NYC Mayor blames, in part, rat infestation on why people are leaving the Big Apple
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that the reason residents are leaving the Big Apple in droves is, in part, due to the ongoing rat infestation. “Some people who have children and families decide they want to go to a place where their children can play outdoors, larger green spaces, you want to see animals — you don’t see animals except for rats in New York,” Adams said when asked about the plunging population data. “So there’s a combination of things,” he said. “And we are getting rid of those rats, by the way.” NEW YORK LOST MORE RESIDENTS IN A YEAR THAN ANY OTHER STATE IN THE COUNTRY, US CENSUS DATA SHOWS The Democratic mayor said that there has been “perfect storm” of reasons why people are leaving New York City-including the cost of living, COVID-19, remote job opportunities along with the rats. “Well, I think there’s a combination on why people are leaving the city. The city and cities have become unaffordable,” Adams said. “And people left the city during COVID-19 for a short period of time and some decided that they no longer want to come back into cities. Then you have the remote work option where you don’t have to be in an office space to do the job. You could do it from wherever.” NYC MAYOR ADAMS MIGRANT CRISIS WILL LEAD TO ‘EXTREMELY PAINFUL’ BUDGET CUTS; DOESN’T EXPECT FEDS TO HELP “And so there’s a perfect storm of reasons that cities are losing their population. And at one time you may have lost 20,000 here, 15,000 here. But now when you start to add up all of those dynamics, it’s a different way of life,” Adams said. The mayor said that the continued influx of migrants may help the floundering census data. “So, we don’t want people to leave, but people are also moving into the city. I see first-time New Yorkers over and over again, people are moving in and there are 152,000 migrants,” Adams said. “If you were to do an analysis of those who are behind me, an overwhelming number of them are immigrants. They come from first generations. “So, they went from their parents coming here trying to be citizens to now they’re in charge of what happens to citizens.” Of the eight states that saw their populations fall in 2023, New York lost the most residents, seeing 101,984 people depart the Empire State. RED STATES SEE 2023 POPULATION GROWTH AS AMERICANS FLEE BLUE STATES, CENSUS DATA SHOWS That was followed by California, which lost 75,423 residents, Illinois, which lost 32,826, and Louisiana, at 14,274. Pennsylvania saw 10,408 residents leave the state, while Oregon saw 6,021 move away. Hawaii lost 4,261, and West Virginia lost 3,964, according to the new Vintage 2023 population estimates. South Carolina and Florida were the two fastest-growing states in the nation, growing by 1.7% and 1.6%, respectively, in 2023. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said the mass exodus from New York demonstrated “the consequences of Far Left Democrat leadership.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “Far Left [Governor] Kathy Hochul and Albany Democrats have made New York so unlivable that our state leads the nation in population loss with more than 102,000 residents leaving in one year alone,” Stefanik said in a statement. “With record crime and cost of living far beyond the national average, New York’s mass exodus is far from over. If Far Left Democrats in Albany don’t start putting the safety and prosperity of New Yorkers before their extremist agenda, there will be no more residents left to tax and fund their radical, socialist programs.” Mayor Eric Adams’ office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
China tries to ‘bury the memory’ and trauma of zero-COVID era
When Evelyn Ma’s two-year-old daughter had a persistently high fever and a bad cough earlier this month, she and her husband began to worry. The couple decided to take their daughter to a nearby children’s hospital in the city of Jinan. But as Ma walked through the doors with her daughter in her arms, she found a scene of chaos. “Doctors and nurses were rushing around everywhere between long lines of patients waiting their turn, and people were even sitting on the floor and against the walls,” Ma, who is 36 and works as a sales representative in China’s northeastern Shandong province, told Al Jazeera. China experienced a sharp rise in cases of influenza, pneumonia, RSV and common cold viruses, particularly among children, in early October. By the next month, the surge in the number of people seeking medical attention had put a strain on hospitals, especially those catering to children. “We arrived at the hospital in the early morning, but we didn’t get to see a doctor until the late afternoon, and I think that was only because my daughter’s symptoms were quite bad and my husband and I made a fuss,” Ma said. The rising infections and reports of undiagnosed pneumonia sparked concern that the world was on the cusp of another novel pandemic outbreak spreading from China, after COVID-19 also first appeared as undiagnosed pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan. But after requesting data from China, the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded there was no cause for alarm because the evidence suggested there was no new pathogen. The jump in cases, it appears, was more a reflection of the return of illnesses that had been suppressed by the country’s prolonged pandemic lockdowns. Ma’s daughter soon recovered, but the experience brought back upsetting memories. “Last time I was at the hospital was in late December last year, and I was also sitting in a crowded waiting room filled with coughing people,” she said. “Back then I was holding the hand of my grandmother who was very sick with COVID,” Ma said. The sudden U-turn on the zero-COVID policy followed a series of rare protests across the country [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters] Just a few weeks before that, the Chinese authorities had abandoned the strict COVID measures that were a pillar of the country’s so-called zero-COVID policy after protests in several Chinese cities against the continued enforcement of lockdowns. For three years until then, the zero-COVID policy had defined – and limited – Chinese people’s interactions with each other and the outside world in the name of combatting the pandemic. “So many people suffered under the zero-COVID policy, and so many people died when it ended,” Ma said. “Because of that, my family and I are traumatised to this day.” Mental health struggles Ma’s grandmother succumbed to COVID-19 in early January. At about the same time, 29-year-old translator Lily Wang from Shenzhen also lost her grandmother to the virus. She blames the authorities’ abrupt decision to abandon the zero-COVID policy for her death. “If they had just given us a warning or given us time to prepare, we might have been able to save her,” Wang told Al Jazeera. A wave of infections swept across China after the sudden end of the policy posing a particular hazard to elderly Chinese of whom only 40 percent had received a booster shot by December 2022. In the months that followed, upwards of almost two million more people died compared with the same period in previous years, according to a study by Hong Xiao and Joseph Unger of the Public Health Sciences Division at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center that was published in August. While the death of Wang’s grandmother was traumatic for her whole family, the strict lockdowns of China’s cities, which became a recurring phenomenon throughout 2022, were traumatic for Wang personally. Her neighbourhood in the southern city of Shenzhen was repeatedly placed under total lockdown for months on end to quell flare-ups of COVID infections. “We were not allowed to go outside – not even to stretch our legs, do grocery shopping or take out the garbage,” she said. Regular and relentless testing was a key feature of the zero-COVID strategy [File: Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo] Wang was living alone in a small apartment at the time, and food supplies, provided by the authorities, were often late to arrive at her building. “I was hungry, lonely and trapped, and I started to suffer from panic attacks,” she added. As soon as the COVID policy ended, she moved out of the apartment and back home with her parents. “After zero-COVID, I just couldn’t stay in the apartment any more,” she said. “Even today, it is still difficult for me to be alone for more than a few days.” Ma from Jinan has also struggled to recover mentally. “I am much more concerned about the future than I was before 2022,” she said. During the lockdown of her family’s neighbourhood, they also experienced food supplies arriving late. “Now I get nervous when we don’t have much food left in the apartment, so I make sure that we have lots of meals available in the freezer and the refrigerator in case something happens,” she explained. Hou Feng, a 31-year-old programmer from Shanghai, has also had trouble sleeping since the strict lockdown of Shanghai that took place from April until June 2022. “During that time, people in my building contacted the authorities to accuse each other of breaking the COVID rules,” Hou told Al Jazeera. Residents of Shanghai, China’s biggest city, were required to undergo constant COVID-19 testing, and it was obligatory to report to one of the city’s quarantine centres if the result was positive. Hou witnessed his screaming neighbour getting dragged out of her home by the authorities when she refused to leave of her own volition after testing positive. He still has nightmares about people in white hazmat suits breaking down his door and taking him away to a quarantine
Ed Burke, former Chicago Democratic alderman, found guilty in corruption trial
Ed Burke, who was once one of the most powerful Democratic City Council members in Chicago, was found guilty Thursday in a corruption trial. A federal judge found Burke guilty on all but one of 14 corruption counts, including racketeering, federal program bribery, and attempted extortion. The jury, which comprised nine women and three men, had deliberated all week. The trial centered around Burke’s attempts to extort company executives of a Burger King in 2017 that they’d get building permits if they signed on as clients at his property tax law firm. CHICAGO MAYOR SAYS TEXAS GOV. ABBOTT ‘ATTACKING OUR COUNTRY’ BY SENDING MIGRANTS TO DEM CITIES, STATES Per reporting from Chicago’s FOX 32, federal prosecutors alleged that Burke wouldn’t sign off on the permits until he met face-to-face with the owners. Federal prosecutors said the company eventually obtained the permits and began building, but Burke soon shut them down. “Elected officials are responsible for serving with honesty and integrity, with a moral responsibility to their constituents to uphold and abide by the law,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement. “In the case that they fail to do so, it is imperative that they are held accountable. That is what the jury decided today.” Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Burke “should rightfully be remembered as a man who elevated personal ambition and greed over doing other people’s work.” TEXAS BEGINS FLYING MIGRANTS TO SANCTUARY CITIES WITH FIRST FLIGHT TO CHICAGO Lightfoot said others were complicit in Burke’s corruption, including the “pernicious” practice of aldermanic prerogative, and other elected officials who “looked the other way as Burke systematically monetized the Finance Committee for his own personal benefit.” “But like many before who feasted on their gluttonous power, Burke was felled because this total lack of accountability made him foolishly think he was invincible,” Lightfoot said. “So he grossly overplayed his hand. He dug his own grave and jumped in.” Burke is due back in court for a post-trial hearing on June 19. Burke had been on the council in Chicago for more than 50 years and chaired its finance committee for the last three decades. Since the 1970s, nearly three dozen aldermen have been convicted. A common joke in Chicago is that so many aldermen had gone to prison that when they saw each other behind bars they’d holler, “Quorum call!”
Dem Senator calls for cease-fire shortly after meeting with group pushing to cut aid to Israel
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., called for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war just days after meeting with a group pushing for cuts to military aid to the Jewish state. Baldwin held a meeting with World Beyond War in the second week of December, where activists reportedly pressed Baldwin to “call for a ceasefire in Israel and Palestine now, work to cut military aid to Israel, and call on Israel to lift the siege on Gaza,” according to the anti-war group’s website. When asked about the meeting, Baldwin initially told the Washington Examiner, “We know that Hamas will not agree to a cease-fire. So you’re really asking Israel to unilaterally stop, and we know Hamas won’t, both through words and actions.” Despite stating Hamas will not agree to a cease-fire with Israel, Baldwin is changing her tune, saying Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing and military approach has led to unacceptable bloodshed.” ETHICS COMPLAINT ALLEGES DEMOCRATIC SEN. TAMMY BALDWIN USED TAXPAYER DOLLARS TO FUND PERRSONAL TRIPS Baldwin called for a cease-fire Thursday, releasing a statement saying Netanyahu’s government’s actions do not “appear to be moving us closer to our ultimate goals of removing Hamas from power and achieving a lasting peace in the region through a two-state solution.” World Beyond War, which joined members from Jewish Voice for Peace and the Madison Rafah Sister City Project during the Baldwin meeting, launched in 2014 to create “a global movement to abolish the institution of war itself, not just the ‘war of the day,’” according to its website. HAMAS SAYS ‘NO TALK ABOUT PRISONERS OR EXCHANGE DEALS’ UNTIL ISRAEL STOPS GAZA CAMPAIGN: REPORT “Since October 7th, Israel’s assault with U.S. weapons has resulted in tens of thousands of Gazans killed or wounded and 1.7 million people displaced, including almost a million in 154 UNRWA shelters, some of which Israel has bombed,” the group wrote in a post pressuring Baldwin to support a cease-fire. “In the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, ‘Gaza has become a graveyard for children.’” After Israel launched a counterattack against Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 attack on innocent Israelis, World Beyond War called for an immediate cease-fire. “The blood of everyone who has died over the past few days is not only on the hands of the Hamas and the Israeli military, but on our own government which arms, supports, and funds Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and which is currently applauding the military escalation promised by the Israeli government,” the group’s Canadian branch wrote three days after Hamas attacked the Jewish state. In December, World Beyond War also staged a “blockade” of a Canadian arms manufacturer that provides weapons to Israel. Baldwin did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment by the time of this publication.
Entire Gaza population facing hunger crisis, famine risk: UN-backed report
The proportion of households affected by acute food insecurity is largest ever recorded globally, the report says. The entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger and the risk of famine is increasing each day, a United Nations-backed report says. The proportion of households in Gaza affected by high levels of acute food insecurity is the largest ever recorded globally, according to the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) published on Thursday. The extent of hunger in Gaza has eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years, according to figures in the report. ‘Everybody in Gaza is hungry’ “It doesn’t get any worse,’’ the World Food Programme’s chief economist, Arif Husain, said. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza and at this speed – how quickly it has happened in just a matter of two months.” #GazaUrgent action is needed. Hostilities, including bombardment, ground operations & besiegement of the entire population have caused catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity. There is a risk of Famine. Read more ➡️https://t.co/b358hNlY4i pic.twitter.com/e9C155XqAP — The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (@theIPCinfo) December 21, 2023 The report by 23 UN and nongovernmental agencies found that the entire population in Gaza is in a food crisis with 576,600 people at catastrophic – or starvation – levels. “It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry,” Husain said. “People are very, very close to large outbreaks of disease because their immune systems have become so weak because they don’t have enough nourishment,” he said. International aid agencies say Gaza is suffering from shortages of food [Fatima Shbair/AP] The report said every single person in Gaza is expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity in the next six weeks. The 23 agencies forecast that in the “most likely scenario”, the entire population of the Gaza Strip would be at “crisis or worse” levels of hunger by February 7 after four months of war. Under the IPC’s five-phase food insecurity classification, crisis in phase three, emergency is phase four and catastrophe or famine is phase five. “This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country,” the report said. The international humanitarian organisation CARE called the figures “alarming”. Risk of famine The humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated rapidly since Israel began a major military operation on October 7 with heavy air strikes and a ground offensive laying waste to wide areas of the enclave. “There is a risk of famine, and it is increasing each day that the current situation of intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persists or worsens,” the IPC for Gaza said. The IPC sets the global standard for determining the severity of a food crisis using a complex set of technical criteria. The report warned that the risk of famine is “increasing each day”, blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza. Trucks bringing aid from Egypt have delivered some food, water and medicine, but the UN says the quantity of food is just 10 percent of what is needed for the territory’s inhabitants, most of whom are displaced. Distribution of aid within Gaza has been hampered by military operations, inspections of aid demanded by Israel, communications blackouts and shortages of fuel. Some desperate Palestinians in Gaza have jumped onto aid trucks to try to grab scarce supplies of food and other goods. There have been reports of residents eating donkey meat and emaciated patients begging for food. Meanwhile, the death toll from Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza has surpassed 20,000, 70 percent of them women and children. About 1.9 million Gaza residents – more than 80 percent of the population – have been driven from their homes. More than a million are cramming UN shelters. The war has also pushed Gaza’s health sector into collapse. Only nine of its 36 health facilities are still partially functioning – and all are located in the south, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. Adblock test (Why?)
Trump ally Rudy Giuliani files for bankruptcy following defamation case
Giuliani was ordered to pay a $148m penalty for falsely accusing two 2020 election workers of facilitating fraud. Rudy Giuliani has filed for bankruptcy, just days after he was ordered to pay $148m to two former Georgia election workers he falsely accused of fraud as he worked to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss. The former mayor of New York, in a bankruptcy petition seeking protection from his creditors on Thursday, listed assets of between $1m and $10m and liabilities of up to $500m. The largest of his debts is the $148 million a federal jury in Washington, DC ordered him to pay on December 15 to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss for repeatedly making false claims that they engaged in 2020 election fraud. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition filed with a New York bankruptcy court also listed debts ranging from the hundreds of thousands to the millions of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service, New York tax authorities and his former lawyers and accountants. “Unknown” amounts were also recorded as being owed to Hunter Biden, former president Joe Biden’s son, and the voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic. Hunter Biden, Dominion and Smartmatic have all filed lawsuits against Giuliani. They are ongoing. A spokesperson for Giuliani said the bankruptcy filing will give him time to appeal the $148m penalty and ensure that other creditors are treated fairly. “No person could have reasonably believed that Mayor Rudy Giuliani would be able to pay such a high punitive amount,” spokesperson Ted Goodman said. The 79-year-old Giuliani was found liable in August by US District Judge Beryl Howell of defaming Freeman and Moss, both Fulton County poll workers, with his 2020 election lies on behalf of Trump. An eight-person federal jury awarded Freeman and Moss more than $16m each for defamation, $20m each for emotional distress and $75m in punitive damages. Giuliani, who led Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the results of the election, posted a video of the pair that falsely accused them of engaging in fraud during ballot counting and made numerous other baseless claims about them. Freeman and Moss, who are Black, told the jury during the four-day trial that Giuliani’s false accusations upended their lives and made them the target of racist threats. “The flame that Giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives, our homes, our family, our work, our sense of safety, our mental health,” Moss said. The defamation case is just one of a number of legal challenges facing Giuliani, who has been indicted on racketeering charges in Georgia along with Trump and others for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the southern state. Giuliani was New York mayor from 1994 to 2001, guiding the city through the shock of the September 11, 2001 attacks and becoming known as “America’s Mayor” – before signing up as Trump’s personal lawyer while he was in the White House. Adblock test (Why?)
DR Congo votes on second day of chaotic general elections
The vote across Africa’s second-largest country was derailed on Wednesday over logistical issues. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has concluded a second day of voting in chaotic elections after logistical problems forced officials to extend the balloting. Voting in the impoverished but mineral-rich Central African nation extended into Thursday after some polling stations did not open at all on the first day of the general elections. Some opposition candidates and observers said the unscheduled extension of the vote could open the results up to legal challenges. The DRC, one of the poorest countries in the world despite its vast reserves of copper, cobalt and gold, has a history of disputed elections that can turn violent. Africa’s second largest country held four concurrent elections on Wednesday – to pick a president, national and regional lawmakers, and local councillors. President Felix Tshisekedi, 60, is running for a second term against a backdrop of years of economic growth but little job creation and soaring inflation. Tshisekedi, who took office in 2019 and faced 18 challengers, says he wants a second term to “consolidate his gains”. ‘Genuine shipwreck’ Wednesday’s voting was marked by massive delays nationwide as the Independent National Electoral Commission struggled to deliver materials to voting stations long after polls were meant to have opened. Denis Kadima, the head of the commission, declared on Wednesday night that people in places where casting ballots had proved impossible would vote on Thursday. It was not clear how many polling stations that involved, but voting took place in cities in the eastern DRC, in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi and in the capital, Kinshasa, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency. The vote was mostly peaceful, but in the east, a polling booth was ransacked by displaced people who could not cast ballots. In Kinshasa, journalist Pascal Mulegwa was allegedly assaulted by pro-government activists, according to Reporters Without Borders. Opposition presidential candidate Moise Katumbi, whose team has been compiling its own vote count, said results so far showed him in the lead. He made the claim in a joint statement with opposition backers that also alleged widespread irregularities in the conduct of the vote. The former ruling coalition, the Common Front for Congo of ex-President Joseph Kabila, called the elections a parody that had brought shame on the country. “What we witnessed today was a genuine shipwreck of the electoral process,” the coalition said in a statement on Wednesday, as it asked its members to stand by for further instructions on actions to be taken. Adblock test (Why?)
RFK Jr slams California Lt Gov for eyeing bid to remove Trump from ballot
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. blasted the California lieutenant governor for calling on the state’s secretary of state to “explore legal options” to remove former President Trump from the ballot. Kennedy blasted Golden State Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis in a tweet after her Wednesday orders to Secretary of State Shirley Weber to look into “legal options” to take Trump off the ballot. “Someone needs to explain to Lt. Governor Kounalakis that in democracy, we choose candidates by VOTING,” Kennedy wrote. “Not by legal maneuvers to get them off the ballot.” CALIFORNIA LT. GOV CALLS FOR STATE TO ‘EXPLORE EVERY LEGAL OPTION’ TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM ’24 BALLOT “Kounalakis has close ties to Gavin Newsom (of course), Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi. She isn’t just an individual with an agenda,” he continued. “She is deep in the Democratic party establishment.” Kennedy wrote that in “so-called banana republics and authoritarian countries, voters can only choose from a slate of officially approved candidates” and warned it’s “starting to look like that here too.” “We can restore real democracy,” Kennedy said. “Electing me President is one step, but what it will take is a full mobilization of an engaged citizenry.” “Democracy doesn’t come when the elites who have usurped it finally relent,” he added. Fox News Digital reached out to Kounalakis’ office for comment. A day after the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Trump from appearing on the state’s ballots in 2024, Kounalakis asked California’s secretary of state to “explore every legal option” to do the same. Kounalakis sent a letter to Weber dated Wednesday, Dec. 20, and referencing Colorado’s recent ruling, which stated Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s ballot as a presidential candidate because of his role in “inciting an insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy,” Kounalakis, who launched a campaign to run for California governor in 2026, wrote. “Specifically, the Colorado Supreme Court held in Anderson v. Griswold (2023 CO 63) that Trump’s insurrection disqualifies him under section three of the Fourteenth Amendment to stand for presidential re-election. Because the candidate is ineligible, the court ruled, it would be a ‘wrongful act’ for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on that state’s presidential primary ballot.” The gubernatorial candidate told the secretary of state that California “must stand on the right side of history,” and is “obligated to determine” if the former president is ineligible to be on the ballot for the same reasons he was deemed ineligible in Colorado. Kounalakis said Colorado’s decision could be the basis for California’s decision. “The constitution is clear: you must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist,” Kounalakis wrote, though in an earlier version of the letter that hit social media, she wrote, “you must be 40 years old…” She also said this is not a matter of political gamesmanship, but instead is a “dire matter that puts at stake the sanctity of our constitution and our democracy.” Colorado’s disqualification was made under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and tied to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. The 4-3 ruling is stayed until Jan. 4 because of likely appeals. Three justices on the Colorado Supreme Court dissented. Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed reporting.
UN Human Rights Office calls for investigation into unlawful Gaza killings
NewsFeed “They were executed.” The UN Human Rights Office is calling for an immediate investigation into a ‘possible war crime’ after receiving information about Israeli forces allegedly killing Palestinian men in front of family members in northern Gaza. Al Jazeera spoke to several witnesses; these are their accounts. Published On 21 Dec 202321 Dec 2023 Adblock test (Why?)
India’s Sakshi Malik quits over election of new wrestling federation chief
Top wrestler quits the sport after Indian wrestling body replaces the powerful president accused of sexual abuse with his close ally. A top Indian wrestler has announced she will quit the sport in protest after the country’s wrestling federation replaced a president accused of sexually abusing female athletes with his close ally. Sakshi Malik, an acclaimed wrestler who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and led protests against Brij Bhushan Singh, the former chief of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), announced her retirement on Thursday. “We slept for 40 days on the roads and a lot of people from several parts of the country came to support us,” Malik, 31, told a news conference in New Delhi, referring to the protests earlier this year. “If Brij Bhushan Singh’s business partner and a close aide is elected as the president of WFI, I quit wrestling”, she said before leaving the conference with tears in her eyes. VIDEO | “We gathered a lot of courage for this fight against the WFI President (Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh). But today, his right hand (referring to Sanjay Singh) has been elected as the new WFI President. We had demanded a woman be made the president, but that has not been… pic.twitter.com/UMwOMRnnNI — Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) December 21, 2023 Malik became an outspoken voice over harassment and discrimination faced by female athletes in India, a plight underscored by charges filed against Singh in June accusing him of sexually harassing six female wrestlers, including a minor, during his time leading the WFI. Singh, who is also a six-time parliamentarian and member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), denied any wrongdoing, dramatically stating then that he will hang himself if the accusations are proven to be true. Asked about Malik’s decision to quit, 66-year-old Singh on Thursday said, “I have nothing to do with it.” Singh was stripped of his administrative duties in January, and the government promised to investigate the accusations. But Malik and other athletes renewed their protests in April after the government refused to disclose the findings of a panel looking into the incidents. In recent months, Singh actively campaigned for Sanjay Singh to replace him and predicted his victory to the local press. On Thursday, the WFI voted to replace Brij Bhushan Singh with Sanjay Singh, who defeated Anita Sheoran, another contender for the presidency who had won a gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth Games and had supported the campaign by the athletes to bring attention to the allegations of abuse. “It’s a very big victory of truth over lies,” Sanjay Singh told members of the media after securing 40 out of the 47 votes by the federation’s member institutions. He told reporters that he was committed to supporting wrestlers, but did not comment on Malik’s announcement. The United World Wrestling (UWW), the global wrestling body which suspended the Indian federation in August over the wrestlers’ protest, is yet to comment on the election. Adblock test (Why?)