LOS ANGELES — Lakers star big man Anthony Davis will return to the lineup on Wednesday against the visiting San Antonio Spurs, barring any setback during his pregame warmup, league sources told ESPN.
Davis will be on a 20- to 24-minute restriction, easing back from a foot injury that had some medical personnel projecting an eight- to 10-week recovery time frame, sources said. It was 5½ weeks ago that he suffered a fractured bone spur and stress reaction in his right foot.
The Lakers have gone 10-10 in Davis’ absence, after falling to the LA Clippers 133-115 on Tuesday.
“I didn’t expect anything besides just go out and compete,” LeBron James said after the Clippers game when asked about how the Lakers fared without Davis. “It wasn’t like, ‘OK, AD’s out, what can we do?’ You just go out and play the game and see what happens.”
Davis averaged 27.4 points this season prior to the injury, while also posting career bests in rebounds (12.1 per game) and field goal percentage (59.4%), along with averaging 2.1 blocks.
Lakers coach Darvin Ham pulled his main rotation players with 5:07 remaining in the fourth quarter on Tuesday, essentially conceding the loss with his team trailing 121-103.
It could have been an anticipatory move to save their legs to join Davis in Wednesday’s lineup against the Spurs.
“I made an executive decision to pull the plug,” Ham explained. “Knowing we have a game to play tomorrow, we have to give ourselves the best chance possible to win.”
Rui Hachimura, acquired in a trade on Monday, also will be available to play against the Spurs, according to Ham.
After today’s announcement that Microsoft will lay off 10,000 people, details on how internal restructuring will hit its gaming divisions continue to emerge, with Halo Infinite’s 343 Industries among the studios impacted.
According to Bloomberg, Joseph Staten, a Halo veteran who began his career with Bungie in 1998, will transition from his Halo Infinite creative director role and rejoin Xbox’s publishing division. Staten joined the team at 343 Industries in 2020 as the campaign project lead on Halo Infinite and later saw a title change to Head of Creative.
Bloomberg’s report includes an email from 343 Industries head Pierre Hintze, who explained the studio “made the difficult decision to restructure” and that support for Halo Infinite’s live service features will continue. Details on Staten’s new role and the exact degree of impact at 343 Industries remain unclear for now.
Microsoft Acquires Activision Blizzard: The Story So Far
Suspended All-Star guard Kyrie Irving is nearing completion on the process needed for a return to play and could rejoin the Brooklyn Nets as soon as Sunday’s game against the Memphis Grizzlies at Barclays Center, sources told ESPN.
Irving will miss his eighth consecutive game on Thursday night in Portland, but he is closing in on the end to his suspension after nearly two weeks, sources said.
“Kyrie is continuing his journey of dialogue and education,” National Basketball Players Association executive director Tamika Tremaglio told ESPN on Wednesday night. “He has been grappling with the full weight of the impact of his voice and actions, particularly in the Jewish community. Kyrie rejects antisemitism in any form, and he’s dedicated to bettering himself and increasing his level of understanding. He plans to continue this journey well into the future to ensure that his words and actions align with his pursuit of truth and knowledge.”
Tremaglio and the union have worked closely with Irving, the Nets and the NBA in helping him to author his own remedies to end the suspension, sources said. What may have started out as a rigid list of prerequisites evolved into Irving himself taking ownership of the process, which is what the Nets and the league hoped would be the case, sources said.
Irving is carrying out a minimum five-game suspension without pay for his failure to initially apologize for and condemn his social media link to a film riddled with antisemitic material.
Irving’s apology — posted on his Instagram account hours after his suspension was announced on Nov. 4 — came in the wake of two news conferences and a public statement issued with the Nets that didn’t include an apology or a condemnation.
Irving has met with Nets owner Joe Tsai and commissioner Adam Silver individually, and both publicly said that they didn’t believe Irving is antisemitic.
At the time of his suspension, the Nets issued a statement saying his “failure to disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity to do so is deeply disturbing, is against the values of our organization, and constitutes conduct detrimental to the team.”
In a memo to members of the NBPA on Friday, the union told NBA players that “Kyrie’s rights, and the rights of all future players, have been protected at every turn,” and added that the union “look[s] forward very soon to a resolution of all matters satisfactory to all parties.”
The NBPA described the recent meetings as an “effort to deepen understanding and open clear lines of communication among all parties.”
The Nets are 4-3 without Irving during his suspension, including a 153-121 loss to the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday night. Brooklyn is 6-9 overall, 5.5 games behind first-place Boston in the Eastern Conference standings.
Irving, 30, is averaging 26.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 5.1 assists for the Nets this season.
Russia said it would rejoin a deal allowing for the safe passage of Ukrainian grain, ending days of uncertainty over future shipments and feeding some criticism at home that Moscow had capitulated in the standoff.
Over the weekend, Russia suspended its involvement in an agreement with the United Nations and Turkey that was struck in July and allowed for the safe passage of grain exports from war-torn Ukrainian ports through the Black Sea to world markets. Russian authorities had said a maritime corridor used to facilitate the grain shipments had been used in an attack on Russia-occupied Crimea. Moscow threatened to board ships that left without its permission.
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Russia’s Defense Ministry said early Wednesday it had received written guarantees from Kyiv that Ukraine wouldn’t use the corridor to attack Russian forces and that those were sufficient to rejoin the deal. President
Vladimir Putin
later Wednesday said that Russia reserved the right to pull out of the deal, but that it wouldn’t interfere in any future grain shipments from Ukraine directly to Turkey.
The justification provided by the Defense Ministry triggered derision in Moscow, where commentators have openly criticized Russia’s execution of the war in Ukraine. Senior military officials have at times drawn fire from pro-Kremlin military bloggers for losing ground to Ukraine’s army in recent months and for other moves these critics have called tactical or strategic mistakes. Russian officials have also had to defend themselves against criticism they have bungled a recent mobilization of reinforcements across the country.
“We trust Kyiv that the grain deal will not be used for military purposes. Brilliant,” wrote political commentator
Pavel Danilin,
director of the Center for Political Analysis, a pro-Kremlin Moscow-based think tank, questioning the logic of trusting Ukraine.
After Russia said over the weekend that it was suspending its participation in the deal, ships continued to pull in and out of Ukraine, navigating through a maritime corridor established to safeguard the trade. Moscow then threatened it would intercept ships that disembarked without permission, but Russia’s navy didn’t stop any vessels.
The relatively smooth operation, despite Russia’s suspension, was taken by some critics as a sign Moscow was powerless to upset the trade, even if it wanted to.
“The Kremlin itself simply fell into a trap from which it did not know how to get out,”
Tatiana Stanovaya,
founder of R.Politik, an independent political-analysis firm founded in Moscow, wrote on Telegram.
An oil refinery in Sicily, owned by Russia’s second largest oil and gas giant Lukoil, acts as a pass-through for Russian crude, which ultimately makes its way to the U.S. as gasoline and other refined oil products. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann
Among shipping and insurance executives, though, Russia’s suspension was threatening to dry up underwriting for voyages. Insurers were pulling policies and refusing to write new ones without Russia’s participation in the deal.
“You can’t get insurance with Russia out of the agreement,” said
Nikolas Tsakos,
president and chief executive of U.S.-listed, Greece-based Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. Shipowners said insurers have resumed offering cover.
The grain standoff came as Russia faces setbacks on the battlefield and far from it. Ukrainian forces have taken back swaths of terrain that Russian forces had occupied in the early days of the invasion. Meanwhile, Russia’s economic leverage over Europe, in the form of its once-prodigious sales of natural gas, has recently waned—at least temporarily. European buyers have pivoted from Russian supplies, while Moscow cut back sharply on its sales to Europe.
Still, the continent has managed in recent months to sock away enough gas in storage that analysts believe will help it avoid the sort of shortages and rationings many Western officials just a few months ago had been bracing to endure. That new comfort could be short-lived, analysts say, if there is a colder-than-expected winter or infrastructure problems that further disrupt supplies.
Russia’s grain-deal suspension threatened to increase economic pressure on Ukraine, which relied on agriculture for about 10% of its gross domestic product before the war, Western and Ukrainian officials said. The Russian shutdown also imperiled food supplies for millions of people in poorer countries that import Ukrainian wheat.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had bottled up those grain exports, sending global prices soaring. The U.N.-brokered deal moderated those prices, but also appeared to give Moscow outsize leverage on markets. As Mr. Putin threatened in recent weeks to leave the deal, Western officials accused him of using food as a weapon.
A U.N. official prepares to inspect in Istanbul a ship from Ukraine loaded with grain.
Photo:
yasin akgul/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Ismini Palla,
a spokeswoman for the U.N. at a coordination center in Istanbul that is charged with overseeing the deal, said Wednesday’s pause in shipping, which had been anticipated before Russia’s decision to rejoin the deal, was intended “to provide time for planning and discussions for the next movement of vessels.”
Ukraine shipped nearly 10 million tons of corn, wheat, sunflower oil and other products through the deal’s maritime corridor between August and October, helping to return the country’s exports to prewar levels. More than 100 large bulk ships are involved in the trade.
Russia stopped cooperating with the agreement after it accused Ukraine of using the corridor to attack Russian forces over the weekend. The U.N. said no military vessels are allowed to approach the corridor, which is closely monitored using satellite data.
In threatening to abandon the deal in recent months, Russia had complained that not enough of Ukraine’s grain was going to poor countries and said Western sanctions had slowed Russian food and fertilizer exports. U.S. and European Union officials say the sanctions don’t apply to food products. The U.N. said the measures have created obstacles to financing, insuring, shipping and paying for Russian products.
Russian shipping executives said vessel arrivals at Russian export ports had fallen by 20% over the past two months, with the majority of ships shifting to move Ukrainian cargoes.
U.N. Secretary-General
António Guterres
praised Russia’s renewed participation in the deal. Mr. Guterres “continues his engagement with all actors towards the renewal and full implementation of the Initiative, and he also remains committed to removing the remaining obstacles to the exports of Russian food and fertilizer,” his spokesman,
Stéphane Dujarric,
said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that thanks to the U.N. and Turkey, “it was possible to obtain the necessary written guarantees from Ukraine” that it wouldn’t use the maritime corridor and Ukrainian ports for combat operations against Russia. Russia “considers that the guarantees received at the moment appear to be sufficient and resumes the implementation of the agreement,” it said.
Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com, Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com and Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com
Buccaneers Coach Todd Bowles appeared to confirm multiple reports that Tampa Bay was signing Carl Nassib, a free agent defensive end who is the NFL’s first openly gay active player.
“We look forward to him coming here,” Bowles said of Nassib to reporters Tuesday.
Nassib previously played for the Buccaneers in 2018 and 2019. He then signed in free agency with the Las Vegas Raiders and was a member of that organization in June 2021, when he made history by coming out.
“I’m a pretty private person,” Nassib said then in a video he shared online, “so I hope you guys know that I’m really not doing this for attention. I just think that representation and visibility are so important.”
Several NFL players saluted him at the time, as did a number of league officials and advocates for LGBTQ issues. In a message to Nassib and Kumi Yokoyama, a National Women’s Soccer League player who came out as a transgender man, President Biden wrote: “I’m so proud of your courage. Because of you, countless kids around the world are seeing themselves in a new light today.”
Another defensive end, Michael Sam, had blazed a trail by coming out before the 2014 NFL draft. He was subsequently selected in the seventh round by the St. Louis Rams but released before the start of the season and never played a regular season snap in the NFL. Sam then became the first openly gay player in the Canadian Football League when he took the field in August 2015 for the Montreal Alouettes.
Nassib said earlier this summer that he had some trepidation about taking the step of sharing his video last year.
“I stared at the phone for, like, an hour just looking at it, trying to hype myself up,” the 29-year-old Pennsylvania native told “Good Morning America” correspondent Michael Strahan, a former NFL star, in July. “The last thing I said was, ‘You know what — for the kids.’ And I pressed post.”
Nassib added that, having come out to his friends and family years before, he decided to make it public last year to “own the story and make sure I did it on my terms.”
By the time Nassib made those comments last month, he had been released by the Raiders, following a two-year stint that coincided with a turbulent period for Las Vegas. Head coach Jon Gruden stepped down in October 2021 after the revelation of emails he had sent that included racist, misogynistic and homophobic language.
In the wake of the Gruden scandal, Nassib was excused from team activities to take a personal day.
“He just said he’s got a lot to process,” then-general manager Mike Mayock said of Nassib at the time. “There’s a lot that’s been going on the last few days. And, of course, we support that.”
Gruden was replaced on an interim basis by Rich Bisaccia before Josh McDaniels was hired in January to be the team’s new head coach. At the same time, the Raiders brought aboard a new general manager, Dave Ziegler, after they fired Mayock earlier in the month.
Now Nassib is set to reunite with General Manager Jason Licht, who has held that position for the Buccaneers since 2014, and Bowles, who was the team’s defensive coordinator for three years before replacing former head coach Bruce Arians in March.
After starting his NFL journey with the Cleveland Browns, with whom he spent two seasons, Nassib enjoyed some of his most productive moments with the Buccaneers. Of his 22 career sacks, 12.5 came in a Tampa Bay uniform, as did 25 of his 53 quarterback hits.
Bowles praised Nassib on Tuesday as a sturdy run defender who can also be deployed in different ways in the coach’s scheme.
“He’s a very good pass-rusher on the outside, and he can also play inside in some nickel situations,” Bowles told reporters. “He has a lot of versatility, he brings a lot of energy, brings a lot of toughness and he understands the system. He was comfortable in it [in his previous stint].”
Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Antonio Brown, whose future has been up in the air since his three-game suspension for violating the joint NFL-NFLPA COVID-19 protocols, is expected to rejoin the team on Monday, sources say.
Brown was one of three players suspended for violations of COVID-19 protocols as Bucs defensive back Mike Edwards and free-agent wide receiver John Franklin III also were suspended three games.
Edwards also is expected to rejoin the Bucs on Monday, sources say.
Brown, Edwards and Franklin were each found by the NFL on Dec. 3 to have misrepresented their vaccination status — 15 days after the Tampa Bay Times published a report in which Brown’s former chef alleged that Brown obtained a fake COVID-19 vaccine card. All three accepted their suspensions and did not appeal.
Tampa Bay head coach Bruce Arians has left the door open on whether or not Brown and Edwards would be welcomed back to the team.
On Friday, he indicated that a decision has been made, though he didn’t announce it.
“It’s just a matter of making a statement, and whether I do it before this game or after, we’ll wait and see,” Arians told reporters. “But I don’t want anything distracting from this game.”
Previously, he had said it could go either way.
The Bucs play the Saints tonight on Sunday Night Football, their third game without Brown — who was also nursing an ankle injury at the time he was suspended. While Arians declined to address the issue, both Brown and Edwards have posted Instagram videos of themselves inside the team’s facility.
A source explained that Brown and Edwards have been attending meetings and working out in the facility, all the activities they are allowed to do under the suspension. The team wanted to see how they responded during the time away, and it appears it was more than enough.
As for the ankle injury, a source said Brown’s rehab has gone well for an injury that’s kept him out since mid-October. He’s ready to go.
ISIS bride Shamima Begum apologized for joining the terror group and appealed to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to allow her to return to the UK, saying in her first live TV interview she’d “rather die” than go back to the jihadists.
“I know there are some people, no matter what I say or what I do, they will not believe that I have changed, believe that I want to help,” she told ITV’s “Good Morning Britain.”
“But for those who have even a drop of mercy and compassion and empathy in their hearts, I tell you from the bottom of my heart that I regret every, every decision I’ve made since I stepped into Syria and I will live with it for the rest of my life,” she said.
Begum was just 15 when she and two classmates set off for Syria to join ISIS. She has said she married an extremist from the Netherlands and had three children, all of whom have died.
Now 22 and living in a refugee camp in Syria, Begum has sought to return home, but the British government revoked her citizenship on national security grounds in 2019 and she has fought unsuccessfully to have her passport restored.
Shamima Begum said that at the time she joined ISIS, she “did not know it was a death cult.”ANL/Shutterstock
Begum, who wore lipstick, a gray tank top and a Nike baseball cap for the interview, said she had been misled when she went to Syria.
Addressing the prime minister, she offered a critical message: “I think I could very much help you in your fight against terrorism because you clearly don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I did not want to hurt anyone in Syria or anywhere else in the world. At the time I did not know it was a death cult, I thought it was an Islamic community,” she said.
Sajid Javid, who as home secretary made the decision to revoke Begum’s citizenship, stood by his choice, telling ITV News on Wednesday that it was “absolutely the right decision.”
“When I saw what I did and the information I received from my advisors and our intelligence agencies, in the end it was a very clear cut decision,” Javid said.
Begum acknowledged that it might be difficult for some Britons to forgive her, as they have lived “in fear of ISIS and lost loved ones,” but noted that “I have also lived in fear of ISIS and also lost loved ones.”
Begum has described the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing — in which 22 people died when jihadist Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb – as a “retaliation” for military strikes on ISIS strongholds.
She now clarified her comments.
Shamima Begum told “Good Morning Britain” that she’d “rather die” than go back to ISIS.ITV/ShutterstockShamima Begum (center) walks through security at Gatwick airport, before then catching a flight to Turkey in 2015.Metropolitan Police via APShamima Begum said that she “did not want to hurt anyone in Syria or anywhere else in the world.”Laura Lean – WPA Pool/Getty Images
“I do not believe that one evil justifies another evil. I don’t think that women and children should be killed for other people’s motives and for other people’s agendas,” she said.
Begum added that when she initially made the remarks, she did not know that women and children were hurt in Manchester.
“I did not know about the Manchester bombing when I was asked. I did not know that people were killed, I did not know that women and children were hurt because of it,” she said.
The Biden administration is reportedly set to have indirect negotiations about rejoining the Iran nuclear deal next week, prompting a wave of backlash from critics.
Agreed to under former President Barack Obama in 2015, the landmark accord prompted a raging debate with supporters arguing it provided a path to mitigate Iran’s nuclear proliferation. Others suggested the deal could be unconstitutional and wasn’t tough enough on the rogue state. Ripping the agreement as “the worst deal ever negotiated,” former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the accord in 2018.
Xiyue Wang, a former hostage in Iran, tweeted Friday that “Americans should know team Biden’s approach to reassert US global leadership is to appease authoritarian regimes.”
US TO HAVE INDIRECT NUCLEAR DEAL TALKS, IRAN PUSHES BACK
Others, like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., weighed in, as well.
“Two months in, the Biden administration is so desperate to get back to a broken deal that they’re giving up all their leverage and offering concession after humiliating concession,” Cotton tweeted.
For the past two months, the U.S. and Iran have been conducting quiet diplomacy that ultimately failed, according to The Wall Street Journal. In the past few weeks, the two sides have exchanged proposals through European intermediaries. Next week’s meeting in Vienna, Austria, will similarly occur through intermediaries, The New York Times first reported.
The two sides have struggled to reach a deal, with Iran demanding complete sanctions relief and rejecting a limited relief proposal from the U.S. The Journal reported a U.S. official claiming the administration “went along” with a proposal from Iran for initial gestures before actual talks. “They messaged us that maybe the best thing would be for each side to make an initial gesture that would pave the way to those talks,” the official said.
“They wanted some sanctions relief and in return they would reverse some nuclear steps they had taken in contravention of the JCPOA. It was their idea, and we went along.”
Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration official who helped craft the deal, urged the Biden administration to act quickly.
“[I]f the Biden team doesn’t signal a willingness to move in returning to the JCPOA (that the US left first with catastrophic results), who knows if the window will open again,” he tweeted.
IRAN, CHINA SIGN DEAL TO WARN US AGAINST ISOLATING THEM, PROFESSOR SAYS
But Richard Goldberg, former NSC Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction under the Trump administration, worried about the implications of current negotiations.
“If reports are accurate, the Biden administration is offering Iran billions of dollars in terrorism sanctions relief in exchange for very limited nuclear concessions,” Goldberg said.
“Biden would not only lose his leverage up front for very little, he would be breaking a commitment to Congress that he would not lift sanctions on Iran tied to terrorism. The Central Bank of Iran and the National Iranian Oil Company are subject to sanctions due to their connections to financing terrorism, not Iran’s nuclear program. Alongside completely ignoring the fact that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] is telling the world Iran is actively concealing undeclared nuclear sites and materials, this may be a worse negotiating position than Obama had.”
“One more thing to flag: under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), any agreement with Iran must be submitted to Congress for a vote before any sanctions on Iran are lifted. An agreement of billions in dollars in oil sanctions relief in exchange for a temporary halt to 20% enrichment should trigger that congressional review.”
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After Trump’s withdrawal, Iran ramped up its uranium enrichment. Critics of the deal argue, however, that it lacked sufficient measures for ensuring compliance and allowed billions of dollars to flow to the state-sponsor of terror.
“Biden is set to give up the leverage Trump gained on Iran,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. in a tweet Friday. “Let’s not forget: The Obama-Biden Iran strategy was a disaster—we sent them pallets of cash as they plotted terror attacks against us. Biden wants to return to that? Scary.”
