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China will allow all couples to have three children in hopes of slowing aging population - WDSU New Orleans
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Netanyahu hailed the Republican South Carolina senator, thanking him for his support during a press conference, where the two stood side-by-side.
"No one has done more for Israel than you, Senator Lindsey Graham, stalwart champion of our alliance and we have no better friend," Netanyahu told Graham.
He went on to thank Graham for the work he's done on Israeli defense, security and Iran.
"You've been a tremendous friend and a tremendous ally," Netanyahu added.
"No one has done more for Israel than you, Sen. @LindseyGrahamSC, a stalwart champion of our alliance and we have no better friend. I want to thank you for everything you've been doing over the years on our defenses, our security, on Iran. You've been a tremendous friend and ally pic.twitter.com/Nw1vulBLHt
Graham returned the favor, commending Netanyahu and his country for working to keep America safe.
"The eyes and ears of America is Israel," Graham said. "Nobody does more to protect America from radical Islam than our friends in Israel."
As he held up a sign that read, "More for Israel," Graham asked, "So what can you expect, my friends in Israel, in the next coming days and weeks from Washington? More."
Great meeting this morning in Jerusalem with @IsraeliPM Netanyahu.
Graham's trip to Israel comes after Israel and Hamas engaged in 11 days of violence that marked the worst escalation between the two in years. A cease-fire was called earlier this month.
Celtics radio commentator Cedric Maxwell had just called the final seconds of Boston’s 141-126 Game 4 loss to the Nets Sunday night when he looked down on the floor and could not believe his eyes. He turned to play-by-play partner Sean Grande.
“I said, ‘Oh no, he didn’t,’ ” Maxwell said Monday. “Kyrie [Irving] just went to the logo and wiped his foot like he was wiping off some poop.”
Irving had just scored 39 points to lead his team to the win and a commanding 3-1 series edge. As he walked toward midcourt to greet some teammates, he used his left foot to stomp on the face of the leprechaun on the Celtics logo. Maxwell was stunned.
“It had nothing to do with the competition, not for you to go wipe your feet on the logo,” he said. “It didn’t matter if it was a white man, if it was a zebra, if it was a squirrel. I didn’t care what it was. It was just the fact that you didn’t need to do that, and you’re bringing attention to yourself.
“You played a great game, you won, what is the point? What really is the point? Like I said, Kyrie is a great player. Why the classless act?”
About a minute later, Cole Buckley, a 21-year-old Celtics fan from Braintree, threw a water bottle at Irving and nearly hit him in the head. Buckley was arrested and charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. That incident became the night’s primary story line, and any comparison to stepping on a painted logo seemed unfair.
Maxwell, the MVP of the 1981 NBA Finals with the Celtics, said there was no reason to put the moments side by side. He believes Buckley was wrong and should be punished, and he also believes that Irving went too far, even if he had spent most of these two games in Boston being booed and heckled and showered with derisive chants.
“The people were wrong about some of the things they said to him, too,” Maxwell said. “When they said, ‘Kyrie sucks,’ that bothered me. When they said ‘[expletive] Kyrie,’ that really bothered me, because we had fans there who were younger kids. So I didn’t appreciate that at all. That crossed the line too with me.
“But there was still no reason at all for Kyrie to go out to the logo of the Celtics and essentially wipe his foot like he has just stepped in some dog crap. That, to me, was classless from a great player. There’s no place for it in the game.”
Celtics Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett also was irritated by Irving’s act and posted about it on Instagram Monday afternoon.
“So nobody gonna say anything about kyrie stomping Lucky?” he said. “We just gonna act like we didn’t see that. [What’s] going on … You can’t do that. That’s not [cool] on no level. All of us need to be better.”
Two are doubtful
Kemba Walker and Robert Williams are both listed as doubtful for Game 5 Tuesday.
Walker is dealing with a bone bruise on his left knee and Williams has been slowed by a sprained ankle and a lingering turf toe injury. Both players sat out the Celtics’ 141-126 Game 4 loss Sunday night.
Walker’s injury occurred during the Game 2 loss last Tuesday. He played in Game 3 Friday but began to experience significant soreness Saturday. Williams sat out five of the final six regular-season games because of the turf toe. He was slowed by the injury in the playoffs before being sidelined by a sprained ankle in the opening minutes of Game 3.
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June 01, 2021 at 02:57AM
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Kyrie Irving’s gesture was ‘classless,’ says Cedric Maxwell, but fans were out of line, too - The Boston Globe
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Allowing couples in China to have up to three children rather than two will help the country counteract a population that's shifting towards the elderly, the government says. STR/AFP via Getty Images
STR/AFP via Getty Images
BEIJING - China will now allow married couples to have up to three children as the country attempts to halt a declining birthrate.
The policy is a dramatic change for a country which, less than a decade ago, still performed forced abortions and sterilizations of women who had more than one child. The new three child limit raises the previous ceiling of two children. It is a recognition from the country's top leaders that China will need to undertake drastic measures to counter a rapidly aging society.
"Implementing the policy and its relevant supporting measures will help improve China's population structure, actively respond to the aging population, and preserve the country's human resource advantages," China's Politburo, a top Communist Party governing body, wrote in a statement published on China's state news agency Xinhua on Monday.
Only five years ago, China officially ended its One Child policy, a raft of restrictions that for more than three decades strictly limited couples to only one child. Those who had two or more children in violation of the policy were fined heavily. Pregnant women were sometimes effectively kidnapped by local family planning officials who cajoled, intimidated, or forced women to end the birth.
China's latest census figures released this year show the country's birthrate has dropped to 1.3 live births per woman, far below the rate of 2.1 most demographers agree is needed to sustain a population at its current level.
Meanwhile, Chinese society is now aging faster than it can produce new workers, threatening to halt economic growth and bankrupt state pension funds. China's latest census shows the proportion of people between 15 and 59 in 2020 declined by about 7 percentage points from 2010, while that of people 60 or older rose by more than 5 percentage points.
Yet the country's ruling Communist Party has decided to retain an upper ceiling on family sizes, despite recommendations from China's central bank to let people have as many children as they want.
The news that the government was now allowing three-child families was initially unclear in China. Popular Chinese social media site Weibo disabled the ability to read the thousands of comments left under news items about the family planning policy change due to what they alleged was "abnormal content".
"As slow as our population growth may be, we still have 1.4 billion people, which is more than the Western countries combined," Chinese state media tabloid Global Times wrote in an editorial this week. "China remains young as a rising nation. This won't change in the long term."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming out swinging against the coalition of opposition groups that have come together to oust him, calling it the “fraud of the century.”
In televised remarks to the Israeli people Sunday night, the defiant leader made it clear he was not going down without a fight.
“This is not unity, healing or democracy. This is an opportunistic government. A government of capitulation, a government of fraud, a government of inertia. A government like this must not be formed,” the Israeli leader said of the unity pact between opposition groups to oust him after 12 years in power.
By Monday morning, top negotiators for the major parties involved had hit snags in discussions about power-sharing, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Pedestrians pass through an area destroyed in an airstrike prior to a cease-fire that halted an 11-day conflict between Gaza’s Hamas rulers and Israel, Thursday, May 27, 2021, in Gaza City.AP Photo/John MinchilloA man looks out from his destroyed home just over a week after a cease-fire was reached between Gaza’s Hamas rulers and Israel.AP Photo/Felipe DanaIsraeli right-wing activists chant slogans and hold signs during a demonstration against the possibility of forming a new government in Tel Aviv, Israel on May 30, 2021.AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner
Still, the coalition appears to mark the greatest challenge to Netanyahu’s hold on power as prime minister.
The coalition, put together following weeks of bipartisan negotiations, was organized after Israel came under attack by a barrage of rockets launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip this month, sending residents fleeing for shelter as air raid sirens blared across Israel’s cities.
Hamas claimed the attacks came in response to a clash between Israeli police and Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque at the close of Ramadan.
Leader of the Yemina party, Naftali Bennett, delivers a political statement in the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament), in Jerusalem, Israel on May 30, 2021.EPA/YONATAN SINDEL / POOL
Hamas, an Islamic fundamentalist offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, took Gaza in the 2007 Palestinian civil war against the less-radical leadership of the Palestinian Authority.
Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted many of the rockets, with the streaks of interceptor missiles lighting up the sky.
The outbreak of violence was the worst fighting between Israel and the terror group since their 2014 war.
Opposition leader and Chairman of Israel’s Yesh Atid party Yair Lapid speaks during a weekly party meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on May 24, 2021.GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images
A cease-fire was brokered just before the end of last weekend, and was holding as of one week later Monday.
A former ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that he would seek to form a coalition government with the Israeli leader's opponents, taking a major step toward ending the rule of the longtime premier.
The dramatic announcement by Naftali Bennett, leader of the small hardline Yamina party, set the stage for a series of steps that could push Netanyahu and his dominant Likud party into the opposition in the coming week.
While Bennett and his new partners, headed by opposition leader Yair Lapid, still face some obstacles, the sides appeared to be serious about reaching a deal and ending the deadlock that has plunged the country into four elections in the past two years.
"It's my intention to do my utmost in order to form a national unity government along with my friend Yair Lapid, so that, God willing, together we can save the country from a tailspin and return Israel to its course," Bennett said.
The pair have until Wednesday to complete a deal in which each is expected to serve two years as prime minister in a rotation deal, with Bennett holding the job first. Lapid's Yesh Atid party said negotiating teams were to meet later Sunday.
Bennett, a former top aide to Netanyahu who has held senior Cabinet posts, shares the prime minister's hard-line ideology. He is a former leader of the West Bank settlement movement and heads a small party whose base includes religious and nationalist Jews. Yet he has had a strained and complicated relationship with his one-time mentor due to personal differences.
Naftali Bennett seen January 22, 2013, in Ramat Gan, Israel.Oren Ziv / Getty Images
Bennett said there was no feasible way after the deadlocked March 23 election to form a right-wing government favored by Netanyahu. He said another election would yield the same results and said it was time to end the cycle.
"A government like this will succeed only if we work together as a group," he said. He said everyone "will need to postpone fulfilling part of their dreams. We will focus on what can be done, instead of fighting all day on what's impossible."
If Bennett and Lapid and their other partners can wrap up a deal, it would end, at least for the time being, the record-setting tenure of Netanyahu, the most dominant figure in Israeli politics over the past three decades. Netanyahu has served as prime minister for the past 12 years and also held an earlier term in the late 1990s.
In his own televised statement, Netanyahu accused Bennett of betraying the Israeli right wing and urged nationalist politicians not to join what he called a "leftist government."
"A government like this is a danger to the security of Israel, and is also a danger to the future of the state," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen Wednesday, May 19, 2021.Sebastian Scheiner / AP
Despite his electoral dominance, Netanyahu has become a polarizing figure since he was indicted on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in late 2019. Each of the past four elections was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu's fitness to rule, and each ended in deadlock.
Netanyahu is desperate to stay in power while he is on trial. He has used his office as a stage to rally his base and lash out against police, prosecutors and the media.
In order to form a government, a party leader must secure the support of a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament. Because no single party controls a majority on its own, coalitions are usually built with smaller partners. Thirteen parties of various sizes are in the current parliament.
As leader of the largest party, Netanyahu was given the first opportunity by the country's figurehead president to form a coalition. But he was unable to secure a majority with his traditional religious and nationalist allies.
Netanyahu even attempted to court a small Islamist Arab party but was thwarted by a small ultranationalist party with a racist anti-Arab agenda. Although Arabs make up some 20% of Israel's population, an Arab party has never before sat in an Israeli coalition government.
After Netanyahu's failure to form a government, Lapid was then given four weeks to cobble together a coalition. He has until Wednesday to complete the task.
While Bennett's Yamina party controls just seven seats in parliament, he has emerged as a kingmaker of sorts by providing the necessary support to secure a majority. If he is successful, his party would be the smallest to lead an Israeli government.
Lapid already faced a difficult challenge, given the broad range of parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc that have little in common. They include dovish left-wing parties, a pair of right-wing nationalist parties, including Bennett's Yamina, and most likely the Islamist United Arab List.
But with Wednesday's deadline looming, negotiations have kicked into high gear. Lapid has reached coalition deals with three other parties so far. If he finalizes a deal with Bennett, the remaining partners are expected to quickly fall into place.
They would then have roughly one week to present their coalition to parliament for a formal vote of confidence allowing it to take office.
Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said Netanyahu will try to undermine those efforts until the end.
Netanyahu's main strategy, he said, would be to try to appeal to hard-liners in both Bennett's party and New Hope, another hard-line party led by a former Netanyahu confidant, to withdraw their support for the new coalition. A defection of just one or two lawmakers could prevent Lapid from mustering a majority and force another election.
"Anything might happen," Plesner said. "I would wait for the final vote to go through."
Even if Lapid and Bennett manage to put together a government, Netanyahu is unlikely to disappear, Plesner said.
Netanyahu could remain as opposition leader, working to exploit the deep ideological differences among his opponents to cause the coalition to fracture.
"History teaches us it would be unwise to write him off," he said.
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The four-time Grand Slam tournament winner wrote on Instagram that she had suffered from bouts of depression since 2018 and that she will “take some time” away from the tennis court.
PARIS — The weeklong confrontation between Naomi Osaka, the second-ranked woman in tennis, and leaders of the sport’s four Grand Slam tournaments turned bitter on Monday when Ms. Osaka withdrew from the French Open citing concerns for her mental health.
The move was a dramatic turn in the high-stakes standoff between the most powerful officials in tennis and Ms. Osaka. The 23-year-old is not only the world’s highest paid female athlete but a generational star who has quickly become the most magnetic figure in tennis.
“I think now the best thing for the tournament, the other players and my well-being is that I withdraw so that everyone can get back to focusing on the tennis going on in Paris,” Ms. Osaka said in an Instagram post.
It is the first time in professional tennis that a star as significant as Ms. Osaka who has not suffered a physical injury has walked away in the middle of an event as big as the French Open, and Gilles Moretton, president of the French Federation of Tennis, called her withdrawal “unfortunate.”
She had never before spoken in public about her depression, which she said began after her 2018 victory over Serena Williams at the United States Open before a boisterous crowd that was firmly behind her opponent.
“I never wanted to be a distraction and I accept that my timing was not ideal and my message could have been clearer,” she added. “The truth is that I have suffered long bouts of depression since the US Open in 2018 and I have had a really hard time coping with that.” She did not indicate when she would return to tournament play.
Mr. Moretten said in a statement that tournament organizers wished her the “quickest possible recovery.”
“We are sorry and sad for Naomi Osaka,” he said. “We remain very committed to all athletes’ well-being and to continually improving every aspect of players’ experience in our tournament, including with the media, like we have always strived to do.”
The dispute between Ms. Osaka and tournament officials began Wednesday when she announced she would not participate in post-match news conferences during the French Open because she said negative questions about her play affected her mental health. It came to a head on Sunday after her first-round win, and she made good on her promise to skip the news conference.
Within hours Ms. Osaka was fined $15,000 by the French Open’s tournament referee, and the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments — the Australian, French and United States Opens and Wimbledon — threatened that she could be expelled from the French Open and face harsher penalties if she would not fulfill her media obligations.
Players are subject to fines of up to $20,000 for skipping a news conference, though the fines have historically been far less. Still, tour officials and most players have long believed that news conferences are important for the promotion of the sport.
“Press and players and the tournaments comes hand in hand,” Victoria Azarenka, a two-time Grand Slam champion, said. “I think it’s very important in developing our sport, in promoting our sport.” She added that there were moments when the media did need to be more compassionate.
Ms. Williams said has been through many difficult news conferences during her career but viewed the experiences as having made her stronger. “I feel for Naomi, and I wish I could give her a hug because I’ve been in those situations,” the 23-time Grand Slam tournament winner said. “You have to let her handle it the way she wants to in the best way she can.”
In her social media post last Wednesday, Ms. Osaka said that having to answer questions after a defeat was harmful to her mental health.
“If the organizations think they can keep saying, ‘do press or you’re going to get fined,’ and continue to ignore the mental health of the athletes that are the centerpiece of their cooperation then I just gotta laugh,” she wrote.
Last week the WTA Tour said it welcomed a dialogue with Ms. Osaka about mental health but stood by its position on press obligations for players. “Professional athletes have a responsibility to their sport and their fans to speak to the media surrounding their competition, allowing them the opportunity to share their perspective and tell their story,” the WTA said.
This is not the first time that Ms. Osaka, a private person who rarely grants interviews with the mainstream Western media, has taken a public stand on an issue. Last summer tennis officials suspended play at the Western & Southern Open after the four-time Grand Slam tournament winner announced she would not play her semifinal match to draw attention to the issue of police violence against Black people following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.
The suspension of play, a move that several sports undertook as athletes threatened a boycott, allowed Ms. Osaka to remain in the tournament. She won her postponed semifinal match and then defaulted the final because of an injury.
This time, however, the leaders of the sport’s most prestigious events refused to bend.
In the statement signed by Jayne Hrdlicka, the head of Tennis Australia; Mr. Moretton, president of the France Tennis Federation; Ian Hewitt, the chairman of the All England Lawn Tennis Club; and Mike McNulty, chairman of the United States Tennis Association; the officials said they had reached out to Ms. Osaka to open a discussion about both her well being and concerns she had about news conferences and mental health.
Ms. Osaka, they said, refused to engage with them, leaving them with no choice but to pursue significant penalties to help ensure that she did not gain an advantage over her competitors.
“We want to underline that rules are in place to ensure all players are treated exactly the same, no matter their stature, beliefs or achievement,” the officials stated. “As a sport there is nothing more important than ensuring no player has an unfair advantage over another, which unfortunately is the case in this situation if one player refuses to dedicate time to participate in media commitments while the others all honor their commitments.”
Osaka gave an on-court interview but did not do a news conference after her first-round match.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times
Though she skipped her post-match news conference on Sunday, Ms. Osaka did take three questions from an on-court interviewer, Fabrice Santoro, after the match and a few more queries on her way off the court from Wowow, the Japanese broadcaster with which she is under contract. Ms. Osaka plays for Japan and lives in the United States.
Ms. Osaka’s sister, Mari, a former professional tennis player, indicated in a post on Reddit that Naomi Osaka’s anxiety was caused in part by her struggles to win on clay courts like the one at the French Open. She said the press asks about her sister’s poor performance every time she plays on clay, which hurts her.
By avoiding news conferences Mari Osaka said, her sister could “block everything out. No talking to people who is going to put doubt in her mind.”
In her post on Monday, Noami Osaka described herself as an introverted person who suffers from anxiety before she has to speak with the press. She said she wrote to tournament officials privately to apologize for the distraction she had created and offered to speak with them after the tournament about potentially changing rules requiring players to engage with the media that she described as “outdated.”
Since the inception of social media more than a decade ago, sports stars, politicians and celebrities, especially those who are younger, have increasingly used it to speak directly to their fans. The pandemic, which has forced nearly all news conferences in sports to be held virtually, has accelerated the power shift, making the events that led to Ms. Osaka’s withdrawal from the tournament even more surprising.
Sofia Kenin, the player of the year on the women’s tour in 2020, said she respected Ms. Osaka’s decision, and acknowledged that the pressures of being a young star are intense.
“This is what you signed up for,” Ms. Kenin said. “This is sport. There’s expectations from the outside, sponsors, and everyone. You just have to somehow manage it.”
Ms. Osaka said she planned to take some time away from the tennis court. She did not specify whether she would play in the next Grand Slam tournament, Wimbledon, which begins in just four weeks, or just two weeks after the conclusion of the French Open.
Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam that is played on grass, another surface where Ms. Osaka’s performance has not matched her dominance on hard courts. She has never made it past the third round at Wimbledon, which is widely considered the most important championship in the sport.
“I’ll see you when I see you,” she wrote to end her Instagram post.
Celtics fans weren’t the only ones angry with Kyrie Irving for stomping on Boston’s center-court logo featuring “Lucky the Leprechaun” on Sunday, a moment that took a backseat to a fan later throwing a water bottle at the Nets star.
“So nobody going to say anything about Kyrie Stomping ‘Lucky’?” Celtics great Kevin Garnett wrote Monday on Instagram. “We just gonna act like we didn’t see that.
“You can’t do that,” added the Hall of Famer, who won a title with Boston in 2008. “That’s not cool on no level .. All of us need to be better.”
The clip of Irving stamping his left shoe on the emblem made the rounds on social media after a Celtics fan in a Garnett jersey nearly hit Irving with a water bottle as he walked down the tunnel toward the locker room following Brooklyn’s win.
The fan, 21-year-old Massachusetts native Cole Buckley, was banned from TD Garden and will be arraigned Tuesday on a charge of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, local police told reporters.
But Garnett appeared to only criticize Irving, who had 39 points Sunday and was heavily booed both games in Boston.
The 29-year-old Irving spent two tumultuous seasons with the organization that featured him reportedly calling out younger teammates and struggling in the 2019 playoffs.
Kevin Garnett (inset) was not happy with Kyrie Irving stomping on the Celtics logo.AP (2)
He left that summer to sign a four-year, $136 million contract with the Nets to team up with fellow star Kevin Durant.
The Nets are one game away from eliminating Boston in the first round of the playoffs.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid was tasked by the country’s figurehead president with forming a government earlier this month after Netanyahu failed to do so in the aftermath of the March 23 elections. | Oded Balilty/AP Photo
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM — A constellation of Israeli political parties seeking to unseat longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened Monday to hash out power-sharing agreements two days before a deadline.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said at a meeting of his Yesh Atid party that “a great many obstacles” stood before a prospective government. But he said the various members of the anti-Netanyahu coalition are trying “to see if we can find in the coming days wise compromises for the sake of the big aim.”
Lapid was tasked by the country’s figurehead president with forming a government earlier this month after Netanyahu failed to do so in the aftermath of the March 23 elections, the fourth in two years.
On Sunday, Naftali Bennett, head of the small, hard-line nationalist Yamina party, said he would work with Lapid to form a broad unity government and “save the country from a tailspin and return Israel to its course.” Lapid has already secured the support of two smaller liberal parties and a secular ultranationalist faction.
Bennett and Lapid have until Wednesday to hammer out a deal in which the pair split the premiership — with Bennett serving the first two years and Lapid the following two.
No political party has ever won an outright majority in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, forcing smaller factions to band together to form a coalition with more than 61 seats.
If Lapid and his allies — which range from hard-line nationalists to liberal Zionists and a small Islamist party — can overcome their differences and seal a deal, it would spell the end of Netanyahu’s rule, for the time being.
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having held office since 2009, as well as a brief stint in the late 1990s. Despite his Likud party being the largest faction in the Knesset, he has become a divisive figure. Israel has held four parliamentary elections in the past two years, all seen as a referendum on his fitness to rule.
The long-serving prime minister has held onto power despite being indicted on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in 2019. Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing and has refused to step down from office while on trial.
After Bennett announced his intention to join forces with Lapid, Netanyahu lashed out in a nationally televised speech, saying that such a government “is a danger to the security of Israel, and is also a danger to the future of the state.”
Lapid responded to Netanyahu’s remarks on Monday, saying they were “reckless and dangerous, that of a man who has lost the brakes.”
“If you want to know why we’re determined to [bring] a change of government in Israel, go listen to that speech by Netanyahu,” Lapid said, referring to Netanyahu’s claim that a government without him would be “dangerous” and growing calls to violence by some against the prime minister’s political opponents and others.
Lapid pointed to the security details assigned to the prime minister’s political rivals, reporters and state prosecutors in Netanyahu’s corruption trial.
On Sunday, the Knesset Guard approved assigning a personal bodyguard to senior Yamina party politician Ayelet Shaked amid increasing threats of physical violence. Protesters outside Shaked’s home held signs that read “Leftist traitors.” Bennett received a personal security detachment earlier this month.
Gideon Saar, a former member of Netanyahu’s Likud party who split away ahead of the March elections, said his New Hope was “doing everything in our power” to reach a compromise and form a government, but that such an outcome remained uncertain.
Saar railed against the “incitement” against politicians seeking to assemble a coalition without Netanyahu, saying the prime minister “and his people are engaging in wild de-legitimization of a government that has yet to arise.”
A woman mourns over 215 pairs of kids shoes outside Vancouver Art Gallery during a memorial May 29.
Calls are mounting for greater accountability and a search for more unmarked graves after the discovery last week of 215 bodies at a former residential school, one of more than 100 in Canada where Indigenous children were separated from their families.
The Tk’emlĂșps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation announced the discovery of the children's remains last week, found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Some of the children who died at the school, which closed in 1978, were as young as 3.
On Monday, Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said the find should be a "catalyst" for further work uncovering these graves at school sites throughout the country.
"It’s a prime opportunity to do this very, very important work in all the residential school grounds," he told reporters. "This has to be further researched and investigated. Kamloops is one school. There were over 130 residential schools that were operating across Canada."
For more than 100 years, thousands of Indigenous children were sent to residential schools across Canada, taken from their parents in an attempt to assimilate them. These schools, many run by religious institutions, operated as recently as 1996 and were rife with abuse. The Canadian government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was formed to examine the legacy of the schools, has identified at least 4,100 children who died of disease or by accident in these schools. It's estimated that the actual number of deaths could be more than 6,000.
The US government used similar boarding schools, forcing Native American children to live and learn away from their families, and systematically cutting them off from their communities and culture.
According to Bellegarde, survivors of the schools, as well as their communities, have told stories about mass graves for decades, "but nobody believed them because it was too horrific."
Rick Madonik / Toronto Star via Getty Images
A small memorial in front of the Queen's Park Legislative Building in Toronto
In its 2015 report, the Canadian commission called the schools an act of "cultural genocide." The report also came up with 94 calls to action for reconciliation, including six in regard to the children who died in residential schools. Recommended actions include creating an online registry of school cemeteries and making sure descendants know where their family members were buried.
That work hasn't been completed, and Bellegarde said government funding is necessary to move forward. The Tk’emlĂșps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation was only able to examine the Kamloops school grounds now with the help of a local government grant.
Hundreds of graves have been found at these sites before, although this latest discovery is particularly large, said Katherine A. Morton, an instructor and researcher in anti-colonial and Indigenous studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland. In addition to unmarked graves at the schools, many sites also purposely included cemeteries, she said.
"If you look at the blueprints for residential schools when they were first built, many blueprints indicated that there were plans for graveyards to be put in," she told BuzzFeed News. "You don’t build a cemetery into a high school for white kids."
She added that there were indications of mass abuse and deaths at these schools as early as the 1920s, but there was never any formal tracking of the violence while they were operational.
The residential schools are scattered across Canada, and some have now been demolished. Some First Nations have made independent attempts to search the sites for remains, but Morton agreed the biggest barrier is funding.
In 2009, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada requested federal funding to locate the graves of missing children, but that request was denied by the then-Conservative government.
Handout / Reuters
Pukatawagan Residential School in Manitoba in a 1960 archive photo
As Indigenous people mourned after last week's discovery, they also called on Canadians not to turn away from the grim reminder of a system that forcibly took children from their families.
"We call upon Canada, and all of those who call yourselves Canadians, to witness and recognize the truth of our collective history," said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, in a statement.
"This is the reality of the genocide that was, and is, inflicted upon us as Indigenous peoples by the colonial state. Today we honour the lives of those children, and hold prayers that they, and their families, may finally be at peace."
Chief Clarence Louie of the Syilx Okanagan Nation in British Columbia said the impact of the schools is still felt today by Indigenous people.
"The level of inhumane and criminal treatment of First Nation's children at the hands of colonial governments and organized religion is deeply disturbing," he said in a statement. "We are calling on the Province of British Columbia and Government of Canada to directly address these atrocities."
Across Canada, memorials have been created at legislative buildings and other sites, with people leaving pairs of shoes to symbolize each lost child.
In Winnipeg, shoes were placed at the Forks, a green space where the Red River and the Assiniboine River join together. Historically, it was an important place for trade and settlement by local First Nations.
Two hundred and fifteen pairs of shoes have been placed at the Oodena Circle @TheForks in #Winnipeg as a powerful tribute to the 215 children who didn’t make it home from the #KamloopsIndianResidentialSchool. Here is a look at the display:
Shoes were also placed at a former residential school in Ontario.
The stairs are filled with children's shoes and toys at Algoma U/Shingwauk Hall (former residential school) in honour of the 215 children's remains found at Kamloops Indian Residential School. Heartbreaking. đ
In both of Saskatchewan’s major cities, 215 shoes were placed on the front steps of prominent buildings, honouring the children whose remains were found at a Kamloops residential school late last week. A look at #yxe’s St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Cathedral:
In Ottawa, shoes were placed around the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for flags to be lowered across the country in mourning for the 215 children.
What should be done with the schools that remain standing is still a question. Several have been turned into memorials, while some people want to see them demolished.
"There’s got to be these ongoing conversations to ensure whatever happens, the ultimate decision is left up to the Indigenous nations closest to these sites," Morton said.
If you need support, the 24-hour Indian Residential School Survivors Crisis Line can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.
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The Remains Of 215 Indigenous Children Were Found At A Residential School. The Search For Graves Isn’t Over. - BuzzFeed News
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The LA Clippers arrived in Dallas down 0-2 in the series with their future clouded in uncertainty, but they left with home-court advantage and momentum thanks to Kawhi Leonard and Paul George playing the relentless style they envisioned when they joined forces.
For the second straight game, Leonard and George overwhelmed Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks, combining to score 45 points in the first three quarters to help the Clippers even this Western Conference first-round playoff series at 2-2 with a 106-81 rout on Sunday at American Airlines Center.
The Mavericks could not contain Leonard for the third straight game, as the All-Star forward made 11-of-15 shots and tallied 29 points and 10 rebounds. And George scored 13 of 20 points in the second quarter, when the Clippers opened a 48-29 lead with 6:58 left before halftime.
"I think we both have just done a great job of complementing each other," George said of him and Leonard leading the Clippers back into this series. "[Leonard] has been all-out driving and attacking and putting pressure on their bigs at the rim. Myself, as well. When he needs a break and a breather, now I am in attack mode. I think we are just doing a great job of countering each other.
"This is ultimately what we wanted to get to -- being able to share the court together and doing it on both ends together."
This was what Leonard, George and the Clippers envisioned when the two All-Stars became Clippers during the summer of 2019.
Leonard is playing at the postseason level that made him the NBA Finals MVP for a second time when he led the Toronto Raptors to a championship in 2019. He has been simply too strong and powerful for Dallas to stop, averaging 35.3 points in the past three games.
In leading the Clippers to the past two wins in Dallas, Leonard shot 24-for-32 combined in Games 3 and 4, and he has done the majority of his damage on drives into the paint.
But his message to the Clippers after they lost the first two games of the series at home was to step things up considerably on the defensive end. Doncic labored through a nerve issue in his neck on Sunday and shot 9-for-24 to finish with 19 points, six assists and six rebounds. But the Clippers were thrilled with their ability to slow down the Mavericks' other shooters who really shot lights out in Los Angeles.
Tim Hardaway Jr. missed 7 of 8 shots and scored just four points, Dorian Finney-Smith only had eight points and the Mavericks as a group missed 25 of 30 3-point attempts in Game 4. In the first two games of the series, Dallas took home-court advantage by making 35 of 70 (50%) attempts from behind the arc.
Since trailing 30-11 with 4:38 remaining in the first quarter of Game 3, the Clippers have outscored Dallas 213 to 159. Now, the Mavericks are the ones who have to find a way to turn things around or their season could quickly come to an end.
"We responded well," Leonard said of the team heeding his message to play better defense. "Especially coming back from that [30-11 deficit] in Game 3."
"The job is not done yet," he added, "so we got to keep having that even-keeled mindset and get ready for the next one."
The Clippers have pushed all the right buttons since they left Los Angeles, where they had no answer for Doncic. Clippers coach Tyronn Lue went to a small lineup and inserted Nicolas Batum in for center Ivica Zubac when the Mavericks started off Game 3 hot. The move allowed the Clippers to be able to switch defensively on Doncic, who had his way scoring with Zubac in front of him.
Lue began Game 4 with Batum in the starting five for Zubac, and the veteran forward responded with 10 points, five rebounds, four steals and two blocks. Batum said he studied film of Draymond Green and Boris Diaw in preparation on how to best use versatility as an undersized center.
With Batum helping on defense and moving the ball on offense, Leonard kept punishing the Mavericks with his drives, making his first five shots and scoring 10 points in the first quarter. George then took over in the second quarter.
Doncic tried to keep his team in it and had 15 points at the half, but Kristaps Porzingis, who finished with 18 points, was the only other Maverick to score in double figures in the first half.
The Clippers pushed their lead to 79-51 with 4:42 left in the third, as they took home-court advantage and all the momentum in this series back with them to Southern California.
Lue said the Clippers would show who they truly are in Game 3 with their backs against the wall. They backed his vow, as Batum said the Clippers never panicked despite being down 0-2 in the series and trailing 30-11 in the opening minutes of Game 3.
"I mean, we knew our mistakes," Batum said. "We just had to adjust. We knew what we had done wrong."
"It's just 2-2," Batum added. "We are right where we're supposed to be. We are supposed to be at 2-2, technically. So now, got to go home and take care of the home court and take care of this game on Wednesday or we can put ourselves in a bad situation if we don't do the job on Wednesday."
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Clippers' Kawhi Leonard, Paul George power win over Mavericks, seize back control of series - ESPN
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The longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history could soon be out of office after a diverse group of opposition parties said they’re ready to form a unity government to oust Benjamin Netanyahu after 12 straight years in power. Far-right politician Naftali Bennett, who leads the small hardline Yamina party, said he would join forces with centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid to form a coalition government. “It’s my intention to do my utmost in order to form a national unity government along with my friend Yair Lapid, so that, God willing, together we can save the country from a tailspin and return Israel to its course,” Bennett said. The announcement came after many outside observers had said the recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict would benefit Netanyahu’s ambitions to stay in power.
Bennett and Lapid have until Wednesday night to present their deal to Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin and then it would have to be endorsed by the Israeli Parliament. For now it looks like Bennett would head up the government first until the fall of 2023 with Lapid serving as foreign minister. They would then swap roles until there is a new election in 2025.
Netanyahu is likely to stay in politics if he is ousted and he made clear Sunday that he’s going to fight back as much as possible to try to stay in power. Shortly after Bennett made the announcement of the new coalition, Netanyahu called the plan “the fraud of the century” and accused Bennett of betraying his right-wing voters. “There is not a single person in Israel who would have voted for Naftali Bennett if they had known what he would do,” Netanyahu said. Eager to keep holding on to power, Netanyahu is likely to spend the next few days trying to pressure right-wing parties to reject the new coalition government.
If the coalition does move forward, it would join together a very ideologically diverse group of parties that range from left-wing to right-wing nationalist parties. Bennett, who wants to annex most of the occupied West Bank, also has a lot of differences with Lapid, a former TV news anchor who largely represents secular centrists. Those differences mean that the new government is likely to focus, at least at first, on economic policy rather than more divisive issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
LeBron James has set such an absurd standard in the postseason that his 21.8 points per game average against the Phoenix Suns thus far looks practically pedestrian. He scored 25 points in Sunday's Game 4 loss, his highest total of the series, but that puts this series in rather unfortunate company. James has had at least one game with 27 or more points in every playoff series of his career except for two: the 2007 NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs in which he was swept, and the 2011 Finals against the Dallas Mavericks in which he infamously melted down in an upset loss.
The Lakers might have been able to overcome LeBron's limited scoring if they were healthy, but near the end of Sunday's first half, Anthony Davis went down with a strained left groin. Considering the hyperextended right knee he suffered in Game 3, there is a reasonable chance he misses Game 5 entirely. Even with him, the Lakers have rarely been able to put forth an elite half-court offense. Without him? Things have gotten ugly. The Lakers scored only 15 points in the third quarter of Game 4. From Feb. 14 through March 18, the period they played with a healthy James but no Davis, the Lakers ranked 15th in the NBA in offense. That's not going to be good enough to beat an opponent as good as Phoenix.
That puts the onus on James to step up and take on a greater scoring load in Game 5, and he's up to the task. "These shoulders are built for a reason," James said after Game 4. "If there is going to be some more put on them, so be it. Win, lose or draw, I'm ready for the challenge."
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Complicating matters is the high ankle sprain James suffered earlier in the season. James played in only four regular-season games afterward and never topped the 25-point mark in any of them. Against Phoenix, he's flashed his typical athleticism in spurts, but he's never been able to display it for a full game. That he's been guarded largely by possible All-Defensive selection Mikal Bridges hasn't helped either.
James is 36 years old. He's now playing without his best teammate on a roster designed to support two stars, not carrying the load when one is out. He's injured and playing against the team with the second-best record in basketball. His playoff track record is beyond reproach, and it was only a year ago that he quieted critics and demanded his "damn respect" after a sensational title run. But Father Time is undefeated. James has overcome his physical limitations time and time again, but doing so this time would be one of his most impressive feats yet.
But Frank Vogel has seen this movie before. "When I competed against the Miami Heat and either [Dwyane] Wade or [Chris] Bosh was out, and there were more touches for Bron, that wasn't always necessarily a good thing for my Pacers teams," the Lakers coach said. In that sense, there could be a silver lining to Davis' injury. If it gets James going, that could have major benefits for the Lakers. in the later rounds, and Vogel's Pacers were far stronger defensively than these Suns are.
James once made the Finals without Kevin Love and nearly won them without Kyrie Irving. His 2007 and 2018 Cleveland Cavaliers are two of the weakest rosters ever to reach the Finals. Every time he's been counted out, he's managed to find ways to win. If the Lakers are going to escape this series, this time can't be any different.
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Lakers vs. Suns: LeBron James on carrying the load if Anthony Davis misses time: 'I'm ready for the challenge' - CBS Sports
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Irving, who was walking into an arena tunnel when he was almost hit, had recently asked fans not to be belligerent or racist when the Nets traveled to Boston.
A fan in a Boston Celtics jersey was arrested Sunday after a bottle nearly struck Nets guard Kyrie Irving in the head following Boston’s Game 4 loss at TD Garden. It was the latest in a string of unruly fan behavior as N.B.A. arenas begin opening to near full capacity for the playoffs.
Last week, before the best-of-seven series shifted to Boston, Irving, a former Celtics player who is Black, had anticipated booing but had asked fans not to be belligerent or racist. For decades, Black athletes in multiple sports, including the Celtics legend Bill Russell, have spoken about the racism they’ve experienced in Boston.
“We claim that we care about each other as human beings, but we just call things out before they happen like I did the other day,” Irving said after Sunday’s game. “I’m telling people, ‘Just keep it basketball.’”
Irving stressed that he expected fans to root for their home teams and that most were eager to watch quality athletes perform. But he said sports were now at a crossroads.
“It’s been that way in history, in terms of entertainment, performers and sports for a long period of time and just underlying racism and just treating people like they’re in a human zoo,” Irving said. “Throwing stuff at them, saying things. There’s a certain point where it just gets to be too much.”
Irving was heading into an arena tunnel after the Nets beat the Celtics, 141-126, when an object that appeared to be a water bottle sailed just past his head. Multiple videos on social media showed a person in a Celtics jersey being led away by the police.
The bottle-throwing followed a run of incidents from last Wednesday night: In Philadelphia, a fan poured popcorn on the head of Washington Wizards guard Russell Westbrook as he left the game with an injury. In New York, a fan spat on Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young at Madison Square Garden. In Utah, security ejected three fans for obscene behavior toward the family of Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant.
“We’ve had times in history when people have reacted and gone in the crowd, then we’re wrong and we need to be civilized and we need to keep our calm and we need to keep our cool and it’s reflected on us,” Irving said. “Just want to keep it upfront and truthful, and it’s just unacceptable for that stuff to be happening, but we move on.”
Following Wednesday’s incidents, the N.B.A. released a statement saying its fan code of conduct would be “vigorously enforced.” The fans involved in those incidents have been barred indefinitely from the arenas.
“Anything could have happened with that water bottle being thrown at me, but my brothers were surrounding me,” Irving said. “I had people in the crowd. So, just trying to get home to my wife and my kids.”
