout tournament with the caveat that various continents qualify for different stages of the tournament.

The champion of Oceania plays the host club in the first round. The winner is then drawn with the champions of Africa, Asia and North America in two knockout games. The winner of each game then plays the European and South American champions in the semifinals.

Because Wydad Casablanca is both the champion of Morocco and Africa, the role of “host” passes to Egyptian club Al Ahly who lost to the Moroccan team in the final of the African Champions League in May.

Wydad enters the tournament at the quarterfinal stage, playing against Al Hilal of Saudi Arabia with South American champion Flamengo waiting in the semifinals.

Hunting a record fifth title, Real Madrid also enters at the semifinal stage and will face either New Zealand club Auckland City, Al Ahly, or the Seattle Sounders – the first ever US club to play in the Club World Cup.

No African club has ever won the Club World Cup, but Wydad fan Mohamed Berrada is confident that in a tournament on home soil, the team can channel the success of its history-making national side – and perhaps even lift the trophy.

“We had a very good World Cup with the national team in Qatar,” Berrada tells CNN Sports. “Everybody is talking about us, and we know that we will be very followed in this Club World Cup.”

Expectations are high for the club with tickets for Wydad’s first match against Al Hilal selling out in under two hours as fans from Casablanca will make the one hour journey to Rabat’s 53,000 capacity Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium.

Fans who regularly watch the English Premier League, La Liga, and the UEFA Champions League could be forgiven for asking the question: who cares about the Club World Cup? The European teams nearly always win, it adds extra fixtures to an already busy calendar, and fans have to watch their team play in far-flung countries.

That sentiment is shared by some players. Manchester United great Paul Scholes once said on BBC Radio Five Live that the Club World Cup was less important to him than his local badminton tournament.

But take a step outside Europe and the perception of the competition is very different.

Flamengo fan João Paulo still views his team’s 3-0 triumph over Liverpool in 1981 in the Intercontinental Cup – a precursor to the Club World Cup – as the greatest moment in the club’s history.

Despite Europe’s dominance in the tournament, it is still taken just as seriously in Brazil as it was 40 years ago.

In 1981 Paulo listened to the match against Liverpool on the radio; in 2019, he made the trip to Qatar where Flamengo lost against the same opponent, and this year he is one of thousands of Flamengo fans making the trip to Morocco.

“I believe that for us, for Brazilian and for South American supporters, winning the [Club] World Cup is something incredible. It’s amazing,” he tells CNN Sports.

“If we win this or if any team from South America can win this, this would be something that would change your life as a supporter.”

It’s a sentiment is not limited to South America.

Pitso Mosimane, who took Egyptian giants Al Ahly to back-to-back bronze medals in 2020 and 2021 and is arguably Africa’s greatest coach in the modern era, says the Club World Cup was the “highlight” of his career.

“It’s the pinnacle of any club coach,” he tells CNN Sport.s “What’s the biggest tournament you want to play? Some would say the Champions League, but the Champions League leads you to the Club World Cup.”

For Mosimane and others, the Club World Cup is the one chance that players, coaches, and fans get to test themselves against the very best.

And even in a format that Mosimane says loads the dice in favour of Europeans and South American teams by allowing them to enter at the semifinals, the Club World Cup is the opportunity for fans of the Sounders, Al Ahly, Wydad and even Auckland City to earn the respect that Real Madrid has by dint of its geography.

Those “loaded dice” are potentially on their last roll as Morocco’s tournament is the final Club World Cup to be held in its current format.

Perhaps lost amidst the hysteria of Lionel Messi winning his first World Cup title was the announcement made by FIFA president Gianni Infantino that the Club World Cup would be turned into a 32-team tournament played every four years, starting in 2025.

It is recognition from the head of world soccer that the tournament has not drawn the interest that the concept warrants.

With the tournament falling at the same time as the major leagues in Europe and just a few weeks ahead of the resumption of the Champions League, FIFA has recognized that it needs to both expand the tournament and find a time that does not clash with major club soccer.

Soccer’s global governing body has not provided any information on the format of the tournament beyond the number of participants, but the announcement has caused quite a stir, particularly in Europe.

The Premier League maintains its position that it is, “committed to preventing any radical changes to the post-2024 FIFA international match calendar that would adversely affect player welfare and threaten the competitiveness, calendar, structures and traditions of domestic football.”

FIFPRO, the global player’s union, said that the tournament could have “serious consequences for and aggravate pressure on the welfare and employment of players.”

However, Infantino’s idea has traction outside of Europe.

“We would love to see our team playing against more and more international teams,” says Berrada.

Moroccan journalist Amine El Amri agrees, bemoaning the “frustrating” model of the tournament now that gives the Europeans and South Americans an advantage over the other continents.

He tells CNN Sports: “I think it’s just so enchanting for the people of those countries to have their countries in a [Club] World Cup.”

Even in an expanded format, European clubs would arrive as heavy favorites and there are very real concerns about player welfare as the global soccer calendar mercilessly fills up.

But for those outside of Europe, an expanded Club World Cup, if organized properly, is a potential opportunity for those seen as second-class clubs to take their place alongside European clubs at the top table of world soccer.

CNN
 — 

Sean Payton will join the Denver Broncos as head coach after they agreed compensation with the 59-year-old’s former team, the New Orleans Saints, according to reports from ESPN and NFL Network.

Payton was under contract with the Saints, despite stepping down last season and was working as a broadcaster this season.

In a 15-year stint with the franchise, he took the Saints to the playoffs nine times winning a single Super Bowl in 2010.

“This was the opportunity I was looking for,” Payton said to NOLA.com. “It’s a great fanbase and great tradition. The ownership group is fantastic, and I love the way they competed in some of their games last year.”

He joins a Broncos team in desperate need of an uplift.

Denver finished the season 5-12 and extended its time outside the playoffs to seven consecutive seasons.

Perhaps most disappointing was the performance of quarterback Russell Wilson who the Broncos traded for four premium drafts from the Seattle Seahawks ahead of this season.

The nine-time Pro Bowler had the worst statistical season of his career, finishing with a career low 16 touchdown passes and leading an offense that ended the season averaging 16.9 points per game.

However, Payton is confident of getting the most out of Wilson.

“Russell is a hard worker and has played at a high level and won a lot of games in this league,” Payton told NOLA.com.

“The pressure is on us to put a good run game together and reduce the degree of difficulty on his position. I’m excited about him.”

Elsewhere, the Houston Texans have hired San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator and former Texans linebacker DeMeco Ryans, 38, as their new head coach, the NFL team announced Tuesday.

The former Texans linebacker comes into the job off the back of an excellent period with the 49ers as defensive coordinator.

Under his leadership as coordinator the last two seasons, San Francisco defense ranked first in total defense (300.6 yards/game), total points allowed (277) and points allowed per game (16.3) in the 2022 regular season.

In 2021, the 49ers defense ranked third in the league, allowing 310.0 total yards per game.

Houston fired former head coach Lovie Smith in early January after finishing 3-13-1 in 2022. Smith was the second coach to last just one season with the team. The Texans fired David Culley after a 3-14 season last year and then went on to hire Smith.

The Carolina Panthers also unveiled the team’s new head coach on Tuesday after bringing in former Colts head man Frank Reich.

The 61-year-old Reich was the starting quarterback in the Panthers’ first ever game in 1995 and returns to the franchise as its sixth head coach.

CNN
 — 

The word “Intimate” is frequently used when describing celebrity documentaries, but it certainly applies to “Pamela, a love story,” which at one point shows Pamela Anderson lounging in the bathtub as portions of her diaries are read as voiceover. The result is a humanizing look at a woman often reduced to cartoon caricature, while occasionally feeling too conspicuously like a licensed product.

Produced by, among others, Anderson’s son Brandon Thomas Lee, director Ryan White (whose biographical documentaries include “Ask Dr. Ruth” and “Serena”) had access not only to her diaries but a collection of home movies – including, yes, the one stolen and posted for the world to see, of Anderson having sex with her then-husband, drummer Tommy Lee.

Anderson, now 55, speaks at length of that interlude, the invasiveness of having private material shown and exploited in that fashion, and what she clearly sees as a reopening of those wounds with Hulu’s limited series “Pam & Tommy,” which dramatized those events.

Anderson’s account actually does little to detract from that Emmy-nominated production, which was quite sympathetic in portraying the hurt she felt and the way the media treated her. Indeed, the clips presented here of late-night comics cashing in on Anderson as a punchline, or interviewers Matt Lauer and Larry King asking her about her breasts, do as much to endorse the Hulu version as undermine it.

“Pamela” makes clear that Anderson is letting her guard down right from the outset, as she appears makeup-free, hanging out in the small British Columbia town where she grew up, before getting discovered at a football game (fans “oohed” when she appeared on the scoreboard camera) launched her as a model and into the pages of Playboy.

As Anderson tells it, during that time she reclaimed her sexuality, having experienced abuse on more than one occasion as a child.

International stardom on “Baywatch” followed, and it’s amusing to hear Anderson reminisce not only about all the celebrities she dated during that stretch, but the whole “Running on the beach in slow motion” imagery. (There’s no mention of “Home Improvement,” or Anderson’s recent allegations in her memoir of being flashed by its star, Tim Allen, which the comic has denied.)

The indignities of that “blond bombshell” status are nicely documented here. Ditto for the intrusions of the paparazzi, who dogged her particularly after the whirlwind romance with Lee.

The feeding frenzy surrounding the sex tape “solidified the cartoon image” of her, Anderson recalls, adding, “I knew at that point my career was over.”

While “Pamela” handles all of that quite well, too much of the rest of it plays like the Hallmark Card version of Anderson’s story, from the cloying, saccharine music to the interviews with her sons, whose protectiveness toward their mother is admirable but not especially enlightening.

The last part of the documentary also feels a bit scattered, venturing into areas like Anderson’s animal-rights activism through PETA, her advocacy for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and, finally, her Broadway debut in “Chicago.”

At its best, “Pamela, a love story” strips away what in hindsight looks like misogynistic media coverage – obsessed with her looks and relationships – to consider the person behind all of that, while proving a little too determined and pliable in the goal of helping Anderson assert ownership over her narrative.

At those moments, “Pamela” might work as a love story, but it fares a little less well as a documentary.

“Pamela, a love story” premieres January 31 on Netflix.

New Delhi
CNN
 — 

An Indian court on Tuesday sentenced self-proclaimed spiritual guru Asaram Bapu to life imprisonment on charges of rape and sodomy, according to his lawyer.

The verdict is the second life term against the octogenarian, who is already serving a life sentence following his 2018 conviction for raping a 16-year-old girl.

Asaram’s lawyer C.B. Gupta told CNN the court in the western state of Gujarat also ordered him to pay 50,000 rupees (about $600) in compensation to the victim.

“We may appeal the judgment in the high court,” the lawyer said.

Asaram, 81, described on his website as a “spiritual revolutionist” and “great teacher,” is one of India’s best-known spiritual gurus.

Known as “Bapuji” or “father” among his followers, he rose to prominence in the 1970s before building a vast religious empire that includes hundreds of thousands of followers, about 400 religious schools across India, and numerous global outreach programs.

The latest ruling against him comes at a time when India’s poor track record on violence has been under the spotlight.

Last August, an Indian court freed 11 Hindu men who had been sentenced to life for the gang-rape of a pregnant Muslim woman during deadly riots in 2002, angering rights groups and activists.

On average, there is one rape reported every 17 minutes in India, according to government figures. Campaigners say deeply-entrenched misogynistic and patriarchal values in the country of 1.3 billion are partly to blame.

Spiritual gurus in India can draw millions of devotees to religious schools known as ashrams that are spread across the country.

In recent years, sexual assault accusations against some of these gurus have sparked violent skirmishes.

After Asaram was arrested in 2013 on the first rape charge, clashes broke out between his supporters and police in several major cities.

In 2019, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, head of the spiritual sect Dera Sacha Sauda, was sentenced to life in prison for the 2002 murder of a journalist who helped expose the sexual abuse of women within his group. The guru was already serving a life sentence for raping two of his followers.

After the first verdict against Singth, riots erupted that left 36 people dead and hundreds injured.

CNN
 — 

President Joe Biden is fine-tuning his argument for reelection in an intensive stretch of travel and fundraising, homing in on the newly powerful House GOP as a threat to the rebounding economy as the pieces of his expected campaign come together.

With several weeks to go before Biden is expected to announce his intention to run again, White House officials have crafted a travel schedule and series of speeches that will see the president opening infrastructure projects, promoting union jobs and laying out the progress he believes the American economy has made under his watch.

“It’s about good jobs. It’s about the dignity of work,” Biden said Tuesday in front of a tunnel on the West Side of Manhattan that will be improved with the help of the $1 trillion infrastructure law he signed in 2021. “It’s about respect and self-worth. And folks, it’s about damn time.”

In a string of events along the eastern seaboard, from northern Virginia to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York City, Biden is setting a multiple-days-per-week travel schedule that aides expect will continue as the presidential contest begins in earnest.

Last week, he told a steamfitters union hall in Virginia that his agenda was about “seeing communities all over America, not just on the coasts, but all over America, reborn.” He stood at another tunnel on Monday, this time in Baltimore, where improvements will help Amtrak trains triple their speed on one of the busiest rail corridors in the nation.

He also headlined a high-dollar Democratic fundraiser in Manhattan, kicking off what is expected to be a campaign cash blitz. Donors have been made aware of potential events over the coming months in multiple states, including traditional fundraising enclaves in California and Florida.

“There’s two things that I think we have to run on: What we stand for – what we did – and what we need to do more of,” Biden told the donors, offering a tacit preview of his 2024 message. Recalling that he ran in 2020 to restore the soul of the country, rebuild the middle class, and unite the country, Biden suggested his work wasn’t finished.

“The third is turning out to be the hardest thing to do, but we’re getting there,” he said.

On Friday, Biden will tout lead removal efforts in Philadelphia before addressing the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting – a gathering where his likely reelection bid is top of mind.

Speaking ahead of Biden in New York on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer underscored the progress Biden has made in implementing his infrastructure bill, readying a message that Biden has accomplished what his predecessor – and currently his only Republican challenger – Donald Trump could not.

“For four years, the former president was shoveling you know what. And now, we’re gonna put real shovels in the ground, wielded by real American workers,” Schumer said.

Biden’s aides and other Democrats have been working for months to put in place a campaign infrastructure that will be ready when he decides to make his intentions known. The campaign is expected to draw some staff from the DNC and the White House, and will need to coordinate with both.

Already, Biden’s West Wing team is reorienting with the upcoming departure of chief of staff Ron Klain. Klain’s replacement, Jeff Zients, is expected to focus on managing the White House and implementing Biden’s legislative and policy agenda, while other top advisers – namely senior adviser Anita Dunn and deputy White House chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, who managed Biden’s successful 2020 campaign – will take the lead on Biden’s political operation.

Other political hires are also expected as the likely reelection campaign takes shape, according to a White House official.

Casting a shadow over Biden’s preparations is the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified material, which is expected to formally get underway this week. Biden has denied any wrongdoing after documents with classified markings were found at his private office and home, but the specter of the probe will hang over the White House for at least the coming months.

White House aides have felt vindicated by polls showing the documents controversy hasn’t weighed down Biden’s overall approval ratings. And Biden himself shrugged off a question Monday about whether he would sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

“I don’t even know about the special counsel,” Biden told reporters at the White House, moving quickly to another question.

For now, Biden’s principal focus is next week’s State of the Union address, a speech his team has been crafting to act as a launchpad to his reelection run. His string of policy speeches this week have foreshadowed the expected themes of Tuesday night’s address.

Afterward, Biden is expected to continue traveling the country – including potential stops in Michigan and Wisconsin, two battleground states – as he prepares for his formal campaign announcement.

Officials said the yearly speech will continue to evolve as Biden and his advisers work on writing it. The text is not expected to be finalized until the final moments before he delivers it in the House chamber next week. The team working on the address, including senior advisers Mike Donilon and Bruce Reed, have held lengthy writing and preparation sessions with Biden over the last several days.

White House officials said the president’s recent speeches touting the bipartisan infrastructure law that he signed into law in 2021 are designed to signal a shift: whereas much of Biden’s first two years in office was focused on what he hoped to accomplish, officials said now is the time to tout what he has achieved.

The US jobs market is robust, GDP growth continues to be strong, wages are up, and critically, inflation finally seems to be moderating – all points Biden has made in his public remarks recently. In contrast, the president has warned that lawmakers who he calls “MAGA Republicans” are trying to reverse some of that very progress by proposing ideas like a national sales tax.

He’s also offered sharp warnings to Republicans looking to use the national debt ceiling as leverage to negotiate spending cuts – setting up a battle that will play out in the opening weeks of his campaign.

As Biden was speaking in Virginia last week, new Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote on Twitter that if Biden was “so eager to speak on the economy, then he should set a date to discuss a responsible debt ceiling increase.”

He’ll get that date this week, when Biden and McCarthy sit down at the White House for their first one-on-one since McCarthy was elevated to the role earlier this month.