So, that plan. Everyone wants to see the plan, to see the world in a grain of sand, to see the nuts and bolts of a sophisticated modern footballing philosophy in a promising 15-minute spell either side of the break. The truth is, there is no plan yet. Just the kind of mid-tempo chaos you get when you are still at the thick end of one of the most audacious experiments ever seen in elite football. The bottom line is that Chelsea still can’t keep the ball and they still can’t keep it out. Everything else is bubbling test tubes and incomplete data.
There were 21 shots in the 1-0 defeat at Dortmund, which is at least something. João Félix probably should have had a couple of goals, Gregor Kobel made several fine saves for the hosts and, naturally for a Graham Potter team, the xG was off the charts. You might even argue that this was the sort of game Chelsea deserved to win. All the same, they keep failing to win them, largely because they keep doing the sort of things that teams do when they have no map, no structure to fall back on, no collective consciousness to drag them through the tough bits.
It was telling that with 20 minutes remaining, Potter reached for Marc Cucurella and Mason Mount: his tried and trusted toys. Mount made one fine tackle high up the pitch to create an opening; Cucurella, by contrast, wandered around like a man who had just stumbled out of a house fire. Booed when he came on and hounded every time he got the ball, there was a kind of pathos to him here: a £50m footballer who no longer really knows what any of this means, who no longer knows what the plan is here.
But of course these things work both ways. Opponents can’t really work you out if you don’t know what you’re doing yourself. If you’re a rival coach who wants to know how this Chelsea side combine with each other, how they react in certain situations, what do you do? What footage do you consult? And perhaps Chelsea’s best moments here were when the patterns broke down and they were forced to trust to pure individual quality at each end.
Thiago Silva heading away cross after cross. Mykhaylo Mudryk running at Marius Wolf on the left wing, losing it and inevitably getting it back again. Félix fluttering this way and that in the final third. Hakim Ziyech looking sharp in the second half. If you’re a coach with a vision and a blueprint, you take tactics over talent every time. But there are times when talent really doesn’t hurt.
The flip-side was the ease with which Dortmund could pass through Chelsea’s press, which at this stage of its gestation remains a largely theoretical thing. There are players in positions, certainly. Some of them running in a gutsy sort of way towards the ball. But virtually no concept of spacing or coordination just yet, no sense of a team moving as one, a system run by Zoom call. Can you communicate at all when the noise is this deafening and nobody really knows each other’s movements yet?
Graham Potter watches on as his Chelsea side lose the first leg of their last-16 Champions League tie with Borussia Dortmund 1-0 in Germany. Photograph: Paul Currie/Shutterstock
Perhaps the best example of this was at set pieces. Has a losing team ever taken as long over set pieces as this? Every free-kick seemed to involve a board-level summit, four or five players congregating on the ball while Silva waved his arms behind them. Goal-kicks were a similar story: as the centre-halves dutifully spread wide, Kepa looked up and realised that in the time he needed to set himself, every single teammate was marked. What’s the plan here, then?
And after that promising 15-minute spell, things fell apart in the most Chelsea way possible. Chelsea were offside at a corner, some players stopped, some players didn’t, and all of a sudden Karim Adeyemi was burning Enzo Fernández for pace, scoring the only goal of the game. If there was an irony here it was that the immaculately honed and structured Dortmund had struck Chelsea in just the way Chelsea were most likely to strike themselves: with a searing direct counterattack, a flash of individual brilliance, a finish that seemed almost prosaic in its assurance.
These are the sorts of things that happen when you are all cast and no movie. And as Dortmund cycled through their substitutes, there was perhaps another lesson for Chelsea here too. Dortmund have in many ways perfected a very similar model Chelsea are trying to follow: harvest Europe’s top young talent, develop it, nurture it, watch it swell in value. Adeyemi, a £30m summer signing from Salzburg, has been trusted through a torrid period by coach Edin Terzic, slowly learning his own game and Dortmund’s. Does Potter have the time to give a struggling young player that kind of leeway? Or does he simply shuffle in the next promising young card off the deck? What exactly is the plan here?
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Potter, for his part, seems like a coach second-guessing himself, torn between long-term renewal and short-term impact. The fans are already beginning to turn; desperate to see an A-list coach with this A-list squad. Chelsea still have a foot in this tie, which represents perhaps their last remaining thread to Champions League football next season. If it breaks, Potter may well end up being cut loose with it.
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#Graham #Potter #Chelsea #searching #plan #chaos #Jonathan #Liew
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Notably, prosecutors’ unsuccessful effort to glean information from Flores stands in contrast to the Jan. 6 select committee. Two investigators familiar with her interview — an informal, untranscribed appearance in early 2022 — say that while she was a reluctant witness and initially planned to plead the Fifth, she ultimately agreed to answer some questions about the document.
“Instead of pleading the Fifth, we did an interview with her,” one of the investigators said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe information the committee had not publicly released. “She gave us the name of Samuel Armes as the name of the individual who wrote the document.”
Armes, who knew Flores through their shared cryptocurrency advocacy, would interview with select committee investigators in July. He accused Flores of “blame-shifting” by pinning the authorship of the “1776 Returns” document on him. Rather, Armes said that in the summer of 2020, he did some informal “war-gaming” about what might happen if a sitting president refused to leave office after the election. Flores, he told the panel, expressed interest in his thoughts, which he says he shared with her via a Google drive.
Armes said Flores or someone else she shared the document with must have taken his rough ideas and morphed them into a tactical plan with overt references to 1776, a reference to the Capitol as the “Winter Palace” and a plan to “storm” government buildings.
Prosecutors indicated they interviewed Armes too — in October 2022, three months after the select committee spoke to him.
The select committee investigators said they found Armes to be more forthcoming than Flores, who they said exhibited a “general apprehension.” Flores didn’t respond to messages and emails seeking comment.
“She acted like she didn’t know what it was at all,” said one of the investigators.
The two investigators said Flores indicated she had shared the document with Tarrio to impress him during a sensitive phase in their relationship and disclaimed specific knowledge about its contents.
During the trial of Tarrio and his allies, prosecutors displayed text messages in which Flores boasts to Tarrio about the “brilliance” of her 1776 Returns document and suggests she would pitch it elsewhere if Tarrio wouldn’t use it.
“If you don’t like my plan, let me know. I will pitch elsewhere. But I want you to be the executor and benefactor of my brilliance,” she wrote, asking him not to “play games” with her.
“I’m not playing games,” Tarrio responded.
Tarrio notably used the phrase “The Winter Palace” in conversations about the Capitol with at least two other people in the days before and on Jan. 6.
The select committee, like prosecutors, ultimately couldn’t pinpoint the precise authorship of the “1776 Returns” document, a detail that remains a mystery to this day.
Prosecutors revealed new information about their interactions with Armes and Flores in response to an effort by one of Tarrio’s co-defendants, Dominic Pezzola, to seek a mistrial. Pezzola’s attorney Roger Roots suggested that Armes’ training to be in the intelligence community — even though he ultimately pursued a career in crypto — suggested that the government itself authored the incriminating “1776 Return” document.
“The government strongly disagrees with Pezzola’s characterization of both the facts and the record with respect to these assertions,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jason McCullough and Conor Mulroe wrote. “The government robustly agrees with defendant Pezzola that it would have been egregiously improper for a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community to have conducted a domestic intelligence operation targeting Enrique Tarrio, a U.S. Person, and providing him with a plan to ‘storm’ (or ‘occupy’ or ‘sit in’) House and Senate Office Buildings on January 6.”
“It would have been even more improper,” they continued, “for a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community to send this plan to the leader of the Proud Boys when, just months before, then-President Trump had exhorted the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by’ during a nationally televised debate.”
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#Girlfriend #Proud #Boys #leader #pleaded #plan #occupy #government #buildings
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Monday ordered a stay in the Kamareddy Master Plan petition filed by K A Paul of Praja Shanthi party.
The division bench constituting Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N Tukaramji issued directions to the state government not to revive the issuing of the new draft of the Kamareddy Master Plan. The matter has been postponed for the next hearing on April 17.
Speaking to the media, K A Paul said, “The government had earlier said that the plan cannot be sacked as Rs 10,000 crores are involved in it. What does that have to do with us? Anything that is not agreeable to the farmers must not be carried out.”
Many visitors to Graefekiez, a lively cobbled-road neighbourhood just south of Berlin’s centre, come in search of something new: a tattoo from an authentic Japanese parlour, a rare print from an off-grid gallery, a dive-bar encounter over a 4am beer.
This summer, they can brace themselves for another novelty: for at least three months, local authorities are planning to scrap almost all of the neighbourhood’s parking spaces as part of a social experiment designed to chart the waters of the German capital’s car-free future.
Exactly how long the trial will last, how many of the neighbourhood’s roads it will include, and whether the vacant parking spaces will be filled with ping-pong tables, plant pots or dining tables instead, the council will not reveal until after Sunday’s Berlin state elections, a repeat of the September 2021 vote that was marred by delays and logistical errors.
The decision to hold back information may well be politically motivated: the business of getting from A to B has become the subject of a bitter culture war between car lovers and car haters in the runup to the vote. And Berlin’s experimental approach to ushering out the age of the automobile isn’t only alienating petrolheads.
The metropolis on the river Spree used to be feted for its public transport links, its densely woven web of underground and overground trains, trams, buses and ferries guaranteeing that getting from one corner of the city to the next usually took less than an hour. Wide roads make cycling popular and relatively safe.
“Berlin has lots of space and barely any commuters – a lot of people live close to where they work,” said Prof Andreas Knie, a mobility researcher at the WZB Social Science Center that will supervise the Graefekiez project. “In theory, it has all the right conditions in place to become a model ‘city of short distances’,” he added, citing the concept of compact living spaces that urban planners have championed for more than a decade.
Only cyclists can ride bicycles in the Berlin car-free section of Friedrichstrasse – a significant culture and shopping hotspot. Photograph: Michael Kuenne/PRESSCOV/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock
Yet recently Berlin has struggled to convert its advantages into real change. In inner London and Paris, car ownership is in decline. Berlin may still have the lowest car ownership rate in Germany, with 337 vehicles registered per 1,000 inhabitants in 2022, but the number of automobiles on its roads has been rising steadily.
“Five years ago, we were top of the pops,” said Knie. “Now London and Paris have overtaken us.”
The means that German cities have at their disposal to shape movement on their roads is limited by federal laws that prioritise free flow of vehicles. Municipalities can’t impose 30 km/h zones on main roads unless they can prove a high risk of accidents. The liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), in charge of the ministry at federal level, has shown no signs of willingness to rewrite the all-powerful road traffic act.
While their hands remain tied, Green councillors in Berlin have resorted to guerrilla tactics aimed at nudging cars out of the city centre. During the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020, several Berlin districts redrew road markings to create “pop-up” cycle lanes, supposedly to help cyclists physically distance on their commutes to work. Many of the new lanes have become popular permanent fixtures.
At the start of the year, the senate went further: as of 2023, two-wheeled vehicles – including bikes, motorbikes and electric scooters – are allowed free use of parking spaces previously reserved exclusively for cars across the city.
But this experimental approach has also left parts of Berlin in a what locals perceive as a state of permanent flux. A section of the Bergmannstrasse thoroughfare in Kreuzberg has undergone two attempts at a cycle-friendly redesign in the last four years, first with psychedelic-looking polka-dot road markings and then with a two-way cycle lane pushing cars on to a one-way single lane.
Further north, cars were banished from a 500-metre stretch of the Friedrichstrasse boulevard for two years until a local wine dealer last November won a court case to let automobiles back in. At the end of January, Berlin’s Green party senator for mobility and climate protection, Bettina Jarasch, shut cars out again, against the will of the incumbent city mayor Franziska Giffey, of the centre-left Social Democratic Party.
The hypothesis behind the latest experiment in Graefekiez is that most residents who leave their Autos on the side of its tree-lined streets don’t actually need them to get around town. A summer of seeing spaces previously hogged by boxes of steel used by playing children and al-fresco diners, the thinking goes, may encourage them to ditch them for good.
“The idea we are pursuing is whether public spaces can be experienced and used in more efficient ways than keeping them reserved for parked cars,” said Annika Gerold, Kreuzberg’s Green district councillor in charge of transport affairs.
But with the details of the car-free experiment kept under wraps, scepticism in the neighbourhood is tangible. Florian Eicker, who runs a small lunchtime eatery serving Hawaiian poké bowls on Graefestrasse, says he would welcome additional space for tables outside his restaurant, and could imagine switching to a car-sharing scheme to buy and deliver his ingredients.
But a lack of information about another temporary state that could be rolled back again by the autumn has left him frustrated: “What’s the point if we merely push the problems three months into the future?” The attitude among his neighbours and guests was broadly negative, Eicker said. “I’d say it’s 30% in favour to 70% against. And those people aren’t especially wedded to car ownership on principle.”
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a conservative party whose core voters could not be further from the bohemian crowd on the Graefekiez’s streets, has been making hay of local frustration, collecting 1,450 signatures in favour of scrapping the trial in the neighbourhood of approximately 18,000.
Instead of banishing parking spaces altogether, local CDU candidate Timur Husein advocates charging car owners to use them like they do in other cities – because for now, parking in the Graefekiez remains mostly free. If polls are anything to go by, his party’s pitch is proving surprisingly resonant in a city usually famed for its countercultural ways.
The most recent surveys show the Christian Democrats in the lead on 26% of the vote, and within a realistic chance of unseating the incumbent left-green senate as long as it can sway one of the coalition parties to switch sides.
“Adding a few bollards here and there is absolutely fine,” Husein said. “But an entire neighbourhood without cars – that’s even too much for Green voters.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
“You would see a suburban uprising, the likes of which you’ve never seen before, if the state tried to impose land-use regulations on communities that have had local control for over a 100 years,” Bruce Blakeman, the Republican county executive in Nassau County, said in an interview.
Voters on Long Island and in much of the Hudson Valley went overwhelmingly for Republicans in the midterms, putting Rep. Lee Zeldin within striking distance of the Democratic governor and losing her party multiple seats in the House.
But Hochul seems undaunted by the political risk, arguing the suburbs have failed to do their part to add housing supply, with a “potentially catastrophic” impact on the state’s ability to compete for jobs and residents.
Her plan would compel every municipality to grow their housing stock and require those downstate to allow more housing near rail stations, contributing to her goal of reaching 800,000 new homes over the next decade. Similar efforts have been tried in other states, including Massachusetts and California, to varying results, while pitting bucolic suburbs against the needs of pricey metro areas.
“The whole objective is so families can stay in New York, kids can raise their own families where they grew up, employers don’t have to worry about whether or not there’s going to be employees in a community because they’ll have a place to live,” Hochul told state lawmakers Feb. 1 as she outlined her proposed budget.
Even some Democrats are concerned that Hochul’s initiative goes too far and could have political ramifications. The governor is looking to get it approved by the Democratic-led Legislature as part of a budget deal for the fiscal year that starts April 1.
“There’s a lot of resentment when the state or a regional entity tries to come in and tell people how they should make their communities. It’s not a winning strategy,” said Laura Curran, the former Democratic Nassau County executive who was defeated by Blakeman in 2021.
A push for new housing in New York
Hochul, who took over the governor’s office in 2021 after Andrew Cuomo resigned, has faced similar backlash before. A year ago, she sought to legalize apartments on single-family lots — meeting immediate opposition from politicians in the suburbs. With an eye toward her upcoming election, Hochul swiftly abandoned the proposal.
Her rhetoric since November, however — including a keynote speech at a housing group’s annual luncheon, and her own State of the State address in January — suggests that she’s not afraid of the impending fight.
“We’ve failed so far. No longer is failure an option,” she said this month.
There could be political consequences for the governor proposing such a controversial measure after Democrats lost all four House seats on Long Island and three in the Hudson Valley, Curran and others said. The losses were in sharp contrast to what happened elsewhere, with Democrats bucking expectations in other states to hold the Senate and keep GOP control of the House to 10 seats. Hochul won by just six points, the closest New York governor’s race since 1994.
“I am concerned if this is done in a clumsy way that it will continue to hurt Democrats in the suburbs,” Curran said. “It will be one in the long litany of reasons why people are mad at Democrats right now in New York.”
Republicans are already pouncing. Zeldin was in Albany on Monday to rip the proposal, calling it “Hochul control, not local control.”
“The idea that you’re just going to micromanage all of that up in Albany is making a lot of New Yorkers in these communities feel like they’re being deliberately targeted because of how last year’s election turned out,” he told reporters.
Republicans and Democrats questioned Hochul’s political calculus, with some wondering whether she has written off Long Island as entirely lost to Republicans. One Democratic consultant, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the governor, contended Hochul wouldn’t have pursued the measure if there were more Democratic legislators from the area.
“She ignores what’s going on on the ground on Long Island to her own peril,” said Chapin Fay, a Republican consultant. “It’s a very important part of the statewide puzzle.”
Slow housing growth in New York’s suburbs
Hochul is pleading with local leaders to embrace her housing push for the greater good, saying it still gives towns and villages flexibility in how they choose to meet her goals.
New York had the largest population loss in the nation last year, according to Census data, which the governor has attributed to housing unaffordability. Her administration argues the suburbs are not immune to strains on the housing market — a point echoed by housing and business groups and even some local leaders opposed to the scale of the push.
“When you talk to people in the Hudson Valley, if you talk to people in Nassau and Suffolk, the number one issue people have is the housing affordability,” RuthAnne Visnauskas, the state housing commissioner, said in an interview. “Part of quality of life is having availability of housing, having choice in where you live.”
New York is unusual in how much leeway it gives local governments to resist new housing. A 2020 report from New York University characterized the state as “stand[ing] nearly alone” among its peers in how much power suburban leaders have had to restrict growth. Nearly every similar state — Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Oregon, Washington and Florida — “have adopted state-level reforms to promote housing development in high-cost suburban areas.”
Visnauskas said Hochul’s approach was driven in part by seeing other states that initially tried an incentive-based approach to spur housing shifting towards mandates because the earlier policies were failing.
She has dismissed the political risk.
“There’s a housing crisis, it’s in New York City, it’s in the suburbs, and we need a solution,” she told reporters. “And if it isn’t this one, then what is it? There has to be some solution to it or else we’re going to get 10 years down the road and New York City and its suburbs are going to be a place where only millionaires and billionaires can live.”
Hochul faces challenges with housing plan
Hochul’s effort is being celebrated by housing groups who have long called for New York to pursue the kind of substantive state action seen in other parts of the country — and implement it in a way that includes sticks and carrots.
The suburbs have “lost credibility” to produce enough housing without a state mandate, said Andrew Fine, policy director of the group Open New York, which is part of a coalition of housing, transit and climate groups formed to support the governor’s plan.
Proponents point to projects like Matinecock Court, which was first proposed in affluent Huntington on Long Island in 1978, but after multiple legal fights is just now starting development.
“For our region, not being able to provide diverse housing options makes it much more difficult to attract and retain a young vibrant workforce,” said Kyle Strober, executive director of the Association for a Better Long Island. “The lack of housing on Long Island is a dire economic issue.”
Hochul said in January the state has produced just 400,000 new homes over the last decade, while adding 1.2 million new jobs.
Her proposal would impose a 3 percent growth target for New York City and surrounding suburbs to be met every three years. By comparison, over the last three years, Long Island increased its housing stock by just 0.6 percent, while the lower Hudson Valley grew by 1.7 percent.
If the targets aren’t met or new zoning changes aren’t made, a state appeals process would allow certain projects to circumvent local zoning restrictions. Another measure would require municipalities to permit a minimum level of housing density within a half mile of train stations.
Fierce pushback from local officials
The hamlet of Manhasset, in one of the wealthiest parts of Nassau County, is about a 30-minute train ride from Midtown Manhattan. A quaint downtown area surrounding the local Long Island Rail Road station has scarcely a building above two stories.
It’s also home to the town hall of North Hempstead. Local leaders have not made it easy to make changes to area building rules, to put it mildly: The Board of Zoning Appeals recently mulled whether to grant a variance for an air conditioning unit that was located too close to the street and “not properly screened from view.”
North Hempstead supervisor Jennifer DeSena, a registered Democrat who ran as a Republican, said the governor’s proposed requirements “sounds like a parent talking to a teenager.” Residents, she said, are “concerned about losing the quality of life they paid for.”
Republican Donald Clavin, the supervisor of neighboring Hempstead, meanwhile, said his constituents “don’t need bureaucrats in Albany telling them how they’re going to live.”
Hochul’s proposal left some Long Island political strategists perplexed.
“There’s hardly a word that you can poll that polls worse on Long Island than state mandates,” said Michael Dawidziak, who is based in Suffolk County and has worked with both Republicans and Democrats. “To me, this is not good politics for the governor.”
Asked whether she’s targeting Long Island for political reasons through her housing proposal, Hochul said this month she’s “guided by what is best for New Yorkers.”
“Just so all New Yorkers understand, nothing I do in a budget is driven by politics, elections, outcomes,” Hochul told reporters.
State Sen. Kevin Thomas, one of two remaining Democrats representing Long Island in the chamber, cited a “great need for housing out in the suburbs” and expressed openness to Hochul’s proposal, but still raised concerns around the prospect of overriding local zoning.
“Out on Long Island, we pride ourselves on our autonomous villages and towns, so to say, ‘Hey, the state should come in and override what they want,’ is a bit problematic,” he said in an interview.
Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a Democrat, said the county needs housing and sees a willingness there to support development. But he, too, expressed reservations about the prospect of overriding local rules.
“I’d rather not override zoning,” Latimer, a former state senator, said. “But I think it’s important to disconnect the narrative that exists out there, which is, the city wants to develop housing and the suburbs don’t. The suburbs are not monolithic.”
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#Hochul #faces #uprising #plan #build #housing #NYC #suburbs
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Saudi Arabia offered to pay for new sports stadiums in Greece and Egypt if they agreed to team up with the oil-rich Gulf heavyweight in a joint bid to host the 2030 football World Cup, POLITICO can reveal.
In exchange, the Saudis would get to stage three-quarters of all the matches, under the proposed deal.
The dramatic offer — likely worth billions of euros in construction costs — was discussed in a private conversation between Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in summer 2022, according to a senior official familiar with the matter.
A second senior official with knowledge of private discussions on the bid told POLITICO that Saudi Arabia is prepared to “fully underwrite the costs” of hosting for Greece and Egypt, but 75 percent of the huge 48-team tournament itself would be held in the Gulf state.
It is not clear whether the offer was taken up. But the three countries are now working on a joint proposal to host the 2030 tournament, a move which has triggered a backlash against Greece.
Riyadh’s megabucks offer to Greece, reported here for the first time, will fuel criticism that Saudi Arabia is effectively attempting to use its astronomical wealth to buy the World Cup by creating a trans-continental coalition to cleverly take advantage of the voting system.
In an attempt to persuade the members of football’s world governing body, FIFA, of the virtues of the Saudi-led bid, the proposed tournament would see matches held across three continents, providing geographical balance. A Middle East-only World Cup bid would be unlikely to succeed just eight years after Qatar hosted the tournament in 2022.
The Saudis’ main rivals are a joint Spain, Portugal and Ukraine bid from Europe, and a South American bid from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile.
The decision on who hosts the 2030 World Cup comes down to a public vote of the entire FIFA Congress, made up of more than 200 member associations from around the globe. If African countries, attracted by Egypt’s presence and Saudi investment around Africa, rally behind the bid, and Asian nations do the same, while Greece siphons off some European votes, the Saudi-led proposal will stand a strong chance of winning.
POLITICO approached all three governments for comment. The Greek and Saudi governments declined to comment and the Egyptian government did not respond to POLITICO’s requests. FIFA also declined to comment.
‘New world order’
Holding the World Cup would be the culmination of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious strategy to dominate major sporting events. Successes include winning the rights to host world championship boxing bouts, European football and Formula One motor races, while creating its own rebel golf tour. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund also bought a prominent English football club and the country will host football’s Asian Cup for the first time in 2027.
But Saudi Arabia’s desire to stage the World Cup goes beyond reasons of sporting prestige, according to one regional expert.
Lionel Messi of Argentina lifts the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Winner’s Trophy after the team’s victory during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 | Julian Finney/Getty Images
“Saudi Arabia is strategically trying to position itself as an AfroEurasian hub — the center of a new world order,” Simon Chadwick, professor of sport and geopolitical economy at Skema Business School in Paris, said of the Saudi-fronted bid. “This positioning would enable Saudi Arabia to exert significant power and influence across a vast geographic area, which it is seeking to achieve by building relationships with key partners.”
“The multipolar staging of a World Cup with Egypt and Greece would be neither altruism nor largesse. Rather, it would form part of a wider plan, which the government in Riyadh is enabling through the potential gifting of stadiums,” he added.
The Saudi move to host the tournament has sparked disgust among human rights watchdogs, who point out the country’s brutal treatment of the LGBTQ+ community and migrant workers.
“Saudi Arabian repression should not be rewarded with a World Cup,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “So long as Saudi Arabia discriminates against LGBT people and punishes women for human rights activism, and does not have protections for the migrant laborers who would build the majority of the new stadiums and facilities, the country cannot meet the human rights requirements that FIFA already has in place.”
The 2022 Qatar World Cup was blighted by criticism of the Gulf state over its treatment of migrant workers.
Bad memories
In Greece, paying for sports infrastructure is a touchy subject, where it is seen as a monument to government profligacy.
Back in 2004, Athens hosted the Olympic Games, with Greece splurging around €9 billion. However, much of the infrastructure was left abandoned after the Olympic flame went out.
As the country entered a decade-long depression and had to resort to bailout programs to avoid bankruptcy, the Olympics became a source of anger for Greeks who questioned whether the Games pushed their country further into recession. Nearly two decades after the Olympics extravaganza, many of the 30 venues remain unused, while some have been demolished.
Since coming to power in 2019, Greece’s conservative New Democracy government has sought to deepen ties with the Saudis and other Gulf countries, as a response to arch-rival Turkey’s expansionist policy in the region.
Mitsotakis has visited Riyadh multiple times, Greece has delivered military equipment and soldiers to Saudi Arabia and, in July last year, Athens became the first EU capital visited by bin Salman since he personally approved, according to declassified U.S. intelligence, the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Bin Salman, who is back in the West’s good books thanks to an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine, signed a number of bilateral agreements in Athens last summer, while pledging to make Greece an energy hub for the distribution of “green hydrogen.”
Saudi Arabia has traditionally enjoyed close diplomatic ties with Egypt. Bin Salman met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo last June where he signed billions of euros worth of investment deals and discussed “bilateral, regional cooperation.”
The decision on World Cup 2030 hosting will be made in 2024, with the bidding process set to open officially later this year.
Nektaria Stamouli and Nicolas Camut contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Jio vs Airtel plans – Two major telecom service providers in India Reliance Jio and Airtel are providing some of the best plans for their customers. You can buy one such plan based on your requirements. Reliance Jio and Airtel categorize plans as smart recharge, unlimited plan, data only, talk-time, and international roaming.
While, Jio and Airtel have different set of plans, they have a common plan which can be purchased in Rs 199. Notably, Rs 199 plans of Jio and Airtel are prepaid plans. Today, we are comparing the Rs 199 plans offered by both companies and understanding why Airtel’s plan is better for budget users here.
Jio Rs 199 Prepaid Plan
In Reliance Jio’s 199 recharge plan users will get 34.5 GB 4G mobile data with 23 days validity, unlimited voice calls along with 100 SMS per day and Jio Apps Complimentary Subscription. Also, this Jio 199 plan benefits include free JioTv, JioCinema, JioSecurity and JioCloud subscription with no added cost.
Jio Recharge Rs. 199
Plan Details
1. Jio Voice Calls
Unlimited
2. LOCAL
Unlimited
3. STD
Unlimited
4. To ALL OPERATORS
Jio to Non-Jio FUP Unlimited
DATA
5. DATA AT 4G SPEED
34.5 GB
6. DAILY 4G FUP
1.5 GB Per Day
7. FUP (POST 4G DATA)
64 kbps unlimited
8. SMS
Daily 100
9. INTERNATIONAL ROAMING
–
10. JIO APPS
Complimentary Subscription
11. VALIDITY
23 Days
Airtel Rs 199 Prepaid Plan
Bharti Airtel’s Rs 199 plan comes with 3GB of data in total. This plan also ships with unlimited voice calling and 300 SMS. The total service validity of this plan is 30 days. There are additional benefits of Hellotunes and Wynk Music. So why is Airtel’s plan better here?
Airtel Recharge Rs. 199
Plan Details
1. Airtel Voice Calls
Unlimited
2. LOCAL
Unlimited
3. STD
Unlimited
4. To ALL OPERATORS
Unlimited
DATA
5. DATA AT 4G SPEED
3 GB (Total)
6. DAILY 4G
3 GB (Total)
7. SPEED (POST 4G DATA)
64 kbps unlimited
8. SMS
300 (Total)
9. INTERNATIONAL ROAMING
–
10. Additional Benefits
Hellotunes and Wynk Music
11. VALIDITY
30 Days
Airtel vs Jio: Why Airtel’s Rs 199 Plan is Better?
Airtel’s plan is better for budget users. This is because it comes for longer validity. Airtel’s plan is not necessarily the best option for people who want a lot of data. However, in case you are recharging for a relative or yourself who requires very minimum data and primarily uses the phone for making calls, then the Rs 199 plan from Airtel is a better option. Jio’s plan comes for 23 days, meaning you would have to recharge again and again in 23 days. However, for the same cost, Airtel’s plan comes with 30 days of service validity.
Here’s How You Can Recharge Your Jio Number Online:
In digitalization, most of the people like E-Recharges on their own. As per trends, the most downloading play store application is MyJio app, it will more easy to do online recharge to Jio Users.
Open MyJio app and tap on “three dots icon” on the top left corner.
In the “Menu Option”, Click “Recharge”.
Click on “Recharge Your Number”
Select Jio Rs 199 plan and then click on “Buy”.
It’s Redirecting to Gateway payment, Pay using “Google Pay UPI” or “Phone Pay UPI” or “Paytm” or “Whatsapp” and other Payment Options.
Select the mode of payment and click on ‘Pay now’.
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The claims are a continuation of a posture Trump sought to project both as a candidate for president in 2016 and while in the White House — one occasionally contradicted by his record.
But his renewed focus on international affairs also comes as the Republican primary field is expected to get crowded with potential challengers likely to pitch their own foreign policy bona fides. That includes two former Trump lieutenants: former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and former secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Those close to Trump’s campaign operation say he plans to try and paint himself as an anti-war dove amongst the hawks. They believe doing so will resonate with GOP voters who are divided on, but growing wary of, continued support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
“Trump is the peace president and he’s the first president in two generations to not start a war, whereas if you look at DeSantis’ congressional record, he’s voted for more engagement and more military engagement overseas,” said a person close to the Trump campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
“Trump is the only person who has said no more funding for the Ukraine war. I haven’t heard Nikki Haley say anything like that… Pompeo or Pence? Where do they stand on Ukraine?”
In fact, Haley, Pence and Pompeo have all, to varying degrees, called for the U.S. to fund Ukrainians and even, on occasion, criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough.
Still, Trump’s modernized “America First” framework has already had profound implications, both in upending establishment Republican and neo-conservative orthodoxy on foreign policy and in muddying the consensus on issues ranging from military intervention to how to handle ruthless dictators.
And as multiple Republican officials noted for this story, last week the conservative and once-hawkish Heritage Foundation stepped away from its long standing demands for a robust defense budget and said cuts to Pentagon spending should be on the table as part of the debt limit negotiations.
“I do think national security is going to be a much more important issue in 2024 than in many of the most recent presidential elections,” said Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-public critic John Bolton, who also is considering a 2024 run. “You may have noticed there’s a Chinese balloon floating over the country today.”
Aware that his instincts aren’t as hawkish as some of his potential Republican challengers, Trump and his aides have started to draw contrasts and set the parameters of the debate.
On Thursday, Trump said Pompeo “took a little bit more credit than he should” for accomplishments made while he was secretary of State, a sign that Trump may try to minimize his opponents’ foreign policy experience, despite having been appointed by him. Later that day, the super PAC supporting Trump highlighted recent attacks on Haley by right-wing conservative commentators, some of whom called her a “warmonger” and “Neocon Nikki.”
Trump’s team was also eager to tout a Wall Street Journal op-ed endorsement this week from Sen. J.D. Vance, the populist Republican from Ohio, who touted Trump’s inclination against getting into foreign entanglements.
“Every Republican running is going to be opposed to [critical race theory]. Every Republican running is going to say we need to secure the border and we need to oppose amnesty. Every Republican running is for lower taxes and less regulation,” a Vance adviser said of Trump’s early foreign policy play. “It makes sense for Trump to drag the race where his opponents don’t want to be.”
Trump’s team also sees foreign policy as an area to draw distinctions with his potential top political foe, DeSantis, who gained national attention for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and embrace of cultural wars but who, as governor, has a limited track record internationally.
“The governors will have a tough time proving their foreign policy chops because it’s not in their job description so they’re going to have to do something to step up and prove to voters that they’re capable of handling all these issues that present themselves on the global stage,” said David Urban, a Republican strategist who remains close to numerous potential 2024 contenders.
“[Potential] candidates such as Pompeo and Haley and Pence and the [former] president can say, ‘Here’s me sitting down with Kim Jong Un, and here’s what we were able to accomplish with the Abraham Accords or on USMCA.’ Everyone has something they can talk about on concrete terms, where governors can’t and that will be a point of differentiation among a wide group of them.”
There are already signs that DeSantis is making moves to address this likely line of attack. He has had phone calls and meetings with foreign leaders and ambassadors in recent months, including a face-to-face session in Tallahassee last week with Mario Abdo Benítez, the president of Paraguay. Relatives of Paraguay’s first lady – Silvana Abdo – were killed in the deadly Surfside condominium collapse of 2021.
Back in December, DeSantis met in his office with Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., along with Yousef Al Otaiba, the ambassador from the United Arab Emirates. Right after DeSantis handily won re-election he met top officials from Japan, including Koji Tomita, ambassador to the United States, as well as Japanese business leaders.
“Florida continues to be an important political and economic partner to many countries around the world, and as foreign officials request meetings with our office it is appropriate to further develop these ties,” said Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for DeSantis.
Bolton, for his part, said he thought Trump would prove vulnerable on foreign policy when it became clear that he had none.
“He doesn’t have policy on much of anything, he has Donald Trump,” he said. “So his most recent musing is that if he were president he could solve Ukraine-Russia dispute in 24 hours — I think it is so ridiculous it falls on its own weight. …I think people over time and self-identified Republicans just don’t buy it.”
But so far, Trump’s other likely opponents aren’t taking the bait. DeSantis this week hit back on Trump’s digs about the governor’s Covid response, touting his margin of victory in Florida’s November election, but has not sought to defend his record on foreign policy.
A person close to Haley’s political operation, meanwhile, said the former U.N. ambassador will tout her own foreign policy record, one that involved helping Trump secure some of his top accomplishments abroad. They include moving the United States embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, repealing a nuclear deal with Iran and securing buy-in from China on sanctions against North Korea.
While some big gulfs do exist between Haley and her former boss — she has championed U.S. support of Ukraine and became a vocal critic of Putin and Moscow during her tenure in the Trump administration — she likely won’t take swings at Trump, choosing instead to criticize Biden’s approach to China, Iran and the U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“That is not the focus,” the Haley ally said of contrasting with Trump. “We are focused on Biden.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: India, France and the UAE on Saturday unveiled an ambitious roadmap for cooperation in areas of defence, nuclear energy and technology under a trilateral framework.
After a phone conversation among their foreign ministers, a joint statement said the three sides agreed that the trilateral initiative will serve as a forum to promote the design and execution of cooperation projects in the fields of energy, with a focus on solar and nuclear energy.
“It was acknowledged that defence is an area of close cooperation between the three countries. Therefore, efforts will be undertaken to further promote compatibility, and joint development and co-production, whilst seeking out avenues for further collaboration and training between the three countries’ defence forces,” it said.
The foreign ministers noted that the trilateral initiative will serve as a platform to expand cooperation between their countries’ development agencies on sustainable projects.
The three foreign ministers met on September 19 last year for the first time in a trilateral format on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
In the meeting, they agreed to establish a formal trilateral cooperation initiative to expand cooperation in various fields of mutual interest.
“It is in this context that a phone call between the three ministers was held today to adopt a roadmap for the implementation of this initiative,” the statement said.
Srinagar, Feb 01: The project worth Rs 340 crore under phase-2 flood mitigation plan has been tendered out on which work is expected to start soon.
A top official of Irrigation and Flood Control department of Kashmir, wishing not to be named, told the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) that phase-1 of comprehensive flood mitigation plan has almost completed while work on phase 2 is expected to start soon.
“The main work in the phase 2 will be flood spill channel for re-sectioning so that if there will be more water coming, then it will go through these channels,” he said, adding that part of it is to work on Hokarsar.
He said that resectioning of the flood spill channel which includes taking channel width from 20-80 metre with constant slope from Padshahi Bagh to Wullar costing around Rs 239 crore has been tendered out and efforts are on to rope in competitive national agencies for dredging.
He added that the main purpose of the work that has been started at Hokarsar is to keep wetland wet so that migratory birds coming there can live without any hindrances, but that is also part of the phase- 2 of flood mitigation plan.
He said that the gate at the Wular has 80 m width while Chanell there is just 30 m wide which has to be taken to 80 m.
He said that crate projection and other works on 21 major tributaries of Jhelum have been tendered out as well under 13 Irrigation divisions of Kashmir on which work is also expected to start soon.
He said that as tendering is in the last stage and they expect to start the work soon
“With the completion of phase 1 the capacity of river Jhelum will go to 60,000 cusecs, which has been already taken to 40,000 in the phase 1.
He said that the deadline to complete the phase 2 is three years and hopefully it will be completed in three years time.
Notably, Flood Management Plan was divided into two phases, phase 1 was funded under the Prime Minister’s Development Package with a budget of Rs 399 crore, which included spot dredging as per requirement to increase the capacity of river Jhelum so as to minimize the damage if there will be floods again.
Soon after floods in 2014, the government of India had constituted a committee to suggest measures to prevent such calamities in the future.
The committee in its report had recommended several long term measures including additional supplementary flood spill channel, creation of storage facilities on tributaries of Jhelum, flood plain zoning and enhancing capacity of Wular Lake—(KNO)
