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    Soccer Star Says His Family Stopped From Leaving Iran for Supporting Protests

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    Ali Daei, a prominent former soccer player, said his wife and daughter were prevented from leaving Iran on Monday after their plane made an unannounced stopover en route to Dubai.DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A prominent former soccer player in Iran who has expressed support for anti-government protests said his wife and daughter were prevented from leaving the country on Monday after their plane made an unannounced stopover en route to Dubai.Ali Daei, who had his own passport briefly confiscated earlier this year, said his wife and daughter had departed from the capital, Tehran, legally before the flight made an unannounced stop on Kish Island in the Persian Gulf, where they were questioned by Iranian authorities.He said his daughter had been released but the doors to the flight were closed by then. He said his family had planned to travel to Dubai and return next week.The flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed Mahan Air Flight W563 being diverted to Kish Island, part of Iran, before traveling onward to Dubai a couple hours later.There was no comment from the airline or Iranian authorities.The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the Revolutionary Guards, said a travel ban had been imposed on Mr. Daei’s wife earlier this month because of her support for the protests. It said she had tried to illegally bypass the ban, without elaborating, and that her final destination was the United States.Mr. Daei is one of several Iranian celebrities who have come out in support of the protests, which were set off by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September. The Kurdish woman died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police in Tehran for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.The protests rapidly spread across the country and escalated into calls for the overthrow of the theocracy established after the 1979 revolution, making it one of the biggest challenges to clerical rule in over four decades.At least 507 protesters have been killed and more than 18,500 people have been arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has closely monitored the unrest. Iranian authorities have not released figures for those killed or arrested.Iran has also executed some protesters, including a 23-year-old man who was publicly hanged earlier this month.Before his passport was confiscated, Mr. Daei, a top international goal scorer and former Iranian team captain, had urged the government on social media to “solve the problems of the Iranian people rather than using repression, violence and arrests.” More

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      WNBA Upgrades to Charter Flights for Finals

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      For the first time ever, the W.N.B.A. is providing charter flights throughout the finals. Aces and Sun players are loving it — and hope it becomes permanent.UNCASVILLE, Conn. — There were “oohs and aahs” of excitement as the Connecticut Sun players entered their chartered plane on the way to Las Vegas for Game 1 of the W.N.B.A. finals, guard Nia Clouden said.Waiting for them were pillows and blankets, seats that fully reclined and a generous menu of complimentary food. Clouden typically never eats the roasted salted almonds, cookies, chips and other snacks offered on the team’s commercial flights. But on that night, she ordered a pepperoni pizza.Sun center Jonquel Jones pointed to the long legs that make up part of her 6-foot-6, 215-pound frame to show how the leg room on the charter flight made a difference for her. She usually tries to find the exit row seat on flights, but the space is never enough. Jones said she was also happy to avoid “all the unnecessary stuff that happens at airports.”“Sometimes after a game, you don’t really feel like talking, and you go to the airport and people want to talk about the game,” Jones said while laughing. “Or they want to ask you how tall you are — constantly — all the time. ‘How’s the weather up there?’ And it’s just like, dude, I’m just trying to get to the next destination.”She added: “As much as we love our fans — we appreciate them — sometimes it does really get a little exhausting, and it makes the season a little bit tougher.”This season, for the first time ever, the league agreed to provide charter travel throughout the W.N.B.A. finals. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said that the league does not have enough revenue to cover travel for all teams during the regular season and playoffs, which she estimated would cost more than $20 million. Teams fly commercially during the season and playoffs, with rare exceptions for extreme travel difficulties.Athletes in major professional sports leagues like the N.F.L., N.B.A. and M.L.B., and even many men’s and women’s Division I athletes, have grown accustomed to charter travel. But those men’s leagues have been around much longer than the W.N.B.A. and have billions of dollars of revenue, while the women’s league regularly operates at a loss.The W.N.B.A. hasn’t committed to offering charter flights for next year’s finals or expanding them to the regular season or any other part of the playoffs. Engelbert said the league was able to provide charters for the finals because of its efforts to increase revenue.“As we focus on growing this league by adding more corporate partners, increasing media exposure and disrupting the outdated media rights valuations of women’s sports,” Engelbert said in a statement, “it would be our hope to continue offering these opportunities when possible.”More on the W.N.B.A.Swan Song: Sue Bird, who had said she would retire after this season, shepherded the Seattle Storm to the playoffs. The team’s loss on Sept. 7 marked the end of her incredible career.Greatness Overshadowed: Sylvia Fowles, who has also announced her retirement from basketball, is one of the most successful American athletes ever. Why isn’t she better known?A Critical Eye: As enthusiasm for women’s basketball and the W.N.B.A grows, fans are becoming more demanding of the league and more vocal about their wishes.Making the Style Rules: Players in women’s basketball are styling themselves before the games. Their choices are an expression of their freedom, and can be lucrative too.The W.N.B.A.’s collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union prohibits teams from chartering flights without league approval. The Liberty were fined $500,000 for secretly traveling to several games by charter last season.So players fly commercially, dealing with the delays, Covid risks and the many flight challenges that everyday customers also deal with. If you’re wondering why professional athletes should have different travel standards anyway, many W.N.B.A. players said it started with rest.Having a relaxing night’s sleep is paramount for playing in a 36-game regular season — with half of those games on the road — when a player’s future salary and place in the league depend on their performance each night, players said. Rest can be especially challenging on a commercial flight for the tall humans that occupy women’s basketball teams. But more important, delays and flight cancellations can result in teams’ having to forfeit games.The Aces forfeited a game in 2018 after dealing with over 25 hours of delays and layovers on their way to Washington, D.C., to play the Mystics. They arrived just four hours ahead of their game. The Aces cited health concerns as the reason not to play and were the first team in league history to forfeit a game. Las Vegas missed the playoffs, finishing one game behind the Dallas Wings.“I definitely think having charters is a trickle-down effect to people being able to take care of their bodies better and rest,” Aces guard Sydney Colson said. “And then you have better games to watch because people are rested and injury free.”Connecticut’s Jonquel Jones said though she loved the Sun’s fans, it can be challenging running into them at the airport after games when players might not feel like talking.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesFor those players who played college basketball for major programs in the United States, the special finals travel is a welcome return to the norm, as many of their schools provided charter flights to all games.“There aren’t many times that I can remember at all that we flew commercial,” said Aces forward Theresa Plaisance, who played at Louisiana State University. “And when you get to the W.N.B.A., and you’re going to your middle seat on Southwest — sometimes it’s really hard to swallow that pill and think like: ‘Oh, this is my progression. I went from college to make it to a professional league, and I have to go backward.’”For Peter Feeney, the basketball operations manager for the Sun, who has handled all flight logistics for the past four years, the simplicity of the travel blew his mind, he said. Feeney typically arrives at airports an hour before the team to ensure that they can pass through security without any hiccups. But on their two charter flights, they’ve arrived at the plane less than an hour before takeoff, and the flight staff handled almost everything.The moment made Feeney realize that if the league switched to charter flights for the entire season, he would become less useful in his role. But he also serves as a video coordinator, so he welcomes the idea. “That’s a good problem, right?” he said with a laugh.Aces forward A’ja Wilson, who has been outspoken about the W.N.B.A.’s travel woes, said that the players had talked about what life would be like if chartered flights were normal after they comfortably made the cross-country trip to Connecticut from Las Vegas for Game 3 on Thursday.“We need it. Ain’t nothing else,” Wilson said. “We need to be able to fly like that after every game. I can only imagine how my body would feel if we did. So, I think it’s a huge deal for us to do it. We need to continue to push it.” More

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      W.N.B.A. Adds Charter Flights for the Finals. Here Is Why That Matters.

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      Teams usually fly on commercial airlines, but that will change for the W.N.B.A. finals. This could be good news for players’ health, finances and game.Delay after delay. Then, a cancellation. Germy bathrooms. Wrestling with yourself over paying $4 for a small bag of Skittles. Forgetting your headphones and wanting to cry. Now, the power plug at your seat is not working, and the people sitting next to you on the airplane won’t stop coughing. Do they have Covid?Anyone who flies often knows these pains, and W.N.B.A. players have to deal with all of this, too. W.N.B.A. players — they’re just like us, flying on commercial airlines. But why?The league, founded in 1996 and in its 26th season, said there was a simple reason players weren’t permitted to fly by charter plane: Unlike the N.B.A. — a multibillion-dollar operation entering its 77th season that flies its players by charter — the W.N.B.A. said there wasn’t enough money to pay for it. W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said it would cost more than $20 million to fly all of its 12 teams by charter instead of on commercial airlines for a full season.“We’re hoping in a few years, as we get more viewers to the game, we get more sponsors, we get better media deals, that that would be something we could afford,” Engelbert said in a recent interview. But she also said that she wouldn’t “jeopardize the financial health of the league” to fly players by charter.The W.N.B.A.’s finances are more precarious than those of other leagues, but it recently raised $75 million from investors such as Nike and Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state. Still, that’s a drop in the bucket compared with leagues like the N.H.L., which was projected to bring in $5 billion in revenue. N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said his league had more than $10 billion in revenue for the 2021-22 season. The W.N.B.A. has declined to disclose its annual revenue.Before the W.N.B.A. All-Star Game on Sunday, Engelbert announced that the league would cover charter flights for teams during the finals. The league has occasionally covered charter travel for teams on tight schedules during the playoffs, but its collective-bargaining agreement with the players’ union prohibits teams from chartering flights themselves. The W.N.B.A. fined the Liberty $500,000 for secretly traveling to several games by charter last season.W.N.B.A. players have publicly alluded to how their travel affects their preparedness for game day. But what can frequent commercial travel do to the body?To better understand, it’s important to know how players travel while on W.N.B.A. business. The terms of the collective-bargaining agreement state that teams are allowed to book players in premium economy seating “or similar enhanced coach fare.” While a handful of U.S. airlines offer true premium economy seats, they’re primarily available on international flights and include perks like amenity kits that are not offered on domestic routes. On domestic routes, carriers including American Airlines and Delta Air Lines do offer seats with extra legroom.For a player headed to, or from, a game, Delta’s and American’s seats with extra legroom can be a golden ticket. These tickets often offer a more comfortable flying experience than economy: more legroom, a seat closer to the exit and complimentary drinks and snacks.For instance, American Airlines flies its Boeing 787-800 jet — a wide-body plane with more than 230 seats — between cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. American offers premium economy seats with pitch — the distance between a seat and the same point on the seat in front of it — of 38 inches and main-cabin extra seats with pitches between 35 and 36 inches. In comparison, main-cabin seats on the 787 have just 31 inches of pitch. On a United Airlines flight between, say, Newark and Seattle, a route that operates a Boeing 737-900 jet, an Economy Plus traveler can expect between three and four more inches of legroom than a regular economy traveler.Players can upgrade their seats on their own, but they’re on the hook for the difference in cost or airline miles. Los Angeles Sparks center Liz Cambage, who is 6-foot-9, slammed the league on Twitter for its upgrade policy in February, saying, “Yall think imma spend another season upgrading my seat on a flight to get to games out of my own pocket.”Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird autographed the shirt of a fan after the Storm arrived at a Seattle airport after winning the W.N.B.A. championship in September 2018.Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times, via Associated PressJetBlue and the so-called Big 3 airlines — American, United and Delta — offer business or first-class lie-flat seats on some transcontinental routes. Some, like American, offer lie-flat products — seats that recline into a full bed — on shorter routes, such as New York to Miami. And on American flights longer than 900 miles, premium passengers receive an in-flight meal.The W.N.B.A.’s travel policy raises questions about the players’ fitness for game days and the impact that travel can have on the body. But the cost for these premium products can be steep. Travelers without enough miles — or a complimentary upgrade — can expect to pay, in some cases, hundreds of dollars or thousands of miles for a seat upgrade.Such prices can be prohibitive for average W.N.B.A. players, whose minimum salaries start at around $60,000 for the 2022 season.“The union asked for certain things,” Engelbert said, “and the players asked for more pay. They didn’t ask for first-class or charter travel. They asked for more pay.”Earlier this year, Terri Jackson, the executive director of the players’ union, said the players had many goals going into contract negotiations and did not prioritize full-season charters, though they do hope to be able to travel that way eventually.“We didn’t go into negotiations to break the bank,” she said. “We care too much about this league. But we want to be supported.”Experts have also raised concerns about the impacts of commercial travel during the coronavirus pandemic.A federal judge in mid-April struck down the federal mandate requiring face masks on public transportation, including trains and airports. Now, it’s up to individual travelers to decide. Air travel has nearly reached prepandemic figures, with more than 2 million travelers passing through airport security checkpoints each day, according to government figures. More than 2.4 million passengers passed through security checkpoints on Sunday — one of the busiest days since the start of the pandemic.Some players, such as Seattle’s Breanna Stewart and Washington’s Natasha Cloud, have tweeted about the risks of flying commercial during the pandemic while trying not to catch the coronavirus, which would cause them to miss games.However, it’s important to note that any form of travel — commercial or private — can lead to a positive coronavirus test. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends that travelers wear a face mask on airplanes and in airports. And leagues that do fly their players by charter have not been spared from outbreaks. Virtually every major league has had players enter health and safety protocols. The N.H.L. had to pause its season in December amid an uptick in positive cases among players caused by the Omicron variant. The N.B.A. in December also postponed several games after an outbreak across the league.With any commercial travel, there’s the risk of flight delays, cancellations and being rerouted or having to move around in-flight. But an uptick in summer travel and ongoing staffing shortages have made air travel more frustrating as the W.N.B.A. pushes through its season.More than 6,200 flights were delayed within, into or out of the United States on Sunday, and more than 2,000 flights were canceled altogether, according to the website FlightAware.com, which tracks airline delays and cancellations. And unlike with charter jets, which frequently are nonstop, W.N.B.A. players may need to connect at other airports before reaching their final destination.In recent years, travel delays caused by layovers or flight cancellations have hampered the league. A 2018 game between the Las Vegas Aces and the Washington Mystics had to be forfeited after the Aces spent more than a day in transit delays to get to the game.That travel stress, said Dr. Ida Bergstrom, an internal medicine doctor at Farragut Medical and Travel Care, a travel health clinic in Washington, D.C., can be taxing on athletes expected to compete at high levels once they land.“If you’re traveling for 24 to 36 hours for business and flights get delayed, or you’re in the middle of nowhere, and you’re expected to perform not only mentally but physically — that’s really tough,” she said.And more travel is on the way: On Sunday, Engelbert said that the season would increase to 40 games next season from 36 this year. It’s part of an effort to generate more revenue for the league, which could help fund charters down the line. But in the meantime, the players will still be winding their way through airports, just like us.“You, physically, are not going to be able to perform as well if you don’t have an opportunity to rest and regroup,” Dr. Bergstrom said. More

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      The WNBA’s $20 Million Debate Over Charter Flights

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      Secret charter flights cost the Liberty a big fine, but players say they deserve them — and need them to be healthy. The league says they’re too expensive for now.The W.N.B.A. said charter flights were too expensive. The players said they did not have to be. The W.N.B.A. commissioner said she wanted them more than anyone. The players said that when they asked for them just two years ago, it felt like the answer was “a hard no.”Now, charter flights for players seem to be closer to a maybe. But that movement has come at a cost — a $500,000 fine for the Liberty, and a bruising of the league’s public image as fans, players and those attuned to drama question whether the W.N.B.A. is doing right by its players.And the cost for the flights? W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the league had estimated that it would cost more than $20 million for all 12 teams to fly by charter instead of commercial airlines for a full season, not accounting for the recent surge in fuel costs and variables such as routes. She has maintained that the league does not have enough revenue to cover the costs. Teams typically play more than 30 games, with half on the road.The players’ union said that it did not have a cost estimate, but that a change in travel accommodations was long overdue.“The league is young, but it’s old enough,” said Terri Jackson, the union’s executive director. “We can figure this out.”An article in Sports Illustrated on Tuesday revealed that the W.N.B.A. had fined the Liberty $500,000 in the fall for secretly using charter flights to travel to some games during the 2021 season. The collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union allows for premium economy seats, such as Comfort Plus from Delta, but charter flights are not allowed and their provision is considered an unfair competitive advantage. The league confirmed to The New York Times that the Liberty had been fined $500,000 for “multiple violations of league rules,” including taking eight charter flights toward the end of the regular season, sending players on a trip to Napa, Calif., and making unspecified “public comments about items that are collectively bargained.”The Liberty declined to comment. In October, Joe Tsai, who owns the Liberty with his wife, Clara Wu Tsai, tweeted about charter flights as an issue of “equity for women athletes.”The Liberty, owned by Joe Tsai, were fined $500,000 for eight charter flights and a trip to Napa, Calif., during the 2021 season.Corey Sipkin/Associated PressEngelbert said that she wanted players to have charter flights, but that until that was possible, the collective bargaining agreement had to be enforced and the fine “had to be big enough” to serve as a deterrent. She said Sports Illustrated’s report that the league had suggested a $1 million fine was “inaccurate,” but a spokesman for the magazine said it stood behind its reporting.The sentiment on social media this week has been largely against the league, including from players who are not on the Liberty.“We deserve nice things,” guard Lexie Brown, who won a championship with the Chicago Sky last season, posted on Twitter on Wednesday. A week earlier, Brown tweeted “the wnba” in response to a question about what was holding the league back.“What a joke,” Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu posted on Twitter with three crying-laughing emojis, in response to a tweet about the Sports Illustrated article.Josh Hart, who plays for the Portland Trail Blazers of the N.B.A., tweeted “This is trash and @WNBA yall got to get better.”Part of the blowback came in response to the assertion by Sports Illustrated that in September, team owners did not support an “unofficial proposal” from the Liberty to make charter flights the default. According to the article, “the Liberty said they’d found a way to get it comped for everyone in the league for three years,” but some owners were worried the players would get used to the flights and want them permanently.But the league was quoted in the article as saying that the Liberty did not make a proposal for the owners to consider, and, in an interview with The Times, Engelbert said a formal proposal “never happened.” She added that if such a proposal were to come, “it would be supported.”“This is a good thing that we have ownership groups that really care, that are investing and are having really good debates,” she said.Whether or not the team owners want charters, the players do. And, in a twist from even five or 10 years ago, they appear to have broad public support as female athletes speak up for themselves and women’s sports get more media attention. For some, the push for charters is about offering accommodations befitting professional athletes — “nice things,” as Brown said. But Jackson said it was mainly about players’ health and safety.“Their bodies are their craft,” Jackson said. They need time to rest, leg room because they are tall and access to nutritious meals to perform at a high level, she said. All of that is compromised by spending hours in airports traveling commercially, sitting in cramped seats and not having proper snacks, she said.It was worse just a few years ago, before the 2020 collective bargaining agreement went into effect with an allotment for upgraded seats. Liz Cambage, a four-time All-Star who is listed at 6-foot-8, tweeted last month that she had paid “out of my own pocket” to upgrade her seats. And yet, even now, players can find themselves stuck in coach.Jackson said teams and the league had blamed overwhelmed staff members struggling to arrange travel and airlines that won’t allow large groups to book upgraded or exit row seats. Bringing the complaints to the league has helped — “Some teams got it together,” Jackson said — but she said the next step would be to file a grievance. The union did not do so last season, but upgraded travel will be a “point of emphasis” this coming season, she said. The league said it was “made aware” of complaints last season and will be auditing teams this season “to assure full compliance.”How soon players can upgrade to charter flights — without teams incurring fines — is unclear because of the players’ and league’s conflicting views on how to pay for them, and when. Engelbert said the $20 million-plus price tag for full-season charters makes it unlikely that a sponsor will pick up the tab, though the league is open to that and the Liberty and other teams are exploring options.“I don’t want to do things that jeopardize the financial health of the league,” she said, adding, “We are trying to build revenue and financial models that support better things for the players in the long term, but this is not something that we can afford today.”Engelbert would not disclose the W.N.B.A.’s revenue or if any teams were profitable, but she said the league was valued at $475 million and at more than $1 billion with the 12 teams included. Last month, the league announced that it had raised $75 million from a group of investors, including Condoleezza Rice and Joe and Clara Wu Tsai. The league had been owned in a 50-50 split with the N.B.A., which founded the W.N.B.A. in 1996. Now the ownership split is 42.1 percent each for the W.N.B.A. and N.B.A. and 15.8 percent for the new investors, who do not have voting rights, as first reported by Sports Illustrated and confirmed by The Times.W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said she hoped the league would be able to have full-season charters eventually, but that was “not something that we can afford today.”Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesIn an interview with The Times last month, Engelbert said that the new money would not be used for charter flights but for marketing and upgrading the league’s digital products, such as its website and streaming service. The marketing efforts could generate additional revenue that might then enable the league to pay for flights in the future, she said.Jackson said even small changes to the flight rules now could have a big impact. When the union was negotiating travel accommodations for its contract, it didn’t start by asking for full-season charters, she said.“We didn’t go into negotiations to break the bank,” she said. “We care too much about this league. But we want to be supported. The players want to be supported and valued, not taken advantage of.”In addition to having sponsors cover some, if not all, of the cost of charters, Jackson said the union was open to discussing using charters for back-to-back games and the postseason — which Engelbert has permitted under special circumstances — and setting a maximum number of flights that teams could use per season and letting them decide when and whether to use them.“There are ways to do this,” Jackson said. “This is not an all-or-nothing.” More

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      With Positive Tests, the Rules Change for Some Players in Australia

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith Positive Tests, the Rules Change for Some Players in AustraliaAfter some passengers on charter flights tested positive for the coronavirus, 47 players will not be allowed to practice for two weeks.Players, coaches and officials arriving at a hotel in Melbourne where they will be required to spend most of their time before the start of the Australian Open.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMatthew Futterman and Jan. 16, 2021MELBOURNE, Australia — Organizers of the Australian Open faced a rebellion from players after passengers on two charter flights bringing them to Melbourne tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting orders for everyone aboard to go into quarantine for two weeks.The flights carried 47 players — including several top competitors who had just played the first event of the women’s tour last week in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — as well as some journalists, coaches and others.Passengers were asked to have negative test results for the virus within 72 hours of the flights’ departures from Los Angeles and Abu Dhabi. They were tested again after landing in Melbourne, and four people on the flights were found to have the virus as of Sunday afternoon, prompting health officials in the Australian state of Victoria to order that all passengers remain in their hotel rooms for 14 days.For the players on the flights, that means stricter restrictions than they had planned on before the Australian Open, the first major tennis tournament of 2021, which is scheduled to begin Feb. 8.Entrants in the tournament agreed to stay in their rooms for 19 hours a day and were allowed five hours daily at the tennis center to practice, train and eat.Those rules got even tighter Saturday for the 47 players on the two charter flights, who were told they could not leave their hotel rooms at all.Tennis officials appealed for more leniency for players who repeatedly test negative in their first days in Australia, but government officials declined to soften the rules. Players and tennis officials were not aware when they moved ahead with plans to stage the tournament that the government might impose such restrictions.“We are communicating with everyone on this flight, and particularly the playing group whose conditions have now changed, to ensure their needs are being catered to as much as possible, and that they are fully appraised of the situation,” said Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, which is organizing the tournament.Tiley held a series of difficult videoconferencing sessions with players to explain the changes.In a livestream on Instagram on Saturday night, Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine told her fellow player Paula Badosa of Spain that she had been blindsided by the ruling and would have to compete on an uneven playing field.“It’s about the idea of staying in a room for two weeks and being able to compete,” said Kostyuk, who could not remember the last time she did not pick up a racket for two weeks. “We have to stay in quarantine, but we have to fulfill expectations.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More