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Liverpool manager Arne Slot says star forward Alexander Isak will be on the sidelines until at least late February.

Alexander Isak is expected to be out of action for two months after fracturing his leg against Tottenham, with Liverpool manager Arne Slot accusing Tottenham’s Micky van de Ven of making a “reckless challenge”.

The Sweden striker was injured in a tackle from the defender in the act of scoring the opening goal in Saturday’s 2-1 victory and limped off the pitch.

Liverpool said in a statement on Monday that the forward had had an operation on an ankle injury that included a fibula fracture.

“It’s going to be a long injury, for a couple of months,” Slot told reporters on Tuesday, “So, yeah, that’s a big, big, big disappointment for him. And as a result, also of course for us.”

Slot described Van de Ven’s tackle as “reckless”.

“I think I said a lot about the tackle of Xavi Simons [sent off earlier in the game for Spurs], which for me was completely unintentional, and I don’t think you will ever get an injury out of a tackle like that.

“The tackle of Van de Ven, if you make that tackle 10 times, I think 10 times there’s a serious chance that a player gets a serious injury.”

Isak’s challenging year continues

Isak’s injury is the latest setback for the forward after he signed from Newcastle for a British record 125 million pounds ($168m) in September.

A dispute with Newcastle meant he did not have a proper preseason programme and arrived at Liverpool well behind his teammates in terms of fitness.

His season was then interrupted by a groin injury.

The 26-year-old has scored just three goals in 16 appearances since completing his protracted move to Anfield.

Isak’s absence will be a major blow for Reds boss Slot, with Mohamed Salah at the Africa Cup of Nations and Cody Gakpo not ready to return from a muscle injury until early in the new year.

It leaves Slot with Hugo Ekitike, who has five goals in his past four games, and the little-used Federico Chiesa as his only senior forwards.

Liverpool, whose Premier League title defence collapsed after a shocking run of results, have climbed to fifth in the table after extending their unbeaten league run to five games.

Isak’s injury raises the prospect of Liverpool moving to boost their attack in the January transfer window, with Bournemouth winger Antoine Semenyo linked with a move to Anfield.

It may also change the conversation around Salah, who had been linked with a move to Saudi Arabia following his recent claim that he had been thrown under the bus by the club and no longer had a relationship with Slot.

Salah’s rant, which came after he was left on the bench for three successive matches, prompted Liverpool to leave him out of the squad for a Champions League match at Inter Milan.

But he returned to action as a substitute against Brighton before leaving for international duty.

Liverpool host bottom side Wolves on Saturday.

Dec. 19 (UPI) — Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s lung condition has worsened, and her doctors are considering a lung transplant, the royal palace announced Friday.

The 52-year-old was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, a rare, chronic disease that causes lung tissue to become damaged and scarred. This scarring causes difficulty for the lungs to carry oxygen to the bloodstream.

Symptoms of the condition include shortness of breath, dry cough, fatigue, weight loss and loss of appetite, muscle or joint pain, and rounded or swollen fingertips.

“During the autumn, a number of tests have been carried out that show a clear worsening of the crown princess’ health,” a statement from the palace said.

“The physicians at Rikshospitalet University Hospital have therefore started the process towards an evaluation for potential lung transplant surgery.”

At the time of her diagnosis, Mette-Marit predicted the condition would restrict her ability to perform royal duties.

“Although such a diagnosis will limit my life at times, I’m glad that the disease has been discovered so early,” she said in 2018. “My goal is still to work and participate in the official program as much as possible.

Mette-Marit married Crown Prince Haakon, son of King Harald V and heir to the throne, in 2001. The couple share two children — Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus, and Mette-Marit has a 28-year-old son, Marius Borg Høiby, from a previous relationship.

Høiby faces trial early next year on 32 charges, including four counts of rape.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department violated the constitutional rights of a close friend of James B. Comey and must return to him computer files that prosecutors had hoped to use for a potential criminal case against the former FBI director, a federal judge said Friday.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly not only represents a stern rebuke of the conduct of Justice Department prosecutors but also imposes a major hurdle to government efforts to seek a new indictment against Comey after an initial one was dismissed last month.

The order concerns computer files and communications that investigators obtained years earlier from Daniel Richman, a friend of Comey’s and Columbia University law professor, as part of a media leak investigation that concluded without charges. The Justice Department continued to hold onto those files and conducted searches of them this fall, without a new warrant, as they prepared a case charging Comey with lying to Congress five years ago.

Richman alleged that the Justice Department violated his 4th Amendment rights by retaining his records and by conducting new warrantless searches of the files, prompting Kollar-Kotelly to issue an order last week temporarily barring prosecutors from accessing the files as part of its investigation.

The Justice Department said the request for the return of the records was merely an attempt to impede a new prosecution of Comey, but the judge again sided with Richman in a 46-page order Friday that directed the Justice Department to give him back his files.

“When the Government violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures by sweeping up a broad swath of a person’s electronic files, retaining those files long after the relevant investigation has ended, and later sifting through those files without a warrant to obtain evidence against someone else, what remedy is available to the victim of the Government’s unlawful intrusion?” the judge wrote.

One answer, she said, is to require the government to return the property to the rightful owner.

The judge did, however, permit the Justice Department to file an electronic copy of Richman’s records under seal with the Eastern District of Virginia, where the Comey investigation has been based, and suggested prosecutors could try to access it later with a lawful search warrant.

The Justice Department alleges that Comey used Richman to share information with the news media about his decision-making during the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Prosecutors charged the former FBI director in September with lying to Congress by denying that he had authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source for the media.

That indictment was dismissed last month after a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the prosecutor who brought the case, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed by the Trump administration. But the ruling left open the possibility that the government could try again to seek charges against Comey, a longtime foe of President Trump. Comey has pleaded not guilty, denied having made a false statement and accused the Justice Department of a vindictive prosecution.

The Comey saga has a long history.

In June 2017, one month after Trump fired Comey as FBI director — while the agency was investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and its ties to the Trump campaign — he testified that he had given Richman a copy of a memo he had written documenting a conversation he had with Trump and had authorized him to share the contents of the memo with a reporter.

After that testimony, Richman permitted the FBI to create an image, or complete electronic copy, of all files on his computer and a hard drive attached to that computer. He authorized the FBI to conduct a search for limited purposes, the judge noted.

Then, in 2019 and 2020, the FBI and Justice Department obtained search warrants to obtain Richman’s email accounts and computer files as part of a media leak investigation that concluded in 2021 without charges. Those warrants were limited in scope, but Richman has alleged that the government collected more information than the warrants allowed, including personal medical information and sensitive correspondence.

In addition, Richman said the Justice Department violated his rights by searching his files in September, without a new warrant, as part of an entirely separate investigation.

“The Court further concludes that the Government’s retention of Petitioner Richman’s files amounts to an ongoing unreasonable seizure,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Therefore, the Court agrees with Petitioner Richman that the Government has violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Republican critics of affirmative action hailed Monday’s Supreme Court decision as a mandate for even more sweeping action by Congress and vowed to press home their attack on federal programs of racial preference.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole called the ruling–that preferential treatment based on race is almost always unconstitutional–”one more reason for the federal government to get out of the race-preference business” and summoned fellow lawmakers “to follow the court’s lead and put the federal government’s own house in order.”

Dole, once a supporter of affirmative action, has called for hearings on the subject in the Senate, and has said he may sponsor legislation to rewrite many of the programs. He was joined in his praise of the court ruling by fellow presidential contender Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), who said Monday’s decision “greatly strengthens the prospects” that he would seek to amend all funding bills passing through Congress this year to bar the use of federal dollars for “quotas and set-asides.”

The court’s dramatic ruling, meantime, thrust President Clinton and other Democrats into a new bind both legally and politically. Administration officials acknowledged it has disrupted a review of the federal government’s 180-odd affirmative action programs now under way. Clinton had sought the review to help deflect criticism both from the GOP and conservative forces within his own party.

Legally, Clinton now can hope to save parts of affirmative action only if he can come up with new rationales that are defensible under the narrow terms outlined by the Supreme Court on Monday. The court said affirmative action programs can be upheld as a means to correct specific, provable cases of discrimination, but not to correct suspected discrimination by a society over time.

That, in turn, underscores Clinton’s political challenge in dealing with the charged issues of race and gender. The President must either acquiesce in cutbacks to affirmative action programs, thereby risking alienation of minority voters who are crucial to his party’s base, or actively defend the programs and risk offending large numbers of white voters.

“This has really intensified the question of which programs should live and which should die,” said one Senate Democratic aide. “And that really raises the heat on what Clinton has been doing.”

The White House has said it expects to complete its review of affirmative action by the end of this month. Before the court announced the rulings, officials familiar with the review have predicted that it would essentially affirm most principles of federal affirmative action, while calling for changes in the procurement “set aside” programs that have attracted so much criticism.

Administration aides were in general agreement that the decision now would considerably delay the results of the review, which were to be released in a major thematic speech.

“If we’re not back to square one, we’ve at least moved back some distance,” said one Administration official.

But with the White House still contemplating its next move on the issue, House Republicans are set to redraft completely the controversial programs that were launched in the early 1960s to compensate women and minorities for past discrimination in higher education and the job market.

Rep. Charles T. Canady (R-Fla.), a one-time Democrat who now chairs the House Judiciary Committee’s constitution subcommittee, is set later this month to unveil legislation that would forbid the federal government to use gender or race preferences in any federal program, and dismantle many of the programs that have come to be central to affirmative action.

The House bill would effectively repeal one of the central features of 160 government programs that use racial and gender preferences in hiring and promoting federal workers, granting federal contracts and awarding benefits under federal programs. It would call a virtual halt to federal programs that “set aside” slots and pools of funding for businesses owned by minorities and women, and would require substantial changes in other programs.

On Monday, Canady said the court’s decision “gives impetus” to Republicans’ political efforts to roll back many such programs, by making clear the court’s intent to “return to a focus on individual rights” over groups’ rights.

But the complex ruling, he added, also makes it vital for Congress to weigh in quickly with its own views on affirmative action. “You’ll now see all kinds of challenges and litigation moving through district appeals courts, all the way to Supreme Court,” Canady said.

But Democratic proponents of affirmative action on Monday said that the court’s ruling had increased pressure on the White House to act, and to do so quickly, before Congressional Republicans seize the initiative.

“It is perhaps even more important that the President take time to delineate a vision and a course of action . . . as only the President can do,” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume, (D-Md.) former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Mfume, focusing on one of the majority opinion’s few comments that could be construed as justifying existing programs, lauded the court for acknowledging that “race discrimination is real and government has a role in eradicating it.”

“For those Republicans who have some notion that they ought to do away with all set-asides in the government because there’s no need for them, the court is saying, that is not correct, there is still,” he said.

Mfume’s positive tone was echoed by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who said she was “somewhat disappointed . . . but certainly not discouraged” by the stringent standards called for by Monday’s Supreme Court ruling.

“We may have to do a lot more work and it’s going to be a little confused,” said Waters. But she asserted the new standards applied by the Supreme Court would by no means spell an end to existing affirmative action programs at the federal level.

“This ruling suggests that the strict scrutiny standards would have to be met, and that there is overwhelming and compelling reasons out there to meet them. It doesn’t take a Harvard scholar to do that. The group certainly has been discriminated against.”

The author of major affirmative action laws in California, Waters stated that with a simple technical change, California statutes allowing set-asides for women- and minority-owned contractors would be able to meet the standards set out by the Supreme Court Monday.

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.

Due to the ongoing advance of M23/AFC rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), scores of displaced people have crossed into Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi, on Dec. 9.

Burundi is facing a major surge in refugees as families escape ongoing conflict. The unexpected influx, which includes individuals with ties to armed groups, has raised fears of a security and humanitarian crisis in the country. The chaotic situation at the South Kivu border sees both civilians and armed personnel caught up in the turmoil.

Refugees from Luvungi, Katogota, Bwegera, Luberizi, Mutarule, and Sange of the DRC crossed the border en masse at the Kaburantwa bridge under construction, on the 6th avenue in the Buganda zone of Bukinanyana district. According to local Burundian media, the rout of armed groups and regular forces allowed armed fighters to blend into the crowd.

On Dec. 8, joint operations conducted by Burundian soldiers, Congolese Wazalendo militias, and Rwandan rebels resulted in the seizure of weapons and uniforms, and the arrest of men suspected of being infiltrated fighters. These operations took place in Kansega, in the border area of ​​Ndava, Bukinanyana district.

Burundi has also accused the M23 rebels of conducting a bombing attack within its territory, signalling an increase in regional tensions, despite several peace agreements. The militant actions by the rebels continue despite the ratification of the Washington peace accord signed between DR Congo, the M23/AFC rebels, and Rwanda under the Trump administration.

Despite facing strong resistance from the DR Congo national army, the M23/AFC rebels, with support from Rwanda, continue to advance on the ground toward the capture of the city of Uvira in South Kivu, which has become the province’s provisional capital.

The two main parties involved in the conflict in the eastern Congo, the Kinshasa government and the M23/AFC rebels, previously signed a framework agreement. This agreement aimed to initiate new discussions on the underlying causes of the conflict and, eventually, to reach a comprehensive peace accord to restore normalcy in North Kivu and South Kivu. 

Despite multiple meetings with the mediator and several signed documents, including mechanisms for prisoner exchange and cease-fire verification, the measures have not yet been implemented. 

Kinshasa officials accuse Kigali of continuing to support M23/AFC rebels, violating the Washington Accords.

Rights group FairSquare accuses world football governing body of ‘openly flouting’ its own rules on political neutrality.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s effusive praise for Donald Trump and the decision by the world football governing body to award a peace prize to the US president have triggered a formal complaint over ethics violations and political neutrality.

Human rights group FairSquare said on Tuesday that it has filed a complaint with FIFA’s ethics committee, claiming the organisation’s behaviour was against the common interests of the global football community.

The complaint stems from Infantino awarding Trump FIFA’s inaugural peace prize during the December 6 draw for the 2026 World Cup to be played in the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and July.

“This complaint is about a lot more than Infantino’s support for President Donald Trump’s political agenda,” FairSquare’s programme director Nicholas McGeehan said.

“More broadly, this is about how FIFA’s absurd governance structure has allowed Gianni Infantino to openly flout the organisation’s rules and act in ways that are both dangerous and directly contrary to the interests of the world’s most popular sport,” said McGeehan, head of the London-based advocacy group.

According to the eight-page complaint from the rights group filed with FIFA on Monday, Infantino’s awarding of the peace prize “to a sitting political leader is in and of itself a clear breach of FIFA’s duty of neutrality”.

“If Mr. Infantino acted unilaterally and without any statutory authority this should be considered an egregious abuse of power,” the rights group said.

FairSquare also pointed to Infantino lobbying on social media earlier this year for Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Israel-Gaza conflict. Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado ultimately received the prize.

FairSquare said it wants FIFA’s independent committee to review Infantino’s actions.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch also criticised FIFA’s awarding of the prize to Trump, saying his administration’s “appalling human rights record certainly does not display exceptional actions for peace and unity”.

Disciplinary action from the FIFA Ethics Committee can include a warning, a reprimand and even a fine. Compliance training can also be ordered, while a ban can be levied on participation in football-related activity. But it remains unclear if the ethics committee will take up the complaint.

Infantino has not immediately responded, and FIFA said it does not comment on potential cases.

Current FIFA-appointed ethics investigators and judges are seen by some observers to operate with less independence than their predecessors a decade ago, when FIFA’s then-president, Sepp Blatter, was removed from office.

Trump was on hand for the World Cup 2026 draw ceremony on Friday, along with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

But it was Trump who received the most attention during the event at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC.

During the event, Infantino presented Trump with a gold trophy, a gold medal and a certificate.

“This is your prize; this is your peace prize,” Infantino told Trump.

FIFA also played a video that touched on some of Trump’s efforts towards so-called peace agreements.