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Associated Press
13-06-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
Mexican FA accused of silencing clubs seeking promotion reinstatement
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two Mexican clubs seeking to reinstate promotion and relegation say the Mexican Football Association is trying to silence and punish them after they appealed to sport's highest court. Last month, 10 of the 15 clubs in Mexico's second division filed the appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Since then, four of them have opted out leaving six in it: Leones Negros, Venados FC, Atlético Morelia, Cancún FC, Club Atlético La Paz and Mineros. The FMF halted promotion in 2019 and agreed with the second division teams to reinstate it in 2026, but there are no current plans to do it and that is why the clubs went to CAS. 'We can't ascend to the first division because the league is kidnapped,' Giovanni Solazzi, the Cancún FC vice president said this week. 'If there is sporting justice, promotion must return.' Alberto Castellanos, the Leones Negros president, also criticized the federation for what he called 'monopolistic practices.' On Wednesday, the federation wrote to Solazzi and Castellanos informing them they were being investigated because their statements may have breached the code of ethics. The clubs could be fined up to 450,000 pesos (about $23,000), stated the letter, seen by the Associated Press. 'The FMF is clearly pursuing an intimidatory process intended to silence and punish the clubs for appealing to CAS,' said Eduardo Carlezzo, the owner of the legal firm representing the clubs in the appeal. The owners of the 18 top flight teams voted to halt promotion and relegation for six seasons, arguing it would help to consolidate the second-division clubs. As a payoff, the second tier clubs share an $8 million pot. Since the CAS appeal, the second division teams claim they have not received any payments. 'The federation suspended the financial compensation the day after the appeal was launched and is now threatening disciplinary sanction over comment,' Carlezzo said. 'These actions constitute a serious and blatant infringement of the freedom of expression and the access to justice guaranteed by the Mexican constitution.' ___ AP soccer:
IOL News
13-06-2025
- Business
- IOL News
Cosatu defends B-BBEE policy amid criticism from Solidarity and FMF
The Free Market Foundation and Solidarity held a media briefing on Thursday to discuss the impact of Black Economic Empowerment legislation on the economy. Image: Supplied Banele Ginidza The battle for the scrapping of "race laws" in South Africa went a notch up on Thursday as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) shot down a call to review and drop South Africa's Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) policy. This comes as trade union Solidarity and the Free Market Foundation (FMF) on Thursday released a report claiming that B-BBEE has caused serious damage to the country's economy and to its population while only enriching a small, politically-connected elite. The report draws on data from the B-BBEE Commission, Stats SA, the JSE, and international comparisons to assess the real costs of compliance across the key BEE scorecard elements: ownership, skills development, enterprise and supplier development, management control, and socio-economic development. According to the report, the annual cost of BEE compliance is between R145 billion and R290bn per year. It claimed that this has resulted in an annual reduction of 1.5% to 3% in economic growth, and to an annual loss of between 96 000 and 192 000 jobs. 'Our findings show that BEE, as currently designed, is enriching a small elite while throttling economic dynamism and deepening unemployment,' said Dr Morné Malan, FMF senior associate and co-author of the report, speaking at the joint press conference. The study compares South Africa's model with global 'affirmative action' policies in Malaysia, India, Brazil, the US, and Namibia, showing that South Africa's version is the most intrusive and economically damaging. At the media briefing, the organisations claimed that B-BBEE benefits largely captured by politically-connected elites as South Africa now ranks 139th in GDP per capita, down from 87th in 1994. Executives of both organisations said the people most affected by the current economic programme are people that work poor people and those that are beneficiaries are the elite. "That is why we will engage with Cosatu trade unions Numsa and others to find alternatives to the current racial legislation," said Theuns du Buisson, economic researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute, and co-author of the report. "In the second place we will continue to litigate and in the third place we will also put pressure on SA via the international world and continue to put pressure on South Africa with the outside world especially the G20 that comes." However, Cosatu's Parliamentary spokesperson Matthew Parks said the report provided no breakdown backed up by actual research as to any financial burden to the state nor how B-BBEE has been an obstacle to growing the economy and reducing unemployment. Parks said the report strangely cited statistics related to real and potential growth overall, but no evidence of the relationship between those and B-BBEE. He said it may as well have blamed constitutional democracy for South Africa's economic challenges. "No reference is made to the need to overcome our still prevalent racial divides as evidenced by countless employment equity studies confirming that most senior positions in the private sector are held by White males or that economic ownership, including shares on the JSE remain largely White-held," Parks said. Johann Rossouw, an economist at Altitude Wealth, said a more sensible empowerment model as an alternative to B-BBEE policies was Black Economic Skills Transfer (BEST), which would help with job creation and carry the economy into the future. "At the moment all the arguments are about how many ways to cut the existing pie instead of growing the pie that we have for the future. Black empowerment is not a policy of the government of national unity," Rossouw said, commending that the study was evidence based and drew comparison with other countries. "It is important that the GNU makes its own policies that will benefit the average poor." However, independent economist Duma Gqubule said the study and the report was fake news on steroids, which lacked the fundamental understanding of the objectives of transformation. Gqubule said the report lacked empirical evidence and was premised on companies counting upskilling workers for an example as a transformation contribution when both the worker and the company benefited from the exercise. "I would call on black business to come up with a coherent response to this. It is a dangerous agenda. We need another citizen dialogue on black empowerment for the new circumstances as the situation in the 1990s when the policies were crafted were critical," Gqubule said. BUSINESS REPORT
Eyewitness News
12-06-2025
- Business
- Eyewitness News
Job creation has been minimal in SA since democracy, claims Solidarity
JOHANNESBURG - Minority lobby group, Solidarity, claims that job creation since 1994 has been minimal, largely due to Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) policies. Solidarity, in collaboration with the Free Market Foundation (FMF), has released a new study outlining the costs associated with BBBEE compliance. Their findings indicate that these policies have contributed to rising unemployment and have hindered significant economic growth since 1994. Solidarity CEO Dirk Hermann argues that a complete overhaul of the BBBEE policy would be more beneficial for the country. 'Black Economic Empowerment does not address inequality. It increases as a result of the policy. The paradox is that inequality increases particularly in the black community as a result of a small group of elites, who are being radically enriched.' Speaking to 702 , prominent businessman Saki Macozoma said BBBEE remains necessary for transformation. 'Empowering people who are previously disadvantaged is the right kind of thing. It may be that the terminology of Black Economic Empowerment is the one that creates the emotion. The fact of the matter is that we need to have the redress, and we have not done it to the extent that we should have.' ALSO READ:
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
🇲🇽 Henry Martin and Chucky Lozano ruled out for Mexico at the Gold Cup
🇲🇽 Henry Martin and Chucky Lozano ruled out for Mexico at the Gold Cup Javier Aguirre will not be able to count on two key players for Mexico in the Gold Cup, which will be played in a few weeks. According to a statement just released by the FMF, Hirving Lozano and Henry Martín will be unavailable for El Tri in the upcoming North American national team tournament. In the press release distributed to the media, the FMF states that, according to a report from Club San Diego FC, Hirving Lozano is suffering from a muscle injury in his left hamstring that will prevent him from joining the team. Advertisement Similarly, they confirm the medical status of Henry Martín, who was evaluated in Mexico City by the national team's medical staff, where a muscle tear in his left hamstring was confirmed. His rehabilitation will be coordinated with his club. In the coming hours, Javier Aguirre will announce the replacements for the national team. This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here. 📸 Simon Barber - 2024 Getty Images
Newsweek
03-06-2025
- General
- Newsweek
From France, A Fresh Warning About Islamism
Not all that long ago, warnings about a creeping Islamist infiltration in Europe were widely ridiculed as conspiracy theories or, worse, "Islamophobia." In previous years, when politicians like Geert Wilders of the Netherlands and Britain's Michael Gove, or authors like France's Michel Houellebecq raised alarms about the growing prevalence of political Islam on the Continent, they were routinely dismissed as cranks, alarmists, or simply as racists. These days, though, such concerns are getting harder to refute. Just ask the French. The minaret of the Great Mosque of Paris is pictured. The minaret of the Great Mosque of Paris is pictured. Getty Images Last month, a new government report caused a national firestorm when it concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's most influential Islamist movement, is trying to penetrate the country and subvert its institutions. The 73-page study, excerpts from which were published in the prestigious Le Figaro, makes the case that the country's branch of the Brotherhood, known as the Federation of Muslims of France (FMF), is "involved in republican infrastructure ... in order to change it from the inside." The study details that the FMF now controls or influences nearly 10 percent of the mosques in the country, as well as running nearly 300 sports, educational, or charity organizations and close to two-dozen schools. Its objective is to establish "ecosystems at a local level" that gradually impose strict Islamic norms on society at-large. The warning is a stark one. France has long prided itself on laïcité, a foundational principle of the country's political order that provides freedom of, and from, religion for its citizens. The FMF's efforts are a direct challenge to that norm. Or, as Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has put it, France is now facing "below-the-radar Islamism trying to infiltrate institutions, whose ultimate aim is to tip the whole of French society under sharia law." Predictably, the conclusions were greeted with the usual outrage. Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for instance, proclaimed on social media that the report was "fueling Islamophobia" and full of "delusional theories" aligned with the country's far right. Even French President Emmanuel Macron, who himself had belatedly ordered the production of the study last fall, after years of turning a blind eye to the problem, fretted about stigmatizing all Muslims and criticized the lack of ready solutions. He has ordered "new proposals" to address the issue in time for the next meeting of the country's Defense Council in early June—although there are real doubts, given his low popularity and battered public image, that Macron will be in a position to do anything meaningful. Voices on the country's political right, meanwhile, have grumbled that the study is too little, and far too late. The French case, though, is just the tip of the iceberg. A 2023 report by George Washington University's Program on Extremism noted that, over the past several years, assorted security services throughout Europe have mapped out what amounts to "an extensive and sophisticated network linked to the Brotherhood operates covertly in Europe, both at the national and pan-European level." Moreover, it stresses, the continent's security officials are unified in their conviction that "Brotherhood networks in Europe ... have views and goals that are problematic, subversive, undemocratic, and incompatible with basic human rights and Western society." Some European societies, at least, are starting to wake up to this reality. In Austria, successive governments have attempted to mitigate the perceived danger over the past decade by instituting reforms to the national Islam Law, shuttering mosques and deporting extremist imams, and establishing a Documentation Centre to research and monitor political Islam in the country. Germany has also been comparatively activist, and has begun domestic training for imams, stepped up its monitoring of "legalist Islamism," and started a parliamentary debate on a Muslim Brotherhood ban. Other places in Europe, though, have done far less of substance. Meanwhile, even these steps, and others like them (such as the 10-point anti-migration plan recently unveiled by Wilder's ruling Party for Freedom) suffer from a common failing. That is, they view political Islam as an overwhelmingly foreign phenomenon—one that can be addressed through hardened national borders, curbs on immigrants, and stepped-up policing. But as the new French report lays out, the danger is different. "The reality of this threat, even if it is long term and does not involve violent action, poses a risk of damage to the fabric of society and republican institutions (...) and, more broadly, to national cohesion," it states. In other words, entrenched Islamist groups within Europe are actively trying to reshape Western societies in their own image. Now that this uncomfortable reality is finally out in the open, though, the operative question becomes: what is Macron's France, and the rest of Europe, actually prepared to do about it? Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
