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Gwyneth Paltrow testifies in a civil trial that she ‘froze’ in 2016 skiing crash at a Utah resort | CNN

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Gwyneth Paltrow, the award-winning actress facing a civil trial for a 2016 skiing crash at a Utah resort, testified that she “froze” when a man allegedly skied directly into her back, causing them to collapse to the ground as their skis tangled together.

Paltrow testified on Friday that the collision forced her legs apart as she felt someone from behind her.

“I was skiing, and two skis came between my skis, forcing my legs apart. And then there was a body pressing against me. And there was a very strange grunting noise. So, my brain was trying to make sense of what was happening,” Paltrow testified. “I froze when he slid between my skis. I absolutely froze.”

“I was confused at first, and I didn’t know exactly what was happening. It’s a very strange thing to happen on the ski slope,” Paltrow continued.

Paltrow and the man both fell slowly and were nearly spooning once they hit the ground, “and I moved away quickly,” Paltrow said previously in a deposition read during the trial Friday in Park City, Utah.

Friday marked the fourth day in the skiing crash case against Paltrow, who is being sued by Terry Sanderson, a 76-year-old retired optometrist – the man she maintains crashed into her in February 2016 at Deer Valley Resort in Park City.

Meanwhile, Sanderson claims that Paltrow crashed into him and caused him lasting injuries and brain damage while they were both skiing on a beginner’s run. Sanderson also accuses Paltrow and her ski instructor of skiing away after the incident without getting him medical care.

Kristin A. VanOrman, an attorney representing Sanderson, questioned Paltrow for nearly two hours Friday. At one point, VanOrman asked whether Paltrow can demonstrate the crash with her in at the courtroom, but the judge declined that request.

Instead, VanOrman walked around the courtroom trying to reenact where the skis were and how Paltrow and Sanderson were positioned, based on how Paltrow described the incident.

VanOrman asked Paltrow whether the actress had been present when paperwork about the crash was filled out, and Paltrow said she was not but that her ski instructor stayed with Sanderson and made sure he was OK.

Later, Paltrow said she stayed on the mountain “long enough for him to say that he was OK” and to stand up, saying it was “absolutely not” a hit-and-run.

Paltrow didn’t seek medical treatment after that crash, she said, but she pointed out her knee felt like it had been “over-stretched” and her “back hurt” and decided to go for a massage later that day.

Sanderson had initially sued Paltrow for $3.1 million dollars, later amending his complaint to seek more than $300,000 in damages, according to court documents.

Paltrow has filed a counter lawsuit in which she is seeking $1 in damages plus attorneys’ fees.

Court is slated to resume Monday.

VanOrman pressed Paltrow more than once about whether the actress had sought information about Sanderson’s medical condition following the crash.

“I think you have to keep in mind when you’re the victim of a crash, right, your psychology is not necessarily thinking about the person who perpetrated it,” Paltrow testified.

Paltrow also did not ask anyone at the resort about Sanderson “because at the time I did not know that he had sustained injuries like that. I thought it was very minor on the day,” she said.

Throughout the testimony, Paltrow maintained that Sanderson skied into her and that she did not cause the crash.

“Mr. Sanderson categorically hit me on that ski slope, and that is the truth,” adding that she feels sympathetic for him.

“I feel very sorry for him. It seems like he’s had a very difficult life, but I did not cause the accident so I cannot be at fault for anything that subsequently happened to him,” she testified.

The collision happened on the first day of a family trip that Paltrow, her now-husband Brad Falchuk and both of their children were attending. It was the first time Paltrow and her then-boyfriend were introducing their children to each other to gauge whether they had a future as a “blended family.”

According to Paltrow’s countersuit, she “was enjoying skiing with her family on vacation in Utah, when Plaintiff – who was uphill from Ms. Paltrow – plowed into her back. She sustained a full ‘body blow.’ Ms. Paltrow was angry with Plaintiff, and said so. Plaintiff apologized. She was shaken and upset, and quit skiing for the day even though it was still morning.”

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March 24, 2023
New Mexico Game and Fish is now hiring ‘professional bear huggers’ | CNN

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Bear lovers rejoice: The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is hiring for “professional bear huggers.”

The department posted an adorable job listing on Facebook on Monday, featuring precious snaps of conservation officers cuddling baby bears.

Unfortunately, a love of bears is not the only qualification you’ll need to become a conservation officer. The job listing with the formal title of the position specifies candidates should have a bachelor’s degree in “biological sciences, police science or law enforcement, natural resources conservation, ecology, or related fields.”

Interested applicants “must have ability to hike in strenuous conditions, have the courage to crawl into a bear den, and have the trust in your coworkers to keep you safe during the process,” wrote the department.

The photos are from a research project in Northern New Mexico, according to the Facebook post. They added they “do not recommend crawling into bear dens” and “all bears were handled safely under supervision.”

“Not all law enforcement field work is this glamorous, but we would love for you to join the team where you can have the experience of a lifetime,” added the department.

Applications for the next class of conservation officer trainees are open until March 30, according to the post.

The job duties include a lot more than just bear-hugging, according to the job listing. Each conservation officer is responsible for “enforcing the game and fish laws” and also “educates the public about wildlife and wildlife management, conducts wildlife surveys, captures ‘problem animals,’ investigates wildlife damage to crops and property, assists in wildlife relocations and helps to develop new regulations.”

Black bears are New Mexico’s state animal. Estimates place the population at around 6,000 bears, according to a publication from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.

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March 19, 2023
Fox hunting club that first met in the 1700s holds last meet after new law | CNN

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One of Scotland’s oldest fox hunts has come to an end after 252 years following the introduction of new law on hunting.

The Hunting with Dogs bill, which went into effect earlier this week after being passed in January, outlaws hunting and killing wild mammals using packs of dogs except in limited circumstances.

Following its introduction, the Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire Hunt – which first met in the 1700s – announced it had held its final meet.

“We were humbled to see the huge support by riders and supporters for our modest hunt in the west of Scotland,” the group wrote on Facebook, also thanking “all farmers and landowners who have allowed us to cross your land in some tricky weather over the years.”

“A big thank you to every single person who has helped out in any way over the years, big or small, it is all very much appreciated,” it said.

“Finally we wish to thank our lovely hounds, we look after them with great love and affection, often better than we do ourselves.”

Originating in the sixteenth century, fox hunting remains a controversial topic in the United Kingdom.

Hunters view it as an important part of local heritage while animal rights activists argue that it is cruel and unnecessary.

Anti-hunting organizations have previously welcomed the bill’s implementation.

“This historic news is a huge win for wildlife, locals against the hunt and of course hunt saboteurs who have spent decades bringing this hunt to their knees,” the Glasgow Hunt Sabs said on its website.

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March 11, 2023
It’s never been this warm in February. Here’s why that’s not a good thing | CNN

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As parts of the West and Northern US face a winter storm with blizzard conditions and significant snowfall, much of the rest of the country is experiencing a summer-like heat that has never been felt before during the month of February.

More than 130 cities from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes could set new records for daily and monthly high temperatures this week. Highs will climb up to 80 degrees as far north as Ohio and West Virginia — certainly unusual, but becoming less so in the warming climate.

Here’s a stark example: Before this decade, Charleston, West Virginia, had only hit 80 degrees before March three times in more than 100 years of record-keeping. But this week’s incredible warmth will mean that four of the last six years will have logged temperatures of 80 degrees, which is its normal high on June 1, in February.

Record warmth in February — a time that’s supposed to still feel like winter — might not sound like such a bad thing, but its negative consequences spread across the plant world, sports, tourism and agriculture. And it is another clear sign that our planet is warming rapidly, experts say.

“Whenever we get these events, we should always be thinking there’s the possibility or likelihood that human-induced climate change is increasing the likelihood of strange weather,” Richard Seager, climate researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, told CNN. “The more it goes on, the more they can bring such tremendous damage.”

On the Great Lakes, ice coverage reached a record low for this time of the year — the same time that the annual maximum extent of ice usually occurs. As of last week, only 7% of the five freshwater lakes were covered in ice, a sharp difference from the 35 to 40% ice cover typically expected in mid-to-late February, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Great Lakes ice is on a downward trend, NOAA scientists report. A recent study found a 70% decline in the lakes’ ice cover between 1973 and 2017.

The decline in Great Lakes ice each winter may not seem like it has any harmful impact, but that ice acts as a buffer for large, wind-driven waves in the winter, scientists have reported. Without the ice, the coastlines are more susceptible to erosion and flooding.

Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome, a research scientist at NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan, said low ice coverage could also set the stage for another severe lake-effect snow storm like the one Buffalo, New York, experienced in December.

“The moisture and heat from the lake surface water are absorbed into the atmosphere by storm systems, and then fall back to the ground as snow in the winter,” Fujisaki-Manome said in a statement.

The thin ice has already had deadly consequences in New England.

At Vermont’s Lake Champlain, the annual ice fishing tournament was cancelled last weekend when three fishermen died after falling through the ice. One man’s body was found hours after he was expected to return home from the lake, while the other two died after their utility vehicle broke through the ice.

Montpelier, Vermont, had its warmest January on record this year since 1948, with Burlington recording its fifth warmest January since 1884, according to the Burlington National Weather Service.

Robert Wilson, a professor of geography and environment at Syracuse University, said the Northeast as a whole is now a “fast-warming region,” with winter seasons warming faster than summers due to the climate crisis.

And he underscored how this trend is threatening some of New England’s most cherished winter activities.

“In coming decades, winter — as most people understand it — will get shorter and warmer, with less snow and more rain,” Wilson said. “This poses a serious threat to winter recreation: snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, and downhill skiing.”

Plants are blooming way earlier than usual across much of the country, a clear sign that spring is either right around the corner — or it has already arrived, in some places.

“Spring is coming early in much of the Southern and Eastern US,” Brad Rippey, meteorologist with the US Department of Agriculture, told CNN. “Here in the mid-Atlantic, that means everything from budding trees to crocuses in bloom to spring peepers making lots of noise — and in February, no less.”

Many plants species — including daffodils, witch-hazel, forsythia and even cherry blossoms — are beginning to leaf out in the East. Theresa Crimmins, director of the USA National Phenology Network, said it’s the plants responding to very early warm temperatures.

“Plants, especially those of temperate systems, respond to a number of cues in order to wake up in the spring, including exposure to chill in the winter, exposure to warmth in the spring, and day length,” she told CNN.

If another cold snap occurs after an early warm spell, Crimmins said it could be disruptive and damaging for the plants’ cycle. As flower buds develop, many species lose their ability to tolerate cold temperatures, which means a freeze could kill blooms and leave fruit crops and other commodities vulnerable to spring freezes.

Rippey said warm winters followed by a spring freeze has become more common in recent years. In 2017, for instance, a severe spring freeze in March damaged several fruit crops — peaches, blueberries, apples and strawberries — in states including Georgia and South Carolina, which carried an economic toll of roughly $1.2 billion.

“As nice as it feels to have temperatures in the 70s and 80s this time of year, the fact that it’s not ‘normal’ can have a profound impact on the ecosystem,” Rippey said. “Even a typical spring freeze can damage commercial and back-yard fruit crops that have been pushed into blooming by late-winter warmth.”

India issued its first heatwave alert, with temperatures in some states reaching 39 degrees Celsius (102 Fahrenheit) – up to 9 degrees Celsius (16.2 Fahrenheit) above normal, according to data released by the India Meteorological Department on Monday.

“The heatwave warnings as early as February is a scary situation,” Krishna AchutaRao, a professor at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, told CNN.

It has raised fears of a repeat of last year’s deadly heatwave, which scorched swaths of India and Pakistan.

Blistering heat has devastating consequences for people’s health, for water supplies and for crops; last year, crop yields were reduced by as much as a third in some parts of the country. As temperatures soared last spring, India banned exports of wheat, dashing hopes that the world’s second-largest wheat producer would fill the supply gap caused by the war in Ukraine.

This February, with high temperatures hitting wheat-producing states, including Rajasthan and Gujarat, India has set up a committee to monitor the impact of rising temperatures on the crop, according to Reuters.

Europe, too, has seen unusually high temperatures, kicking off 2023 with an extreme winter heatwave that broke January temperature records in several countries. Low levels of snow and rainfall have fueled concerns about the region’s rivers and lakes.

The River Po, which winds through northern Italy’s agricultural heartland, fed by snow from the Alps and rainfall in the spring, is at very low levels, while water in Lake Garda in northern Italy has reached record lows. There are fears Italy, which declared a state of emergency last year after its worst drought in 70 years, may face another drought.

The unusually warm weather has also left ski resorts across the Alps with little or no snow. In February, top skiers wrote an open letter to the International Ski and Snowboard Federation demanding action on the climate crisis.

“The seasons have shifted,” they wrote. “Our sport is threatened existentially.”

While ski resorts have adapted to warming by relying on artificial snow – a process that uses a lot of water and energy – Wilson noted that resorts would still need cold nighttime temperatures to make it.

“The long-term survival of skiing and other winter recreation will depend on nations lowering their carbon emissions to avoid the more dire consequences and severe warming in the future,” he said.

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February 23, 2023
Washington forges rare political unity in condemning China over balloon drama | CNN Politics

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China’s audacious spy balloon flight across North America has spectacularly backfired by enshrining rare bipartisan unity in Washington.

The coming together of Republicans and Democrats is certain to stiffen future US strategic, economic and military resolve in the Pacific region and further damage buckled relations with Beijing.

The fierce congressional reaction to the balloon and the US government’s disclosure of intelligence about it and China’s balloon espionage program, meanwhile, threatened to further damage the world’s most crucial diplomatic relationship – especially after China hit back by accusing the US of being the world’s most gratuitous spy state.

The unanimity of American anger toward China was exemplified by a House resolution condemning China that passed by a stunning 419-0 margin. It followed a growing realization in Washington, and more broadly across the country, that a long-predicted geopolitical confrontation may now be a reality.

But despite the united political front in Washington, fury is boiling in both parties over the failure to down the balloon before it traversed the continent amid rising questions about the implications of China’s breach of US airspace. Administration officials faced a gauntlet of criticism from lawmakers during a classified briefing on the issue on Thursday. And Republicans stepped up efforts to brand President Joe Biden as weak over the incursion despite his warning to President Xi Jinping in his State of the Union address earlier this week that he would vigorously defend US sovereignty.

This growing discord threatens to so politicize China policy that it will drain any efforts to defuse an escalating Cold War. The Biden administration wants to pursue those efforts despite the tensions caused by the balloon crisis.

There’s also a risk that Republican efforts to leverage the drama for domestic political gain could bust unity over policy toward America’s giant Pacific rival. Such a partisan split would ironically deliver a greater payoff for China’s communist rulers than any information picked up by the balloon over the US.

The unanimous House vote on the incident had not been assured. It required Republican leaders to omit language critical of Biden and followed unusual bipartisan cooperation fostered by Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the top Democrat on the panel, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks. The resolution describes the balloon flight as a brazen violation of US sovereignty. McCaul said the bipartisan nature of the vote was critical and called on everyone to stand together against a “common enemy.”

“We wanted it to be America against China – not internal fighting, because China would see that as a moment of weakness, that we’re divided on party lines, and we didn’t want to project that,” McCaul told CNN.

This strong signal sent to Beijing raises the possibility that the spy balloon mission has demonstrably hurt China’s interests – especially if it results in a bipartisan zeal to increase defense spending, the size of US arms and equipment packages to allow Taiwan to defend against a possible Chinese attack and more resources to US allies.

While there is agreement on the challenge now posed by China, there was mystification and some anger elsewhere in Congress on Thursday, even as officials held classified briefings and the FBI pushed forward on its effort to evaluate intelligence from the remains of the balloon salvaged from the Atlantic after it was shot down on Saturday.

In a Senate hearing, Democrats as well as Republicans, criticized Defense Department officials and questioned why they did not tell Americans more once the balloon was spotted.

“You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before,” said Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who could be facing a tough reelection next year. The balloon floated above his state, which hosts US missile installations. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was furious that the Chinese balloon crossed her state. “As an Alaskan, I am so angry,” Murkowski said. “If you’re going to have Russia coming at you, if you’re going to have China coming at you, we know exactly how they come. They come up and they go over Alaska.”

Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, said he understood why the White House might have kept China’s balloon program classified but added, “We all understand that some of the desire to keep things classified, it has to do with not wanting to disclose to the public things that might be inconvenient politically for the department.” The White House has previously explained that it waited until the balloon was off the Carolinas to shoot it down based on Pentagon advice that doing so before could endanger lives and property on the ground. Officials also said they took steps to ensure it was not an intelligence threat as it wafted across the country.

But some Republicans are accusing the White House of a cover-up that they think exposes Biden as feckless and unfit to be commander-in-chief as he eyes reelection, despite his strong role in standing up to Russia over Ukraine.

“I think the public, and Congress, would never have known about this if the Billings, Montana, paper hadn’t published a picture that showed the balloon and US assets tracking the balloon. I think their plan was clearly to keep this a secret,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN after a classified briefing.

“The United States was grossly unprepared, this administration was grossly unprepared, and frankly I think it was a huge mistake for them not to take down the balloon before it entered the continental United States,” Hawley added.

While the House vote on the resolution condemning China was unanimous, many Republicans used the debate before the resolution passed to lacerate the Biden administration.

“We watched in real time from our backyards and workplaces as a foreign aircraft equipped with spyware navigated over our neighborhoods, our military installations and our vital infrastructure,” said Missouri GOP Rep. Ann Wagner, the vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“The administration again showed the dictatorship in Beijing that they could again be bullied. President Biden’s weakness and indecision sends a dangerous signal to our adversaries like Iran and Russia and North Korea.”

Still, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said he came away from the classified briefing more confident in the administration.

“I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care,” Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said.

Besides the classified briefings, Biden administration officials divulged new information about the balloon to the public Thursday, some of it gleaned by flybys by U-2 spy planes before it was downed. A senior State Department official said the balloon had been capable of conducting signals intelligence collection – or intelligence gathered by electronic means – and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”

Beijing is likely to be irked by more details being made public about its balloon program, as evidenced by comments by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in a briefing Thursday.

“I am not aware of any ‘fleet of balloons,’” Mao said. “That narrative is probably part of the information and public opinion warfare the US has waged on China. As to who is the world’s number one country of spying, eavesdropping and surveillance, that is plainly visible to the international community,” she added.

Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Xi’s knowledge, sources familiar with Hill briefings said. But the idea Xi was unaware of balloon “is the working theory and an ongoing intelligence gap,” a source briefed on the matter said.

Intelligence experts in the United States have been perplexed at the political furor stoked by a mere balloon – a comparatively unsophisticated asset that pales in significance compared to multi-pronged Chinese intelligence operations against the United States including economic, cyber and traditional espionage. Indeed, the US mounts a similarly broad collection mission against China, which was exposed when a Chinese jet fighter collided with a US spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea in 2001.

But the balloon flight, over US territory, has had a symbolic impact greater than that so far generated amid years of building tensions with China, including over Taiwan.

“I would never have imagined that my Saturday afternoon would have been disrupted due to a Chinese spy balloon not – only that floated across most of South Carolina, it floated across the entire continental United States,” said freshman Republican Rep. Russell Fry whose South Carolina district contains coastal areas where the balloon was shot down.

“It does – if you watch it, and you were there on the ground – sound like it was straight out of a sci-fi movie,” he said on the House floor, blasting the Biden administration for negligence and bemoaning an international incident that unfolded off the shores of Myrtle Beach.

In the Senate, the dramatic events of the past week have caused a reassessment of years of US-China policy, which has seen efforts by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations to try to usher China peacefully into the global economy degenerate into a brewing confrontation in the Trump and Biden administrations.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said at a hearing that the Biden administration did not “see another Cold War, but we do ask everyone to play by the same set of rules.”

The problem, however, is that China interprets such US calls as an attempt to thwart what it sees as its rightful rise as a regional and global superpower. Sherman argued that US policy in the 21st century designed to head off confrontation had not failed, but that conditions in China had changed.

“Xi Jinping is not the Xi Jinping of the 1990’s that we all thought we knew,” Sherman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She added that China under Xi was “the only country that wants to change that rules-based order, that can successfully do so and are trying to make that happen.”

“It is true that our way of life, our democracy, our belief in our values, in the rules-based international order is being challenged,” she continued. “And we have to meet that challenge.”

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February 10, 2023
Social media hunting stars and their company ordered to pay more than $100,000 and probation for illegal hunts | CNN

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Josh and Sarah Bowmar, a couple with a strong following on social media for their hunting videos, were sentenced Tuesday as part of a plea agreement for breaking hunting regulations during some of the events they posted online.

The couple – along with their company, Bowmar Bowhunting – were placed on three years probation and ordered to pay more than $130,000 in fines, restitution and forfeiture.

The terms of their probation include that the couple “shall not hunt or otherwise engage in any activities associated with hunting, limited to within the District of Nebraska,” according to court documents.

The Bowmars were accused of conspiring with a hunt guiding and outfitting company in Nebraska to illegally hunt deer using bait traps. Under Nebraska law, it is illegal to set food to attract animals to a hunting site. Prosecutors also alleged Sarah Bowmar killed a wild turkey without a valid permit.

It is a violation of the federal Lacey Act to break hunting laws in one state and take the illegally obtained game to another state, and federal prosecutors alleged the Bowmars took the deer and turkey they illegally killed in Nebraska out of state.

The Bowmars and their company entered guilty pleas to one count of conspiracy and the government dropped four other counts.

The couple received no jail time.

In a statement sent to CNN, Josh and Sarah Bowmar said that they felt that the prosecutors’ decision to drop the baiting and poaching charges was “fair and true to what happened with that outfitter 9 years ago.”

“We did plead guilty to conspiracy, which means we should have known better about hunting at that outfitter and should have paid more attention to what was going on behind closed doors—but we did not, and for that, we take complete responsibility,” their statement said.

“We’ve learned some very valuable lessons from this experience and our mistakes and we look forward to doing our best to leave a positive footprint on the hunting community and involving our children in the boundless joys of the great outdoors.”

The Bowmar Bowhunting YouTube channel has more than 300,000 subscribers and its page has more than 340,000 followers on Instagram.

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January 18, 2023
A skier died in an avalanche outside a Colorado resort | CNN

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A man died while skiing with his father in Colorado on Saturday when an avalanche struck and engulfed them both, a rescue team statement said.

The avalanche struck outside the Breckenridge Ski Resort when the men went skiing through “a backcountry area called The Numbers, which is outside the Breckenridge Ski Resort boundary on Peak 10,” the Summit County Rescue Group said in a Facebook post.

“They were caught in an avalanche at approximately 1:00 pm, with the father partially buried and the son fully buried,” the post said.

While the father was able to dig himself out and call 911 for help, his son did not make it, the post said.

Nearly two dozen rescue group members and three Summit County Sheriff’s Office Special Operations Unit members responded, the post said.

“A probe line was formed to find the son and the onsite command confirmed that the subject was found by a dog team at 3:11, deceased,” the post said. “Our deepest condolences to all those affected by this tragedy.”

More details about the death will be released by the coroner’s office, the rescue group said. The Colorado Avalanche Information Center will conduct an accident investigation on Sunday, the post added.

There have been three avalanche fatalities in the US this season, two in Colorado and one in Montana, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

The Breckenridge Ski Resort is about 80 miles west of Denver.

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January 1, 2023
Golf’s new Saudi deal presents questionable political, business and sporting realities | CNN Politics

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The PGA Tour once advertised its brightest stars with the catch phrase “These guys are good.” A better slogan might now be “These guys are even richer.”

In a bombshell announcement so staggering that many golf fans thought it was fake at first, the venerable PGA Tour unveiled a partnership Tuesday with Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund, the financier of its sworn rival LIV Golf – a breakaway circuit that split the sport and seeded feuds among its top players.

The deal means that the PGA Tour – built on the image of quintessentially American Arnold Palmer, who epitomized post World War II US values – will now rest atop a pile of money put up by the regime that the US blamed for the murdering and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, that was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers of September 11, 2001, attack, and that has frequently been condemned by Washington for infringing women’s rights.

It is beyond doubt that the new reality of pro-golf will mean a better spectacle for fans since it will end the split between the two rival tours and will also fold in the DP World Tour (formerly known as the European tour) and mean the brightest stars will play one another more often.

For many sports fans in the US and elsewhere, that’s just fine. They like to plop down on the couch and watch their favorite golfer on the back nine on Sunday or their Gulf-owned Premier League team on TV. Who can begrudge them one oasis free from bitter, tribal modern politics?

And the deal is also undeniably a great piece of business, assuming PGA Tour players accept it. Global golfers stand to win a lot more money, various tours will be invigorated and Saudi Arabia’s government and its ruthless leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), get to be associated with one of the planet’s most prestigious year-round sporting properties. And all pending litigation between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour was also mutually ended under the new agreement.

But for others, Tuesday’s peace deal on the links raises painful moral issues. It also exposes top PGA leaders – who had blasted golfers who defected to LIV – to accusations of hypocrisy and reflects the way modern professional sports are hostage to the highest bidders. This can only pose uncomfortable questions to fans whose values and history clash with those of distant and sometimes politically dicey entities who effectively own their teams and top stars.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, for instance, had some explaining to do – not least to the tour’s players gathered at the Canadian Open this week after many tweeted that they had no advance notice of the deal. Monahan had played the 9/11 card last year at the same event, saying that two families that were close to him had lost loved ones in the worst terror attack on American soil, adding, “I would ask any player that has left, or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

Now Monahan stands to be the effective supremo of global golf, save for the four majors – the sport’s most prestigious tournaments – aided by a gusher of Saudi cash.

9/11 Families United effectively accused Monahan of using the tragedy as leverage in a business deal to reunite golf. He “co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sports washing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation,” the group said in a statement. “But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones.”

Monahan was asked about his reversal after what he said was a “heated” meeting with PGA Tour players on Tuesday.

“I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” he said. “Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment, and I said it based on someone that’s trying to compete for the PGA TOUR and our players.”

Major champions who jumped to the rival circuit last year like Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed and Cam Smith might also now wonder whether their PGA tour brethren will face the same grilling over human rights that they had to endure at the time.

One very famous golfer was delighted by the deal and seemed keen to claim some reflected credit – former President Donald Trump. The current front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination associated himself with LIV after the PGA Tour and other golf governing bodies distanced themselves from him over his radioactive political reputation. Trump has hosted several tournaments at his courses for LIV – a circuit that sits well with his record of refusing to sever links with the Saudis over the murder of Khashoggi in 2018, reasoning that the Saudis were great customers of the US.

“A big, beautiful, and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf. Congrats to all!!!” Trump wrote in block capital letters on his Truth Social platform.

Some defenders of LIV golfers have pointed out that the players were only making a choice to prioritize personal interests over moral ones in partnering with the Saudis – a calculus that mirrored decades of US foreign policy. Indeed, President Joe Biden had called on the 2020 campaign trail for the kingdom to be treated as a “pariah” because of Khashoggi’s murder only to travel to the kingdom as president to fist-bump MBS when he needed a spike in oil price production to bring down American gas prices.

On Tuesday, after the LIV/PGA partnership was announced, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat down for talks with the Crown Prince in Riyadh.

The idea that politics and sport shouldn’t mix has always been quaint. The Olympics and the World Cup are two of the planet’s most political spectacles after all. And modern sport has long run on money as monster TV rights contracts translate into huge salaries for top soccer players, Formula One Drivers, NBA stars and the top names in other sports.

But Tuesday’s LIV/PGA Tour agreement lays bare questions of morality so starkly precisely because of the way golf has sold itself. In a sport where players call penalties on themselves, and commentators idolize top players in whispered tones as paragons of gentlemanly conduct, patriotism and family values, the origin of the sport’s new financial lifeline is glaring.

The PGA Tour and Saudi partnership may be the most prominent example yet of the phenomenon known as sports washing, whereby an authoritarian nation seeking to buff up its image – despite serious criticism over its political system and human rights performance – woos the world’s top sporting stars. China was accused of such an agenda with its 2008 and 2022 Summer and Winter Olympics, where attempts at political activism largely fizzled under its repressive rule. The Qatar World Cup last year was another example of a nation that used its financial muscle to present a new image to the world. Various controversies during the tournament over LGBTQ rights and the plight of workers who built the stadiums undercut global governing body FIFA’s pretensions to inclusion.

The Saudis, Qataris and others are using their oil wealth to buy themselves a foothold among the world’s most powerful nations and to create tourism, entertainment and sporting legacies to sustain them when their reserves of carbon energy are depleted.

This mirrors a global shift in power and especially financial muscle – from the capitals of Western Europe to new epicenters in the emerging economies of the Middle East, India and China. Soccer, like golf, is taking its share of the cash. Traditional working class football clubs knitted into their communities for decades in the UK, for example, now suddenly find themselves owned by foreign energy magnates. Premier League giant Manchester City was bought by a United Arab Emirates-led group. And Newcastle United is owned by a Saudi Arabia-led consortium, forcing fans to consider (or not) the ethical dimensions of their support for their hometown clubs. And global cricket has been transformed by the Indian Premier League, which pays lavish salaries in a shortened form of the game.

One of the top names in soccer, Cristiano Ronaldo, is playing out the twilight of a glorious career spent at Europe’s top clubs in the up-and-coming Saudi league for a massive salary. And on Tuesday, Saudi team Al-Ittihad announced the signing of Real Madrid and French forward Karim Benzema, completing a sporting double whammy for the kingdom.

There are as many sporting questions about the PGA Tour/LIV Golf partnership that remain unanswered. The partnership combines the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity. A spokesman for the PGA tour told CNN that the deal is not a merger.

“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” Monahan said, describing a “transformational partnership” that would “benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.”

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, told CNBC he expected the partnership to be finalized within weeks and revealed, in a stunning move, that he had told LIV figurehead and Hall of Famer Greg Norman about the deal only moments before going on air.

LIV lured some of the PGA Tour’s top stars with massive signing bonuses and huge purses at substantially fewer events than the PGA tour, prompting the premier US circuit to unveil its own select “designated events” with upped prize money. The two sides were locked in bitter legal battles that have now been resolved.

It remains unclear, however, what steps LIV stars will have to take to potentially be able to return to events like The Players Championship, currently hosted on the PGA tour from which they were banned.

Then there is the question of how current PGA Tour members will respond.

Former British Open Champion Collin Morikawa tweeted, “I love finding out morning news on Twitter.”

The sudden announcement also did not specify what would happen to LIV tour events, which have struggled to draw a strong TV audience, beyond this season. Monahan’s announcement did hint that the new entity was committed to the new format of team events that has been introduced by LIV, to compliment golf’s traditional reliance on individual tournaments.

The golfer with the widest smile on Tuesday was probably Mickelson. The three-time Masters champion took the most heat for deserting the PGA tour for a reported massive payday, and was one of the most outspoken supporters of LIV – a breakaway he argued was a way to revolutionize the structure of professional golf and to secure more rewards for players.

Mickelson was also open about the reality of partnering with the Saudis, calling them “scary m*therf**kers to get involved with,” in an interview with golf journalist Alan Shipnuck that he later claimed was off the record. Shipnuck has written that he offered Mickelson no such agreement.

On Tuesday, Mickelson simply tweeted: “Awesome day today,” with a smiley sunshine emoji.

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April 12, 2021