Qatari broadcaster beIN Sports has said it will take legal action against the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), accusing the governing body of breaching a multi-million-dollar rights deal by streaming its matches in Saudi Arabia online.

On Tuesday, the AFC said it would start streaming its games involving Saudi teams in the country for free on its geo-blocked Facebook and YouTube channels.

It said the move would fulfil its commitment to promote its competitions “for the benefit of all our stakeholders”.

With beIN Sports holding exclusive TV rights to these matches, viewers in Saudi Arabia were reliant on a subscription to watch AFC matches.

However, since June 2017, beIN’s signals have been blocked in the kingdom after Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt, severed diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar.

BeoutQ – a Saudi-based pirate TV channel – has also been illegally broadcasting beIN Sports’ content.

Several major sports bodies, including FIFA and the AFC, said they would take legal action against beoutQ.

BeIN CEO Yousef Al-Obaidly said the decision was a “material breach” of its multi-million dollar rights deal with the AFC and accused the governing body of football in Asia of colluding with the Saudi Football Federation.

“The AFC’s decision is not only a self-harming commercial decision and a clear political play with Saudi Arabia, but most damagingly it will impact rights holders across sports and entertainment around the world,” he said.

“We will immediately be launching a major international dispute to recover damages and protect our position.”

BeIN did not disclose the value of damages it would seek but said the lawsuit would be raised at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre.

No comment from AFC

When contacted by Reuters news agency, the AFC said it was not yet in a position to make an official comment on the matter.

Since the illegal blockade in 2017, beIN Sports has had no pitch-side presence in Saudi Arabia, once its top regional market. It has also been forced to broadcast Saudi-based matches with commentary from Doha.

The English Premier League has said there is “compelling” evidence that the Riyadh-based satellite operator ‘Arabsat ‘ has allowed beoutQ to use its services.

In December, the World Trade Organization said it would investigate the allegations but Riyadh objected to the move on national security grounds.

Saudi Arabia has denied claims that beoutQ is based in the kingdom. However, beoutQ set-top boxes are readily available for purchase in most cities.

National Emergency

The Senate is set to pass a resolution overturning the president’s border emergency in a major rebuke to Trump.

Two more Senate Republicans — Mitt Romney of Utah and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — will support a House resolution to overturn President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.

Romney and Alexander are the latest GOP senators to break with the president on his plans to unilaterally steer funds to his border wall, joining Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina had written an op-ed denouncing Trump’s national emergency declaration, though it was unclear this week how he would vote.

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In a statement, Romney described Thursday’s vote on the House resolution of disapproval as “a vote for the Constitution and for the balance of powers that is at its core” and emphasized his stance was “not a vote against border security.”

“I am seriously concerned that overreach by the Executive Branch is an invitation to further expansion and abuse by future presidents,” Romney, an occasional critic of the president, said.

Alexander reiterated his support for Trump’s border wall while emphasizing Congress’ role as a check on the executive branch on the Senate floor. Alexander said after his speech that he will support the House resolution.

“This declaration is a dangerous precedent,” he said. “Any appreciation for our structure of government means that no president should be able to use the National Emergencies Act to spend money that Congress refuses to provide.”

Only a simple majority is needed to pass the resolution under congressional rules, though Trump has vowed to veto the measure.

The additional Republican defections amount to a growing rebuke to the White House, which sought to persuade the GOP to stick with the president.

Trump continued to pressure Senate Republicans on Thursday morning, tweeting that “a vote for today’s resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!”

On Fox News, Vice President Mike Pence urged senators to stick with Trump.

“A vote against President Trump’s national emergency is a vote against border security,” he said. “Vote down the resolution of disapproval. Stand with the president and stand for border security.“

Earlier this week, Lee and Tillis attempted to reach some sort of deal with the White House to maintain party unity. In exchange for White House support of Lee’s bill to update the National Emergencies Act requiring congressional approval of national emergencies, some Republican senators were willing to consider voting against the House measure.

But Trump told Lee Wednesday that he would not endorse the bill, leaving skeptical Republicans with few options.

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

World Rugby have gone public with their plans for a Nations Championship, claiming it would be worth £5billion to the sport over a 12-year cycle.

The world governing body faced a backlash a fortnight ago when reports in New Zealand leaked the initial plans for a new 12-team league which would have left Pacific island nations out of the frame to compete alongside the world’s elite.

World Rugby vice-chairman Agustin Pichot and chief executive Brett Gosper both took to twitter to give contrasting messages about the plans for new format, but a crisis meeting has now allowed the body to officially release more information for the first time in their attempt to save the idea.

The statement read: “At the meeting of unions, competition owners and international player representatives, World Rugby outlined details of a game-changing competition model that delivers a true pathway for all unions through a three-division format and a system of promotion and relegation.

“The proposed format would be underpinned by a record commercial partnership with leading global sports marketing company Infront, guaranteeing almost £5 billion for investment in the sport over an initial 12-year period (of which more than £1.5 billion is guaranteed incremental revenue for the world game).

“The proposed business model covers both media and marketing rights but does not include any sale of equity in the competition and therefore full control of the competition and its revenue redistribution model would be retained by the unions, the current major competitions and World Rugby.”

With the video below outlining the format of the Nations Championship showing promotion and relegation will be a feature, this is likely to antagonise the organisers of the Six Nations who are opposed to the idea.

Having given more detail about the potential overhaul of the international rugby calendar, which would also include a cross-hemisphere champion of champions match as of 2022 involving the winners of the Six Nations and Rugby Championship, World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont conceded opposition to the proposal would remain.

“I would like to thank my union, competition and player representative colleagues for their candid, constructive and positive contributions,” said Beaumont.

“There was strong recognition that World Rugby’s Nations Championship proposal, based on a true pathway for all, has been developed with great care, extensive evaluation and with the global game at the forefront of our thinking.

“We are encouraged that the format revisions and robust financial model has been well-received.

“Everyone, not just the established teams, will benefit, accelerating the development and competitiveness of the global game.

“However, as you would expect in an ambitious, complex and multi-stakeholder project, not everyone is in full agreement on the way forward, including the matter of promotion and relegation, but we will continue to engage and consult.

“This is a pivotal time for the game. Only by keeping the best interests of the global game at heart will we be able to achieve something truly impactful for the future success and sustainability of the game.”

Tagged Bill Beaumont, Nations League, World Rugby

Alexandria Villasenor, barely a teenager but old enough to be profoundly scared for the future, has jump-started the climate struggle in the United States.

For 14 weeks through frigid temperatures, the seventh grader nicknamed “Lexi” has walked out of class every Friday and demonstrated on a bench by the United Nations Secretariat building in New York City.

As cofounder of Youth Climate Strike US, she has organised a mass walkout for Friday.

The centerpiece is an 11-minute strike at 11am (16:00GMT) to emphasise that in 11 years the world risks exceeding the temperature limit cited by scientists, beyond which the effect of global warming will become catastrophic.

“Every Friday [since August] folks have been protesting, mostly in Europe and Australia,” said Villasenor, 13, whose hooky-for-a-cause partners are Haven Coleman, 12, in Denver, and Isra Hirsi, 16, in Minneapolis.

Demanding that the government declare a national emergency on climate change, on Friday the trio will join tens of thousands of students in about 100 countries.

The US has already seen the viral successes of activist youth, mostly affiliated with the Sunrise Movement, who repeatedly stormed the halls of Congress, doing sit-ins outside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, standing down Senator Dianne Feinstein, and swarming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But this will be the first time that US young people participate en masse in “Fridays for Future” protests begun by 16-year-old campaigner Greta Thunberg.

The Swedish activist gained global attention by riding the rails to Davos, Switzerland, to lecture global economic barons, in addition to her speeches at the European Union and the COP24 climate summit.

“Greta is supportive of strikers all over the world,” said Villasenor, who is coordinating with the Scandinavian activist and was inspired by her protests after devastating summer wildfires in northern Europe. “Her message just resonated with me.”

‘My generation is impacted the most’

Villasenor moved from northern California to New York with her parents last year, so her mother could study climate science at Columbia University.

When back on the West Coast over the Thanksgiving holiday in November to visit family in the city of Davis – downwind of the Paradise wildfire – she experienced an Air Quality Index of 350.

She told Al Jazeera that breathing the worst air in the world was the pivotal moment for her climate activism.

“People were collapsing on the pavement from smoke inhalation,” said Villasenor, who was forced to stay inside for days due to severe asthma. “The hospital beds were all filled up.”

“My generation is impacted the most,” she said. “Some of my peers at school don’t understand, but I’m trying to educate them. We’re putting pressure on world leaders because we don’t have time to wait.”

“We won’t stop making noise until we get the necessary climate action,” said Villasenor, adding that “the Green New Deal is one of the only proposals to meet the necessary standard”.

That resolution aims to wean the US off fossil fuels and launch a massive public works programme.

In preparation for Friday’s events, she and a few dozen other young students gathered at New York University’s engineering lab last weekend to make posters and strategise.

Highlighting their grassroots, no-holds-barred approach, their freshly painted signs read: “Save Our Ocean”, “Face Facts”, “You Change the World”, and “We’re Melting, Act Now!”

Alex Serio, spokesperson at March for Science NYC, which organised the gathering, said that because the previous “pie-in-the-sky” goals of the climate change movement were not tethered to actual proposals on the table, the Green New Deal offers “a great shot at moving policy”.

Although her organisation is nonpartisan, Serio said: “In this era, science has to choose a side, and we choose the side that votes for science.”

March for Science has been holding annual marches around Earth Day since 2017.

The group, which includes university students and professionals, advocates increased government funding for science and full acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change.

‘The bogeyman to me’

After 22-year-old college student Justine Berfond finished making a colourful poster for the upcoming event, she said: “Ever since I was a kid, climate change was the bogeyman to me.”

Berfond is a volunteer with Sunrise Movement NYC, and says she is motivated to “change the conversation about how we better our society”.

“This is a social and political issue of justice,” she says.

Sunrise Movement is one of several groups bringing out young people to rallies and demonstrations.

They may go by a variety of names and mobilise around slightly different themes, but their goals and tactics are overlapping.

Miles Goodrich is the New York State director for the Sunrise Movement, which has organised hubs at several colleges in the New York City area that will join Friday’s walkout.

“The young people in this country have existed in a permanent state of crisis, and not only because of climate change,” said Goodrich. “Political crises and financial crisis have plagued our generation.”

“Elected officials, the putative adults in this room, have failed,” he told Al Jazeera. “So the politicisation of millennials and Generation Z is inevitable, and ultimately good. I’m doing my best to help shepherd it.”

Goodrich said that the upsurge in youth activism following the Parkland school massacre in February 2018 had a significant effect on his group’s popularity.

Many of the Sunrise founders had already cut their teeth in politics, he said, with the fossil-fuel divestment movement.

The 25-year-old activist also said that the traditional left had failed to grab national attention around the climate issue.

But Sunrise has been able to cast a wide net, attracting interest from union, healthcare, and immigrant rights groups.

“Climate change is affecting all of us. This can’t just be environmentalists or elite college students,” he said. “We found a frame that everybody could get behind because it’s going to require everybody.”

Under no illusion that the Republican-controlled Senate or Republican President Donald Trump will get behind the Green New Deal, the Sunrise Movement is laying the groundwork for the 2020 elections, which they hope will usher in new legislative and executive partners for transformative action.

The group says its role is to convince voters and earn a mandate to tackle the problem.

They reject austerity policies and the idea that anyone should have to choose between clean air and affordable healthcare.

And Friday’s strike is a chance for Sunrise, which has recently developed organisational heft across the country, to test its strategy for expanding the youth climate fight.

“Americans overwhelmingly support the Green New Deal and taxing the rich,” said Goodrich. “Reality is on our side.”