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WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - The White House Tuesday accused most of the Philadelphia Eagles of abandoning their fans and not acting in good faith one day after President Donald Trump withdrew an invitation for the Super Bowl champions to visit the White House.

"The vast majority of the Eagles team decided to abandon their fans," the White House said in a statement Tuesday.

Trump called off the June 5 visit late Monday.

Tuesday's statement said Trump withdrew the invitation "after extensive discussions" with the team. On May 31, the Eagles said 81 members of the organization, including players, coaches, management and support personnel, had committed to attend, the White House statement said.

The statement went on to say that last Friday "many players" would not attend, prompting the White House to try to reschedule the event. The statement said Trump previously announced he would be traveling abroad on the dates the Eagles proposed and tried to work with the team over the weekend "despite sensing a lack of good faith."

Trump said Monday, "They disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.''

All Eagles players stood for the anthem last season.

Trump said the team wanted to send a smaller delegation, but "the 1,000 fans planning to attend the event deserve better.''

Instead, Trump said the fans were still welcome and that he would host "a different type of ceremony.'' In a Twitter post on Tuesday, he said the anthem "will proudly be playing."

Trump also noted "many" championship teams have visited the White House.

Trump has been at odds with NFL athletes who knelt during the playing of the national anthem before their games to protest police brutality and racial inequality. Trump has repeatedly denounced the players as unpatriotic, and demanded an end to such protests.

In response to Trump's announcement, the Eagles issued a statement saying, "It has been incredibly thrilling to celebrate our first Super Bowl Championship," adding, "Watching the entire Eagles community come together has been an inspiration." The statement also said the team was grateful for the support it has received and is looking forward to continuing preparations for this year's season.


Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney criticized the move by Trump and said the Eagles "represent the diversity of our nation — a nation in which we are free to express our opinion."

Kenney, a Democrat, said, "Disinviting them from the White House only proves that our president is not a true patriot, but a fragile egomaniac obsessed with crowd size and afraid of the embarrassment of throwing a party which no one wants to attend."

In a CNN interview Tuesday, Kenney said, "Athletes are American citizens who have the First Amendment right to express their views." He accused the president of trying to "control the thoughts of this country."

Wide receiver Torrey Smith, who played for the Eagles last season, responded via Twitter to Trump's decision.

"So many lies,'' he wrote, adding, "Not many people were going to go."

He also said, "No one refused to go simply because Trump "insists" folks stand for the anthem. ...The President continues to spread the false narrative that players are anti military.''

Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania invited the Eagles to the U.S. Capitol and described the president's decision as a "political stunt."

This is not the first time Trump has clashed with professional athletes.

Last year, National Basketball Association champions Golden State Warriors did not visit the White House after the president took issue when team star Stephen Curry said he would not attend. (VOA)

WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - Curling, once a minority pastime played mostly by Scots and Canadians, will sweep onto the ice at next month's Pyeongchang Olympics with the proud boast of being the world's fastest-growing winter sport.

The "roaring game," with its origins in the frozen ponds and mists of medieval Scotland, is now popping up in the sort of sunny places where ice usually comes in cubes to cool the drinks.

Qatar's men's curling team celebrated their first international victory last November, beating Kazakhstan on Australia's sun-soaked Central Coast north of Sydney.

A few months earlier, Middle Eastern neighbors Saudi Arabia secured conditional membership of the World Curling Federation along with fellow-newcomers Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Portugal.

Las Vegas, in Nevada's Mojave desert, will host the men's world championship next April.

"You'd obviously think curling is for winter sport countries, it's not really," said Kate Caithness, the Scottish head of World Curling and one of only two female presidents of any Olympic sports. "You can have curling anywhere in the world.

"Give us a hall and we'll make ice. We've got these new facilities where we can almost roll out a mat, plug it in, add water and freeze it," she told Reuters from her headquarters in Perth, Scotland.

In order to be included on the full program at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, curling needed to have 30 member nations. Twenty years on and there are 60, with more to come and a growth explosion predicted.

"We've never been in better shape, actually," said Caithness. "Mexico and Guyana are new members, and there's other members in South America waiting to come on board."

At the 2010 Games in Vancouver, curling was the most watched Winter Olympic sport on television in Brazil — a country that recently challenged Canada for a place at the men's world championships.

There are no member nations from Africa as yet, but there has been interest with South Africa most likely to be the first on board.

Looking to Beijing

Curling is big in Korea and Japan, and the main growth areas over the next four years for a sport also known as "chess on ice" are likely to be China, host of the 2022 Olympics, and the United States.

"China is a huge, huge market for us," Caithness said. "We've just signed a $13.4 million contract with a sponsor [Kingdomway Sports] in China for the next four years in the runup between now and 2022."

Curling at those Beijing Winter Games will be held in the "Water Cube" facility that hosted swimming at the 2008 summer Olympics.

Transformed into the "Ice Cube," the plan is to have a three sheet rink in the basement so that fans can watch the competition upstairs and try their hand at the sport downstairs.

"I'm on the 2022 IOC co-ordination commission, so I do have the inside information. I've been there already with the IOC," Caithness said.

"They are going to put 300 million people through winter sport [in China] between now and 2022. ... I understand they are building 500 new ice rinks. I think the sport's going to explode."

Sleeping giant

Starting this year, a new made-for-television World Cup will start up with four city events on three continents forming the "Road to Beijing."

In the United States, USA Curling last year signed a sponsorship deal with Pepsico's Frito-Lay brand Cheetos that features tight end Vernon Davis of the National Football League's Washington Redskins.

As part of the promotion, the cheese curl snack has come up with a rap video "Teach me how to Curl" featuring curling moves and dance.

Even if Cheetos said in a statement that the deal aimed to "help raise awareness for one of America's least participated in sports," Caithness felt things were moving in the right direction.

"I think we're going to see things go crazy in the United States. They've woken up at last," she said.

Curling, whose tournament starts a day before the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang and runs right through to the last Sunday, can also expect more television coverage than any other sport.

To win a gold medal in men's or women's curling takes up to 33 hours on the field of play, with nine round robin games of three hours each followed by a semi-final and final. Pyeongchang sees the debut also of mixed doubles.

"We'll have non-stop curling every day from dawn until dusk. We have huge TV coverage and this is really going to help our sport as well," Caithness said. (VOA)

WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - They were little girls with dreams of Olympic gold when they started in gymnastics. Now they're women with lifelong injuries, suffocating anxiety and debilitating eating disorders. They are the other victims of USA Gymnastics.

Thirteen former U.S. gymnasts and three coaches interviewed by The Associated Press described a win-at-all-cost culture rife with verbal and emotional abuse in which girls were forced to train on broken bones and other injuries. That culture was tacitly endorsed by the sport’s governing body and institutionalized by Bela and Martha Karolyi, the husband-and-wife duo who coached America’s top female gymnasts for three decades.

The gymnasts agreed to speak to AP, some for the first time, after the recent courtroom revelations about USA Gymnastics’ former team doctor, Larry Nassar, who recently was sentenced to decades in prison for sexually assaulting young athletes for years under the guise of medical treatment.

The Karolyis’ oppressive style created a toxic environment in which a predator like Nassar was able to thrive, according to witness statements in Nassar’s criminal case and a lawsuit against USA Gymnastics, the Karolyis and others. Girls were afraid to challenge authority, Nassar was able to prey on vulnerable girls and, at the same time, he didn’t challenge the couple’s harsh training methods.

“He was their little puppet,” Jeanette Antolin, a former member of the U.S. national team who trained with the Karolyis, said. “He let us train on injuries. They got what they wanted. He got what he wanted.”

Young girls were virtually starved, constantly body shamed and forced to train with broken bones or other injuries, according to interviews and the lawsuit. Their meager diets and extreme training often delayed puberty, which some coaches believed was such a detriment that they ridiculed girls who started their menstrual cycles.

USA Gymnastics declined to answer questions for this story, and the Karolyis didn’t reply to requests for comment. The Karolyis’ Houston attorney, Gary Jewell, said the Karolyis didn’t abuse anyone.

Some female gymnasts in the U.S. were subjected to abusive training methods before the Karolyis defected from their native Romania in 1981. But other coaches and former gymnasts say the Karolyis’ early successes — starting with Romania’s Nadia Comaneci becoming the first woman gymnast awarded a perfect score in competition — validated the cutthroat attitudes that fostered widespread mistreatment of American athletes at the highest levels of women’s gymnastics.

The Karolyis, who helped USA Gymnastics win 41 Olympic medals, including 13 gold over three decades, trained hundreds of gymnasts at their complex in rural Huntsville, Texas, known as “the ranch.” They selected gymnasts for the national team and earned millions from USA Gymnastics.

A congressional committee investigating the gymnastics scandal said in Feb. 8 letters to the Karolyis, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee that they were all “at the center of many of these failures” that allowed Nassar’s sexual abuse to persist for more than two decades.

It’s unclear what the Karolyis knew about Nassar’s sexual abuse and whether they took any action to stop it.

Martha Karolyi, in a deposition given last year as part of the lawsuit against the Karolyis and numerous others, acknowledged that “in or around June 2015” she received a phone call from the then-head of the national gymnastics organization, Steve Penny, informing her that the organization had received a complaint that Nassar had “molested a national team gymnast at the ranch.”

The deposition was included in a Feb. 14 letter to two U.S. senators from John Manly, an attorney representing Nassar victims in a lawsuit that seeks monetary damages and court oversight of USA Gymnastics.

Manly cited the deposition in accusing the sport’s governing body of lying to Congress.

In a timeline submitted to a congressional committee investigating the scandal, the organization said it was told in mid-June of an athlete “uncomfortable” with Nassar’s treatment, but that it was not until late July 2015 that it decided to notify law enforcement “with concerns of potential sexual misconduct.”

Penny, the former USA Gymnastics chief, said in a statement that Martha Karolyi was mistaken about the timing of his call.

Texas has one of the strongest child abuse reporting laws in the nation, requiring anyone who has reason to believe abuse has occurred to immediately alert authorities. Failure to do so is a misdemeanor punishable by jail time and a fine.

In the deposition, Martha Karolyi said she did not discuss what she learned about Nassar with anyone but her husband, her lawyers and the USA Gymnastics official who called her.

Jewell, the Karolyis’ attorney, said the couple didn’t know about any sexual assault complaints involving Nassar until Martha Karolyi was contacted by a USA Gymnastics official in the summer of 2015. (VOA)

ISTANBUL, LELEMUKU.COM - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday his government has more information about the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and that it will likely make the evidence public after investigations of his death have been completed.

Speaking during a trip to Japan, Cavusoglu told reporters that Turkey said Saudi Arabia and other countries interested in the information have been given the opportunity to see it.

Khashoggi died after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

Initially, Saudi Arabia said Khashoggi walked out of the consulate and that his whereabouts were unknown, then that he died in a fist fight and still later that he had died in a chokehold. The kingdom's public prosecutor has since called the killing premeditated, but has not said who planned or approved it.

Cavusoglu said Tuesday that after multiple conversations with Saudi King Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is convinced the king was not involved.

But Cavusoglu said it is clear that a 15-man team alleged to have traveled to Turkey to act as a hit squad would not have taken such action on their own, and that investigators need to find who would have given that order.

Turkey said last week that Khashoggi, a U.S.-based journalist who had written columns for The Washington Post that were critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was strangled as soon as he entered the consulate, his body dismembered and then destroyed, possibly dissolved in acid.

No trace of Khashoggi's remains has turned up, even as the 59-year-old journalist's sons appealed on the U.S. television news network CNN on Sunday for the Saudis to return his body so he can be buried in the major Islamic pilgrimage city of Medina with the rest of his family.

A Turkish official, speaking anonymously, confirmed a Monday report in Sabah, a newspaper close to Turkey's government, that chemicals expert Ahmad Abdulaziz al-Janobi and toxicology expert Khaled Yahya al-Zahrani were part of a team sent from Saudi Arabia, supposedly to investigate Khashoggi's October 2 killing.

The Sabah report said the two experts visited the consulate every day from their arrival on October 11 until October 17, with Saudi authorities allowing Turkish investigators to search the consulate on October 15.

"We believe that the two individuals came to Turkey for the sole purpose of covering up evidence of Jamal Khashoggi's murder before the Turkish police were allowed to search the premises," the Turkish official said.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia told a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva that it would prosecute those responsible for Khashoggi's death, but continued to deflect reporters' questions about Riyadh's ongoing investigation.

Bandar Al Aiban, the head of Riyadh's delegation, told the U.N. hearing that King Salman had instructed the Saudi public prosecutor to "proceed with the investigation into this case according to the applicable laws," and "bringing all the perpetrators to justice." Saudi Arabia has detained 18 Saudi nationals in connection with Khashoggi's death, but Aiban gave no details on their status or whereabouts.

"The case is still under investigation, as you know ... I think my statement was very clear," Aiban said.

More than 40 nations, including the United States, called for a thorough investigation of Khashoggi's death and human rights reforms in Saudi Arabia. Numerous Western nations called for the abolition of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, an end to the system of male guardianship over women and a loosening of the definition of "terrorism" in the kingdom so that peaceful critics are not prosecuted. The Saudis have until Friday to report back on whether they will accept any of the recommendations.

The United States pulled out of the 47-member Human Rights Council in June, accusing it of anti-Israel bias.

But U.S. Charge d'Affaires Mark Cassayre appeared at the meeting in an observer status, saying that a "thorough, conclusive and transparent investigation (of Khashoggi's death) carried out in accordance with due process with results made public is essential." (VOA)

WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - The four major U.S. professional sports leagues could reap a combined $4.2 billion annually as a result of legal sports betting, most of it indirectly from increased fan engagement, according to a casino industry survey released on Thursday.

The findings could fuel a long-simmering feud between the gaming industry and American sports leagues, who want a share of the gambling revenue as U.S. states begin to legalize sports betting.

The survey showed leagues stand to benefit even without taking a cut of wagers. The National Football League is likely to make the most, with a projected $2.33 billion of additional annual revenue, according to the study seen by Reuters. The rest would go to Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.

The Nielsen Sports survey was commissioned by the American Gaming Association (AGA), which represents the casino industry. The NBA and MLB declined to comment. The NFL and NHL did not reply to requests for comment.

For years, the leagues fought states' efforts to legalize sports betting, arguing it would lead to game fixing.

Supreme Court ruling a game-changer

But in May, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a federal ban against sports betting, paving the way for any state to legalize, regulate and tax the activity.

Since then, the leagues have sought to glean a portion of the coming windfall to help them fund additional integrity measures. They also have argued that they deserve a portion of wagers because there would be nothing to bet on without their players, stadiums and games.

Major League Baseball has said it wants 1 percent of the total amount of money bet as an "integrity fee."

Lawmakers in New Jersey, the first major state outside of Nevada to roll out sports betting, flatly rejected that idea.

Heated exchange

At last week's annual Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, tensions flared when Kenny Gersh, an MLB executive vice president, told a panel the integrity fee should be called a "royalty" and that leagues had lowered their request to 0.25 percent.

"You want a cut of the revenue without any of the risk," shot back fellow panelist Sara Slane, the AGA's senior vice president of public affairs.

"We have to go through a regulatory process. We invest billions of dollars in buildings and our licenses," she said. "You want us to take that risk, pay you, and then you're going to benefit on the back end as well."

The AGA study found that $596 million of leagues' total increased annual revenue would come from gaming services spending on television advertising, $267 million from sponsorship deals with the sports betting industry and $89 million from data and video revenue.

But the study projected that the bulk of the projected windfall would come if more fans, attracted by betting, attend games or watch them. Nearly $3.3 billion is tied to those indirect revenues, including media rights and more merchandise and ticket sales.

Over 13% increase in revenue for NFL

For the NFL alone, indirect revenues could grow 13.4 percent to $14.8 billion of annual revenue, the report said.

The study has a margin of error of 3 percentage points and surveyed more than 1,000 adult sports fans and self-identified bettors nationwide, asking how a national legal market would affect sports consumption habits.

The national market would need to include at least 100 million people for the leagues to fully benefit, Nielsen estimated. (VOA)

BEIJING, LELEMUKU.COM - China is Japan’s largest trading partner and despite meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of numerous international events, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had yet to travel to Beijing for a bilateral summit. All that changed Thursday, when the Japanese leader arrived in the Chinese capital to mark the 40th anniversary of the Treaty of Japan-China Peace and Friendship.

It’s Abe’s first trip to Beijing since assuming Japan’s premiership six years ago.

Three days in China

During the three-day visit, economic issues are expected to rise to the top of discussions, although regional security issues related to the East China Sea and North Korea will most likely also get some attention.

The Japanese leader will sit down with Premier Li Keqiang Thursday and attend a reception to mark the 40th anniversary of the treaty. He then meets Xi on Friday, which will be the first Sino-Japanese summit since 2011.

Government officials and analysts expect the three-day summit will lay the groundwork for future meetings and a potential trip to Tokyo by Xi.

In a policy speech Wednesday, Abe said, “Tomorrow I will visit China. As we unflaggingly exchange summit diplomacy, I will also deepen the exchanges between the two peoples in all levels of activities from business cooperation to sports.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the bilateral summit was important and hoped that Beijing and Tokyo could move beyond the past to forge a new future.

“[We] will reconfirm that we are partners, not rivals; and reconfirm the consensus that we take each other as opportunities, not challenges; so that we could further improve and develop our ties, and at the same time deepen our mutually beneficial cooperation in all fields,” she said.

East China Sea and North Korea

When it comes to regional security issues, two of the most prominent topics for Tokyo and Beijing to discuss are competing territorial claims in the East China Sea and security concerns regarding North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Jonathan Berkshire Miller, a senior fellow at the EastWest Institute, expects that Xi and Abe will “agree to disagree” when it comes to the issue surrounding ownership of islands Japan calls Senkaku and referred to as Diaoyu by Beijing.

A senior research fellow with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo, Grant Newsham, also doesn’t see “any resolution, or movement towards resolution of the territorial issues in the East China Sea.”

Nevertheless, Newsham notes some positive advancements in bilateral security. He cites a recent naval exchange program agreed to by the two governments as one step forward. But when it comes to North Korea, Newsham expects nothing more than a general statement to work together to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

According to Miller, China’s role of implementing and maintaining sanctions on Pyongyang has traditionally been a concern for the Japanese leadership.

“I think Japan is so focused now on the U.S. and South Korea, and seeing what the Trump administration[’s approach is]” that Tokyo’s has now expanded its attention on North Korea and sanctions beyond Beijing, Miller said.

He said there’s concern in Japan about the prospect of sanction relief for North Korea without significant progress on denuclearization and the weakening of deterrence, leading Japan to stress the need to continue to maintain a united line on North Korea.

Economics to overshadow security issues

While issues related to the competing claims in the East China Sea and North Korea will be discussed, Miller expects most of the focus will be on economic cooperation initiatives, “because that is the area for good news.”

One area Miller said is worth watching is what Abe says about China’s Belt and Road initiative, especially since the establishment of a bilateral council.

“Japan has showed on a case-by-case basis that it’s willing to endorse working with the Belt and Road, but it hasn’t fully gone on board and said, ‘OK, this is a great initiative, and Japan is fully behind it,’” Miller said.

Aside from the Belt and Road initiative discussions, Newsham said the planned implementation of a $25 billion currency swap agreement between the two nations will likely be discussed.

Although Newsham doesn’t expect much in terms of concrete agreements resulting from this “feel good” meeting.

He expects a probable end result will be a “shaking of the hands and [a] vague sense that they agreed on something,” but without specific details.

However, Newsham added whatever ultimately is discussed, the outcomes won’t “lead the Chinese to change their adversarial position towards the Japanese, who they see as, the one Asian obstacle to Chinese domination of the region.” (VOA)