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      Brittney Griner’s Sentence Renews Pressure on President Biden

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      The basketball star’s supporters are pressing for action. But critics of any possible deal are already fuming.WASHINGTON — Immediately after a Moscow judge handed down Brittney Griner’s nine-year prison sentence on Thursday, calls grew louder for President Biden to find a way to bring her home.“We call on President Biden and the United States government to redouble their efforts to do whatever is necessary and possible,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement.U.S. officials and analysts had been resigned to a guilty verdict for Ms. Griner, a basketball star who plays for a Russian team during the W.N.B.A. off-season. But the cold reality of her sentence on a drug charge was a shock and renewed calls for Mr. Biden to secure her release — even as critics fumed that offering to swap prisoners with Moscow rewards Russian hostage-taking.The result is a painful quandary for the Biden administration as it tries to maintain a hard line against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over his war in Ukraine.“There’s nothing good here,” said Andrea Schneider, an expert on international conflict resolution at Cardozo School of Law. “No matter what Biden does, he’s going to be criticized — either that we’re giving too much or we’re not working hard enough.”Kremlin officials had said that any potential deal could not proceed before her trial was complete, creating a glimmer of hope that the verdict might open the door for an exchange. But analysts called that unlikely anytime soon.“I don’t think this is going to get resolved quickly,” said Jared Genser, a human rights lawyer who represents Americans held by foreign governments. “I think the fact that Putin has not said yes right away means that he’s looked at the U.S. offer and said, ‘Well, that’s their first offer. I can get more than that.’”That U.S. offer, first presented to Russia in June, sought the release of Ms. Griner and Paul N. Whelan, a former Marine arrested in Moscow and convicted of espionage in 2020.The Biden administration proposed to trade the two Americans for the notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is midway through a 25-year federal prison sentence for offering to sell arms to a Colombian rebel group that the United States then considered a terrorist organization.The proposal has already reshaped U.S. diplomacy toward Russia, which had been frozen at senior levels since Mr. Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. A phone call about the matter on July 29 between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, was their first conversation since the war began. But it appeared to leave the Kremlin unmoved. The White House says Russia has made an unspecified “bad faith” counteroffer that the United States is not taking seriously.What to Know About the Brittney Griner CaseCard 1 of 4What happened? More

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      Outrage Grows in the U.S. Over Brittney Griner’s Sentencing

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      The W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner’s friends and colleagues expressed support and sadness for her after a Russian court found her guilty of attempting to smuggle illegal narcotics into Russia and sentenced her to nine years in a penal colony.“Just really feeling sad and feeling sick for Brittney and hoping that she gets home as soon as possible,” said Breanna Stewart, a four-time W.N.B.A. All-Star who had played with Griner on the Russian team UMMC Yekaterinburg since 2020. “Now that the trial is done and the sentencing happened, I know she’s got to be in a very emotional state and just want her to know that we’re still continuing to do whatever we can to get her home.”Griner has been detained in Russia since Feb. 17, when Russian customs officials at an airport near Moscow said they found hashish oil in vape cartridges in her luggage. Her trial began on July 1 and the conviction had been widely expected. The U.S. State Department has said that Griner is being wrongfully detained and that it has been working to negotiate her release.Griner’s family has sought help from Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor who is working to secure the release of Griner and of Paul Whelan, a former Marine who has been detained in Russia since 2018.“Today’s sentencing of Brittney Griner was severe by Russian legal standards and goes to prove what we have known all along, that Brittney is being used as a political pawn,” Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, said on Twitter. “We appreciate and continue to support the efforts of @POTUS and @SecBlinken to get a deal done swiftly to bring Brittney, Paul and all Americans home.”What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in RussiaCard 1 of 4What happened? More

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      ‘Wagatha Christie’ Trial, a British Spectacle, Ends: There Was No Libel, Judge Finds

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      The High Court in London ruled against the plaintiff, Rebekah Vardy, putting an end to a legal feud that turned into a reality-show-style event.LONDON — It began as an Instagram-related quarrel between the spouses of two British soccer stars and grew into a libel trial that provided a welcome distraction for a nation in turmoil.The High Court on Friday brought an end to the long-running legal feud by ruling against the plaintiff, Rebekah Vardy, saying that she had not been defamed by her former friend Coleen Rooney.In the verdict, Justice Karen Steyn ruled that the reputational damage suffered by Ms. Vardy did not meet what she described as “the sting of libel.” For that reason, she stated in a written decision published on Friday, “the case is dismissed.”With its combination of low stakes and high melodrama, the dispute between Ms. Vardy and Ms. Rooney did not amount to the trial of the century. But the case attracted months of overheated tabloid coverage at a time when Britain was navigating a stubborn pandemic and a struggling economy while its prime minister was on the ropes.The legal dispute was between Ms. Vardy, the wife of the Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, and Ms. Rooney, who is married to the former Manchester United star Wayne Rooney. The women belong to a group known as WAGs, a common, if sexist, tabloid acronym for the “wives and girlfriends” of professional athletes, particularly Premier League footballers.In 2019, Ms. Rooney suspected that a follower of her private Instagram account was selling information about her, gleaned from her posts, to The Sun, a Rupert Murdoch-owned London tabloid known for its pungent celebrity coverage. To suss out the supposed leaker, Ms. Rooney set a trap: She made her Instagram Stories visible only to Ms. Vardy and used the account to plant false information about herself. Then she waited to see if it ended up in the press.At the end of her monthslong sting operation, Ms. Rooney claimed that Ms. Vardy was the culprit. She leveled that accusation in a social media statement in the fall of 2019 that was widely shared. Because of her sleuthing tactics, Ms. Rooney became known as “Wagatha Christie,” a mash-up of WAG and Agatha Christie, the 20th-century mystery writer.Rebekah Vardy left the Royal Courts of Justice in London in May.Toby Melville/ReutersMs. Vardy issued a swift denial that she was the leaker. She then said that she had hired forensic computer experts to determine whether anyone else had access to her Instagram account. In June 2020, after failed mediation, Ms. Vardy filed a defamation lawsuit against Ms. Rooney in High Court, which oversees high-profile civil cases in Britain.This May, it went to court. The proceeding, formally called Vardy v. Rooney, became known as the Wagatha Christie Trial. The term was so common that it appeared in crawls on Sky News right next to “War in Ukraine.”Tabloid photographers and cable news correspondents flocked to the steps outside London’s Royal Courts of Justice for the nine-day event, which proved to be a fashion spectacle as much as whodunit.Ms. Vardy, 40, arrived in an assortment of finery, including a buttery yellow tweed suit by Alessandra Rich and an Alexander McQueen blazer. On her left foot, Ms. Rooney, 36, wore a medical boot, an ungainly plastic device that she paired with a Chanel loafer, a Gucci loafer and a Gucci mule. She had sustained a fracture in a fall at her house.Ms. Vardy testified for three days. “I didn’t give any information to a newspaper,” she said under questioning early in her testimony. “I’ve been called a leak, and it’s not nice.”The trial had plenty of TV-worthy plot twists. It was revealed in court that laptops were lost and that WhatsApp messages between Ms. Vardy and her agent, Caroline Watt — which apparently disparaged Ms. Rooney — had mysteriously disappeared. Ms. Vardy’s lawyer added that Ms. Watt had “regrettably” dropped an iPhone containing WhatsApp messages into the North Sea. Ms. Rooney’s lawyer, David Sherborne, replied that the mishap seemed to have resulted in the concealment of evidence.“The story is fishy indeed, no pun intended,” he said.Ms. Vardy told the court she could “neither confirm nor deny” what exactly had happened to her missing digital data. At another moment, she began a response with the phrase “if I’m honest,” causing Ms. Rooney’s barrister to snap: “I would hope you’re honest, because you’re sitting in a witness box.”The case drew so much media attention because WAGs — like the players on the “Real Housewives” franchise in the United States — loom large in the British cultural imagination. They are photographed constantly. They star in reality shows and have their own fast-fashion lines and false-eyelash businesses. A TV series inspired by their shopping habits, feuds and love lives, “Footballers Wives,” was a hit in the early 2000s.WAGs had a breakthrough moment in 2006, when a group of them enlivened the staid resort town Baden-Baden during that year’s World Cup, which took place in stadiums across Germany. The ringleader was Victoria Beckham, who had risen to fame as Posh Spice in the Spice Girls before marrying the great midfielder David Beckham. Also on the trip: the 20-year-old Coleen McLoughlin, who was dating Mr. Beckham’s teammate, Mr. Rooney, and would later marry him.The tabloids ate it up. Reports from Baden-Baden told of WAGs singing “We Are the Champions” from a hotel balcony, dancing on tabletops and chugging Champagne, vodka and Red Bull into the wee hours. In the daytime, the women went on epic shopping sprees and sunbathed as the paparazzi snapped away.When England lost in the quarterfinals to Portugal, some sports pundits unfairly blamed the WAGs for the defeat. Predictably, the tabloids that had made them into celebrities tried to tear them down. “The Empty World of the WAGs” was the headline of a finger-wagging piece in The Daily Mail.Years later, Wayne Rooney and Jamie Vardy played together for England, which added to the delicious awkwardness of the recent court proceedings.The trial fit snugly into a culture that sometimes revels in images of how foolish it can be — see also the popular TV show “Love Island.” It also touched on betrayal and lies, which were defining themes in Britain as Prime Minister Boris Johnson incurred fines for breaking lockdown rules, then announced that he would step down after his party pushed him out over other deceptions.The trial also presented the complexities of the British class system. Online jokes from those following the case homed in on Oxford-educated lawyers reading aloud text messages filled with profane terms from women who are often dismissed as shallow or “chavvy,” to borrow a word Ms. Vardy used in reference to a cousin of Mr. Rooney’s.Unlike this year’s other high-profile celebrity court battle, Depp v. Heard, these proceedings were not streamed live, which added to the appeal. Old-school courtroom sketches made the parties look like a potato, the moon and, according to one commentator, “Norman Bates’s mother.” More

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      Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini Acquitted of Fraud in Swiss Trial

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      Blatter, the former president of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, and Platini, his onetime ally, were charged over a $2 million payment that prosecutors had labeled a bribe.Sepp Blatter, the former president of FIFA, and his onetime ally Michel Platini were acquitted of fraud on Friday in the latest attempt by Swiss prosecutors to win a conviction in a sprawling, seven-year investigation into corruption at the highest levels of world soccer.The trial, held in the southern Swiss city of Bellinzona, was related to a $2 million payment arranged in 2011 by Blatter, who led world soccer’s governing body for 17 years, to Platini, a former France player who was at the time the president of European soccer’s governing body and a potential heir to Blatter as the most powerful executive in the sport.Prosecutors had labeled the payment a bribe, saying that it was made around the time Blatter was standing for re-election. Blatter and Platini denied wrongdoing; they have long maintained that the money was owed to Platini for work done over several years.NEW | Ex FIFA supremo Sepp Blatter hails “victory” after being acquitted of fraud here in Switzerland pic.twitter.com/DjtYtARANY— Dan Roan (@danroan) July 8, 2022
      In a statement after the verdict, the court said that while there were “many well-founded suspicions” before the case was brought to trial, the versions presented by Blatter and Platini of what had occurred created “serious doubts” around the case made by prosecutors.And in another embarrassing blow for the Swiss authorities, the court ruled that Blatter and Platini were entitled to payment of about $20,000 for what it described as a moral injury. The court said Platini waived the payment, but that both men also would receive payments for their legal costs.A smiling Blatter was engulfed by news media as he left the courthouse. He raised both arms in the air, reminiscent of a gesture he used frequently during his days as FIFA president, to declare victory.“I am a happy man,” Blatter said, before thanking the judges. “They have analyzed the situation and they have explained why both of us haven’t done anything.”The criminal charges of fraud, criminal mismanagement and forgery against Blatter and Platini came after a multiyear investigation into the $2 million payment, which came to light in 2015 after prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice revealed corrupt practices at FIFA dating back at least two decades.The American investigation resulted in the arrest and conviction of dozens of powerful soccer officials and marketing executives on charges that included racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Blatter was not among those charged at the time, and while he has for years been the subject of various investigations, the fraud allegations over the payment to Platini marked the first time that he had actually been indicted on criminal charges.The failure to prove the charges against Blatter and Platini, though, shined yet more light on failures by the Swiss justice system to win convictions in cases related to the FIFA scandal. Swiss authorities had with great fanfare raided FIFA’s offices in 2015, shortly after the Justice Department unsealed its sweeping indictment outlining decades of corruption at soccer’s governing body, and Swiss prosecutors claim to have opened dozens of separate investigations into the organization’s activities.So far, however, they have successfully prosecuted only one former FIFA official, a banker and a Greek television executive. None of those defendants have faced prison sentences.The $2 million payment to Platini came as Blatter faced a strong challenge for the FIFA presidency from a Qatari billionaire, Mohamed bin Hammam, who at the time was head of soccer in Asia. Blatter and Platini both said that the money was a belated payment related to work that Platini, the captain of France’s 1984 European Championship-winning team, had done for Blatter after he was elected FIFA president for the first time, in 1998.Michel Platini outside court before the verdict. He said the ruling came “after seven years of lies and manipulation.”Arnd Wiegmann/ReutersDuring the trial, Blatter told the court that the money was part of a “gentlemen’s agreement” that he had made with Platini, who had agreed to advise him in return for about $1 million a year. The payment of the money would come “later,” Blatter said of their agreement.“When Mr. Blatter asked me to be his adviser, he asked me what salary I wanted,” Platini later testified. “I was surprised that he asked me this question and I said to him, ‘I want a million.’”Blatter, 86, and Platini, 67, had faced as much as five years in prison if convicted.Both men were eventually barred from the game by FIFA’s disciplinary system, though their original bans were later reduced on appeal. Those were to have expired in October, but a new suspension, imposed on Blatter on different grounds, took effect when it ended, meaning that he will be barred from the game until 2028, when he will be 92.After the verdict, Platini said that justice had been done “after seven years of lies and manipulation.”He has previously taken aim at the current FIFA management led by his former deputy, Gianni Infantino. Infantino vaulted from a place-holder candidate for FIFA’s presidency to its leader when Platini first faced accusations in 2015 and after Blatter resigned in the wake of the Justice Department investigation and arrests.Platini suggested that he would continue fighting to clear his name; he filed a criminal complaint against Infantino in April. “In this case, there are culprits who did not appear during this trial,” he said. “Let them count on me, we will meet again. Because I will not give up and I will go all the way in my quest for truth.”Blatter may be headed back to court, too. He faces the potential of another trial after the Swiss authorities informed him in June 2020 that he had been labeled an “accused person” in case involving the suspected misuse of funds after loaning $1 million to a soccer official in the Caribbean.That official, Jack Warner, has been fighting extradition to the United States after being named in the Justice Department’s indictment. More

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      Australia Releases Judges’ Reasoning on Djokovic Expulsion

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      In ruling in favor of the Australian government’s decision to revoke the visa of Novak Djokovic, the panel of three judges who oversaw the case reasserted the broad authority of the country’s immigration minister and found that he had acted in a way that was both reasonable and rational, according to the ruling released on Thursday.The court’s decision, which extinguished Mr. Djokovic’s chance of winning a record 21st men’s Grand Slam title in Melbourne this year, concluded a volatile saga that prompted debate over immigration law, celebrity entitlement and vaccinations.The ruling, released by the Federal Court of Australia, was the first public statement of the court’s reasoning.“An iconic world tennis star may influence people of all ages, young or old, but perhaps especially the young and the impressionable, to emulate him,” the panel of three judges found. “This is not fanciful; it does not need evidence.”The court noted the broad authority of the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, to control entry into the country and found he was well within his rights to cancel Mr. Djokovic’s visa on the grounds of “health and good order.”The legal question, the judges said, was not whether Mr. Djokovic actually posed a risk to health, safety and good order to the country, but whether Mr. Hawke was “satisfied” that his presence in the country might amount to one.Once held up as an example of how nations could keep Covid cases low, Australia is now tackling its most severe surge since the pandemic began.Ultimately, Mr. Hawke’s reasons for revoking the visa — in part, that Mr. Djokovic’s position as a sporting role model who chose to remain unvaccinated against Covid-19 could “foster anti-vaccination sentiment” — were not “irrational or illogical or not based on relevant material,” the three judges said.Though Mr. Hawke did not have to provide his reasons for canceling Mr. Djokovic’s visa, the judgment said they were “carefully drafted,” and showed that he had exercised the discretionary power lawfully.“Another person in the position of the minister may have not canceled Mr. Djokovic’s visa,” the judges wrote. “The minister did.” More

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      Djokovic Returns to Warm Embrace in Home Country of Serbia

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      Novak Djokovic’s deportation from Australia over his vaccination status could signal future difficulties in his quest to win a record 21st tennis Grand Slam title.BELGRADE, Serbia — Novak Djokovic, undone in his quest for a 10th Australian Open tennis championship by his decision to remain unvaccinated against Covid-19, returned on Monday to the warm embrace of his home nation of Serbia even as his future in the sport was shrouded in uncertainty.He landed in Belgrade a day after being deported from Australia following a decision by the Australian government to revoke his visa out of concern that he might inspire anti-vaccination sentiment.As he slipped out a private exit at Nikola Tesla International Airport in Belgrade to avoid a crowd of waiting reporters, nearly two weeks of legal wrangling, political posturing and intense media focus came to a rather subdued end.The few dozen supporters who made their way to the airport waved flags, chanted their support for Mr. Djokovic and complained that their hero had been mistreated.One of them, Simon Avramov, came with his wife and two small children.“The world could not let someone from this small country be a champion,” he said.But if Mr. Djokovic chooses to remain unvaccinated, it will not just be Australia where he might have trouble playing. His quest to win a record 21st Grand Slam title could be in jeopardy, as other nations also have rules on allowing in travelers who are unvaccinated.The swirling drama in Australia — which transcended the world of sport as it became part of a broader debate about civil liberties and collective responsibility — might be only the first chapter in the tennis star’s saga.The French Open is the next major tournament on the calendar, due to start in May, and France’s sports ministry said on Monday it would not grant exemptions to its latest rules on vaccine passes, which it noted applied to professional players as well as spectators.But a tournament representative also said the situation might change before the event was held.In Australia, where Mr. Djokovic has been the dominant force for the past decade, he may not be allowed back for three years.Prime Minister Scott Morrison told an Australian radio station on Monday that Mr. Djokovic might be allowed to enter sooner under the “right circumstances.”The minister for home affairs, Karen Andrews, said she had not ruled out an exemption.“Any application will be reviewed on its merits,” she said.Mr. Djokovic had presented evidence when he first landed in Australia that he was exempt from the nation’s vaccination mandate because he had been previously infected with the virus.As soon as he landed, however, his visa was challenged by border agents and then revoked by the government. Mr. Djokovic appealed that decision, and a court ruled in his favor.The Novak Djokovic Standoff With AustraliaCard 1 of 5A vaccine exemption question. More

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      Novak Djokovic’s Family ‘Grateful’ After Tennis Star Wins Appeal

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      Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world.Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. More