Iraqi Women Boxers Aim Sucker Punch At Gender Taboos


By Qassem Al-Kaabi and Ali Allaq in Amara
01/05/22

Iraqi boxer Bushra al-Hajjar jumps into the ring, gloves raised to eye level, and strikes out at her sparring partner.

Her bigger struggle, though, is to deliver a blow against social taboos.

In Iraq's Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, the sight of a women's boxing hall is unusual but, like others here, the 35-year-old boxing instructor is fighting deeply-ingrained taboos.

"At home, I have a full training room, with mats and a punching bag," said the mother of two, who also practises karate.

Bushra al-Hajjar, a 35-year-old Iraqi boxing instructor, is pictured during a training session in Najaf Photo: AFP / Qassem al-KAABI

Hajjar won gold in the 70 kilogram-class at a boxing tournament in the capital Baghdad in December.

"My family and friends are very supportive, they're very happy with the level I've reached," she said, a blue headscarf pulled tightly over her hair.

Twice a week, she trains at a private university in Najaf, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad, where she also teaches sports.

In overwhelmingly conservative Iraq, and particularly in Najaf, Hajjar acknowledges her adventure has raised eyebrows.

Bushra al-Hajjar trains in Najaf; more than 100 women boxers competed in a December tournament 

Photo: AFP / Qassem al-KAABI

"We've come across many difficulties," she said. "We're a conservative society that has difficulty accepting these kinds of things."

She recalls the protests when training facilities first opened for women, but said "today, there are many halls".

Young boxer Hajer Ghazi poses with a medal; she is part of a movement of women and girls taking up a range of sports, also including kickboxing

 Photo: AFP / Asaad NIAZI

Boxing student Ola Mustafa, 16, taking a break from her punching bag, said: "We live in a macho society that opposes success for women."

However, she said she has the support not only of her trainer but also of her parents and brother, signalling that social change is afoot.

"People are gradually beginning to accept it," she said. "If more girls try it out, society will automatically come to accept it."

Iraqi boxing federation president Ali Taklif acknowledges that Iraqi women engaging in the sport is a "recent phenomenon", but says it is gaining ground.

Young boxer Hajer Ghazi prepares for an international boxing competition in the city of Amarah; in the past, Iraq had a proud tradition of women competing in regional sporting tournaments 

Photo: AFP / Asaad NIAZI

"There is a lot of demand from females wanting to join," he said, adding that Iraq now has some 20 women's boxing clubs.

More than 100 women boxers have competed in a December tournament, in all categories, he added.

But "like other sports (in Iraq), the discipline suffers from a lack of infrastructure, training facilities and equipment".

In the past, Iraq had a proud tradition of women in sports, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.

Whether in basketball, volleyball or cycling, women's teams regularly took part in regional tournaments.

But sanctions, decades of conflict and a hardening of conservative social values brought this era to a close, with only the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq largely spared.

There has been a timid reversal in recent years, with women taking up a range of sports, also including kickboxing.

For Hajer Ghazi, who at age 13 won a silver medal in December, boxing runs in the family.

Her father, a veteran professional boxer, encouraged his children to follow in his footsteps.

Both her sisters and older brother Ali are also boxers.

"Our father supports us more than the state does," said Ali in their hometown of Amara in southwestern Iraq.

The father, Hassanein Ghazi, a 55-year-old truck driver who won several medals in his heyday, insists: "Women have the right to play sports, it's only normal."

He recognises certain "sensitivities" remain, linked to traditional tribal values.

As an example, he pointed out that "when their coach wants them to run, he takes them to the outskirts of town", away from too many onlookers.

Leonardo DiCaprio Gets New Tree Species Named After Him by London Scientists

DiCaprio is having an influential month in the science world and on Netflix, thanks to record-breaker "Don't Look Up."

By Zack Sharf
Jan 6, 2022 2:52pm PT

Evan Agostini/Invision/AP


Leonardo DiCaprio is one of Hollywood’s most outspoken environmentalists, and those efforts have now paid off in the form of a recently-discovered tree species being named after him.

According to USA Today, Scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, London honored DiCaprio this week by giving the Leo tree in Africa’s Cameroon forest the official name of “Uvariopsis dicaprio.” The BBC reports the Leo tree is “critically endangered.” The plant species is “a small tropical evergreen trees” that is a member of the ylang ylang family.

Dr. Martin Cheek of Kew told the BBC that scientists named the tree after the Oscar-winning actor because “we think he was crucial in helping to stop the logging of the Ebo Forest.” DiCaprio has used his social media platforms to advocate against opening up the Ebo Forest for logging. Per USA Today, the Leo tree is “the first plant new to science to be officially named by Kew scientists in 2022.”

The official naming of DiCaprio’s tree comes at a time when the actor is taking his environmentalist efforts to the mainstream with the release of the Netflix’s hit comedy “Don’t Look Up.” DiCaprio has said that he had been looking for years to make a movie with an environmentalist bent, but it wasn’t until Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” script that the actor found the perfect vehicle. The movie is a wake up call to viewers about the climate crisis, a cause close to DiCaprio’s heart.

“Years ago, scientists predicted the damaging effects of climate change that we’re now experiencing. We must listen to scientists and take the necessary steps to mitigate the crisis,” DiCaprio posted on Twitter earlier this week in reaction to the buzz around “Don’t Look Up,” which is on its way to becoming the most viewed Netflix original movie of all time.

In its first two days on Netflix, “Don’t Look Up” recorded 111,030,000 hours viewed. The movie then recorded 152,290,000 hours streamed between December 27 and January 2, making it the most-watched Netflix original in a single week. Read more about “Don’t Look Up’s” record-breaking Netflix run here.

War of words breaks out after UK statue acquittal


War of words breaks out after UK statue acquittalThe four protesters were cleared of criminal damage after the statue was pulled down in Bristol in June 2020

 (AFP/Geoff Caddick)

Jitendra JOSHI
Thu, January 6, 2022

Britain should resist efforts to "bowdlerise" its colonial past, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Thursday after four protesters were cleared of criminal damage for pulling down a statue of a notorious slave trader.

Johnson declined to comment on the specifics of Wednesday's jury verdict, following the 2020 attack on the statue of Edward Colston during a Black Lives Matter protest in the western city of Bristol.

"But what I would say is that my feeling is that we have a complex historical legacy all around us, and it reflects our history in all its diversity, for good or ill," he told reporters.

"What you can't do is go around seeking retrospectively to change our history or to bowdlerise it or edit it in retrospect.

"It's like some person trying to edit their Wikipedia entry -– it's wrong."

The four defendants admitted to taking part in the protest that saw the slave trader's statue thrown into Bristol harbour at the height of anti-racism protests in June 2020.

But the jury agreed with their argument that Colston's blood-stained legacy was integral to deciding the case, and that immortalising him in public had itself amounted to a hate crime.

The 17th-century trader was involved in the enslavement and transportation of more than 80,000 Africans, including almost 10,000 children, the trial heard.

Around 19,000 of the slaves died on ships bound for the Americas and the Caribbean.

Calls for a reassessment of Britain's colonial legacy have seen other sites associated with Colston renamed in Bristol, and a national debate about how to deal with other historical figures.

But the impetus to remove some monuments and re-evaluate Britain's imperial past has sparked a backlash, particularly after a statue of war-time prime minister Winston Churchill was targeted by vandals.

- 'Mass murderer' -

Johnson's former justice secretary Robert Buckland said the Bristol verdict was perverse.

"I don't think we want to see our crown courts becoming political playgrounds," he told BBC radio.

"They're not places for politics, they're places for the law to be applied and for the evidence to be assessed."

But legal experts noted that the verdict did not set any precedent for other courts, as it was reached by an individual jury.

One of the four acquitted, Rhian Graham, told ITV: "I completely understand people's concerns and I really don't think this is a green light for everyone to just start pulling down statues.

"This moment is about this statue in this city in this time. I will leave the fate of monuments in other cities to the citizens of those cities," she said.

The government is meanwhile pushing through legislation to toughen up penalties for vandalism of historical sites, drawing criticism that it is waging a divisive "culture war" against so-called woke activism.

Prominent historian David Olusoga, who testified in the quartet's defence, welcomed the verdict.

"That statue standing there for 125 years was validating the career of a mass murderer," he told ITV.

"And to people whose ancestors were enslaved by Colston and men like him, it is offensive, and you can talk to thousands of people in Bristol who found it offensive."

jit/phz/bp

France fines Google and Facebook €210m over user tracking

Data privacy watchdog says websites make it difficult for users to refuse cookies

Facebook was fined €60m and Google a record €150m for making it difficult for users to refuse cookies.

 Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images

Dan Milmo and agency
Thu 6 Jan 2022 

France’s data privacy watchdog has fined Google and Facebook a combined €210m (£176m) for hampering users’ ability to stop the companies tracking their online activity.

The Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) said on Thursday it had fined Google a record €150m for making it difficult for internet users to refuse cookies – small text files that build up a profile of a person’s web activity for commercial purposes. It fined Facebook €60m for the same reason.




Russia fines Google £73m over failure to delete ‘illegal’ content

Internet users’ prior consent for the use of cookies is a key pillar of the EU’s data privacy regulation, and a top priority for the CNIL.
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“When you accept cookies, it’s done in just one click,” said Karin Kiefer, CNIL’s head of data protection and sanctions. “Rejecting cookies should be as easy as accepting them.”

The watchdog said the facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com websites did not allow the easy refusal of cookies. Citing the example of Facebook, it said: “Several clicks are required to refuse all cookies, as opposed to a single one to accept them.”

It said the companies had three months to comply with its orders, including making it easier for French users to decline cookies, or face extra penalty payments of €100,000 for every day of delay.

A Google spokesperson said: “People trust us to respect their right to privacy and keep them safe. We understand our responsibility to protect that trust and are committing to further changes and active work with the CNIL in light of this decision.”

A spokesperson for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, said: “​​We are reviewing the authority’s decision and remain committed to working with relevant authorities. Our cookie consent controls provide people with greater control over their data, including a new settings menu on Facebook and Instagram where people can revisit and manage their decisions at any time, and we continue to develop and improve these controls.”

In 2020, the CNIL strengthened consent rights over ad trackers, saying websites operating in France should keep a register of internet users’ refusal to accept cookies for at least six months.

It also said internet users should be able to easily reconsider any initial agreement concerning cookies via a weblink or an icon that should be visible on all pages of a website.

Most countries may see annual heat extremes every second year: study

AFP
Jan 6, 2022

Almost every country on Earth could experience extremely hot years every other year by 2030, according to new research. 

Photo: Shutterstock, Su Prasert

Almost every country on Earth could experience extremely hot years every other year by 2030, according to new research Thursday highlighting the outsized contribution of emissions from the world’s major polluters.

The modelling study combined data on historical emissions and pledges made before the COP26 climate summit for cuts from the top five emitters — China, the US, the European Union, India and Russia — to make regional warming predictions by 2030.

The researchers found that 92 percent of 165 countries studied are expected to experience extremely hot annual temperatures, defined as a once-in-one-hundred-year hot year in the pre-industrial era, every two years.

Alexander Nauels of Climate Analytics, who co-authored the study published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, said that in itself was “very striking”.

“It just really shows the urgency and how we’re heading into a world that is just so much hotter for everybody,” he told AFP.

To look at the scale of the contribution from the world’s five biggest emitters to this prediction, the authors looked at what the picture would be without their emissions since 1991, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) first warned governments of human-made climate change.

They found that the proportion of countries affected by extreme hot years would shrink to around 46 percent.

Lead author Lea Beusch, of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich university, said the study found “a clear imprint” of the actions of top emitters on the regional scale.

“This is I think very important, because we usually talk about these abstract quantities of emissions, or global temperatures, which we know about, but we can’t really feel,” she said.

“Whereas regional climate change is much closer to what we’re going to experience — we’re going to experience this warming in our country and this increasing frequency of extremely hot years.”

The researchers found the biggest impact in terms of the frequency of extremely hot years in tropical Africa.

“Because this is a region that traditionally has quite low year-to-year temperature variability, even the moderate mean warming it is set to experience, compared to other regions, really puts it out of its known climate envelope,” she said.

But she added that the greatest overall temperature increases are in northern high latitude areas, which are warming at a faster rate than the tropics.

The authors stressed that the prediction for the frequency of extreme years could be changed if countries significantly step up efforts to cut pollution.

Current plans would see emissions increase 13.7 percent by 2030, according to the United Nations climate change body UNFCCC, when they must fall by roughly half to keep the Paris Agreement warming limit of 1.5C within reach.

 

Philippines: Child marriage ban takes effect

Prison terms of up to 12 years for marrying or cohabiting with anyone under 18

---

Published:  January 06, 2022 14:14AFP

Photo for illustrative purpose.Image Credit: Picryl

Manila: Child marriage became illegal in the Philippines on Thursday as a law banning the practice took effect in a country where one in six girls enters wedlock before the age of 18.

The impoverished Southeast Asian country has the 12th highest number of child marriages in the world, according to Britain-based rights group Plan International, with long-held cultural practices and gender inequalities hindering change.

But the new law, signed by President Rodrigo Duterte and released to the public on Thursday, lays out prison terms of up to 12 years for marrying or cohabiting with anyone under 18.

People arranging or solemnising underage unions also face the same penalty.

“The state... views child marriage as a practice constituting child abuse because it debases, degrades, and demeans the intrinsic worth and dignity of children,” the law states.

The government says the law is consistent with international conventions on the rights of women and children.

However, some portions of the legislation have been suspended for one year to allow for a transition period for Muslims and indigenous communities in which child marriage is relatively common.

A report last year by the United Nations Children’s Fund said more than half a billion girls and women worldwide were married in childhood, with the highest rates found in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

But recent data indicates the practice is generally in decline on average across the globe.'

End Child Marriage and Sex Abuse in the United States ...

https://childusa.org/child-marriage

2021-09-08 · Child marriage remains legal in 46 states. More than half of the states permit child marriage with either parental or judicial consent. Other states have religious or pregnancy exceptions, permitting the practice to continue. Only four states–Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota— have banned child marriage outright.

• Estimated Reading Time: 2 mins

Calling Omicron 'mild' a mistake, warns WHO

The tsunami of cases is overwhelming health systems around the world

Published: January 07, 2022 

AFP

A person reacts as they get tested for COVID-19 as Peru raised its pandemic alert level in various cities due to a third wave of infections caused by Omicron variant, in Lima, on January 6, 2022.Image Credit: REUTERS


Geneva: The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is killing people across the globe and should not be dismissed as mild, the World Health Organization insisted Thursday.


WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the record numbers of people catching the new variant - which is rapidly out-competing the previously-dominant Delta variant in many countries - meant hospitals were being overwhelmed.

"While Omicron does appear to be less severe compared to Delta, especially in those vaccinated, it does not mean it should be categorised as mild," Tedros told a press conference.

"Just like previous variants, Omicron is hospitalising people and it is killing people," he explained.

"In fact, the tsunami of cases is so huge and quick, that it is overwhelming health systems around the world."

Just under 9.5 million new COVID-19 cases were reported to the WHO last week - a record, up 71 percent on the week before.

But even this was an underestimate, Tedros said, as it did not reflect the backlog of testing around the Christmas-New Year holidays, positive self-tests not registered, and overburdened surveillance systems missing cases.

Vaccination targets slipping away

Tedros used his first speech of 2022 to slam the way rich nations hogged available vaccine doses last year, saying it had created the perfect breeding ground for the emergence of virus variants.

He therefore urged the world to share out vaccine doses more fairly in 2022, to end the "death and destruction" of COVID-19.

Tedros wanted every country to have 10 percent of their population vaccinated by the end of September 2021 and 40 percent by the end of December.

Ninety-two of the WHO's 194 member states missed the target set for the end of 2021 - indeed 36 of them had not even jabbed the first 10 percent, largely due to being unable to access doses.

Tedros wants 70 per cent jabbed in every country by mid-2022.

On the current pace of vaccine roll-out, 109 countries will miss that target.

"Vaccine inequity is a killer of people and jobs and it undermines a global economic recovery," said Tedros.

"Booster after booster in a small number of countries will not end a pandemic while billions remain completely unprotected."

Omicron not the end

The WHO's COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said it was "very unlikely" that Omicron would be the last variant of concern before the pandemic is over.

In facing the more transmissible Omicron variant, Van Kerkhove urged people to step up the measures they were already taking to protect themselves against the virus.

"Do everything that we have been advising better, more comprehensively, more purposefully," she said.

"We need people to hang in there and really fight."

Van Kerkhove added that she was stunned by how sloppily some people were wearing facemasks.

"It needs to cover your nose and mouth... wearing a mask below your chin is useless," she said.

Looking ahead to this year, Bruce Aylward, the WHO's frontman on accessing coronavirus tools, added that there was "no need to finish 2022 in a pandemic".

But WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said that without vaccine equity, "we will be sitting here at the end of 2022 having somewhat the same conversation, which, in itself, would be a great tragedy".

Omicron: Is it the 'beginning of the end' of COVID pandemic?

Experts weigh in on variant's unprecedented transmissibility as sign of viral "burnout"

---

Published:  January 06, 2022 Jay Hilotin, Senior Assistant Editor

In certain places, Omicron cases are doubling every two days. Know what experts say about the possible "burnout", or end of the pandemic.Image Credit: File

HIGHLIGHTS

• Omicron’s fast spread makes a surge of infections inevitable, say experts.
• At least one made a bold claim that Omicron’s extremely high transmissibility could also be a “blessing”, as it amounts to a “natural vaccine”.
• Its impact, however, depends on the steps we take over the next few weeks.

NEWS about the highly-infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19 looks bad at the moment. Cases are surging, runaway infections are ripping through communities, leading to renewed lockdowns and mask mandates.

As it spreads fast, far and wide, more than any virus in history, cases have been doubling every two days in some places. And once it becomes dominant in one place or country it dominates the new wave.

That sounds like a lot of bad news.

Omicron currently is driving new record cases — with 10 million reporting positive globally during a weekly tally ending Sunday (more than 95% of new cases in the US).

Good news

Some experts, though, see good news.

Because it moves fast, Omicron’s wave should last less than three months in a population. Yes, certain weeks within those months could be bad, they say.

But if the variant’s observed “intrinsic lower virulence” holds — as suggested by recent studies, though yet to be confirmed in the larger population — this could lead to lower disease severity, hospitalisation and death.

Experts weigh in on the pandemic’s expected "burnout":

'We have tools to end it in 2022'

While the jury is still out on Omicron, medical experts point to the fact that tools that protect people from severe infections and even death — vaccines, boosters, pills, masks and tests — are now available, though not to a level the World Health Organisation initially sought.

Image Credit: Gulf News

“2022 is the year we can end the COVID-19 pandemic. We have tools now. We can take death out of COVID-19,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO COVID-19 Technical Lead.

'VIRAL BURNOUT'

Most scientists agree that the pandemic will eventually “burn out”, posing less public health danger over time, like the Spanish Flu itself, though it may at times burden the healthcare system, and still cause deaths.

But large numbers of people get sick in the short term, and some may even die, and social factors such as crowding and the unavailability of medicine can drive those numbers even higher. The burnout may take several years. Before it happens, havoc reigns.

However, making COVID-19 vaccines and drugs more accessible is key: just 3% of the almost 8 billion doses given globally have been administered in Africa — and only around 8% of Africans are fully vaccinated, way off WHO’s 70% target by July 2022.

Huge wave expected

Though there are many unknowns still about Omicron, Dr Ashish K Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, warns that “a very large wave of infections" will spread quickly.

“We will see cases rise rapidly in the next few weeks, likely peaking sometime in mid-January. With any luck, cases will then fall as quickly as they rose, getting to very low numbers by the end of February. All of this suggests that the work ahead is to manage the next six to eight weeks.”

Image Credit: Gulf News

Writing for The Atlantic, Dr Jha noted: “Successfully navigating the next wave of the coronavirus pandemic requires charting a middle course — one designed with clear goals in mind: preventing deaths, protecting our hospitals from crushing caseloads, and keeping schools and businesses open. We can do this with the proven, effective tools we already have, while giving in to neither dismay nor dismissal."

“Boosted people will largely do fine; partially vaccinated people will get infected at very high rates," he stated, adding that unvaccinated and high-risk people with breakthroughs will be at risk for hospitalisations.

Image Credit: Gulf News

'Hard month ahead'

Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, a Filipino-American molecular biologist and MIT-trained vaccine researcher, believes Omicron’s high transmissibility indicates the pandemic’s end is close at hand. He warns of “a hard month” ahead.

But due to its ultra-high transmissibility, Omicron will eventually amount to a “natural vaccine”. “So as the virus rapidly increases, it’s going to try to spread to everyone and it’s going to try to find as many vulnerable (people). It is spreading so rapidly, what you will expect is it will run out the food sooner.”

“And when it runs out of food, it will begin to crash — which is why you see in South Africa, the numbers are crashing. In London, the numbers are beginning to fall only; because, once it spreads like wildfire, and when all the trees are burned, there’s nowhere for it to go. So it begins to crash,” he added. The Omicron variant marks “the beginning of the end of the pandemic,” he said.

'Omicron is a blessing'

“We have to realise that Omicron is the beginning of the end of the pandemic because Omicron is going to provide the kind of population immunity that should stabilise our societies and should allow us to reopen. This is the hope and the prayer,” he said. 

Image Credit: Gulf News

“The Omicron is actually a blessing. It will be hard for one month, but afterwards, it should be a blessing because it should provide the population protection that we need everywhere,” he added.

Nonetheless, Fr Austriaco urged people to be cautious, particularly those still unvaccinated against COVID-19. “The variant will continue to bring high COVID-19 cases, but the public should not be scared of these numbers. We should expect that most of these cases will be mild. We should expect fewer hospitalisations and deaths,” Austriaco said.

'Situation similar to that of the flu'

A vaccine executive also said the pandemic could soon run out of steam before the end of 2022. Moderna Inc Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said in September last year that the coronavirus pandemic could be “over in a year” — due to increased vaccine production as well as natural immunity.

“If you look at the industry-wide expansion of production capacities over the past six months, enough doses should be available by the middle of (2022) so that everyone on this earth can be vaccinated. Boosters should also be possible to the extent required,” he told Swiss daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

Image Credit: Gulf News

“You can either get vaccinated and have a good winter. Or you don’t do it and risk getting sick and possibly even ending up in hospital,” Bancel said then.

Asked if that meant a return to normal in the second half of 2022, he said: “As of today, in a year (referring to September 2022), I assume.” Bancel said he expected governments to approve booster shots for people already vaccinated because patients at risk who were vaccinated last autumn “undoubtedly” needed a booster.

'Dangerous, careless' idea

Image Credit: Gulf News

For Dr Faheem Younus, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the University of Maryland, the claim that there’s no point in trying to prevent Omicron is a “dangerous, careless” idea.

Dr Younus stated in a tweet on Thursday: “‘Omicron is so contagious that everyone will get it. No point trying to prevent it. It’s the best vaccine.’ Please don’t fall for it. Wear a mask and avoid gathering. In a few weeks, this wave will recede. You can/should prevent this infection.”

As for Dr. Timothy Brewer, professor of epidemiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, he said COVID-19 isn’t ever going to go away completely.

Instead, he adds, people will have to learn to live with it. “This virus is so well adapted for human-to-human transmission that it’s never going to away,” Dr. Brewer told US media. “There will be periods when there will be more cases and [fewer] cases, just like it occurs with influenza every year.”

Image Credit: Gulf News

He envisions, however, that regular vaccinations and antiviral pill treatments could combine with infection-conferred immunity to make COVID outbreaks significantly less severe in the coming years.

•  A thrill of hope for an end to COVID: From epidemic, to pandemic, to endemic, where are we now?

MEDIA CONGLOMERATION

The New York Times to purchase sports news site The Athletic for $550M US

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Deal expected to close in 1st quarter of 2022; sports outlet to operate seperately

Tali Arbel, Joe Reedy · The Associated Press · Posted: Jan 06, 2022 

Traffic passes the New York Times building, in a 2011 file photo. The New York Times Co. is buying the sports news site The Athletic in a deal for $550 million US. (Mark Lennihan/The Associated Press)

The New York Times Co. is buying sports news site The Athletic for $550 million US, the latest move in its strategy to expand its audience of paying subscribers as the newspaper print ads business fades.

The Times, unlike many local news outlets, has thrived in the past several years. It gained millions of subscribers during the Trump presidency and the pandemic, keeping it on track for its previously stated goal of 10 million by 2025.

As of the most recent quarter, the Times had nearly 8.4 million. It has been diversifying its coverage with lifestyle advice, games and recipes, helping it counter a pullback from the politics-driven news traffic boom of 2020.

"We are now in pursuit of a goal meaningfully larger than 10 million subscriptions and believe The Athletic will enable us to expand our addressable market of potential subscribers," said CEO Meredith Kopit Levien in a news release Thursday.

It's one of the Times' largest-ever acquisitions. The company spent $1.1 billion on the Boston Globe in 1993 and $410 million for About.com in 2005, both of which it later sold for less.

Digital media outlets have been consolidating recently to help them compete for online ad revenue with tech giants like Google and Facebook. German media conglomerate Axel Springer bought Politico; Vox Media is buying Group Nine Media, owner of Thrillist and animals site The Dodo; BuzzFeed bought HuffPost.

San Francisco-based The Athletic covers national and local sports — more than 200 teams, according to the Times. It was founded in 2016 and has 1.2 million subscribers. Its website says it has over 400 editorial employees. The Times has more than 2,000.

There is a bit of irony that an upstart sports media company is being bought by one of the world's largest legacy media companies. Alex Mather, a co-founder of The Athletic said during a 2017 interview with the Times that, "We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them."

The two sides had started discussing a deal last summer before talks fell through. The Athletic, had also been in discussions with Axios last year.

After the sale closes, which is expected in the current quarter, The Athletic will be a Times Co. subsidiary and operate separately. Mather will stay on as general manager and co-president and co-founder Adam Hansmann as chief operating officer and co-president.