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At least one judge has seen the transphobic hysteria for what it is. In denying a request to upend this week’s Mountain West volleyball tournament and/or force San Jose State to leave one of its players home, a federal judge called out the disingenuousness of the lawsuit. And in doing so, behind this sudden groundswell of opposition to transgender women athletes. “The Court finds their delay in filing this action and seeking emergency relief related to the MWC Tournament weakens their arguments," U.S. District Judge S. Kato Crews wrote in his ruling issued Monday. “The movants could have sought injunctive relief much earlier if the exigencies of the circumstances required mandatory court intervention.” For three years now, San Jose State’s volleyball team has included a transgender woman. (Neither the young woman nor San Jose State has confirmed it but, as Crews pointed out, no one has denied it, either.) The Mountain West Conference created a participation policy for transgender athletes back in 2022, which included forfeit as punishment for refusing to play a team with a transgender athlete, and athletic directors at every school in the conference agreed to it. Yet not until this season, after the player had been outed by a right-wing website and then thrown under the bus by one of her own teammates, did the howling and forfeits begin. This is an important point, so I’m going to repeat it: For two years, the San Jose State player was on the volleyball team and the world continued to spin. No one was injured, no one was assaulted in a locker room, no legion of transgender women showed up in formation behind her to take over women’s sports. The San Jose State player practiced and played and no one, not her teammates and not her opponents, took issue with it. Whether that’s because no one realized she’s transgender or are two sides of the same coin. So what changed? Other than teammate Brooke Slusser and the other grifters deciding that demonizing a young woman would get them a spot on Fox News? . Not a damn thing. If the San Jose State player was such a threat, if the Mountain West’s transgender participation policy was so onerous, surely the athletes and the schools who filed the lawsuit would have done so immediately. Unless, of course, this was all for show. In which case, waiting until the 11 hour would add fuel to their faux outrage. “At the earliest, Moving Plaintiffs or their institutions began to learn that one of SJSU’s teammates was an alleged trans woman with an article published in the spring of 2024. And they certainly had knowledge of this alleged player when the string of member institutions started forfeiting matches against SJSU in September 2024,” Crews wrote. Predictably, Slusser and three other athletes filed a notice of appeal. But the likelihood of it succeeding would seem to be slim, as well, given Crews’ painstaking detailing of precedent. The anti-trans ilk likes to claim that allowing transgender women to play sports is a violation of Title IX. But Crews says it’s actually the opposite, taking five pages of his 28-page ruling to cite previous Supreme Court and Tenth Circuit cases that found discriminating against someone for being transgender is sex discrimination. Which is prohibited by Title IX. “The (plaintiffs') Title IX theory raised in this case directly conflicts with Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination against trans individuals,” Crews wrote. San Jose State is the No. 2 seed in the Mountain West Conference tournament, which begins Wednesday. The Spartans have a bye in the first round and will play either Boise State or Utah State on Friday. Those are two of the schools that forfeited games during the regular season, which means we’re about to find out how committed to the bigotry those teams are. For all the shrieking there is about transgender women athletes, it’s the cisgender women pushing the forfeits who cost their fellow athletes opportunities to play and saddled their teams with losses. It’s those women, not the San Jose State player, who are .Watch Milwaukee Bucks vs. Miami Heat: NBA Cup free live stream
What both sides are saying about ceasefire deal between Israel and HezbollahRays will play 19 of their first 22 games at home as MLB switches series to avoid summer rain
The San Francisco 49ers’ running back problems aren’t getting any better. 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan confirmed Monday that Isaac Guerendo sustained a foot sprain in Sunday’s 38-13 win over the Chicago Bears. With a short week ahead of them — the 49ers will take on the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday night — it’s unclear if Guerendo will be able to play. “We’ll evaluate him over the next few days and see if he’s got a shot,” via the . While it seems like Guerendo’s injury is relatively minor, the 49ers are in a precarious position at running back with this latest setback. The 49ers placed starting running back after he went down with another leg injury. The team is hopeful that he can return at some point, but McCaffrey shared a message on social media that hinted that he was done for the season. McCaffrey didn’t make his season debut until Week 10 while dealing with a calf and Achilles injury. If he is truly out for the rest of the season, he will have appeared in just four games. Backup running back Jordan Mason did a solid job of filling in for McCaffrey, but Mason was also placed on injured reserve with a high ankle sprain. So that left Guerendo, who did a very solid job in Sunday’s win. He ran for 78 yards and had two touchdowns on 15 carriers, and he had another 50 receiving yards on two catches. Guerendo didn’t seem too bothered by his foot injury on Sunday, either, which is a good sign. “Everything is fine,” Guerendo said after the game, . “They were just being cautious. We got a quick turnaround this week, so just making sure we are good to go.” If Guerendo can't play on Sunday, Patrick Taylor Jr. is next up on the depth chart. He had a season-high 25 yards and a touchdown on seven carries on Sunday. Ke'Shawn Vaughn and Israel Abanikanda are also available. The 49ers' win on Sunday snapped a three-game losing skid. The win kept them in the race for a playoff spot despite their 6-7 record. A win on Thursday night against the Rams would go a long way toward that postseason push. If Guerendo isn't out on the field, though, it'll be that much harder for the 49ers to pull that off.
TAMPA, Fla.—A Florida engineer was given a four-year prison term for helping the Chinese regime collect intelligence on Chinese dissidents, such as practitioners of the persecuted faith Falun Gong. The man, Li Ping, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who had worked for Verizon for 30 years. He had acted on behalf of a Chinese intelligence official in the United States for more than a decade, according to court filings. In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday also granted prosecutors’ request for a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. “It’s bitterly disappointing and upsetting to American citizens” that someone would come from a foreign country that’s a hostile power, take advantage of things such as the U.S. public school system, and then work with that hostile power, Merryday said at the hearing. Li’s lawyer, Daniel Fernandez, in part, blamed the Chinese intelligence official for using Li for the illegal acts, saying that his client felt “betrayed.” Li attended high school and college in China before coming to the United States three decades ago. While in high school, he befriended a student who later became a Ministry of State Security officer, according to a filing that his lawyer submitted. The two kept in touch over the years and met whenever Li visited his family in China. The officer, along with others from the ministry, took care of Li’s mother at his request. Through the officer, Li became acquainted with a second officer from the ministry, a connection that led to requests that crossed the legal line, according to court documents. One of his earliest tasks involved tracking a lawsuit that Falun Gong practitioners planned to mount against Chinese state officials. Six days later, in August 2012, Li wrote back thanking the officer for his help during Li’s China trip a month prior, then shared biographical details of a lawyer in St. Petersburg, Florida, who had written for a Falun Gong-related blog, prosecutors said. Li told the officer that the attorney had lent his wife Falun Gong books, the filings state. Prosecutors noted that Falun Gong practitioners “both in China and abroad are of particular interest to the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government because of Falun Gong’s advocacy of ideas deemed subversive to the PRC government.” In the following two years, Li supplied information about two Israeli authors of a Falun Gong children’s book and a Falun Gong practitioner in California who had protested in the state’s Chinese Consulate. The officers also sought training applications that Verizon used for new employees, publicly available information regarding several politicians, and surveillance and hacking technologies, court filings show. Prosecutors said the Chinese intelligence officials also asked Li about the U.S. government’s wiretapping capabilities, telling him they needed the information to learn how to bypass U.S. companies’ cybersecurity defenses. One of the most recent instances cited was dated in June 2022. But even if Li could find the information through open source, the prosecutors said, it was nevertheless valuable given the internet restrictions in China. Further, Li’s Chinese handlers “simply may not understand how to find property, vehicle, or other information about U.S. persons,” they wrote in a memo that described Li’s actions as a “willful, decade-long criminal conduct.” As a “cooperative contact,” they wrote, Li had “aided Chinese intelligence services in both undermining the United States and suppressing political dissent.” The judge at the hearing sided with prosecutors in issuing a heavier sentence to deter future would-be actors. Li, who has a net worth of around $5.5 million with 12 rental properties and more than $30,000 in passive income each month, had made a calculation in doing what he did, and the exact consequences are still not known, Merryday said. He made the analogy of “shooting into a crowd of people but turning your head away when pulling the trigger.” “It’s astounding that you did this at all,” Merryday said. Li’s lawyer, after the hearing, said the outcome was “disappointing” but that he was “not surprised.” “I can’t defend his conduct,” he told The Epoch Times, but he insisted that Li hadn’t transmitted anything significantly harmful. The prosecutors rejected the argument. The Chinese authorities are using a “death by 1,000 cuts approach” against the United States, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Marcet said at the hearing. The Chinese regime “is not going to show all its cards,” he said, but Li was a small piece of the puzzle—he was playing a part. Merryday has ordered Li to voluntarily surrender himself to the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida’s Sumter County by Jan. 8, 2025. The fine is due immediately.
Manchester United New manager Ruben Amorim has warned the Red Devils fans that the team would suffer for long period. Amorim took charge of his first game as United Boss in their 1-1 draw at Ipswich Town at the weekend. Despite taking an early lead through Marcus Rashford, United were pegged back by the newly promoted club. “I know it is frustrating for the fans but we are changing so much in this moment with a lot of games,” Amorim said “We are going to suffer for a long period and we will try to win games. This will take time. “These guys had two days in trainings...”West Virginia football crumbles in blowout loss to Texas Tech, capping disappointing 6-6 season
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israel approved a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon's Hezbollah militants on Tuesday that would end nearly 14 months of fighting linked to the war in the Gaza Strip. The ceasefire, starting at 4 a.m. local time Wednesday, would mark the first major step toward ending the regionwide unrest triggered by Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But it does not address the devastating war in Gaza , where Hamas is still holding dozens of hostages and the conflict is more intractable. Hours before the ceasefire with Hezbollah was to take effect, Israel carried out the most intense wave of strikes in Beirut and its southern suburbs since the start of the conflict and issued a record number of evacuation warnings. At least 42 people were killed in strikes across the country, according to local authorities. Another huge airstrike shook Beirut shortly after the ceasefire was announced. There appeared to be lingering disagreement over whether Israel would have the right to strike Hezbollah if it believed the militants had violated the agreement, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted was part of the deal but which Lebanese and Hezbollah officials have rejected. Israel's security Cabinet approved the U.S.-France-brokered ceasefire agreement after Netanyahu presented it, his office said. U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking in Washington, called the agreement “good news” and said his administration would make a renewed push for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Biden administration spent much of this year trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza but the talks repeatedly sputtered to a halt . President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to bring peace to the Middle East without saying how. Still, any halt to the fighting in Lebanon is expected to reduce the likelihood of war between Israel and Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas and exchanged direct fire with Israel on two occasions earlier this year. Israel says it will ‘attack with might’ if Hezbollah breaks truce Netanyahu presented the ceasefire proposal to Cabinet ministers after a televised address in which he listed accomplishments against Israel’s enemies across the region. He said a ceasefire with Hezbollah would further isolate Hamas in Gaza and allow Israel to focus on its main enemy, Iran. “If Hezbollah breaks the agreement and tries to rearm, we will attack,” he said. “For every violation, we will attack with might.” The ceasefire deal calls for a two-month initial halt in fighting and would require Hezbollah to end its armed presence in a broad swath of southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops would return to their side of the border. Thousands of additional Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers would deploy in the south, and an international panel headed by the United States would monitor compliance. Biden said Israel reserved the right to quickly resume operations in Lebanon if Hezbollah breaks the terms of the truce, but that the deal "was designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.” Netanyahu’s office said Israel appreciated the U.S. efforts in securing the deal but “reserves the right to act against every threat to its security.” Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed the ceasefire and described it as a crucial step toward stability and the return of displaced people. Hezbollah has said it accepts the proposal, but a senior official with the group said Tuesday it had not seen the agreement in its final form. “After reviewing the agreement signed by the enemy government, we will see if there is a match between what we stated and what was agreed upon by the Lebanese officials,” Mahmoud Qamati, deputy chair of Hezbollah’s political council, told the Al Jazeera news network. “We want an end to the aggression, of course, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of the state," he said, referring to Israel's demand for freedom of action. “Any violation of sovereignty is refused.” Warplanes bombard Beirut and its southern suburbs Even as ceasefire efforts gained momentum in recent days, Israel continued to strike what it called Hezbollah targets across Lebanon while the militants fired rockets, missiles and drones across the border. An Israeli strike on Tuesday leveled a residential building in central Beirut — the second time in recent days warplanes have hit the crowded area near downtown. At least seven people were killed and 37 wounded, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. Israel also struck a building in Beirut's bustling commercial district of Hamra for the first time, hitting a site around 400 meters (yards) from Lebanon’s Central Bank. There were no reports of casualties. The Israeli military said it struck targets linked to Hezbollah's financial arm. The evacuation warnings covered many areas, including parts of Beirut that previously were not targeted. The warnings sent residents fleeing. Traffic was gridlocked, with mattresses tied to some cars. Dozens of people, some wearing pajamas, gathered in a central square, huddling under blankets or standing around fires as Israeli drones buzzed overhead. Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee issued evacuation warnings for 20 buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a major presence, as well as a warning for the southern town of Naqoura where the U.N. peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, is headquartered. UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said peacekeepers will not evacuate. Israeli forces reach Litani River in southern Lebanon The Israeli military also said its ground troops clashed with Hezbollah forces and destroyed rocket launchers in the Slouqi area on the eastern end of the Litani River, a few kilometers (miles) from the Israeli border. Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah would be required to move its forces north of the Litani, which in some places is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the border. Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, saying it was showing support for the Palestinians, a day after Hamas carried out its attack on southern Israel, triggering the Gaza war. Israel returned fire on Hezbollah, and the two sides have exchanged barrages ever since. Israel escalated its bombardment in mid-September and later sent troops into Lebanon, vowing to put an end to Hezbollah fire so tens of thousands of evacuated Israelis could return to their homes. More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon the past 13 months, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The bombardment has driven 1.2 million people from their homes. Israel says it has killed more than 2,000 Hezbollah members. Hezbollah fire has forced some 50,000 Israelis to evacuate in the country’s north, and its rockets have reached as far south in Israel as Tel Aviv. At least 75 people have been killed, more than half of them civilians. More than 50 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive in Lebanon. ___ Chehayeb and Mroue reported from Beirut and Federman from Jerusalem. Associated Press reporters Lujain Jo and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed. ___ Find more of AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-warTAMPA, Fla.—A Florida engineer was given a four-year prison term for helping the Chinese regime collect intelligence on Chinese dissidents, such as practitioners of the persecuted faith Falun Gong. The man, Li Ping, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who had worked for Verizon for 30 years. He had acted on behalf of a Chinese intelligence official in the United States for more than a decade, according to court filings. In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday also granted prosecutors’ request for a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. “It’s bitterly disappointing and upsetting to American citizens” that someone would come from a foreign country that’s a hostile power, take advantage of things such as the U.S. public school system, and then work with that hostile power, Merryday said at the hearing. Li’s lawyer, Daniel Fernandez, in part, blamed the Chinese intelligence official for using Li for the illegal acts, saying that his client felt “betrayed.” Li attended high school and college in China before coming to the United States three decades ago. While in high school, he befriended a student who later became a Ministry of State Security officer, according to a filing that his lawyer submitted. The two kept in touch over the years and met whenever Li visited his family in China. The officer, along with others from the ministry, took care of Li’s mother at his request. Through the officer, Li became acquainted with a second officer from the ministry, a connection that led to requests that crossed the legal line, according to court documents. One of his earliest tasks involved tracking a lawsuit that Falun Gong practitioners planned to mount against Chinese state officials. Six days later, in August 2012, Li wrote back thanking the officer for his help during Li’s China trip a month prior, then shared biographical details of a lawyer in St. Petersburg, Florida, who had written for a Falun Gong-related blog, prosecutors said. Li told the officer that the attorney had lent his wife Falun Gong books, the filings state. Prosecutors noted that Falun Gong practitioners “both in China and abroad are of particular interest to the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government because of Falun Gong’s advocacy of ideas deemed subversive to the PRC government.” In the following two years, Li supplied information about two Israeli authors of a Falun Gong children’s book and a Falun Gong practitioner in California who had protested in the state’s Chinese Consulate. The officers also sought training applications that Verizon used for new employees, publicly available information regarding several politicians, and surveillance and hacking technologies, court filings show. Prosecutors said the Chinese intelligence officials also asked Li about the U.S. government’s wiretapping capabilities, telling him they needed the information to learn how to bypass U.S. companies’ cybersecurity defenses. One of the most recent instances cited was dated in June 2022. But even if Li could find the information through open source, the prosecutors said, it was nevertheless valuable given the internet restrictions in China. Further, Li’s Chinese handlers “simply may not understand how to find property, vehicle, or other information about U.S. persons,” they wrote in a memo that described Li’s actions as a “willful, decade-long criminal conduct.” As a “cooperative contact,” they wrote, Li had “aided Chinese intelligence services in both undermining the United States and suppressing political dissent.” The judge at the hearing sided with prosecutors in issuing a heavier sentence to deter future would-be actors. Li, who has a net worth of around $5.5 million with 12 rental properties and more than $30,000 in passive income each month, had made a calculation in doing what he did, and the exact consequences are still not known, Merryday said. He made the analogy of “shooting into a crowd of people but turning your head away when pulling the trigger.” “It’s astounding that you did this at all,” Merryday said. Li’s lawyer, after the hearing, said the outcome was “disappointing” but that he was “not surprised.” “I can’t defend his conduct,” he told The Epoch Times, but he insisted that Li hadn’t transmitted anything significantly harmful. The prosecutors rejected the argument. The Chinese authorities are using a “death by 1,000 cuts approach” against the United States, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Marcet said at the hearing. The Chinese regime “is not going to show all its cards,” he said, but Li was a small piece of the puzzle—he was playing a part. Merryday has ordered Li to voluntarily surrender himself to the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida’s Sumter County by Jan. 8, 2025. The fine is due immediately.