Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former UEFA president Michel Platini won again in court Tuesday and now lead 2-0 in trial verdicts against Swiss federal prosecutors.

The former football officials were acquitted for a second time on charges of fraud, forgery, mismanagement and misappropriation of more than $2 million of FIFA money in 2011.

Blatter, now 89 years old, gave little reaction listening to the verdict of three cantonal (state) judges acting as a federal criminal appeals court. Sitting in the row in front of Platini, Blatter alternately tapped his fingers and held his left hand over his mouth.

Platini sat with his arms folded or rubbing his hands as he listened to a translator sitting beside him relating the court’s verdict in German into his native French.

The attorney general’s office in Switzerland had challenged a first acquittal in July 2022 and asked for sentences of 20 months, suspended for two years.

Blatter and Platini have consistently denied wrongdoing in a decade-long case that swung on their claims of a verbal agreement to one day settle the money in question.

Blatter approved FIFA paying 2 million Swiss francs (now $2.21 million) to France soccer great Platini in February 2011 for supplementary and non-contracted salary working as a presidential advisor from 1998-2002.

The latest win for Blatter and 69-year-old Platini came exactly 9.5 years after the Swiss federal investigation was revealed and kicked off events that ended the careers of soccer’s most powerful men.

That September 2015 day in Zurich, police came to interrogate them at FIFA after an executive committee meeting when Platini was a strong favorite to succeed his one-time mentor in an upcoming election.

Though federal court trials have twice cleared their names, Blatter’s reputation likely always will be tied to leading FIFA during corruption crises that took down a swath of senior soccer officials worldwide.

Platini, one of soccer’s greatest players and later Blatter’s protégé in soccer politics, never did get the FIFA presidency he often called his destiny.

Source: AP

Golfer Tiger Woods has announced he is dating Vanessa Trump, the former daughter-in-law of US President Donald Trump.

Vanessa, 47, was married to Donald Trump Jr for 13 years. The pair, who have five children, divorced in 2018.

On Sunday, Woods, 49, posted pictures of Vanessa and himself on social media saying: “Love is in the air and life is better with you by my side! We look forward to our journey through life together.”

“At this time we would appreciate privacy for all those close to our hearts.”

It is unclear what prompted the public announcement, but rumours of their relationship had been reported in gossip magazines in recent weeks.

Woods, who has won 15 major championships, is known for being guarded about his personal life after exposure of his marital infidelities and sex scandals damaged his public standing in the 2000s and affected his playing career.

He admitted himself into a sex addiction rehab clinic, and went through an acrimonious split from his first wife Elin Nordegren months later after six years of marriage. The couple have two children together.

US media outlets report that Tiger Woods’ children attend the same school as Vanessa Trump’s.

As the former wife of Donald Trump’s eldest son, Vanessa had been a regular attendee at official events involving Trump’s extended family during his first term in office.

Woods, the former world number one, is also known to have played golf with President Trump on several occasions, including last month. Trump loves golf and owns more than a dozen courses.

In February, Woods attended a meeting with Trump and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) heads at the White House about the future of the sport’s tournaments and current division with the Saudi Arabia-LIV league.

Woods wore his Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was bestowed on him by Trump in 2019 during the president’s first term.

Woods announced an achilles tendon injury earlier this month that has sidelined him from professional competition. He has not suggested a timeline for when he might return to the courses.

He has not competed in a PGA Tour event this season, following the death of his mother, Kultida, in February.

The new couple both have children who are junior golfers.

Kai Trump, 17, has announced her commitment to playing collegiate golf at the University of Miami in 2026.

She and Charlie Woods both played at a junior invite-only tournament in South Carolina last week.

Woods has previously announced relationships with World Cup champion ski racer Lindsey Vonn and Erica Herman, his former restaurant manager.

That relationship ended badly – Herman filed law suits against Woods and his trust in 2023, which she later withdrew.

Source: BBC

Former heavyweight champion George Foreman, who lost to Muhammad Ali in boxing’s iconic 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” before reclaiming the title two decades later, died Friday aged 76, his family said.

Fondly known as Big George, Foreman dropped out of school as a teenager and went on to become an Olympic champion and later a legend of boxing.

He fought 81 times as a professional, winning 76, 68 of those by knockout.

As well as boxing he put his name to the “George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine,” appearing smiling and friendly in the TV ads, becoming a celebrity outside the sport.

“With profound sorrow we announce the passing of our beloved George Edward Foreman Sr, who peacefully departed on March 21, 2025, surrounded by loved ones,” Foreman’s family said in a statement on Instagram.

“We are grateful for the outpouring of love and prayers, and kindly ask for privacy as we honor the extraordinary life of a man we were blessed to call our own.”

Legendary boxing promoter Bob Arum saluted Foreman as “one of the biggest punchers and personalities the sport has ever seen.”

Born in Texas on January 10, 1949, Foreman grew up in Houston.

The man who raised him was frequently absent and often drunk. Foreman only found out that J. D. Foreman was not his biological father after he won the world heavyweight title when his real father, a decorated World War II veteran, got in touch.

As an adolescent, Foreman flirted with crime and left school at 16.

“At 13-years-old, George was about 6-foot-2, 200 pounds and the terrorist in the neighborhood,” his younger brother Roy told the BBC in 2024. “And when you’re bigger and stronger and think you’re better than everyone else, you take things.”

Foreman took up boxing.

“I tried boxing just to show my friends that I wasn’t afraid,” Foreman said later. “Well, 25 fights and one year later, I was an Olympic gold medalist.”

At the Mexico Games in 1968, the 19-year-old Foreman bludgeoned his way to the super-heavyweight gold.

As he celebrated his final victory, 10 days after fellow African Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos had made a black power salute following the 200m track final, Foreman waved an American flag in the ring.

Bigger, stronger

At 6-foot-4 (1.93m), “Big George” was larger and stronger than the other leading heavyweights of the time. He was light on his feet, but slugged his way through the professional ranks to earn a heavyweight title shot against champion Joe Frazier, demolishing the champion in two rounds.

By the time he fought his third title defence over 15 rounds against Ali in October 1974 in Kinshasa, Foreman was unbeaten in 40 professional bouts.

He had won all but three inside the distance and had not needed to develop stamina.

Ali’s “rope-a-dope” tactics exhausted the big man, who lost in eight rounds.

The defeat punctured Foreman’s intimidating aura, not least in his own mind.

“I just couldn’t believe I’d lost the world title,” he said later. “It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. It went from pride to pity. That’s devastating.”

His campaign for another title shot ended when he lost on points to another contender, Jimmy Young, in March 1977 on a hot night in Puerto Rico.

Foreman fell ill after the fight and said he sensed God telling him to change his life.

He retired aged 28 and became an ordained minister.

When he announced his comeback 10 years later, bald where he had once sported an Afro and flabby instead of chiseled, it seemed like a boxing gimmick. He wrote later that he needed money for his youth center.

Knockout

Over the next three years he fought 21 times, mostly against mediocre opponents, winning every bout, 20 of them inside the distance.

A big name in a weakened and fragmented division, he earned a title shot against Evander Holyfield in 1991 and then against Tommy Morrison two years later, losing both on points.

In November 1994 he faced Michael Moorer, who had dethroned Holyfield. In the same shorts he had worn 20 years and six days earlier against Ali, Foreman was trailing badly when he caught Moorer on the chin in the 10th for a knockout.

At 45 years and 299 days old he was the oldest heavyweight world champion.

He was stripped of first his WBA title and then his IBF crown for refusing to fight nominated opponents but won three more fights and was still “lineal” world champion when he lost on points to Shannon Briggs in 1997, aged 48, and retired again.

Foreman, who hosted a 1996 TV programme “Bad Dads,” married four times, fathering 10 children and adopting two.

He named all his five sons George Edward, explaining that he wanted them to know, “‘If one of us goes up, then we all go up together, and if one goes down, we all go down together!'”

Source: AFP