Category World News

More than 30 people were detained on suspicion of illegal sports betting after the shocking indictment, which included Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and other NBA figures.

With just a few taps of a cellphone, wagers can be placed on anything from the outcome of a game to the outcome of a single play. Since legalization, the multibillion-dollar industry has become more accessible. It’s nearly impossible to attend a basketball, football, baseball, or other professional game today or to watch a TV match without seeing sports betting advertisements.

While “Bet” tickers scroll through TV sports broadcasts, fans can place wagers from their stadium seats. Celebrity athletes frequently play a major role in marketing the entire endeavor.

Federal authorities alleged Rozier and other defendants of breaking the law by stealing players’ private information to win NBA games in the indictment on Thursday. Jim Trusty, Rozier’s attorney, stated in a statement that his client “sees forward to winning this fight” and that he is “not a gambler.”

In a separate indictment, it is claimed that Chauncey Billups, a coach for the Portland Trail Blazers, and others conspired to fix high-stakes card games. Chris Heywood, Billups’ attorney, called his client a “man of integrity” in a statement that denied the allegations.

Experts warn about the consequences for gamblers who typically lose money when sports wagering has proven to be challenging to regulate. Professional leagues’ own influence on how to promote gambling has raised questions.

After official figures revealed that businesses had systematically robbed 450 million people of $2.3 billion annually, India’s government passed a comprehensive bill banning online gambling in August.

The ban affected mobile devices like India’s wildly popular homegrown fantasy cricket apps, which include card games, poker, and fantasy sports.

India’s national cricket team was at the time sponsored by Dream11, the nation’s largest fantasy sports gaming platform.

legalized sports betting is being exploited

The history of sports betting is probably as old as the sport itself. However, legal gambling actually started to flourish in the US in 2018.

The Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act, which prohibited sports betting in most states, was overturned by the Supreme Court at that time. Sports betting was once restricted to Nevada, but now it is permitted in 38 states and Washington, D.C., online or in retail locations. On December 1, Missouri will become the 39th state.

According to experts, the biggest increase has been found online, using platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel and smartphone apps. Legal sports betting generated $ 10 billion in revenue in the third quarter of this year, up about 19% from the same period last year, according to the American Gaming Association.

Legal wagering, according to the industry, generates revenue for states and can stop illegal gambling. Major operators point to the technology they employ to track suspicious activity. The “sharp contrast between legal and illegal betting markets,” according to FanDuel, is illustrated by Thursday’s news.

Who benefits?

There is plenty of money available, both for those who place winning bets and for the platforms that enable it. Through their affiliation with sportsbooks and the receipt of advertising revenue, the NBA and other professional sports leagues have also established revenue streams.

The relationship between the sports industry and the gambling industry is crucial to the leagues’ availability of live game statistics. Major League Baseball is selling data to platforms “for a pretty high price,” according to Isaac Rose-Berman, a fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men, whose research focuses on sports betting.

For its data rights, the NBA and Sportradar work together. Official FanDuel Sportsbook statistics are provided by Sportradar in turn. Sportradar referred to the deal as a “to monetize our long-term partnership with the NBA” when it was announced in 2022.

What rules apply to sports betting?

Sports betting is regulated and taxed in each state, per state. Some jurisdictions forbid placing bets, for instance, but only when a player is physically present inside a casino or a certain distance from a stadium. Other regulations restrict the types of betting options you can place on.

According to Wayne Taylor, a professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University, “states kind of opened up a can of worms, and some of them are starting to realize how crazy this sports betting world sort is.”

When players and other team or league members interact, this becomes even more problematic. Employees and players are prohibited from betting on their own league games by the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL, though some players may be allowed to do so in other areas.

Legalized gambling offers some security benefits, such as the ability to immediately flag unusual betting patterns, such as large bets being placed on a random player’s performance. Sportsbooks may have reduced odds on some events to prevent manipulation in some cases.

Experts like Taylor point out that some of that may be brought into question by companies’ own financial interests. Additionally, he claims that the large number of players and the range of micro bet possibilities make potential manipulation “easier to hide” across the sports market.

Prop betting: What is it?

A prop is a type of wager that allows gamblers to wager on whether a player will score more than a certain number of points, rebounds, assists, and other statistics.

The sports betting investigation’s Thursday announcement is crucial because of this type of wager. Rozier and the Charlotte Hornets played a game on March 23, 2023, according to investigators.

Rozier missed the night of the game because of a foot issue, and he missed the following season by playing the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds. He had a productive opening quarter with five points, four rebounds, and two assists, which was far below his usual total output for the entire contest. Many bettors at the time complained on social media that a shady event had occurred regarding prop bets on his stats that night.

In general, other sports leagues are concerned about the potential for manipulation, while the NBA has expressed concern about prop bets.

After Major League Baseball placed two Cleveland Guardians pitchers on leave during a sports betting investigation, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine earlier this year demanded that the state’s gambling commission outlaw prop bets.

What additional pitfalls and social repercussions exist?

Sports betting is also criticized for allowing for the development of addictive gambling.

According to Taylor, “the fact that it’s normalized, the advertising is aggressive, it’s available 24/7, and the micro bets are all adding up to a significant increase in usage across individuals,” citing algorithms and other incentives that betting platforms use to increase engagement.

Rose-Berman points out that platforms make the most of returning “biggest losers” According to recent research, young men in low-income neighborhoods are particularly affected by financial repercussions of sports gambling.

According to him, “upwards of 90% of sports bettors are not going to really experience significant negative effects,” but it will be devastating for them because they are so concentrated among those big losers.

The chances of the country’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) winning another election are increasing as the country prepares for a snap parliamentary election on October 29 – less than halfway through its usual four-year term since the ruling coalition’s collapse.

An outright win is next to impossible. Due to its proportional representation electoral system, which gives parties access to seats in parliament according to the number of votes they receive, the Netherlands has always had a coalition government made up of at least two parties.

In the most recent election, in November 2023, the PVV, led by Geert Wilders, also received the most votes. To create a coalition government, it then formed a coalition government with three other far-right organizations: the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), New Social Contract (NSC), and the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

But in June, PVV made a dramatic exit from the coalition government over a disagreement on immigration policy. The other parties demanded further discussions, despite the fact that PVV had hoped to have a stricter asylum policy that would include deporting dual nationals who had been found guilty of crimes.

Wilders made a dramatic announcement on X that it would leave the coalition if other parties refused to support PVV’s plans.

Coalition partners slammed this decision and accused Wilders of being driven by self-interest. Wilders “chooses his own ego and his own interests,” according to VVD leader Dilan Yesilgoz at the time. I’m shocked. He throws away the chance for a right-wing policy”.

Independent Prime Minister Dick Schoof announced that he would step down following the pull-out and that a snap election would take place this month.

Caspar Veldkamp, the NSC’s foreign minister, resigned in August after failing to secure support for new sanctions against Israel for its conflict in Gaza and its humanitarian situation there. In solidarity with Veldkamp, other NSC party members left the coalition, leaving only two parties remaining.

The PVV’s seat count in the 150-seat parliament is predicted to increase as an election draws nearer. No single party ever reaches that figure, which has resulted in coalition formation, despite the fact that a winner needs 76 seats to form a government.

According to a poll by the Dutch news outlet, EenVandaag, on October 14, the PVV is projected to secure 31 seats. The center-right Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) is polling at 23 seats, while the center-left Green-Labour Alliance (GroenLinks-PvdA) is polling at 25.

The center-right VVD, PVV’s former coalition partner, could hold four seats for the BBB and the VVD, the former BBB. So far, the NSC is not projected to secure any seats at all.

Fears of immigration

At the end of September, EenVandaag polled 27, 191 people and found that the main sticking point between voters – and, hence, between the leaders, PVV and GroenLinks-PvdA – is immigration. It was the main topic in the eyes of half of the voters this year, according to half of the voters. Second-placed were “Dutch identity” and “Housing,” with 37%, and “Dutch identity” was third.

While the PVV is firmly anti-immigration and wants to impose a much stricter border policy and asylum laws, GroenLinks-PvdA would prefer to allow a net migration figure of 40, 000 and 60, 000 migrants per year.

This problem is making people frighten. A right-wing activist known as “Els Rechts” staged a protest against immigration in The Hague last month that attracted 1,500 attendees. According to reports, protesters threw stones and bottles at the police, set a police car alight and smashed windows of the left-wing Democrats 66 (D66) party offices.

Left-wingers are losing control of the narrative, even though they claim the far-right has wildly hyped up the immigration issue.

According to Esme Smithson Swain, a member of MiGreat, a Dutch non-governmental campaign group that promotes the right to free movement and equal treatment for migrants in the Netherlands, the far right has “constructed a narrative that there is a migration crisis” in the Netherlands and the UK more broadly.

“They’ve managed to construct this idea of a crisis, and that distracts our attention away from populism, away from arms trades, away from social services and the welfare state being sold off”.

Whatever its merits, the right-wing belief that immigration is the root of many social problems seems to be permeating everything. The far-left, pro-immigration BIJ1 party, which rejects this claim, is not expected to win any seats in this election.

Immigration “is a key term especially for right-wing political parties to win the election”, Noura Oul Fakir, a candidate for the BIJ1 party, told Al Jazeera. This fight for equality and justice is interconnected with other issues that we see today, not just immigration, but because we examine everything that has been going on from a systemic point of view.

People ‘ more emboldened to express racist views ‘

By January 1, 2024, the Netherlands had 2.9 million people living there (same as the population’s average across the member states of the European Union) compared to 9.9 percent (44.7% total).

According to data from the EU, Germany has 16.9 million migrants (22.2% of the population), France has 9.3 million (13.6 percent), Spain has 8.8 million (18.2%), and Italy has 6.7 million (11.3 percent) of the population.

Mark van Ostaijen, an associate professor in public administration and sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, explained that immigration has become a mainstream talking point in “housing, care, educational and cultural policy domains”.

According to figures released by the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning (VRO), the Netherlands is currently short of 434, 000 homes, with 353, 000 of those being first-time buyers and 81, 000 of those being first-time buyers.

Therefore, what is perceived as a housing crisis was brought on by immigration.

According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), 316, 000 migrants arrived in the country in 2024, 19, 000 fewer than in 2023. However, according to CBS, population growth is still largely attributable to net migration, with the bulk of migrants coming from Syria and Ukraine.

Given that the Netherlands was already leaning toward the conservative viewpoint, van Ostaijen told Al Jazeera, “I think this is indeed something that will continue the electoral legitimacy of far-right parties, or right-wing parties, even more.”

“This will be a topic that will haunt our politics and our democratic decision-making and discourse for quite a while”, he said.

This is supported by anecdotal evidence. In the wake of the expansion of the PVV, Fakir and her colleagues have noticed a change in the experiences of immigrant residents in the nation.

“In their personal life]they have seen] a noticeable shift where people feel more free or emboldened to express racist views, both online and in real life. People are telling them to “go back to your own country, or you’re not Dutch,” she said, echoing the old adage.

The anti-immigration protests at the Hague have “further cemented polarization among Dutch voters” and have caused centrist parties to align with the right-wing narrative, according to Nassreddin Taibi, a recent graduate who plans to vote for GroenLinks-PvdA.

“These protests have influenced the discourse in the sense that centrist parties now say that cutting immigration is necessary to win back trust of voters in politics”, he said.

Nearly half of voters are still unsure.

The far-right PVV is expected to take home the most seats in this election, but it will still have to work together because coalition government members like the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) have ruled out joining a coalition.

Furthermore, the PVV’s leader, Wilders, has not escaped controversy with his Islamophobic comments and anti-migration stance despite the rise in anti-immigration sentiment across the country as a whole.

Wilders’ comparison of Islam to Nazism in 2007 and his reference to the Muslim holy book, the Quran, as “fascist” in a letter to a Dutch news outlet are two notable incidents over the years. His letter and comments led to Wilders’ denial of his charges of inciting hatred and discrimination. In 2011, he was acquitted by a judge who ruled that his comments had fallen within the scope of free speech.

A smiling, blonde, and blue-eyed woman, representing the PVV, and an elderly, creased, angry-looking woman wearing a headscarf, representing the PVV were both depicted in an earlier image posted on X in August of this year. The phrase “The choice is yours on 29/10” was added to it.

Aan U de keuze op 29/10 pic. twitter.com/royhcInDlm

Fake news and misinformation have also driven the rise in far-right narratives, analysts say.

The Facebook page “Wij doen GEEN aangifte tegen Geert Wilders” (We are NOT filing charges against Geert Wilders), which claims to be a page for PVV supporters and has 129, 000 followers, stated it does not intend to be “discriminatory, hateful, or incite violence,” but it has nonetheless posted AI-generated images of this kind.

A white family is allegedly being harassed by men of color in one of these images, which received 1,700 likes.

In another, a white woman is seen in a supermarket paying for groceries while surrounded by Muslim women wearing hijabs and niqabs, with the caption: “No mass immigration, no Islamisation, no backwardness of the Dutch”. 885 people liked the post.

Judith Uitermark, the country’s incoming home affairs minister, stated that the country is looking into new ways to combat fake news while the country’s proportional representation system, which guarantees no party ever wins a majority, is a measure of protection from the rise of extremism.

Still, the Dutch Data Protection Authority has warned voters not to use AI chatbots to help them decide who to vote for.

And many people are still making their decisions. According to EenVandaag, about 48% of voters are still unsure about their choice of candidate. If the GroenLinks-PvdA can disengage from right-wing talking points and, instead, focus on its own policies more, it may perform better than expected, analysts say.

However, this will not be simple.

We find ourselves fighting off the narrative and the far-right’s populist ideals more quickly than we can push for our own agenda, both as a civil society organization and as campaigners. And I think a lot of the time that leaves left-wing parties in the Netherlands seeming a bit hollow”, Swain said.

Despite what appears to be a “vast and growing far-right majority of the population,” she claims that she is holding out for this election.

“I find that there is a certain level of division between us and them,” she says. Us campaigning on the left and this growing mass of the far right”, Swain said.

Anthony Aguilar takes the center of the conversation about the heinous GHF in Gaza that he witnessed working as a security contractor. The former US Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel goes into great detail about the operation of aid distribution facilities and how his or her horrors forced him to step down after only 41 days. Aguilar has worked tirelessly to persuade US policymakers to put an end to Israel’s two-year genocide since his return to the country.

Donald Trump, president of the United States, has suggested using the current front lines of negotiations over territory as a point of entry.

Despite Trump boasting during his presidential campaign last year that he could end the conflict in “24 hours” after his inauguration, peace negotiations have so far stalled.

If Russia wants to consider a ceasefire, it insists that it must be able to keep all the land it has seized from Ukraine and be given more. Trump hasn’t moved either way, and Ukraine has resisted doing so.

How Russia and Ukraine have responded to this most recent proposal, and what the current front lines look like:

Trump’s proposals include what?

Trump has suggested that the conflict be stopped where it is currently taking place.

They can bargain later on. But Trump remarked to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, “Cut and Stop at the Battle Line.”

If you’re going to say, “You take this, I’ll take this,” the rest is very difficult to negotiate. We accept that.

Trump declined when asked if he had given Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy advice to cede the entire eastern Donbass region, which borders Russia and has claimed territory there.

“Let it be shaved as is,” It is currently cut up. Trump claimed to believe that 78 percent of Russia’s land has already been taken from it.

You let it continue as it is now. They may negotiate something in the future.

Where are we currently on the front lines?

Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia are the four eastern and southern Ukrainian provinces where Russia has seized territory during its nearly four-year conflict with Ukraine. Additionally, it has a small portion of Kharkiv province under its control.

The Donbas, which has seen the most fighting, is known as the Donbas as a whole.

Russia is in complete control of Luhansk and the majority of Donetsk, as well as the regions that surround the Sloviansk and Kramatorsk cities.

About 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhia are also under Russian control.

Zaporizhia is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and is a significant industrial hub with a reputation for producing steel, aluminum, and aircraft.

How has this proposal been received by Ukraine and its allies in Europe?

Trump’s strategy to freeze the battle lines has received support from Europe and Ukraine.

European leaders and Zelenskyy both signed a statement on Tuesday stating that they “strongly” support Trump’s proposal.

The negotiation process should begin with the current contact, according to the statement.

Ukraine has previously urged everyone to reclaim their land. Trump has, however, changed his mind on whether a peace agreement should require Ukraine to cede land to Russia.

Trump stated that both Russia and Ukraine would have to cede territory prior to the war’s conclusion in August before a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

Trump later told reporters that there will be some land-swapping going on.

Then, in September, Trump appeared to make a U-turn, claiming that Ukraine could militarily win the war and retake control of the Crimean Peninsula and other eastern Ukrainian regions that Russia had seized in 2014. Ukraine could regain its country in its original form, and perhaps even go further than that? Trump stated in a tweet on social media.

What has Russia done to combat it?

The plan has been rejected by Russia.

Sergey Lavrov, the country’s foreign minister, stated on Tuesday that Russia is committed to “a long-term, sustainable peace – not an immediate ceasefire that would lead nowhere.”

According to Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, “Russia’s position doesn’t change,” referring to its hardline demands for a complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the eastern regions Moscow has claimed.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that Russia demanded control of all of the Donbass, not just the parts it had already seized, in a private communication sent to the US over the weekend.

This week, Trump and Putin had a planned meeting in Budapest, Hungary, that had been scheduled for the following two weeks, but Trump said he didn’t want a “wasted meeting” with Putin.

“I canceled it because it didn’t feel like we were going to get there.” But it will be done in the near future, Trump told reporters on Wednesday.