Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

USA v France Women's World Cup quarterfinals - The only thing hotter than the play on the field may be the weather as dangerous heat wave to engulf Europe


Dream match to shatter attendance, viewers and temperature records.


Fox Preview France v USA







Women's World Cup: France v USA could be 'wild and crazy' - Megan Rapinoe
By Tom Garry
BBC Sport in Reims

United States midfielder Megan Rapinoe said Friday's Women's World Cup quarter-final against hosts France could be "wild and crazy".

Rapinoe scored two penalties in Monday's 2-1 victory over Spain, as the holders set up the tie in Paris.

The two sides were the pre-tournament favourites and both topped their groups, with a semi-final against England or Norway awaiting the winners.

"This is the game everyone had circled," said Rapinoe.

"This is incredible for the women's game. You have two heavy-hitters meeting.

"I hope it's wild and crazy. I hope the fans are crazy, there is tons of media around it and it is just a big spectacle."

The USA are top of the world rankings and their only defeat since 2017 came against France in January.

Their Britain-born head coach Jill Ellis, who was in charge when they won the World Cup in 2015, added: "It's going to be an amazing game. I'm sure a lot of people would want it later in the tournament.

"It's probably going to be crazy with a lot of intensity, but that's as it should be because I truly think this is the world game for women, so what a showcase piece."

France are bidding to win their first major tournament, while the USA are attempting to lift a record fourth Women's World Cup.

Despite the two teams being the favourites from the outset, neither has appeared invincible so far in the knockout stages.

Less than 24 hours after France needed extra time to overcome Brazil in their last-16 tie, the defending champions were thoroughly tested by Spain in Reims.

Against Spain, Ellis' team conceded a goal for the first time at these finals, and occasionally appeared sloppy at the back, in a game some bookmakers had them down as 1-10 odds-on favourites to win.

Former USA goalkeeper Hope Solo said there were many things to question about her former side's display, telling BBC Radio 5 Live: "When you have that much attacking prowess, to not get a goal in normal play is concerning.

"People don't bow down to the United States like they used to. They don't come in and put everyone on edge like they used to.

"Many teams have proved they can beat the USA. If you want to beat the USA you have to press the backline.

"That's where they are truly vulnerable. It's the decision-making, it's the quality of passing - and I think there are nerves back there."


France Heat Wave Warning




Women's World Cup: In search of a major tournament in Paris

By Tom Garry
BBC Sport in Paris


 Fans at Euro 2016 (left) could watch matches on a big screen at the Eiffel Tower but these Chile supporters (right) could not do the same at the Women's World Cup

On a warm Saturday evening in the summer, whether gazing towards the Eiffel Tower from the crowded Place du Trocadero, strolling alongside the River Seine or approaching the Jardin des Tuileries from the Place de la Concorde, you can enjoy some of the finest views in Paris.

What you cannot see are any obvious indications that the Women's World Cup is in town, despite there being no city hosting more games at the 2019 tournament than the French capital.

As the sun sets, Canada's Jessie Fleming opens the scoring against New Zealand in Group E in Grenoble, but there is no reaction from the thousands of people enjoying picnics on the Champ de Mars - an iconic spot where big screens had shown matches to packed fan zones during both the 2016 men's European Championship - hosted in France - and the 2018 men's World Cup in Russia.

Women's football is now as popular globally as the sport of golf, according to a report released on 4 June by the data analytics company Nielsen, while Paris is among the world's busiest tourist destinations.

And therefore, while there is a smaller fan zone - albeit one that does not fully open until 14:00 local time - opposite the Forum des Halles shopping centre across town, is the so-called 'City of Light' illuminating the Women's World Cup to as many people as it could be?

On one hand, the attendances and atmospheres at the Parc des Princes have been very impressive - not least at the hosts' spine-tingling opening win over South Korea.

But - aside from the areas immediately around the stadium, south west of the city - banners boosting the event's visibility are hard to come by in the capital.


On the day of world champions USA's match here, free maps of Paris's Metro routes display information on a rugby sevens tournament that finished two weeks previously, while most central station platforms are devoid of any posters of Women's World Cup stars.

The Paris Metro maps available on the network on 16 June were still promoting the Paris Sevens Rugby tournament, which finished a week before the Women's World Cup started.

Adverts for June's Champs-Elysees Film Festival - not the World Cup - are draped along the city's most famous avenue.

At other host cities, promotion for the tournament varies, but is far more visible at some, with the eye-catching roadside electronic adverts for the matches in Reims tough to miss in the champagne region, while almost every shop in the centre of the north-eastern city of Valenciennes has been decorated with flags, scarves or World Cup banners.

Yet, at the spectacular vantage point that can be enjoyed from Place du Trocadero, where large crowds of people hold their smartphones aloft for a picture of the Eiffel Tower, low-cost, unofficial merchandise is displayed for sale on sheets lying on the floor - but there are no football shirts among the miniature towers, the glow sticks and the handbags with semi-recognisable branding.


Even where there are sports tops for sale, at a string of shops near the Louvre, only those displaying the names Mbappe and Neymar can be found among Tour de France jerseys.

"Avez-vous quelque chose des equipes feminines de Coupe du Monde?" I asked hopefully.
"Non, monsieur."

Around Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris which crosses the River Seine, France kits with players' names on are readily available - but only for the men's team.

However, look closely to one side of the Place du Trocadero and there you will see it, directly overlooking the Eiffel Tower - at last, some Women's World Cup branding. It's US broadcaster Fox Sports' studio for the duration of the tournament.

Then there are other moments to lift your spirits, like the small band of Chile fans enjoying a drink on the grass of the Champ de Mars 24 hours before their goalkeeper Christiane Endler's stunning performances against the United States.

Like the enthusiastic, Marseille-supporting taxi driver who declared France's midfield star Amandine Henry to be "magnifique" and warned that Les Bleues were much better than "Monsieur Neville's" England.

Like the hordes of USA fans who swamped the Parc des Princes with their stars and stripes on Sunday, as over 45,000 saw the holders - and the Chile keeper - put on an exhibition.

And like the sea of orange that flooded into the northern cities of Le Havre and Valenciennes from the Netherlands - dancing left, dancing right - to support the European champions.

This is a truly global festival.

So why have the local authorities not adorned Paris' central areas with more visible promotion of the event?

A Fifa spokesperson told BBC Sport: "One of the main promotional objectives is to maximise the audiences, both in front of their screens and in the stadiums. Even though outdoor advertising is a part of that campaign, it is only one of several platforms deployed in this phase.

"In Paris, the outdoor advertising is centralised around the stadium and around the Fifa fan experience."

When questioned about the subject, a spokesman for the Local Organising Committee pointed out that because Paris is the biggest host city and does not possess a clear city centre, efforts were focused on the areas linked to the World Cup like the stadium and the Fifa Fan Experience.
They also pointed out that Paris City Hall had been adorned with World Cup colours.


The Champs-Elysees is full of huge banners promoting a film festival - but not the Women's World Cup.

The Chatelet district houses the temporary Women's World Cup museum - a free and relatively well-produced, educational cuboid of historical information, complete with a shop - as well as the adjacent fan zone, which is closed until midday and only partially open until 14:00.

Fifa says it has also been marketing on radio and TV, as well as hosting a women's football convention in Paris earlier in June, and a spokesperson added: "For the first time in Women's World Cup history, there is a Fifa fan experience in each host city.

"The choice of the location of the fan experience and whether to include a big screen was determined by each host city."

As for the TV audiences, French channel TF1 has had record viewing figures of about 10 million in France for the host nation's first two group matches, and - although the games not involving Les Bleues are not on free-to-air channels here - the home supporters do seem to be gripped by their side's bid for a first title.

UK viewers have similarly set new records for women's football, while Fox Sports in the US has reportedly seen an 11% rise in their audience compared to four years ago.

Indeed, the world is watching the beautiful game in France this summer - you just have to be in the right place to notice it in the nation's most beautiful city.


Media Headlines on World Cup

Europe heatwave: record high of 45C expected in France


Temperature records expected to be broken as minister warns heatwaves could become norm

'Hell is coming': week-long heatwave begins across Europe

Temperatures could hit 40C from Spain to Switzerland, with authorities urging children and older people to stay indoors

World
A heat wave killed 15,000 in France in 2003. As temperatures soar again, officials are taking no chances.
France is postponing exams, opening pools and urging residents to stay hydrated.


Where's FIFA? Failing to promote a fun, high-quality Women's World Cup, that's where
Dan Wetzel
Columnist
   
Women's World Cup: Record-breaking peak of 6.9m watch England beat Cameroon


WWCup: Nearly 11 million TV viewers watch France’s opener
June 8, 2019

LOS ANGELES — The Americans’ 3-0 win over Chile set a record for the most-watched group-stage Women’s World Cup match on U.S. English-language television.
Fox drew 5,324,000 viewers for Sunday’s game, topping 4,492,000 for the Americans’ 0-0 group-stage draw against Sweden in 2015. The game was the most-watched English-language soccer telecast in the country since last year’s men’s World Cup final.

The 2019 Women's World Cup has become the UK's most viewed women's football tournament on television.
The event has achieved a combined TV reach of 17.2 million people, beating the 12.4 million total set for the whole of the 2015 tournament in Canada.
England's win over Scotland set an audience record for a women's football game on UK TV of 6.1 million.
Women’s World Cup TV Viewership Is on a Record Pace
750 million people watched the tournament in 2015; FIFA estimates that nearly 1 billion could tune in this summer 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

America - A Nation of Immigrants - The Real Story


Who are we?

I feel comfortable writing about America a nation of immigrants because I have spent over 50 years trying to help the indigenous Native Americans like the Hopi nation, who are the only people in our country who are not immigrants.

With the politics in Washington off the cliff, and the truth harder to find every day in the news media, I figured I could be a sort of voice in the wilderness explaining what most Americans think about immigrants.


I wrote this article for the benefit of those outside of America forced to turn to the news media for truth about the the USA  and immigration reform.  Here is  little history often overlooked.

Back when our Forefathers fought a war of independence against the most powerful empire in the world, the British, we were already debating the shape of things to come, in order to assure our freedom, and protect us from the threat of becoming an empire and exercising such control over a free people.


There are a few things I believe were of significant influence on the Founding Fathers, more than we like to acknowledge.  First, I accept that Divine Providence guided them in their deliberations and debate.  Second, the colonists of that time were far more educated than most people believe.  Third, they must have employed either oracles or psychics to see far into the future.

I believe the record since our Declaration of Independence 243 years ago is testament to the truth in what I say.  It would have taken the Hand of God to guide a bunch of farmers, aristocrats, religious fanatics, and outcasts from throughout the world with minimal money and certainly no army, to victory over the greatest empire in world history.


As for education, many Americans were self-taught while those with resources made extensive use of tutors.  Innovation, initiative, and creativity were necessary characteristics of those attempting to tame a wild land and create a civilization in a foreign world.

Now oracles, mediums, and psychics must have been available to help draft the framework of a Constitution that protected and preserved the United States through all the radical changes in world culture, religion, economy, war, and technology that would come in the not too distant future generations.  Certainly no other fledgling country had attempted such a complex and diverse effort.


Beyond the foresight, the founding documents also had to correct the flaws in the system that existed at the time, such as slavery, in order to guarantee freedom and equality to everyone.  The goal of the Constitution was to provide a pathway to achieve the lofty promises contained in the document whether they existed at the time or not.

Three key items immediately come to mind in terms of lofty promises.  Of course, there was slavery, women's rights, and there was religious freedom.  At the time, slavery was legal, women had no rights, and religious freedom was non-existent though there were attempts to institute it in places like Maryland with little success.


The Constitution also had to make it clear that America would always be a nation of immigrants like no other nation in the world.  Just think of the incredible growth that took place in America.  In 1776, there were about 10 million people.  Only forty years later, in 1816, there were 41 million people, four times as many.  During the next millennial, by 1916, we grew to 102 million and one millennial later we have reached 325 million people, from 10 million to 325 million in just 240 years.

Today we have three million indigenous peoples, plus two million more indigenous of mixed race, so five million indigenous residents.  That means 98.5% of the population in America are immigrants or ancestors of immigrants.


The roots of Americans are vast.  Here is the diversity of Americans as of 2010 represented by the ancestral ethnic mix as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.


American Ethnic Mix 2010
1.      49,206,934 Germans 
2.      41,284,752 Black or African Americans
3.      35,523,082 Irish
4.      31,789,483 Mexican 
5.      26,923,091 English 
6.      19,911,467 Americans
7.      17,558,598 Italian
8.      9,739,653 Polish
9.      9,136,092 French (except Basque)
10.  5,706,263 Scottish
11.  5,102,858 Scotch-Irish
12.  4,920,336 American Indian or Alaska Native
13.  4,810,511 Dutch
14.  4,607,774 Puerto Rican
15.  4,557,539 Norwegian
16.  4,211,644 Swedish
17.  3,245,080 Chinese (except Taiwanese) 
18.  3,060,143 Russian
19.  2,781,904 Asian Indian
20.  2,625,306 West Indian (except Hispanic groups)
21.  2,549,545 Filipino
22.  2,087,970 French Canadian
23.  1,888,383 Welsh
24.  1,764,374 Cuban
25.  1,733,778 Salvadoran
26.  1,620,637 Arab
27.  1,576,032 Vietnamese
28.  1,573,608 Czech
29.  1,511,926 Hungarian
30.  1,423,139 Portuguese
31.  1,422,567 Korean
32.  1,420,962 Danish
33.  1,414,551 Dominican (Dominican Republic)
34.  1,319,188 Greek


This is the percentage distribution of the top fifteen.

German
49,206,934
17.1%
African American
45,284,752
14.6%
Irish
35,523,082
11.6%
Mexican
31,789,483
10.9%
English
26,923,091
9.0%
American
19,911,467
6.7%
Italian
17,558,598
5.9%
Polish
9,739,653
3.0%
French
9,136,092
2.9%
Scottish
5,706,263
1.9%
Scotch-Irish
5,102,858
1.7%
American Indian and Alaskan Native
4,920,336
1.6%
Dutch
4,810,511
1.6%
Puerto Rican
4,607,774
1.5%
Norwegian
4,557,539
1.5%

  
Here is the diversity of Americans represented by their religious denomination beliefs.

Denomination name
Members
(thousands)
  1. The Roman Catholic Church
68,202
  1. Southern Baptist Convention
16,136
  1. United Methodist Church, The
7,679
  1. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The
6,157
  1. Church of God in Christ, The
5,499
  1. National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc
5,197
  1. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
4,274
  1. National Baptist Convention of America, Inc
3,500
  1. Assemblies of God
3,030
  1. Presbyterian Church (USA)
2,675
  1. African Methodist Episcopal Church
2,500
  1. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
2,500
  1. Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS),
2,278
  1. Episcopal Church
1,951
  1. Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc Churches of Christ 
1,800
  1. Churches of Christ
1,639
  1. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
1,500
  1. African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
1,400
  1. American Baptist Churches in the USA
1,308
  1. Jehovah's Witnesses Baptist Bible Fellowship International
1,184
  1. Church of God
1,074
  1. Christian Churches and Churches of Christ
1,071
  1. Seventh-day Adventist Church
1,060
  1. United Church of Christ
1,058
  1. The Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc
1,010

NOTE: Includes the self-reported membership of religious bodies with 650,000 or more as reported to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. Groups may be excluded if they do not supply information. The data are not standardized so comparisons between groups are difficult. The definition of "church member" is determined by the religious body.
Source: 2012 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, National Council of Churches.


This is a more detailed breakdown of the same religious information.



Religions

Explore religious groups in the U.S. by tradition, family and denomination

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  • Non-Christian Faiths 5.9%
  • Jewish 1.9%
  • Muslim 0.9%
  • Buddhist 0.7%
  • Hindu 0.7%
  • Other World Religions 0.3%
  • Other Faiths 1.5%

Finally, here is an article discussing the Pew research polling on the political preference of the various religious denominations in the last (2012) presidential election.


FEBRUARY 23, 2016

U.S. religious groups and their political leanings

By Michael Lipka
Mormons are the most heavily Republican-leaning religious group in the U.S., while a pair of major historically black Protestant denominations – the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and the National Baptist Convention – are two of the most reliably Democratic groups, according to data from Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study.

Seven-in-ten U.S. Mormons identify with the Republican Party or say they lean toward the GOP, compared with 19% who identify as or lean Democratic – a difference of 51 percentage points. That’s the biggest gap in favor of the GOP out of 30 religious groups we analyzed, which include Protestant denominations, other religious groups and three categories of people who are religiously unaffiliated.


At the other end of the spectrum, an overwhelming majority of members of the AME Church (92%) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while just 4% say they favor the Republican Party (an 88-point gap). Similarly, 87% of members of the National Baptist Convention and 75% of members of the Church of God in Christ (another historically black denomination) identify as Democrats.

These patterns largely reflect data from exit polls during the 2012 general election. In that year, 95% of black Protestants said they voted for Democrat Barack Obama, while 78% of Mormons said they voted for Republican Mitt Romney, who also is a Mormon.

White evangelical Protestants also voted heavily Republican in 2012 (79% for Romney), which mirrors the leanings of many of the largest evangelical denominations. Members of the Church of the Nazarene are overwhelmingly likely to favor the GOP (63% Republican vs. 24% Democrat), as are the Southern Baptist Convention (64% vs. 26%) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (59% vs. 27%), among other evangelical churches. (In our survey, members of these groups can be of any race or ethnicity, while exit polls report totals for white evangelicals in particular.)

Catholics are divided politically in our survey, just as they were in the 2012 election. While 37% say they favor the GOP, 44% identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party (and 19% say they do not lean either way). In the 2012 election, 50% of Catholics said they voted for Obama, while 48% voted for Romney.

Members of mainline Protestant churches look similar to Catholics in this regard. For example, 44% of members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) identify as or lean Republican in the survey, compared with 47% who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning. United Methodists and Anglicans are slightly more likely than other mainline groups to say they are Republicans, while members of the United Church of Christ are more likely to be Democrats.
About seven-in-ten religiously unaffiliated voters (70%) and Jews (69%) voted for Obama in 2012. A similar share of Jews in our survey (64%) say they are Democrats, while all three subsets of religious “nones” (atheists, agnostics and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular”) lean in that direction as well.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are taught to remain politically neutral and abstain from voting, stand out for their overwhelming identification as independents who do not lean toward either party. Three-quarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses put themselves in that category.

.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)