Two children have died and several others were injured in a mass stabbing at a children’s centre hosting a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in Merseyside, England on Monday.
A major incident was declared at a city children’s hospital in the UK after a knifeman launched an attack at a children’s summer holidays party. Police were called to a children’s centre on Hart Street, Southport at 11:47 on Monday morning (0650) and Merseyside Police have charged a 17-year-old male suspect “originally from Cardiff” with murder and attempted murder.
While it was originally thought that one child had been killed in the mass-stabbing attack, Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy revealed on Monday evening that two children have now died of stab wounds. Further, nine other children, six of whom remain in a critical condition, were injured.
Chief Constable Kennedy praised two adults who were wounded in the attack, who she said sustained their injuries “bravely trying to protect the children”.
She told a press conference this evening that officers arriving at the scene this morning were “were shocked to find that multiple people, many of whom were children, had been subjected to a ferocious attack and had suffered serious injuries.”
The top officer continued: “It is understood that the children were attending a Taylor Swift event at a dance school when the offender, armed with a knife, walked into the premises and started to attack the children. We believe that the adults who were injured were bravely trying to protect the children who were being attacked.
“… the investigation is in its early stages and the motivation for the incident remains unclear, however counter-terrorism police North West have offered their support to Merseyside Police as the full circumstances of what had happened are being established. At this moment in time the investigation is not being treated as terrorist-related.”
The officer’s statement confirms what had been earlier reported by local newspaper the Liverpool Echo reports the attack took place at a dance summer camp being hosted at a children & mother’s support centre. The event was a Taylor Swift-themed dance party for children between the ages of three and 12 years old, they stated.
The Ambulance Service declared a major incident, and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool also declared a major incident as they received casualties.
The owner of a tiny island off the coast of Scotland has vowed to reject any offers to purchase the land made by a radical Islamist cleric intent on creating a new Muslim homeland governed under Sharia law.
Torsa, the 270-acre island to the west of Scotland is on the market for around £1.5 million (€1.78 million) and is uninhabited but for a 3-bedroom farmhouse included in the sale.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported how controversial radical Islamist preacher Sheikh Yasser al-Habib had plans to purchase the land and develop a safe haven for Muslims from around the world.
Al-Habib had announced his desire to build a school, hospital, and mosque on the island, and for residents to adhere to Sharia law — the fundamental legal code of Islam, despite the territory remaining under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom.
However, MailOnline reported on Monday that the current owner assured concerned locals he would not sell the land to anyone considered to be a bad fit with the local community.
The island is around 1.2 miles long and 0.5 miles wide. It is only accessible by private boat and has not been permanently inhabited since the 1960s.
Local residents of adjacent islands expressed their contempt for Al-Habib’s plans.
“The proposal for setting up a sectarian religious outpost on a rural Scottish island is immoral,” said Alastair Redman, a local councillor.
“The fact that he wants to involve an idyllic setting in prejudiced preaching is simply unacceptable,” he added.
Alastair Fleming, a local resident of the neighboring island of Luing, said locals would hamper any plans with planning objections and questioned how viable Al-Habib’s plans were for an island so remote and small.
“It is not an easy island to set up a community on and I am perplexed as to why he has chosen Torsa. Even if he did buy the island, I do not think he would be able to carry out the works he is proposing,” he told MailOnline.
The Kuwaiti-born preacher, now based in London, has a chequered past. He claimed asylum in Britain after being sentenced to 10 years in prison in his home country for upsetting Sunni Muslims by “questioning the conduct and integrity of some of the ‘companions’ of the prophet Muhammad.”
In Britain, he has run military-style training regimes in the car park of a mosque in Buckinghamshire, and is the founder of controversial satellite channel Fadak TV, which has been scolded by Britain’s media regulator Ofcom on multiple occasions for “hate-filled broadcasts.”
The cleric, however, remains a popular figure among his audience with a following in the hundreds of thousands and is using his television channel to raise funds to buy the island.
Savills, the estate agent conducting the sale, insists it remains on the market.
he Prime Minister Boris Johnson attends day two of the COP26 World Leaders Summit in Glasgow in 2021. Photo: British Prime Minister’s Office, OGL 3, via Wikimedia Commons
Former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson will not back any of the party’s leadership candidates, but he is intent on influencing them all on the issue of the environment.
With nominations for the Conservative leadership now closed, Johnson has insisted that whoever is next to head the party must push on with firm support for Net Zero. He said that “continued Conservative environmental leadership is critical for our party’s electoral prospects and the environmental cause.”
During the general election campaign, Rishi Sunak—who will step down as Tory leader once his replacement has been decided—made efforts to present the environment as a dividing line between the Conservatives and Labour. However, the differences were (and are) broadly rhetorical.
Johnson, on the other hand, has long been open about his attachment to the green cause. As Mayor of London, he established the capital’s widely-hated ‘Ultra Low Emission Zone’ (ULEZ). Then, as prime minister, he was pleased to announce a new “landmark strategy” for reaching net zero. All this despite the harm done by the drive to net zero to a large range of industries—particularly farming—and, in turn, national consumers. Not to mention the former Tory government’s dire warning that a speedy rejection of fossil fuels could lead to blackouts.
It is, then, unsurprising that Johnson—who many Tories say was the party’s best leader in decades—believes it is important that the Conservatives continue to work to “finish the job of reaching net zero.”
His comments coincided with the launch of the Conservative Environment Network’s manifesto for environmentalism. This document lays out the need to “move away from expensive fossil fuels,” “double [the] renewable energy capacity” and to “require listed companies, asset managers, asset owners, and large companies to publish transition plans.”
Johnson’s insistence has also been backed by two other liberal former Tory leaders, Lord Hague and Lord Howard.
Depending on the result of the ongoing Tory leadership race, it is very likely that the party’s messaging around net zero will shift over to the Right over the coming years. But whether its voting record and—should it get back into power—actual legislative approach will change is another question altogether.
Police have declared a “major incident” in Southport after reports of a stabbing and a “number of reported casualties”.
At least eight people have been attacked with stab injuries and some have been taken to a children’s hospital.
The North West Ambulance Service has some of the victims have been taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.
Some victims have also been taken to Aintree University Hospital and Southport and Formby hospital.
The ambulance service has dispatched 13 ambulances along with specialised resources.
LATEST | Emergency services are in #Southport after a major incident this morning (Mon). One man has been arrested and a knife seized. There are casualties.
In the midst of the rain-soaked opening ceremony of the Olympics, President Macron tweeted: “This is France.” He was right, though perhaps not in the way he intended.
The president sent out his message in the hours-long display of France’s new secular religion: woke, which rejects and mocks the old while sacralising the new—transgenderism, multiculturalism.
The spectacle will always come first when organising an Olympic ceremony. Everything needs to be improved upon from its predecessors. Faster, higher, stronger is the motto of the games, after all. In 2012, the London Olympics had an opening ceremony which praised Britain’s National Health Service. That was as quirky an idea, though less insulting, as the French efforts to make a spectacle of sexual diversity (every variation of sex except a heterosexual married two-parent family).
Nosta Lgia
It was always going to take something special to capture, in brief, the distinct history and culture of France, a relatively small country that has contributed significantly to the zeitgeist throughout the ages—Baudelaire, Voltaire, Monet, the rest. For centuries, painters, poets, and writers changed the world, leaving behind a cultural legacy for the next generation. Paris, at the vanguard of an artistic and cultural revolution, rose to prominence as the Enlightenment capital of Europe.
Though you would have to struggle to any of that in the Olympic opening.
Thomas Jolly, the organiser of the ceremony was very specific about what he wanted. The theatre director assured everyone that it would be a ’celebration of cultural, linguistic, religious and sexual diversity in France.’ Welcome to the ‘queering’ of the Olympic Games.
Representation entails prioritising one thing over another. From the outset of the sodden ceremony, Jolly shared with us his creative vision of all that France supposedly holds dear. Everywhere you looked during the event was a drag act. A group of body positive drag queens were served a naked man with blue body paint on a fruit platter in a scene that resembled a Bacchanalian Last Supper. Not to mention a man with a beard twerking for the camera. It was more Eurovision than Olympian.
The decision to host it on the Seine was a terrible decision. This was the first time in the history of the Olympic Games that the ceremony was held somewhere other than the traditional stadium. Major sporting events are held in stadiums for one reason: the weather. But I suppose that is what happens when you want to defy convention and be rebellious. While 300,000 spectators lined the quays in rain macs to cheer over 10,000 athletes representing more than two hundred sporting nations all piled onto boats in the pouring rain.
And then there was the length. This took four hours from beginning to end. If you were looking for culture, you could have attended a performance of Carmen at one of the opera houses in Paris, then returned to watch the last thirty or so boats drift up the Seine.
When we did at last get some culture, it was less authentically French and more a celebration of North American cultural imperialism. Lady Gaga and Canadian singer Celine Dion, two semi-forgotten pop stars from the noughties, performed and a headless Marie Antoinette sang a few lines to a heavy metal song. Forty years ago, this kind of faux radicalism would have been considered cliché in gay clubs.
The way that Christ is portrayed in the Last Supper performance has offended some people. The question I find myself asking is not how you could mock Christianity, as I respect freedom of speech and the ability to blaspheme, but rather why it is that you feel the need to constantly attack this specific religion. How would it go over if a man dressed like a busty woman wearing a purple wig spanked a drag version of Muhammad? These people consider it a safe target. Someone should have reminded Jolly that Madonna was doing this in the 1980s.
The fact that these identitarian enthusiasts would never mock or criticise Islam is evidence of their capitulation to conformity. Is it conceivable that they would stage a drag portrayal of Aisha atop a glitter-studded horse with rainbow-coloured wings, ridiculing the Muslim belief that Muhammad ascended to heaven atop this mythical creature? I don’t think so. The cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, 12 of whom were killed in 2015 by two Muslim gunmen for publishing a cartoon depicting their prophet—then boldly published them a few years later—are the artists I admire.
Controversy has surrounded the games despite all of the fanfare and pageantry. An attack had sabotaged three of France’s main railway lines, leaving thousands of attendees stranded, just as athletes were lighting the torch. Then we learned that raw meat had been served to athletes in the Olympic village. But by far the most concerning has been the inclusion of a convicted rapist in the Dutch volleyball team. Meanwhile a six-time female Olympian had to drop out of the games for excessively whipping a horse. The entire situation strikes me as incredibly hypocritical for an event that purports to depict true ‘gender parity.’
There was one point during the tedious event that seemed to sum up France’s current predicament perfectly. To deliver the Olympic flag, a giant silver horse galloped down the Seine. We’re discussing religion and symbolism, so it seems like something out of the Book of Revelation. A pale horse is a symbol of death. We are mourning the loss of the nation’s cultural heritage rather than celebrating it.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday appeared to threaten to invade Israel in support of the Palestinians, and to put an end to the nearly 10-month-old war Israel is fighting against Hamas in Gaza.
Turkey must be “very strong so that Israel can’t do these things to the Palestinians,” the Turkish leader said of the war. “Just as we entered [Nagorno-]Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we might do the same to them. There is nothing we can’t do. We must only be strong.”
The remarks, delivered at a party meeting in Rize, were the latest in a series of inflammatory statements he has issued about Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the months following the October 7 Hamas terror onslaught, and subsequent war in Gaza.
In 2020, Turkey, under Erdoğan’s direction, provided military support to Azerbaijan during a 44-day conflict sparked by a land dispute with Armenia and the breakaway territory of Artsakh, or the republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Turkish military did not intervene directly, and instead provided assistance, which included the deployment of Syrian mercenaries and a supply of drones.
Also in 2020, Turkey passed a one-year mandate to deploy troops to Libya in support of the United Nations-recognized Libyan government, as it fought a civil war.
As a member of NATO, which includes the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and other close allies of Israel, Erdogan would almost certainly face heavy opposition if he attempted to take military action over the war in Gaza.
He has been at odds with his Western allies in recent months, after accusing them several times of backing a supposed Israeli plan to intentionally “spread war” throughout the Middle East.
Erdogan: “We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these things to Palestine. Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we might do the same to them. There is nothing we cannot do. Only we must be strong. “
In response to Erdogan’s latest threat, Foreign Minister Israel Katz compared him to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose regime was toppled by a US-led invasion in 2003. He was later executed by an Iraqi court, after being captured and tried.
“Erdogan is going down the path of Saddam Hussein and threatens to attack Israel. He should just remember what happened there and how that ended,” wrote Katz on X.
In recent months, Erdogan has gone as far as to suggest that Jerusalem would “set its sights” on Ankara once it has completed its stated goal of destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, and freeing the hostages abducted by the Gazan terror group on October 7.
In a speech delivered in the Turkish parliament back in May, Erdogan told his party not to think “that Israel will stop in Gaza.”
“Unless it’s stopped… this rogue and terrorist state will set its sights on Anatolia sooner or later,” he said at the time, in a bizarre claim, and pledged that Turkey would “continue to stand by Hamas, which fights for the independence of its own land.”
Since the war erupted with the October 7 terror assault in southern Israel, when Hamas killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians and abducted 251 others, the Turkish leader has met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Istanbul — where he encouraged Palestinians to unite against Israel, and has compared Israel to Nazi Germany and Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Erdogan and Netanyahu have a long history of public attacks on each other, which have ebbed and flowed alongside Israel and Turkey’s on-again, off-again alliance.
The attacks had halted as Jerusalem and Ankara ties warmed, but the détente seemingly fell apart as the war in Gaza continued.
In May, Erdogan announced that Turkey would halt all trade with Israel.
What fresh hell is this from the wokester Paris Olympics?
According to the Los Angeles Times, elite athletes are being forced to go without air conditioning in the sweltering Paris summer, all to save the planet.
Instead of installing A/C to keep housing safe and comfortable for thousands of athletes staying in the Olympic village, organizers planned to rely on a geothermal system that pipes in cool water underneath the floors. But their assurances that the system was capable of keeping indoor temperatures about 11 degrees cooler than outdoors did not inspire much confidence during a year that’s on track to be the hottest on record.
The plan promptedconcerns from many countries — including the United States — that runners, gymnasts, swimmers and other athletes in the biggest competition of their lives would not get the rest and recovery they need to perform their best as temperatures reach the upper 80s and 90s. As Matt Carroll with the Australian Olympic Committee put it last year, “We’re not going for a picnic.”
Just got done running a practice Marathon or a 400-meter sprint at a speed as fast as humanly possible, in the Paris summer heat wave? Just finished a practice session of soccer or basketball? Just got done lifting 1,076 pounds of weights?
No air conditioner for you, bub, sweat it out. Too bad if you don’t like it, the Paris committee has a planet to save.
In the lead-up to the Games, French officials were uncompromising in their view that A/C would be unnecessary and unacceptable because of the impact of energy consumption on the climate. “I have a lot of respect for the comfort of athletes, but I think a lot more about the survival of humanity,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told a French radio station last year.
As Eric Hoffer once wrote in The Passionate State of Mind, published in 1955, people like these are “the enemies of mankind.”
Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind. We acquire a sense of worth either by realizing our talents, or by keeping busy, or by identifying ourselves with something apart from us–be it a cause, a leader, a group, possessions and the like.
The athletes are in category one. Their hosts are in category two, justifying their callous indifference as wondering how dare these elite athletes expect to be cooled down to a comfortable temperature, such as their bodies require to get their necessary rest when we’ve got a planet to save?
Of course with trash like this going on, there was a participant revolt as these self-respecting athletes and their trainers stood up for themselves.
In the end, organizers’ plans to save energy by not providing A/C evaporated with a compromise that allowed teams to order thousands of A/C units and bring them into the Olympic village at their own expense.
Imported air conditioning is never as good as the piped-in real thing, so this was triage for the richer nations with bigger Olympic budgets. The poorer nations, with smaller Olympic budgets, so far as the editorial went — think of the poorer African states or the tiny Pacific island states, and many other nations with fewer athletic resources — got nothing. But oh, their godawful conditions in Paris make for a greener planet, so they must be so happy.
This is crappy hosting. And the Times notes that it’s part of a string of bad hosting decisions for elite athletes who have spent their entire lives training to the absolute human max for their events and have a right to expect just minimal comforts of civilization, such as air conditioning like normal people in Iowa get, or proper food with animal-based protein such as world-class athletes need (actually, they need extra animal-based protein given the calories they burn) for their Olympic competitions instead of greenie plant-based substitutes of these greenie committees which have been a disaster. See here, here and here. Some of the athletic teams reportedly have already packed up and gone to hotels, given the godawaful conditions in the Village.
The Times also said that uncomfortable cardboard beds to save the planet have been foisted on the athletes, and far left radical greens outside the committee have vowed to poop in the cleaned-up Seine river to force the athletes to swim in their self-designated toilet which could make them sick.
You thought the green swimming pool of Brazil was the grossest thing that ever happened at the Olympics, or the Brits dancing around a ‘death’ figure to celebrate the National Health Service was the most disgusting? No, it’s got to be these Paris Olympics, who have made each Olympic athlete in need of deluxe accommodations for the apex of their careers an ambassador for the get-rid-of-greenie-wokesterism movement.
The green movement has always been about succoring the elites, selling them carbon credits as they jet off in a plume of private-plane effluvia. But this treatment of the elites was a bad miscalculation.
If they can treat elites this way with their unearned power and lack of consent from the public, it’s a warning that they will do the same stuff to the rest of us — taking away our air conditioners, our gas stoves, our fireplaces, our plastic straws, our meat, our flush toilets and everything else. What chance does the little guy have when even the elite athletes of the Olympics who don’t just want certain basics of civilization but actually need those basics get treated like this by these green overlords?
Let’s hope this horrible experience for the athletes gets around and represents the moment the greenie overlords jumped the shark and had to be driven back to the pinched little sweat-Nazi hellhole they came from.
The crime rate of North Africans is soaring higher in Germany, with Moroccans and Tunisians now responsible for one murder every six days on average. However, other serious crimes, including assault, stabbings, and rape, are exploding as well, with the German left-liberal government overseeing an incredible increase in crime while refusing to deport offenders.
Compared to 2019, murder cases involving Tunisians increased by 110 percent and 67 percent for Moroccans. Last year, a Tunisian or a Moroccan committed a murder every sixth day in Germany, according to data from the Federal Criminal Police Office.
When it comes to sexual crimes such as rape, this group of North Africans is even more overrepresented in the crime data. The number of serious sexual offense cases like rape jumped 169 percent for Tunisians between 2019 and 2023 while Moroccans saw an increase of 65 percent in the same period, according to a report from Bild newspaper.
For assaults and robbery, nationals from these two North African nations were responsible for a total of 6,746 crimes in 2023, which equals 19 cases a day. This group of foreigners also is notorious for attacking police officers, with the number of such cases doubling since 2019.
The number of theft cases involving Moroccan suspects rose from 2,900 in 2019 to 5,501 cases in 2023, and among Tunisians by as much as 176 percent to 3,881 cases in 2023.
The only real numbers that are seeing any drop are in terms of deportations. In 2019, 319 Tunisians and 696 Moroccans were deported to their home countries. In 2023, these numbers fell to 273 Tunisians and 272 Moroccans — despite soaring crime from these two groups and an increasing number of people from these two countries arriving in Germany.
The problem has much to do with the ruling government, with the Greens refusing to label these two countries, well known as tourist destinations for Germans, as “safe countries.” Germans, and even these migrants themselves, routinely take their vacations in these nations.
Even ultra-violent and criminal migrants from these countries can remain in Germany for years without any potential for deportation. As Remix News reported last week, one Moroccan migrant has committed well over 100 crimes in the last 10 years — and despite a standing deportation order and multiple prison stints — he has never been deported back to this home country. Just this month, he triggered four police operations in a matter of 24 hours.
Despite the numerous asylum claims from these nations, the rate of their cases being accepted as actual political persecution is close to zero percent. Most of them are, in reality, economic migrants who travel through numerous safe countries to enjoy Germany’s social welfare system. In many cases, these countries have no interest in taking back criminals who may cause serious problems in their host nation.
The crime rate is not only exploding for these two groups; Germany’s foreign population overall has brought a tremendous amount of criminality with it. In 2023, there was a record share of foreign crime in the data, with 41 percent of all crimes committed by foreigners. For serious crimes like rape and murder, foreigners account for 6 out of every 10 crimes.
It is important to note that German statistics do not tell the whole story either, as many of the murders are committed by German citizens who are actually of foreign origin and were naturalized as German citizens. For instance, Berlin’s lead prosecutor has stated that three out of every four migrant clan members actually have German citizenship. As a result, every time one of these gang members commits a crime, the police record it as a German committing a crime.
Two athletes competing at the Paris Olympics as “women” were previously disqualified from a women’s world championship for having “XY chromosomes.” Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan are scheduled to compete in Olympic women’s boxing next week despite past questions surrounding their biological sex.
The Women’s World Boxing Championships took place in March of 2023 and was hosted in New Delhi, India. A total of 324 boxers from 64 nations competed during the 10-day trial, marking the largest participation in any iteration of the championship ever recorded.
However, the grand event was marred by controversy after Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association (IBA), announced the disqualification of multiple boxers from the championship.
Kremlev said that IBA executives had met towards the championship’s grand finale to discuss “fairness among athletes and professionalism,” after concerns were raised about the biological sex of some participants. He added that after “a series of DNA-tests,” the IBA “uncovered athletes who were trying to fool their colleagues and pretend to be women.”
Speaking to TASS News, Kremlev claimed that the tests had proven the athletes in question “had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from the sports events.”
Among the disqualified was Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer who had been set to challenge Yang Liu of China in the welterweight final. Khelif was removed from the gold medal fight, and Thailand’s Janjaem Suwannapheng, who had lost to Khelif in the semi-finals, was allowed to proceed to fight Yang instead.
In a public statement, the IBA wrote that “a boxer from Algeria, Imane Khelif, was excluded from the IBA World Boxing Championships due to the failure to meet the IBA eligibility criteria.” But the Algerian Olympic Committee denied the IBA’s claims, attributing Khelif’s disqualification to a “conspiracy” to prevent Algeria from having a gold medal in boxing.
While they vaguely alluded to Khelif being struck for “medical reasons” surrounding high testosterone levels, they added that they would be supporting Khelif’s journey to the 2024 Paris Olympics regardless.
But following the controversial disqualification, a female boxer came forward to discuss her experience fighting Khelif in the ring at the championship.
“When I fought with her I felt very out of my depth,” Mexican boxer Brianda Tamara wrote on X. “Her blows hurt me a lot, I don’t think I had ever felt like that in my 13 years as a boxer, nor in my sparring with men. Thank God that day I got out of the ring safely, and it’s good that they finally realized,” Tamara said.
Cuando pelee con ella lo sentí muy fuera de mi alcance, me lastimaban mucho sus golpes, creo que nunca en mis 13 años de boxeadora me había sentido así, ni en mis sparrings con hombres. Gracias a Dios ese día baje con bien del ring, y que bueno que por fin se dieron cuenta pic.twitter.com/0mHyhNfq4X
While neither have stated they identify as transgender, it is suspected that both are impacted by a Difference of Sexual Development (DSD), a category of medical conditions encompassing any problem noted at birth where the genitalia are atypical in relation to the chromosomes or gonads.
DSDs in elite sports first came to public attention during the meteoric rise of South African runner Caster Semenya. Semenya’s rapid improvements in performance beginning in 2009 initially triggered suspicions of drug use, and World Athletics (then called the IAAF) was internationally denounced for requesting Semenya take a test to ascertain his biological sex.
Most women, including elite female athletes, have natural testosterone levels of 0.12 to 1.79 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L), but Semenya has XY chromosomes and male gonads producing a normal level of testosterone for a male. In 2011, Semenya was measured as having 15.6 and 29.3 nmol/L. Years later, a decision in the Court of Arbitration for Sport revealed that Semenya has a DSD where the normal male sexual development fails in utero, resulting in external genitals that appear to be a vagina at birth, but was in fact an underdeveloped penis.
Speaking to Reduxx, a representative with the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) condemned the confusion that had emerged surrounding the sex of competitors due to the International Olympic Committee’s 2000 decision to end sex-verification screening.
“The IOC’s decision to end sex-verification screening in 2000 has caused distrust and confusion in women’s sports ever since,” ICONS co-founder Marshi Smith said. “Its 2021 decision to offload the responsibility for international eligibility criteria to individual sporting bodies has resulted in varied standards and widespread chaos among athletes, coaches, officials, and the public.”
This new unit was set up after the International Boxing Association (IBA), which had previously disqualified Khelif and Lin from women’s championships, was suspended by the IOC due to concerns it was receiving funding from Russia.
In the FAQ for the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit, no gender eligibility guidelines are specified, something Smith suggests likely indicates that individual nations were given a tremendous amount of power to deem their own athletes eligible.
“In boxing, the recent contentious split between the IBA and the IOC has now placed Olympic eligibility power into the hands of national boxing federations, allowing countries like Algeria and Taiwan to set their own standards and continue placing male boxers in the ring with female athletes in combat for women’s Olympic medals,” Smith explains.
“The physical abuse of women on an Olympic stage eliminates the integrity of all Olympic events and risks lifelong injury or even death for female athletes. This deceit cannot be allowed to continue.”
