penalty

The Ducks held their annual fan appreciation day Sunday, handing out thousands of gifts, from a new car to team jerseys and gift cards. But the one prize the Ducks’ long-suffering fans really wanted, a playoff berth, remained just out of reach.

Needing a win to clinch a postseason berth for the first time since 2018, the Ducks lost a sloppy 4-3 overtime decision to the Vancouver Canucks, the NHL’s worst team, leaving them a point shy of the playoffs with two games to play. The loss was the seventh in eight games for the Ducks, who have tumbled from first to third in the Pacific Division standings and may now have to settle for a wild-card berth.

So they’ll hit the road Monday for their final two games of the regular season needing one point from games in Minnesota and Nashville. The Ducks could also back into the playoffs if Nashville losses either of its final two games.

“We haven’t clinched anything yet,” captain Radko Gudas said. “With two games to play, there’s still a lot of work to do, 120 minutes to give it our all and make that push.”

“We just can’t be satisfied with what we’re at right now,” coach Joel Quenneville agreed. “We didn’t make it easy on ourselves, that’s for sure.”

The Ducks have already assured themselves of their first winning record since 2017-18 but the playoffs have been the Holy Grail the team has been chasing since then. And it appeared within reach until Marco Rossi scored on a power play with less than 11 seconds left in the extra period, silencing a sellout crowd that had repeatedly peppered the Ducks with rhythmic chants of “We want playoffs!”

“I loved it,” Quenneville said of the chant. “I wanted to complete that wish tonight.”

And it looked as if that would happen given the way the Ducks started, with Cutter Gauthier opening the scoring with the first of two goals 3:41 into a feisty and physical first period that was interrupted by seven penalties and two fights.

But Vancouver got the next three scores, taking a 3-1 lead when Brock Boeser intercepted a sloppy Leo Carlsson pass intended for John Carlson in Vancouver’s defensive end, then outskated Carlson the other way before lifting the puck over goaltender Lukas Dostal less than five minutes into the final period.

The shorthanded goal seemed to wake the slumbering Ducks, with Gauthier scoring on a power play 37 seconds later to halve the lead and become the first Duck with 40 goals in a season since Corey Perry in 2013-14.

“It’s a huge milestone and something I’m very proud of,” Gauthier said. “But that’s not why I’m playing hockey. I’m playing to win games and eventually win a Stanley Cup.”

Carlsson then evened things at 3-3 on a spectacular goal less than two minutes later, backhanding the puck over Canucks goalie Nikita Tolopilo while skating away from the crease for his 29^th goal of the season.

“It was kind of a dagger when they score a shorthanded goal on us,” Gauthier said. “It’s supposed to be the opposite way. But I thought we responded really well, obviously tying it back up.”

The Ducks couldn’t keep it there, however, with Chris Kreider taking a slashing penalty with 2:07 left in overtime, giving Vancouver an extra skater. Dostal had kept the Ducks in the game, making seven saves in the extra period, including five huge stops on the power play, but he couldn’t stop Rossi on the final shot, one which sent the Ducks’ fans home disappointed and eager to end to the second-longest playoff drought in the NHL.

“They’ve been hungry to get back in the playoffs over these last seven years,” said Gauthier, who was in junior high school in Michigan the last time the Ducks played in the postseason. “They’re excited for it, we’re excited for it. We fell short tonight but we had a great opportunity to go on this road trip and get some get points.”

Actually just one point — the one they left on the ice Sunday — will be enough.

Reporting from Sacramento — There are more voters in favor of a ballot measure that would repeal the death penalty in California than one that attempts to speed up executions, but neither proposition has attracted the majority of votes it needs to pass come Tuesday, a new poll finds.

Partly, it’s because some voters seemed confused about what each measure promises, pollsters and strategists said. Mainly, it’s because voters remain strongly divided on the issue of capital punishment, with a strong core of beliefs driving their decisions.

National debate over criminal justice reform and racial disparity in sentencing has not swayed those attitudes, they said, as it has with other crime and punishment measures on the ballot.

“The death penalty is much more controversial, in a sense,” said pollster Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, the Democratic half of the bipartisan team of polling firms that conducted the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll. “People have strong religious or moral opposition on both sides of the issue. They have core values.”

Proposition 62, which would replace capital punishment with life in prison without parole, received 44% support and 45% opposition among the 1,382 likely voters polled in October across the state through telephone interviews. Ten percent said they did not know how they would vote or refused to answer.

The more clearly written measure of the two, pollsters said, it garnered a predictable demographic on both sides: 59% of Democratic voters were in support and 65% of Republican voters were in opposition.

The results also reflected national trends, which show public support for the death penalty has declined, though an almost even split of voters still favor the punishment. The latest Pew Research survey, released in September, found 49% of Americans favored the death penalty, the lowest in more than four decades.

More confusing to interpret, pollsters said, were the results of Proposition 66, which seeks to speed up the death penalty system through changes and limits on how and how often death row inmates can challenge their convictions and sentences.

Thirty-five percent of voters said they would support Proposition 66, 42% said they would oppose it, and 21% said they did not know how they would vote or refused to answer.

But only 45% of Democratic voters opposed the measure, while 31% said they would support it. Of Republican voters, 40% were in favor and 36% were against.

Interviews with poll participants illustrated the opposing values among California voters.

Alan Cheah, 67, a retired technology specialist in the Central Valley, said he strongly opposed the death penalty on moral grounds.

“A lot of people have been wrongly put to death,” he said. “The whole justice system is skewed toward disadvantaged people and people of color, and a lot of them have been accused of murder or wrongdoing but have been acquitted – some have not been acquitted in time.”

To Steven Lang, a 56-year-old self-described fine artist, it’s a sensitive, personal issue. His sister was killed in 1994. The killer was not sentenced to death.

“This guy has robbed me of memories of my sister,” Lang said. “You can’t take life and whitewash it in gray. Every life has a value, and I believe people who take that life, lose theirs.”

The ballot box guide to California’s propositions »

Yet even as the two death penalty propositions “are trying to achieve competing aims, opponents of one don’t necessarily support the other, mostly due to confusion about 66,” said pollster Ben Winston of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

Voters who supported repealing the death penalty and opposed the competing measure were 21% of the electorate, a mostly Democratic group which also supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Will ending the death penalty save California more money than speeding up executions? »

Voters who opposed repealing the death penalty and favored the measure intended to speed up the process formed 18% of the electorate, a group that leaned Republican and toward Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Another 15% of voters, mostly younger Democrats and Clinton supporters, said they would give their “Yes” vote to both propositions, while 21% of the electorate said they would oppose both measures.

The survey was conducted for USC Dornsife and the Los Angeles Times by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and American Viewpoint.

jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com

@jazmineulloa

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A general strike swept the occupied West Bank after Israel passed a death penalty law that only targets Palestinians, sparking international condemnation and protests.

The Israeli parliament’s approval of a legislation that seeks the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks has stoked fears among the Palestinians and drawn condemnation from the international community, dismayed at the further entrenching of what rights groups have long described as Israel’s “system of apartheid”.

The law, which does not apply to Jewish citizens of Israel, was met with jubilation among its backers in the country’s far right.

France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom have all raised concerns over what many describe as the overtly racist nature of the bill, whose nature and wording appear to exclusively target Palestinians.

“We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill. The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles,” the foreign ministries wrote in a joint statement on Sunday.

Rights groups have also criticised the bill, with Amnesty International in February saying the legislation would make the death penalty “another discriminatory tool in Israel’s system of apartheid”.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday called the law discriminatory as it would primarily, if not exclusively, be applied to Palestinians.

“Israeli officials argue that the imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality, it entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid,” Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

“The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.”

Nevertheless, on its successful passage through parliament, amidst the celebrating lawmakers, the legislation’s principal champion, far- right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – who has previous convictions for far-right “terrorism” – was seen brandishing a champagne.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had attended the chamber to support the bill, could also be seen congratulating lawmakers on its passage.

So, how can Israel pass a law targeting one ethnic group and not others? Is that legal, and is this the first time Israel has passed legislation that deliberately discriminates against Palestinians?

Here’s what we know.

How does the law target Palestinians and not Israelis?

By limiting the bulk of the legislation to the military courts that only try Palestinians under occupation.

Under the new legislation, anyone found guilty of the killing of an Israeli citizen within the occupied West Bank will, by default, be sentenced to death by the military courts overseeing the occupied territory.

While the courts do not regularly publish statistics on convictions, in 2010, the court system did concede that, of the Palestinians tried for offences committed in the occupied West Bank, 99.74 percent were found guilty.

In contrast, Israeli settlers, who have killed seven Palestinians in just the weeks following the start of their country’s war on Iran in late February, are tried in civilian courts in Israel. According to an analysis by the UK’s Guardian newspaper in late March, Israel has yet to prosecute any of its citizens for killing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the start of this decade.

Under the new legislation, Israel’s civilian courts are granted an extra degree of leniency in sentencing Israelis found guilty of killing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, with judges having the option to choose between the death penalty and life imprisonment.

Sentences for the military courts trying Palestinians, in contrast, carry an automatic death penalty, with life imprisonment only available under extreme circumstances.

According to a study by the Israeli rights group, Yesh Din, conviction rates for settlers found guilty by civilian courts of committing crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) between 2005 and 2024 ran to about 3 percent. Some 93.8 percent of investigations into settler violence were closed at the end of an investigation with no indictment filed, the group noted.

Underpinning much of this is Israel’s 2018 Nation State law, which, in the eyes of many, codifies Israel’s apartheid system of government, defining Israel as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people and prioritising Jewish settlement as a national value.

Critics argue that it downgrades the status of Palestinian citizens, who make up about 20 percent of the population, by omitting any guarantee of equality.

How is that even legal?

According to many, it isn’t.

Despite the best efforts of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who has administrative power over the occupied West Bank – to annex the Palestinian territory, it remains a foreign territory under military occupation.

According to Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at the Center for Security and Democracy of The Israel Democracy Institute, international law does not permit Israel’s parliament to legislate for the West Bank, since the area is not legally part of Israel’s sovereign territory.

In September 2024, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly called for end to Israeli occupation of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem within a year. The UNGA resolution backed an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which called Israeli occupation “unlawful”.

Similarly, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel announced it had already taken the matter to Israel’s highest court only minutes after the bill was approved. The group argued that the measure was “discriminatory by design” and that lawmakers had no legal authority to impose it on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, who are not Israeli citizens.

Is this the first time Israel has been accused of using its legal system to target Palestinians?

Far from it.

Human rights groups – including HRW and Amnesty International – have long argued that the legal systems applying to Palestinians and to Israeli settlers in the West Bank are fundamentally unequal.

Palestinians live under military law, while settlers fall under Israeli civil law, creating two parallel systems in the same territory.

According to rights groups, this structure enables discriminatory detention practices, such as administrative detention (where people can be held indefinitely without charge), dramatically unequal protections under the law, and the selective enforcement of those laws, which have all underpinned widespread accusations of apartheid.

As of March 2026, approximately 9,500 Palestinians are detained in Israeli prisons under harsh conditions, with about half held under administrative detention or labelled “unlawful combatants”, denied trial and unable to defend themselves.

Legislation relating to the treatment of children in custody has led to concern among many international observers and rights groups. Palestinian minors can be interrogated without parental present and are often denied timely access to legal counsel in defiance of Israel’s own and international law, the HRW noted.

Another key area of international concern is the ongoing demolition of Palestinian homes built without permits, which are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain. Unauthorised settler outposts, in contrast, are rarely troubled and increasingly retroactively legalised.

Olympic champions Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France won gold, with 230.81 points. They are the fourth pair to win Olympic, world and European titles in the same season.

They finished 19.29 points ahead of the field, which is the biggest winning margin in worlds history.

Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who took bronze at Milan-Cortina 2026 won the silver medal, ahead of Zingas and Kolesnik, who finished on 209.20 points, with Fear and Gibson ending on 208.98.

The British pair, who won bronze at last year’s World Championships, missed out on a medal at the Winter Olympics last month because of a costly mistake in their free dance routine.

Earlier, US star Ilia Malinin won a third straight men’s gold as he bounced back from missing out on an Olympic medal last month when he fell twice in the free skate.

“I couldn’t believe it, my beloved Hull City were up against Georgie Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law. That’s like having Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappe in the same team,” Kelly recalled on the BBC’s Sporting Witness programme.

Former Hull City player Frankie Banks said: “It was a massive game, playing against Manchester United, who two years earlier had won the European Cup.

“The atmosphere was electrifying.

“The Man United players were our heroes. On paper we didn’t stand a chance. We wanted to win, we wanted to prove to everybody that although they were the best side probably in the world we could go out and give them a game.”

And that is exactly what they did, taking the lead on 11 minutes through Chris Chilton before Law pulled one back for United in the 78th minute to send the game into extra time. As the clocked ticked down on the additional half-hour, players realised they were about to be part of something historic.

“[Hull player-manager] Terry Neill obviously asked for volunteers and some of the lads were reluctant to step up and take the penalties and some were brave enough to step up and say ‘I’ll take one, I’ll take one and I’ll take one’,” said Banks, who was not on the team sheet that day but was at the game.

“Nobody wants to be the one that misses.”

And, in particular, no-one wants to be the first player ever to miss in a shootout.

However, Best was happy to go down as the first player to score, sending his right-footed shot low into the left corner.

For Hull City, Neill became the first player-manager to score in a shootout, helping keep the score level at 3-3.

“It was still anybody’s game and the noise was deafening,” said Banks.

But then, in a moment that countless big-name players to come would experience through the decades, Law saw his low shot saved by a diving Ian McKechnie.

“For ever and ever, Law will go down as the first man to miss in a penalty shootout and McKechnie will go down as the first goalkeeper to save a penalty in a penalty shootout,” said Banks.

Ken Wagstaff then missed for Hull and so when Willie Morgan scored for United, Hull knew they had to convert their final kick.

And that was when McKechnie became the first keeper to take a penalty in a shootout.

“Please, not him,” Kelly remembers thinking. “I couldn’t believe it, my mum couldn’t believe it, even Alex Stepney the Man United keeper couldn’t believe it and actually asked him what he was doing up there. I had my head in my hands!”

McKechnie stepped up and blasted a powerful strike… against the upper side of the crossbar. And with that, he became the first keeper to miss a penalty in a shootout.

“I still maintain that Ian McKechnie was the right choice – he had a sweet left foot – and he had the guts to do it. I’d have put money on him to score,” said Banks.

“Missing that penalty stayed with Ian for the rest of his life.”

Manchester United were left furious about “astonishing” and “baffling” refereeing decisions as two penalties were awarded and one was not in their thrilling 2-2 draw at Bournemouth.

Harry Maguire’s special day – following his England recall – was spoiled by his sending off at Vitality Stadium, but it was the performance of the officials that had United fuming.

Maguire, who will return to the England squad for the first time in almost two years for upcoming friendlies with Uruguay and Japan, was sent off for pulling back Evanilson inside the box as Manchester United led 2-1 with 10 minutes to go.

Junior Kroupi subsequently scored the penalty but the decision not to award Manchester United an earlier spot-kick left interim manager Michael Carrick furious – especially after his side had been awarded a penalty for what he deemed to be a similar challenge earlier in the match.

The penalty the visitors were not given came when Amad Diallo appeared to be pulled back inside the box by Adrien Truffert, with Manchester United leading 1-0 after Bruno Fernandes’ penalty.

Carrick, who described the decisions made as “baffling”, said: “My first [thought] is he definitely got one of them wrong, because he’s given one penalty for the same thing that he’s not given one as a two-armed grab.

“So the Matheus Cunha one, he gives, the second one on Amad he doesn’t, which is, I think, almost identical, really, two hands on someone in the box, and they go over and they’re in control of the ball.

“Massive moment and I don’t understand how you can give one and not the other – it’s crazy. It’s as obvious as you can get.

“It’s clear, if that’s what he believes is a penalty to start with then the second one has to be. I don’t understand how you can’t give that. And then the goal and after that it was chaos. It’s astonishing.”

Manchester United captain Fernandes, meanwhile, felt that if Bournemouth‘s penalty was given for a foul by Maguire, then so should one for the Diallo incident.

“I think we could have gone 2-0 up, and then we ended up conceding a goal, not getting a penalty and then we get a penalty against, where more or less it’s the same situation as Amad,” he said.

“One is awarded as a penalty, the other one not. I know it’s difficult for the referee to give two penalties in the same game for the same team but what I don’t understand is why VAR doesn’t get involved in that situation.”

Israel’s National Security Minister has filmed himself in front of gallows at a Jerusalem museum, threatening the death penalty for “terrorists”. Itamar Ben-Gvir is leading a campaign to expand the grounds for execution, which human rights groups have slammed as discriminatory.

Brighton should have been awarded a penalty in their 1-0 loss at home to Arsenal on 4 March, the Premier League’s Key Match Incidents (KMI) Panel has said.

The Seagulls were trailing to Bukayo Saka’s ninth-minute goal when they pushed forward in the third minute of first-half stoppage time.

After a cross was delivered from the left, Brighton midfielder Mats Wieffer tried to run into the box towards the flight of the ball but was hauled to the ground by Gabriel Martinelli.

Referee Chris Kavanagh allowed play to continue and it was cleared by the video assistant referee (VAR), Michael Salisbury.

Fabian Hurzeler complained to fourth official David Webb and the Brighton boss ended up exchanging words with Mikel Arteta on the touchline.

The Premier League Match Centre wrote on X that the VAR “deemed there was no clear and obvious error”.

But the KMI Panel voted 4:1 that a spot-kick should have been awarded on the field, and 3:2 that it was a missed VAR intervention.

The ruling said: “Martinelli is not looking at the ball, holds Weiffer into the area and prevents the Brighton player from challenging for the ball.”

It is the second time this season Arsenal have escaped a VAR penalty in an away game they have won 1-0.

In December, Everton should have been awarded a penalty for William Saliba’s challenge on Thierno Barry. The VAR was Michael Salisbury for that match, too.

There have now been 18 VAR errors logged this season, matching the total for the entire 2024-25 campaign.

From this same gameweek, Leeds United should have been given a penalty in their 1-0 loss at home to Sunderland for Luke O’Nien’s holding offence on Pascal Struijk.

The Gunners have had no VAR mistakes against them.