Connect with us

World

Women’s Euro: UEFA launches platform to spot abusive online comments

Published

on

Women’s Euro: UEFA launches platform to spot abusive online comments

The governing physique for European soccer has launched a brand new platform to establish and take away offensive social media posts because the Girls’s EURO competitors will get underway in entrance of record-breaking audiences. 

Forty-one abusive posts had been recognized throughout the competitors’s opener which noticed England beat Austria 1-0 on Wednesday night, UEFA stated in an announcement on Thursday. Of those 28 had been reported to social media platforms for removing. 

Practically half of the abusive content material was associated to sexism (46%) with hate speech a detailed second (44%). Girls’s soccer, the groups and gamers had been additionally focused with situations of homophobia.

The brand new platform is a part of UEFA’s Respect programme geared toward tackling abuse and works by means of a mix of automated scanning and human evaluate.

The governing physique defined that it’s carefully liaising with the completely different groups and briefing them after every match. Additionally it is in “frequent dialogue” with social media platforms together with Twitter, Instagram, Fb, and TikTok.

Advertisement

A primary complete abstract of on-line abuse instances and interventions will likely be printed on the finish of the UEFA Girls’s EURO group stage,” UEFA stated.

The platform is predicted for use by means of every of the ultimate competitions, together with youth, girls’s and males’s matches for the following three years.

Arrests and bans

The world of soccer has been reckoning over the previous two years with offensive feedback posted on-line together with racist abuse focused at gamers. 

English soccer leagues, golf equipment and gamers orchestrated a four-day boycott of social media platforms to protest in opposition to racist abuse in April 2021 to demand more durable motion to cease on-line hate speech. 

A number of months later, British police arrested a number of folks after three Black gamers of the England squad acquired a torrent of racist abuse on-line for lacking penalties of their Euro 2020 conflict in opposition to Italy with the crew dropping the title. 

Advertisement

The UK authorities has since handed a brand new legislation that might ban folks from attending soccer video games for ten years if they’re discovered responsible of on-line racism associated to soccer.

The UK’s Soccer Affiliation governing physique has additionally been cracking down on improper behaviour by gamers, golf equipment, and followers with 11 completely different disciplinary prices levelled in June over improper and/or abusive and/or insulting language.

Earlier this month, Birmingham Metropolis FC Girls’s coach Marcus Bignot was handed a touchline ban for seven matches and ordered to attend a compulsory face-to-face training programme after being discovered responsible of utilizing homophobic language in the direction of Tottenham supervisor Rehanne Skinner throughout a February match. 

Girls’s soccer’s rising reputation

The opening fixture of Wednesday broke the attendance report for a Girls’s Euro match by a large margin with 68,781 turning up on the Previous Trafford stadium in Manchester.

The earlier report of 41,301 was set throughout the 2013 closing that noticed Germany clinch the title over Norway.

Advertisement

Every week earlier than the competitors kicked off, UEFA had introduced that greater than half one million tickets had been bought – greater than doubling the earlier report of 240,000 set on the final occasion in 2017. 

A fifth of the tickets had been purchased by folks exterior of host nation England with the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and France posting the strongest demand.

However demand additionally got here from past European borders, with tickets bought from 99 nations together with Australia, China and North America. 

A complete of 700,000 tickets had been out there for the match in all.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

World

New Lonely Island Song ‘Sushi Glory Hole’ Premieres on ‘SNL’; Raps About Secret Sushi Spots Around NYC

Published

on

New Lonely Island Song ‘Sushi Glory Hole’ Premieres on ‘SNL’; Raps About Secret Sushi Spots Around NYC

In the first Lonely Island song of the 50th season of “SNL,” the beloved trio of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer debuted “Sushi Glory Hole,” a humorous take on a fictional app where you can find sushi in a hole in a bathroom around New York.

“SNL” alumna Maya Rudolph, who has been portraying presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris during the new season, was on hand for the video. “Gentleman, what do you have for us today?” she asked in the video opener.

“Sushi glory hole,” rapped Samberg. “Imagine that. Instead of getting strange [expletive] you’ll be getting a snack.” A long refrain of “Hear us out, hear us out, hear us out,” played on loop as the trio tried to get others on board with their idea.

Dressed as 1980s businessmen, the Lonely Island members, and Bowen Yang, rapped about sushi in bathrooms, with suggestive lyrics, singing, “So drop to your knees and get ready for some fish.” The digital short featured funny evocative imagery of slices of sushi being presented through holes in bathroom walls. The trio rapped, “Hit the bathroom stall, and find a sushi-sized hole in the bathroom wall.”

“Hit the map,” they said, showing a phone with a lit-up map with “SGH” locations all around Manhattan, where one could find a sushi glory hole. They rapped on, defending the unorthodox food-related business idea, saying, “You got nothing to fear. It’s not weird. It’s sushi being through a hole in the wall.”

Advertisement

They rapped about the different ideal circumstances for a “SGH.” Samberg sang about sushi glory holes in nightclubs and how it’s better than eating in the middle of a street. “Make a wish and prepare for some shockingly high-grade fish.”

“Don’t leave, hear us out. No substitutions or special requests,” they said.

Stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze was this episode’s guest and musical group Coldplay was the musical guest.

Continue Reading

World

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei defends missile barrage against Israel in rare sermon

Published

on

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei defends missile barrage against Israel in rare sermon

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared in a rare sermon Friday that his country’s ballistic missile attack on Israel earlier this week was “legal and legitimate” and that the “resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders.” 

The public address from Khamenei was his first during Friday prayers in Tehran in nearly five years, according to the AFP.  

Khamenei said Iran will not “procrastinate nor act hastily to carry out its duty” in going after Israel, Reuters reports. 

The news agency cited him as saying that Tuesday’s barrage of nearly 200 missiles fired by Iran at Israel was “legal and legitimate” and the minimum punishment for Israel’s “crimes.” 

IRAN WARNS OF ‘DECISIVE RESPONSE’ IF ISRAEL CROSSES ‘RED LINES’ 

Advertisement

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during Friday Prayers and a commemoration ceremony of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Tehran, Iran, on Oct. 4. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/West Asia News Agency/Reuters)

“The resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders,” Khamenei reportedly added, mentioning recently slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah during the speech. 

The remarks came as the Israel Defense Forces announced Friday that Mohammad Rashid Sakafi, the commander of Hezbollah’s Communications Unit, was killed in an airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon. 

“Sakafi was a senior Hezbollah terrorist, who was responsible for the communications unit since 2000,” the IDF wrote on X. “Sakafi invested significant efforts to develop communication capabilities between all of Hezbollah’s units.” 

ISRAEL BANS UN SECRETARY-GENERAL OVER ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIONS 

Advertisement
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in Tehran

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday that Iran’s missile attack on Israel this week was “legal and legitimate,” Reuters reports.  (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/West Asia News Agency/Reuters)

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier this week that the Iranian missile attack on Israel was “defeated and ineffective” and that the U.S. military coordinated with the IDF to repel the strikes.  

“U.S. naval destroyers joined Israeli Air Defense units in firing interceptors to shoot down inbound missiles. President Biden and Vice President Harris monitored the attack and the response from the White House Situation Room, joined in person and remotely by their national security team,” Sullivan said during a briefing.  

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system

Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets during the missile attack, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, on Tuesday, Oct. 1. (Reuters/Amir Cohen)

 

“This is a significant escalation by Iran, a significant event, and it is equally significant that we were able to step up with Israel and create a situation in which no one was killed in this attack in Israel… We are now going to look at what the appropriate next steps are to secure, first and foremost, American interests and then to promote stability to the maximum extent possible as we go forward,” he added. 

Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan contributed to this report. 

Advertisement

Continue Reading

World

Protests across Europe as Gaza war anniversary nears

Published

on

Protests across Europe as Gaza war anniversary nears

The war in Gaza, which started on 7 October last year, has seen more than 41,000 Palestinians killed and decimated the Strip. Almost 100 Israelis are still being held hostage by Hamas, with fewer than 70 believed to be alive.

ADVERTISEMENT

Thousands of people have staged protests in capitals across Europe in support of Palestine in the run-up to the first anniversary of the war on 7 October.

Huge rallies took place in several major European cities, with rallies expected to continue over the weekend and peak on Monday, the date of the anniversary.

Italy

In Rome, several thousand demonstrated peacefully until a smaller group tried to push the rally toward the centre of the city, in spite of a ban by local authorities who refused to authorize protests, citing security concerns.

Some protesters, dressed in black and with their faces covered threw stones, bottles and paper bombs at the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons, eventually dispersing the crowd.

At least 30 law enforcement officers and three demonstrators were injured in the clashes, local media reported.

Advertisement

The rally in Rome had been calm earlier, with people chanting “Free Palestine, Free Lebanon,” waving Palestinian flags and holding banners calling for an immediate stop to the conflict.

United Kingdom

In London, thousands marched through the capital to Downing Street amid a heavy police presence.

The atmosphere was tense as pro-Palestinian protesters and counterdemonstrators, some holding Israeli flags, passed one another.

Scuffles broke out as police officers pushed back activists trying to get past a cordon.

At least 17 people were arrested on suspicion of public order offences, supporting a proscribed organisation and assault, the Metropolitan Police said.

Advertisement

Spain

Thousands also took to the streets of Madrid to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.

The protests were peaceful and there were no reported incidents of altercations with police.

“Outrage at this situation, thousands and thousands of people killed in Gaza, now in Lebanon, there are already more than 2,000, more than 10,000 people missing. This has to be stopped one way or another,” said Enrique Quintanilla from the ‘Disarm Madrid’ group.

Germany

In the northern of Hamburg, about 950 people staged a peaceful demonstration with many waving Palestinian and Lebanese flags and chanting “Stop the Genocide,” the DPA news agency reported, citing a count by police.

Two smaller pro-Israeli counterdemonstrations took place without incident, it said.

Advertisement
ADVERTISEMENT

Serbia

A smaller protest of around 200 people happened in Belgrade with protesters chanting “Free Palestine” and expressing their anger at their government’s support for Israel.

“The main message is that we, citizens of Serbia and Belgrade, are against arms exports to Israel. The Republic of Serbia is exporting arms to Israel. Since October 7 last year, the value of weapons exported to Israel from Serbia is at least 20 million euros. We are against that,” said protest organiser, Mihajlo Nikolic.

Rallies were also planned in several other countries across Europe including Greece, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland.

Increased security

Security forces in several countries warned of heightened levels of alert in major cities, amid concerns that the conflict in the Middle East could inspire new terror attacks in Europe or that the protests could turn violent.

ADVERTISEMENT

Pro-Palestinian protests calling for an immediate cease-fire have repeatedly taken place across Europe and around the globe in the past year and have often turned violent with confrontations between demonstrators and law enforcement officers.

A bloody year

On 7 October last year, Hamas launched a surprise attack into Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis, taking 250 people hostage and setting off a war with Israel that has shattered much of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since then in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between fighters and civilians.

Advertisement

Nearly 100 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, with fewer than 70 believed to be alive. 

ADVERTISEMENT
Continue Reading

Trending