Freestyle swimmer eligible through father Gerry
Madeleine’s disappearance still under investigation
Madeleine McCann’s younger brother, Sean, has been selected to represent Scotland in swimming at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
McCann, a student at Loughborough University, is expected to compete in a number of longer-distance freestyle events when competition begins at the Tollcross International Swimming Centre on Thursday, and hopes a strong performance in Glasgow will strengthen his bid for selection to Team Great Britain for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. McCann is eligible to represent Scotland through his father, Gerry, who was born in Glasgow.
Continue reading...Parliament votes to stop children using apps such as TikTok in policy championed by Emmanuel Macron
France’s parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first European country to bar children from apps such as TikTok.
The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September.
Continue reading...Explosion in ticketing and hospitality revenue goes along with a Fifa desire to recoup lost TV income in future deals
As is often the case, it has been left to Donald Trump to say the quiet bit out loud. “We have to do this again and we have to do it while I’m around, you hear that Gianni?” the US president told Fox News in an interview broadcast in the buildup to the World Cup final.
An American bid for the 2038 World Cup has been the talk of the hotel lobbies populated by administrators from around the world over the past month, who have watched this country’s seemingly limitless appetite for major events and willingness to pay whatever it takes to attend them.
Continue reading...GEORGETOWN (ANP/DPA) - Het dodental na een bootongeluk in Guyana is opgelopen naar 41. Een veerboot kapseisde afgelopen weekend en als gevolg daarvan zijn nog tientallen mensen vermist.
Sinds zondag wordt gezocht naar slachtoffers van het ongeluk. Er zijn tot dusver 77 opvarenden gered. Premier Mark Phillips zei dinsdag ervan overtuigd te zijn dat er 179 mensen aan boord waren. Eerder werd bekend dat op de passagierslijst 133 mensen stonden.
De premier van het Zuid-Amerikaanse land zei zondag dat twee bemanningsleden positief waren getest op marihuana. Hij voegde eraan toe dat er een onderzoek loopt. De m/v Barima was onderweg van de hoofdstad Georgetown naar het in het noordwesten gelegen dorp Port Kaituma.
The US military is adding autonomous gun-based counter-drone systems intended to reduce its reliance on expensive interceptor missiles. They also have the potential to kill humans. Defense robotics firm Allen Control Systems (ACS) announced a deal with the US Marine Corps on Monday to get its Bullfrog autonomous weapon system attached to the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System (L-MADIS) expeditionary counter-drone platform. L-MADIS consists of pairs of off-road vehicles, one carrying a suite of sensors and the other slated to be outfitted with a Bullfrog autonomous weapon station. Videos on ACS’ YouTube page demonstrate the Bullfrog in action, taking down a number of small drones in demonstrations over the past couple of years. While we didn't hear back from ACS about the Bullfrog's capabilities to target manned vehicles and troops, a short video on the company's channel also shows a Bullfrog unit switching from targeting aerial drones to ground targets with ease. This suggests that Bullfrog systems aren't just capable of knocking drones out of the sky. They are also fully capable of - and lack any software protections against - the fully autonomous targeting and killing of humans with complete autonomy. Bullfrog systems are a little different from your typical AI-controlled counter-drone systems in that they’re not built with an attached weapon, but are designed to slot in “any legacy or modern firearm” in order to turn them into systems able to “detect, track, and defeat incoming threats at a fraction of the cost of even the least expensive kinetic interceptors.” In other words, ACS claims it's cheaper to build a system that can adapt existing military firearms than to invest in a purpose-built counter-drone weapon system. Bullfrog units provide the AI, computer vision, and precision aiming robotics to take out drones, while the military only has to plug in its own hardware. There are several variants of the Bullfrog available from ACS, with units designed for everything from the M240 machine gun to the M2 50-caliber machine gun. The company is currently working on M230 chain gun and M134 minigun variants as well. In the case of the Marine Corps contract, it appears the service is taking on some M240 variants based on a link in ACS’s press release to the M240-variant’s page. The M240, the smallest of the weapons designed for the Bullfrog, fires up to 850 7.62×51 mm NATO rounds per minute and is effective up to 800 meters in the Bullfrog. The Bullfrog M240 is capable of taking down drones up to DoD Group 3, meaning anything with a max gross takeoff weight less than 1,320 lbs, able to operate as high as 18,000 feet above sea level, and with an airspeed of less than 250 knots. The DoD grouping goes up to Group 5, which includes some of the military's largest drones, such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk. The US Army and US Navy are both already fielding Bullfrog units, making the Marines the third branch to get their hands on the system. ACS cited the proliferation of cheap drones in the Russia/Ukraine conflict and in the Middle East as a need for comparable cheap counter drone tech. ®
De paardensport is niet goedkoop: voor een sportpaard betaal je al gauw duizenden euro’s. Bij Hippisch Centrum Hoogvliet in Rotterdam verzonnen ze enkele jaren geleden een bijzondere manier om aan het paarden-geld te komen. Voor de aankoop van ‘Miss Bottle’ werd 2.500 euro aan statiegeld verzameld. “En we gaan opnieuw sparen.”
De paardensport is niet goedkoop: voor een sportpaard betaal je al gauw duizenden euro’s. Bij Hippisch Centrum Hoogvliet in Rotterdam verzonnen ze enkele jaren geleden een bijzondere manier om aan het paarden-geld te komen. Voor de aankoop van ‘Miss Bottle’ werd 7.500 euro aan statiegeld verzameld. “En we gaan opnieuw sparen.”
Trans Women In Sports?
Quoth Julia Serano: "...Trans sports bans are not intended to be some kind of concession or compromise position. Rather, they are a stepping stone toward further bans and restrictions. This is why trans people almost unanimously oppose them. And it's why you should too. That's everything that the average person needs to know about the issue of trans people and sports. So you can stop reading now if you wish." But if you don't wish, why not engage with some essays about the subject by trans authors!
A brief history of the policing of Trans Women In Sports. The production of trans feminine play as a legitimate target is an important caveat to the broader post-WWII history of play, where the activity itself and, eventually, a "right to play" was tied to childhood. Psychology, the behavioral sciences, sociology and anthropology increasingly agreed that children are not just generally playful, but that play is vital to healthy human development. Play was universalized as a good in itself for children, to the point where limitations on children's play, or the withdrawal of the ability to play, became a focus for child advocates. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in 1990 explicitly includes as Article 31 "the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child." But this universal trajectory of play buries the negation of so many children whose play has long been cast as developmentally improper, like trans girls. Okay but why should we allow TRANS WOMEN in SPORTS?!? The reason that the sports ban breaks my heart is because when I see trans youth I see everything that I was denied. Society denied me a girlhood, and for a brief moment in the 2010s I saw trans girls who got to just be girls, who got to grow up right. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I don't think I'll ever be able to express in words how much I just wanted to be one of the girls as a kid, or just how grateful I am to the girls who tried to let me. I'm eternally grateful for the girls who let me paint my nails with them in the corner, who helped me put on makeup after I made it to school. I'm eternally grateful for goth, which told me it was okay to genderbend. But it would have been cool to be on the field hockey team too. It's fun to get good at things. It's fun to get to use our bodies. It's fun to do all of those things together with other people. Yeah but what about Trans Women... In Sports? If these efforts were really about saving or protecting women's sports, we'd actually devote time, energy, and money to invest in the infrastructure that women's sports needs. We'd pay athletes better so that they don't have to work while also training to be an elite athlete. We'd rout out sexual harassers and abusers. We've invest in better clothing and gear for girls and women at all ages and levels of sport. We'd invest in more research so that we can keep athletes healthy and injury free. We'd pay journalists to cover women's sports, and not just the fluff stories. We'd continue to invest in grassroots efforts to bring sports and physical activity to more girls and women, not fewer. We'd do so much more. So what can we do for Trans Women In Sports? By transitioning, everyone on the field has already chosen a more difficult, more fulfilling way of living. Gender dysphoria—the feeling that transition erodes—felt like being stuck in a lifelong hitting slump that only I had noticed. When I started transitioning, I knew I was taking the right steps, but each one mortified me. The first dozen times I attempted makeup or shopped for clothes felt like desperate tweaks to my swing: It didn't improve anything, and I only felt like I looked more ridiculous. Breaking out of the slump requires accepting that you might whiff and stepping up to the plate anyway. That first time your eyeliner is symmetrical, or a bra fits right, or a stranger calls you "ma'am"—that's a line drive up the middle. Cis women who play baseball are also choosing a more difficult path. In youth sports, they're usually pushed toward softball and away from baseball. Over the past decade, women, especially at the collegiate level, have been chipping away at the "grass ceiling" of the traditionally male baseball world, so it's not like they're depending upon a few dozen New York transsexuals to finally break into sports traditionally reserved for men. (That's not what we're trying to accomplish, anyway.) But if we can show trans women—with all of our baggage—that baseball can be for us, then maybe that can expand the experiences of womanhood for all women, too. Solidarity! Solidarity with Trans Women In Sports! USA Rugby's decision to change its bylaws was, on paper, a massive blow to trans women on the Baltimore-based Flamingos. For years the club made it a point to aggressively recruit trans men and women, and trans players on the Ferals wondered whether the policy change would force the end of their burgeoning rugby careers. But what happened after the ban was illuminating. Across the country, many teams refused to comply. "We're not asking for permission to be here," said former Flamingos president Val Pizzo, a trans man and leader in rugby's pro-trans movement. "We're playing." Wait what was that about Trans... MEN? in SPORTS? As a kid who didn't quite fit in, I always found safety and stability among my teammates. When the weight of the outside world felt like it was too heavy for a teenager struggling with identity, I knew that for an hour each day, I could leave it all outside the rink and just play hockey. Then in my 30s, while fighting for sobriety and battling depression, outreach from my college teammates saved my life: They made overt gestures, like flying to Maine when I was approaching rock bottom just so we could lie in a hotel bed, eat Thai food, and watch trashy reality TV. They messaged me on the daily group text where we offer support and accountability. So what comes next? TRANS WOMEN IN SPORTS?!? The news last week that the NCAA — the governing body of college sports — decided to outright ban trans athletes from competition, complying preemptively with an Executive Order from the Trump administration, which they did not actually have to do, might seem a bit mind-boggling. Why go after sports on top of doing its damndest to legislate trans people out of existence altogether? And why did the NCAA go along with this so easily? Especially when, by the NCAA's own admission there are "less than 10" transgender athletes out of the NCAA's 510,000? Well, because transphobia in sports is how we got here. What's extremely frustrating about this moment — as many of my fellow journalists on this beat have expressed recently, Frankie de la Cretaz, Julie Kliegman, Lindsay Gibbs, Christine Yu, to name a few — is that, those of us who have been watching the culture war boil up and over in the past 7 years have been telling you, if we weren't careful, this is exactly what would happen. Sports was the soil that this culture war took root in.
A brief history of the policing of Trans Women In Sports. The production of trans feminine play as a legitimate target is an important caveat to the broader post-WWII history of play, where the activity itself and, eventually, a "right to play" was tied to childhood. Psychology, the behavioral sciences, sociology and anthropology increasingly agreed that children are not just generally playful, but that play is vital to healthy human development. Play was universalized as a good in itself for children, to the point where limitations on children's play, or the withdrawal of the ability to play, became a focus for child advocates. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in 1990 explicitly includes as Article 31 "the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child." But this universal trajectory of play buries the negation of so many children whose play has long been cast as developmentally improper, like trans girls. Okay but why should we allow TRANS WOMEN in SPORTS?!? The reason that the sports ban breaks my heart is because when I see trans youth I see everything that I was denied. Society denied me a girlhood, and for a brief moment in the 2010s I saw trans girls who got to just be girls, who got to grow up right. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I don't think I'll ever be able to express in words how much I just wanted to be one of the girls as a kid, or just how grateful I am to the girls who tried to let me. I'm eternally grateful for the girls who let me paint my nails with them in the corner, who helped me put on makeup after I made it to school. I'm eternally grateful for goth, which told me it was okay to genderbend. But it would have been cool to be on the field hockey team too. It's fun to get good at things. It's fun to get to use our bodies. It's fun to do all of those things together with other people. Yeah but what about Trans Women... In Sports? If these efforts were really about saving or protecting women's sports, we'd actually devote time, energy, and money to invest in the infrastructure that women's sports needs. We'd pay athletes better so that they don't have to work while also training to be an elite athlete. We'd rout out sexual harassers and abusers. We've invest in better clothing and gear for girls and women at all ages and levels of sport. We'd invest in more research so that we can keep athletes healthy and injury free. We'd pay journalists to cover women's sports, and not just the fluff stories. We'd continue to invest in grassroots efforts to bring sports and physical activity to more girls and women, not fewer. We'd do so much more. So what can we do for Trans Women In Sports? By transitioning, everyone on the field has already chosen a more difficult, more fulfilling way of living. Gender dysphoria—the feeling that transition erodes—felt like being stuck in a lifelong hitting slump that only I had noticed. When I started transitioning, I knew I was taking the right steps, but each one mortified me. The first dozen times I attempted makeup or shopped for clothes felt like desperate tweaks to my swing: It didn't improve anything, and I only felt like I looked more ridiculous. Breaking out of the slump requires accepting that you might whiff and stepping up to the plate anyway. That first time your eyeliner is symmetrical, or a bra fits right, or a stranger calls you "ma'am"—that's a line drive up the middle. Cis women who play baseball are also choosing a more difficult path. In youth sports, they're usually pushed toward softball and away from baseball. Over the past decade, women, especially at the collegiate level, have been chipping away at the "grass ceiling" of the traditionally male baseball world, so it's not like they're depending upon a few dozen New York transsexuals to finally break into sports traditionally reserved for men. (That's not what we're trying to accomplish, anyway.) But if we can show trans women—with all of our baggage—that baseball can be for us, then maybe that can expand the experiences of womanhood for all women, too. Solidarity! Solidarity with Trans Women In Sports! USA Rugby's decision to change its bylaws was, on paper, a massive blow to trans women on the Baltimore-based Flamingos. For years the club made it a point to aggressively recruit trans men and women, and trans players on the Ferals wondered whether the policy change would force the end of their burgeoning rugby careers. But what happened after the ban was illuminating. Across the country, many teams refused to comply. "We're not asking for permission to be here," said former Flamingos president Val Pizzo, a trans man and leader in rugby's pro-trans movement. "We're playing." Wait what was that about Trans... MEN? in SPORTS? As a kid who didn't quite fit in, I always found safety and stability among my teammates. When the weight of the outside world felt like it was too heavy for a teenager struggling with identity, I knew that for an hour each day, I could leave it all outside the rink and just play hockey. Then in my 30s, while fighting for sobriety and battling depression, outreach from my college teammates saved my life: They made overt gestures, like flying to Maine when I was approaching rock bottom just so we could lie in a hotel bed, eat Thai food, and watch trashy reality TV. They messaged me on the daily group text where we offer support and accountability. So what comes next? TRANS WOMEN IN SPORTS?!? The news last week that the NCAA — the governing body of college sports — decided to outright ban trans athletes from competition, complying preemptively with an Executive Order from the Trump administration, which they did not actually have to do, might seem a bit mind-boggling. Why go after sports on top of doing its damndest to legislate trans people out of existence altogether? And why did the NCAA go along with this so easily? Especially when, by the NCAA's own admission there are "less than 10" transgender athletes out of the NCAA's 510,000? Well, because transphobia in sports is how we got here. What's extremely frustrating about this moment — as many of my fellow journalists on this beat have expressed recently, Frankie de la Cretaz, Julie Kliegman, Lindsay Gibbs, Christine Yu, to name a few — is that, those of us who have been watching the culture war boil up and over in the past 7 years have been telling you, if we weren't careful, this is exactly what would happen. Sports was the soil that this culture war took root in.