Israeli military says it killed a top commander with Hezbollah's missile and rocket unit
The Israeli military says it has killed a top commander with Hezbollah’s missile and rocket unit in a strike in Beirut.
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has landed in the middle of a divide about gender in sports after her Italian competitor, Angela Carini, pulled out seconds into their bout at the Paris Olympics.
Outcry has come from conservatives like former U.S. President Donald Trump and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni. Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 world championships after failing unspecified and untransparent eligibility tests for women's competition from the now-banned International Boxing Association.
Khelif was assigned female at birth and it says so on her passport, which is the International Olympic Committee's threshold for eligibility for boxing because of the rift between the sport's governing body and the IOC.
Khelif is a formidable athlete with respected fighting skills, contending in top international events -- including major amateur boxing tournaments over the past six years, such as the Tokyo Olympics. She's won a few regional gold medals.
But Khelif was decidedly not known as a dominant champion, an overpowering physical specimen or even a particularly hard puncher at her weight -- not until this week in Paris.
Khelif defeated Carini in just 46 seconds Thursday, with the Italian boxer's tearful abandonment of the fight leading to innumerable portrayals of Khelif as an unstoppable punching machine whose presence threatens the health of her opponents.
The reality, to those who actually watch or participate in Olympic-style boxing, is quite different. Here's what to know about Khelif and the controversy:
Born in 1999, Khelif is from rural northwestern Algeria. Her father initially didn't approve of girls participating in boxing, but Khelif said she gave up soccer as a teenager to pursue her new passion, even though she had to travel 10 kilometers each way to the gym.
Khelif eventually caught the attention of Algeria's national team, making her major tournament debut in 2018 with a first-round loss at the AIBA -- now the International Boxing Association -- world championships. She lost five of her first six elite-level bouts, but improved and excelled.
Khelif was one of Algeria's first three Olympic women's boxers sent to Tokyo three years ago. She won her opening bout but lost her second to eventual gold medalist Kellie Harrington of Ireland.
She also raised her profile by doing well in the next two world championships, and she even became a UNICEF national ambassador early this year.
Khelif reached the final of the 2023 world championships before she was abruptly disqualified by the IBA, which cited high levels of testosterone in her system. The circumstances of that disqualification have been considered highly unusual ever since it happened, and Khelif called it "a big conspiracy" at the time.
She had previously competed without issues and was disqualified by the sport's governing body only after she defeated Russian boxer Azalia Amineva in the 2023 tournament. The IBA is controlled by Umar Kremlev, who is Russian and brought in the state-owned energy supplier Gazprom as its primary sponsor and moved much of the governing body's operations to Russia.
This week, the IOC described it as "a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA" in which Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan "were suddenly disqualified without any due process." Lin was suspended for failing to meet unspecified eligibility requirements in a biochemical test.
The reasons for the two disqualifications are extremely murky, as is almost always the case with the IBA. The governing body has revealed little about the nature of the tests, including what was tested and who tested it. This lack of transparency would be unacceptable in major Olympic sports, and the IBA has been banned from the Olympics since 2019.
The IOC noted Thursday that the boxing association's own documents say the decision was made unilaterally by the IBA's secretary general. Those documents also say the IBA went on to resolve at a meeting that it should "establish a clear procedure on gender testing" after it had already disqualified the two fighters.
Trump, Meloni and others like "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling have complained about Khelif being allowed to compete.
For the political far-right in Italy, which has been targeting issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, Khelif's participation was just the latest evidence of "woke" culture infecting sport. Meloni, who met Friday with IOC President Thomas Bach, warned "ideology" taken to extremes can discriminate and harm women's rights.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams told reporters Friday that there has been "a lot of misinformation around on social media particularly, which is damaging."
Boxing in Paris is being run by a special IOC-appointed unit that the Olympic body says is applying rules, including eligibility decisions, that are based on the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro following the split with the sports governing body.
The IOC insisted this week that no scientific or political consensus exists on gender and fairness issues. It gave updated guidance to sports governing bodies in 2021.
Several sports bodies have updated their eligibility rules since the Tokyo Olympics were held in 2021, including World Aquatics, World Athletics and the International Cycling Union. They all decided to bar athletes from women's events who have transitioned from male to female and went through male puberty.
World Athletics also tightened rules last year to include testosterone testing for some athletes legally identified as female at birth though with a medical condition that leads to some male traits.
Carini's unusual actions aside -- she later apologized for not shaking Khelif's hand after the bout and told an Italian newspaper that "all this controversy makes me sad" -- it's highly unlikely anyone else in the women's 66-kilogram division thinks Khelif is unfightable.
"I'm not scared," her next opponent, Anna Luca Hamori of Hungary, said Thursday. They will face off Saturday. "I don't care about the story or social media."
Algeria's Imane Khelif, right, defeated, Italy's Angela Carini in their women's 66kg preliminary boxing match at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, in Paris, France. (John Locher / AP Photo)
Khelif is a medal contender in a sport where the Olympic draw can often determine the semifinal field by randomly pitting top fighters against each other too early in the competition.
But Khelif isn't yet considered to be at the level of defending Olympic champion Busenaz Surmeneli of Turkey or 2023 world champion Yang Liu of China, the top two seeds in Paris.
Opinions about Khelif's presence in Paris have ranged widely, often directly correlated with awareness of the news cycle raging outside the athletes' village.
Marissa Williamson Pohlman of Australia lost to Khelif in the Netherlands last May, and she said Khelif was particularly strong.
"I did notice it, but you just keep fighting, though, don't you?" Williamson Pohlman said. "It's just a part of the sport. All you want to do is win, so you just keep chucking punches."
Khelif also received support from peers like Amy Broadhurst, the accomplished Irish amateur who beat Khelif in the 2022 IBA world championships.
"Personally I don't think she has done anything to `cheat,"' Broadhurst wrote on social media. "I (think) it's the way she was born & that's out of her control. The fact that she has been (beaten) by 9 females before says it all."
AP writers Graham Dunbar in Paris and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed
The Israeli military says it has killed a top commander with Hezbollah’s missile and rocket unit in a strike in Beirut.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said many Canadians are taking their cost-of-living frustrations 'out on me for understandable reasons,' during his U.S. late-night television debut on 'The Late Show' with Stephen Colbert Monday night.
The calls are growing louder for city council to tighten the rules governing short-term accommodations, including those advertised on websites like Airbnb and Vrbo, after students arrived by the busload at a rented house in the Masonville neighbourhood.
Spotify is expanding its tool that helps create playlists using generative artificial intelligence for premium users to four new markets, including the United States and Canada, the Swedish streaming giant said on Tuesday.
Coca-Cola is discontinuing the production of its new Spiced flavour just six months after the soda hit shelves, marking the end of a disappointing attempt to attract younger drinkers.
Police in northern Switzerland said Tuesday that several people have been detained and a criminal case opened in connection with the suspected death of a person in a new 'suicide capsule.'
While many Canadians no longer stress as much about COVID-19 as they did during its peak, health experts say a new variant has been spreading in some parts of the world and is now present in Canada.
On a different timeline, the New York Stock Exchange might have been housed inside an imposing, Mayan temple-shaped tower; Disney World would exit to an after-party companion park named Night World.
Genealogy and family tree tracking site Ancestry announced on Monday that by using “billions of historical records and public family trees,†they’ve discovered that the two music powerhouses are actually seventh cousins, once removed.
Giant gourds took over a Manitoba community this weekend.
Fire has destroyed a barn and 17,000 plants at a family-owned business in Lower Coverdale, N.B.
Before influencers on social media, Canada’s Jeanne Beker was bringing the world of high fashion down to earth and as Calgary’s Glenbow Museum gets a major make-over, it will include a new exhibition showcasing the pop culture icon.
A sea lion swam free after a rescue team disentangled it near Vancouver Island earlier this week.
A Nova Scotian YouTuber has launched a mini-truck bookmobile.
Cole Haas is more than just an avid fan of the F.W. Johnson Wildcats football team. He's a fixture on the sidelines, a source of encouragement, and a beloved member of the team.
Getting a photograph of a rainbow? Common. Getting a photo of a lightning strike? Rare. Getting a photo of both at the same time? Extremely rare, but it happened to a Manitoba photographer this week.
An anonymous business owner paid off the mortgage for a New Brunswick not-for-profit.
They say a dog is a man’s best friend. In the case of Darren Cropper, from Bonfield, Ont., his three-year-old Siberian husky and golden retriever mix named Bear literally saved his life.