abusive

Rory McIlroy hadn’t even left the practice range last Friday morning when a small section of fans at the Ryder Cup started a profane chant aimed at his image on a video screen at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y.

The verbal abuse and other inappropriate behavior directed toward McIlroy and his European teammates worsened as the weekend went on. At one point Saturday a cup of beer sailed out of the crowd and hit the brim of a hat worn by McIlroy’s wife, Erica Stoll, who was walking next to her husband.

The poor treatment didn’t prevent Team Europe from claiming a 15-13 win over the U.S. Afterward, McIlroy told reporters, “What happened here this week is not acceptable” and “I think golf should be held to a higher standard than than what was was seen out there this week.”

Derek Sprague, chief executive of PGA of America, told the Athletic this week that he had apologized to McIlroy and Stoll in an email.

Comedian Heather McMahan, who served as a morning emcee on the first two days of the Ryder Cup, also apologized this week for participating in a profane chant toward McIlroy.

And on Thursday — several days after he had seemingly trivialized the boorish fan behavior at the Ryder Cup by likening it to that of attendees at youth soccer games — PGA of America president Don Rea Jr. finally apologized in an email to the organization’s 30,000-plus members.

PGA of America president Don Rea Jr. speaks during a news conference at the PGA Championship in May.

(Matt York / Associated Press)

“Let me begin with what we must own. While the competition was spirited — especially with the U.S. team’s rally on Sunday afternoon — some fan behavior clearly crossed the line,” Rea wrote in the email, which was viewed by the Associated Press. “It was disrespectful, inappropriate, and not representative of who we are as the PGA of America or as PGA of America golf professionals. We condemn that behavior unequivocally.”

It was a different tone from the one Rea took Sunday when the BBC asked him about the unruly behavior of fans.

“Well, you’ve got 50,000 people here that are really excited, and heck, you could go to a youth soccer game and get some people who say the wrong things,” Rea said. “We tell the fans, booing at somebody doesn’t make them play worse. Typically, it makes them play better. And when our American players have to control the crowds, that distracts them from playing. So our message today to everybody who’s out here is, cheer on the Americans like never before, because that’ll always get them to play better and get them out of crowd control and let them perform.”

Asked specifically about the verbal abuse directed toward McIlroy, Rea said: “You know, it happens when we’re over in Rome on the other side. And Rory understands. I thought he handled the press conference just amazingly. But yeah, things like that are going to happen. And I don’t know what was said, but all I know is golf is the engine of good.”

Sprague, who took over as PGA of America’s chief executive in January, told the Athletic on Wednesday that he had apologized to McIlroy’s manager that morning and asked him to pass along a message to the five-time major champion and his wife.

“I sent a long email to share with Rory and Erica and just told him that we will do better in the future,” Sprague said. “I’m the CEO now. I don’t condone this type of behavior. This is not good for the game of golf. It’s not good for the Ryder Cup. It’s not good for any of the professional athletes, and we will do better.”

Heather McMahan arrives at the 76th Emmy Awards on Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater.

(Jae C. Hong / Invision / Associated Press)

In video footage from the first tee Saturday morning, McMahan appeared to be taking part in a profane chant aimed at McIlroy. That night, the PGA of America released a statement saying McMahan had apologized to McIlroy and Team Europe and had stepped down from her first-tee hosting duties.

McMahan addressed the situation Wednesday on her “Absolutely Not” podcast, saying she did not start the chant, as some outlets have reported, and said it only once before realizing it wasn’t something she wanted to take part in.

“I will take full responsibility and sincerely apologize to Rory, Team Europe for saying that,” McMahan said. “It was so foolish of me. I did not start the chant. I would just like that narrative to get out there. I did not start it, but any way that I had participated in that, even just saying it once, was so foolish and silly of me.

“And as soon as it came out and they started chanting, I was just like, ‘Oh, the energy just shifted.’ It went from us trying to be fun and funny … to immediately just was negative and felt really kind of toxic. So as soon as I said that I was like, ‘I don’t want any part of this.’”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Programme, which started after Korean War as a way of removing mixed-race children from society, violated human rights.

South Korea’s president has apologised for a notorious foreign adoption scheme set up after the 1950-53 Korean War that caused “anxiety, pain, and confusion” to more than 14,000 children sent abroad.

President Lee Jae-myung said in a Facebook post on Thursday that he was offering “heartfelt apology and words of comfort” to South Koreans adopted abroad and their adoptive and birth families, seven months after a Truth and Reconciliation Commission said the programme violated the human rights of adoptees.

The commission, which investigated complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States and Australia, held the government accountable for facilitating adoptions through fraudulent practices, including falsifying records to portray children as abandoned orphans and switching identities.

Lee said he felt “heavy-hearted” when he thought about the “anxiety, pain and confusion” that South Korean adoptees would have suffered when they were sent abroad as children, and asked officials to formulate systems to safeguard the human rights of adoptees and support their efforts to find their birth parents.

Mass international adoptions began after the Korean War as a way to remove mixed-race children born to local mothers and American GI fathers from a society that emphasised ethnic homogeneity, with more than 140,000 children sent overseas between 1955 and 1999.

Foreign adoptions have continued in more recent times, with more than 100 children on average, often babies born to unmarried women who face ostracism in a conservative society, still being sent abroad for adoption each year in the 2020s.

After years of delay, South Korea in July ratified The Hague Adoption Convention, an international treaty meant to safeguard international adoptions. The treaty took effect in South Korea on Wednesday.

Former president Kim Dae-jung apologised during a meeting with overseas adoptees in 1998, saying: “From the bottom of my heart, I am truly sorry. I deeply feel that we have committed a grave wrong against you.”

But he stopped short of acknowledging the state’s responsibility for the decades of malpractice.

Booking.com is facing a class-action lawsuit from more than 10,000 European hotels arguing that the accommodation mega-site used its muscle to distort the market to their detriment over a 20-year period.

The Association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes in Europe (Hotrec), which represents the industry within the EU and is bringing the legal action, recently extended to 29 August a deadline for hotel owners to join the suit because of high demand.

The lawsuit, expected to be one of the largest ever filed in the European hospitality sector, is also backed by 30 national hotel associations, including Britain’s.

“Over 10,000 hotels have already joined the pan-European initiative to claim compensation for financial losses caused by Booking.com’s use of illegal ‘best price’ (parity) clauses,” Hotrec said in a statement.

It alleges that the “best price” pledge on Booking.com was extracted from hotels under huge pressure not to offer rooms at lower prices on other platforms, including their own websites.

The hotel industry says that the Netherlands-based platform also used the clauses to prevent customers making what it called “free-rider” bookings, which it defined as using its services to find a hotel but then booking directly with the management, cutting out Booking.com.

“Registration [to the legal action] continues to grow steadily, and the response so far demonstrates the hospitality industry’s strong desire to stand up against unfair practices in the digital marketplace,” Hotrec said.

The litigation, which experts say will be an uphill battle, seeks damages for the period from 2004 to 2024, when Booking.com did away with the best price clause to comply with the EU Digital Markets Act.

Hotrec said the class action, to be heard in Amsterdam, follows a European court of justice (ECJ) ruling from 2024, “which found that Booking.com’s parity clauses violated EU competition law”.

“European hoteliers have long suffered from unfair conditions and excessive costs. Now is the time to stand together and demand redress,” said Hotrec’s president, Alexandros Vassilikos, calling out “abusive practices in the digital market” in Europe.

Booking.com called Hotrec and other hotel associations’ statements “incorrect and misleading” in an emailed statement, adding that it had not received “formal notification of a class action”.

It said that the ECJ ruling did not find that Booking.com’s “best price” clauses were anti-competitive but “simply stated that such clauses fall within the scope of EU competition law and that their effects must be assessed on a case-by-case basis”.

The company referred to a statement about its “commitment to fair competition”, in which it argued that “past parity clauses served to foster competitive pricing rather than restrict it”.

It cited a poll in which 74% of hoteliers said Booking.com made their business more profitable, with many reporting higher occupancy rates and lower customer acquisition costs. However, other industry representatives criticised the company’s practices as extractive.

“As they gained control of the market, Booking was able to increase its commission rates and exert much greater pressure on hoteliers’ margins,” Véronique Siegel, president of the hotels division of French hospitality sector association Umih, told public broadcaster France Inter.

“For a room that the customer pays €100 (£87) for, if you take away Booking’s commission, the hotelier receives €75 at best, with which they have to pay their employees and invest.”

Despite the friction, Booking.com appears unavoidable for many hotels, offering an online reach and visibility hard to achieve for smaller, independent establishments.

A study by Hotrec and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland found that Booking Holding, the website’s parent company, controlled 71% of the European market in 2024, compared with 68.4% in 2019.

The corporation is valued at $170bn (£127bn), three times that of Volkswagen.

Rupprecht Podszun, director of the institute for competition law at Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University, said Booking.com was a classic example of how a digital platform could conquer an entire sector, creating a “winner takes all” dynamic.

He said the legal action would probably be protracted and turn on the thorny question of how damages could be measured.

“Judges will have to form an opinion and then it will go through all the appeals – everything at great expense and with all the tricks available under the law,” he told Germany’s daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“The case is a revolt of the hotels, saying: ‘You can’t just do what you want with us.’”

DEAR DEIDRE: EVEN though my married lover wants to be with me full time, she is terrified about how her husband will react if she leaves him. He is a violent bully.

Her husband is domineering and abusive.

He treats her and her eight-year-old son like dirt. He controls everything.

She has given up seeing her friends, he constantly checks her phone and she has lost contact with all of her family.

I am 33, she is 31 and I can’t tell you how upset I get when she tells me about how he shouts, shoves and lashes out at her.

She works for my sister’s catering business and from the moment I was introduced to her I liked her.

We’d always spend our lunchtime together and I would feel so excited about seeing her.

Recently I bought her a small gift when I went on holiday.

I was taken aback when she dissolved into tears explaining it was the loveliest thing a man had done for her. We ended up kissing and she started coming around to my house whenever she could.

She can’t ever stay for long enough but we have the most wonderful sex.

My sister warned me to stay away because her husband has a bad reputation, she said he was capable of anything, but I refused to listen, and the affair has continued.

I am desperate for my lover to leave this awful man. While she wants to be with me too, she is so frightened that he will become physically violent towards her.

I worry I am being weak because I haven’t stood up to him, even though I know that her safety has to come first

DEIDRE SAYS: Stay away from him. Getting involved will only create more problems and place your lover in danger.

She needs to make leaving him a priority for herself and her son, but it has to come from her.

It’s so damaging for her son to see his mum being treated so badly.

Stress this to her and suggest she talks to the National Domestic Abuse Helpline (nationaldahelpline.org.uk, 0800 2000 247).

While you can be there to support her, she has a better chance of leaving safely if she doesn’t rush straight into a relationship with you.

Even a marriage she is desperate to be out of is a loss and she’ll need to adjust before she can begin to contemplate a future with you.

PARTNER PREFERS HIMSELF

DEAR DEIDRE: MY boyfriend has admitted he pleasures himself three or four times a week, and now I feel he doesn’t fancy me as we rarely have sex.

He blames his low sex drive on being stressed but he has always been like this.

I’m 35 and he’s 36. We’ve been together for eight months. Everything else in our relationship is great.

We only see each other on weekends, which could be part of the problem. We’re both so busy with our jobs, fitness and friends. For example, I go to the gym twice a week and go out with my girlfriends regularly.

My boyfriend insists his low sex drive is because of his new job. It’s very stressful but he’s no different to how he was when I first met him.

Now I realise he masturbates so much, I’m convinced he doesn’t fancy me, rather than there being a problem with his sex drive.

DEIDRE SAYS: There’s not much wrong with his sex drive. It sounds like he has got into the habit of finding sexual satisfaction alone, which is lazy and selfish.

He needs to face up to what is happening rather than using stress as an excuse. Tell him how damaging his behaviour is to your relationship.

Suggest setting aside an evening together each week for chat, kisses and cuddles with no pressure to have full sex, even though that could be the likely result.

My support pack Different Sex Drives will help.

DREAM TO WED BUT BOYFRIEND’S SO CRUEL TO ME

DEAR DEIDRE: ALL I want is to get married and have a family. I constantly fantasise about my boyfriend proposing but deep down I know he won’t – ever.

Years ago, I was told that I would have difficulty getting pregnant.

I am 32 and my boyfriend is 36. We’ve been together for almost three years. He says he doesn’t want to marry or have children.

Recently, he has twice tried to break up with me. I’m sure it’s because I have gained weight – something I am not proud of – but I am dieting and have started running and going to the gym.

He knows I am making an effort but he also says that I don’t keep the house as tidy as he’d like. I work full-time and often do overtime so there isn’t a lot of time for housework.

Most days I only have enough energy to come home, eat and get a decent night’s sleep.

I feel as though I walk on eggshells around him and it is beginning to get me down.

A few weeks ago, I met a man at work who is so kind and makes me feel lovely. I know it is early days, and we are still getting to know each other, but ultimately I am going to have to choose. Which way should I go?

DEIDRE SAYS: After three years together, it is only natural you are thinking about the future, but marriage and children are not the main issue here.

To be blunt, he is being cruel. These are not the actions of a loving and respectful partner. There are serious issues that need to be discussed honestly if you’re going to build a future.

Let him know how his behaviour leaves you feeling, but don’t stay in a relationship where you’re permanently on edge.

Do decide what you really want before involving yourself with another man.

Singer says on day three of trial Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs routinely beat her and threatened to ruin her career with videos of sexual encounters.

Casandra Ventura, the singer popularly known as Cassie and former girlfriend of rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, has taken to the witness stand on the third day of his trial to portray a relationship defined by physical abuse and routine humiliation.

Testifying before the court on Wednesday, Ventura said Combs, who faces sex trafficking and racketeering charges, beat her and threatened to release compromising videos that could damage her career.

“He would grab me up, push me down, hit me in the side of the head, kick me,” Ventura, a rhythm and blues singer, told jurors in Manhattan federal court.

“It would just make him more violent, make him stronger, make him want to push me harder,” Ventura said of efforts to resist Combs’s violent behaviour during their decadelong relationship.

Prosecutors have alleged that Combs used his wealth and control of an entertainment empire to manipulate and coerce women, sometimes through physical violence, into participation in drug-fuelled sex parties known as “freak-offs” and then used videos of sexual encounters as blackmail.

“He said that it would ruin everything that I had worked for, that it would make me look like a slut, that I would be shamed,” Ventura said. “Nobody should do that to anyone.”

She stated participation in the “freak-offs” started to feel like “a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again” and she developed an opioid addiction to cope.

On one occasion in 2013, Ventura sent Combs pictures of injuries she sustained when he threw her into a bed frame so he could “remember” what he had done.

“You don’t know when to stop. You pushed it too far and continued to push,” he responded. “Sad.”

Combs’s lawyers have conceded that the rapper has an aggressive temperament and has physically assaulted people but state he has been incorrectly charged with racketeering and sex trafficking and a freewheeling sexual lifestyle is being misconstrued by prosecutors.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to five counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. If he is convicted on all charges, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.