The Explainer

The real reason Hong Kong is so mad at Lionel Messi

Soccer fans in Hong Kong continued stewing this week over Argentine superstar Lionel Messi's failure to take the field in an exhibition match his Major League Soccer team, Inter Miami, played last week against a local team. Messi apologized, saying he "regretted" that he had to skip the game due to a "swollen and painful" groin injury, BBC said.

Why couldn't Hong Kong just let it go?
Initially, fans and officials in the semi-autonomous Chinese financial hub felt they had been cheated. Hong Kong's government demanded an explanation after Messi took the field in another exhibition game in Japan three days later, ESPN said. Hong Kong lawmaker Regina Ip called it a "deliberate and calculated snub," said BBC.

The early debate focused on whether the team was wrong to bench Messi or to have scheduled the game at all. This "international scandal" is as "hilarious as it was predictable," said Greg Cote in The Miami Herald. You can hardly fault the team for "milking his name for maximum profit" while it can, but its real focus should be "getting its superstar healthy and rested for the MLS season, not parading him out like a show pony."

Did the apologies and excuses work?
Hardly. Match promoter Tatler Asia said it would refund half the ticket price and take a $5 million loss, but the Hong Kong government still clawed back its financial support, said The Athletic. Then Beijing canceled two scheduled exhibition matches against Argentina's national team, broadening the dispute from Hong Kong versus Inter Miami and its star to all of China against Messi and his home country.

The Inter Miami game came at a critical time for the Hong Kong government, Sam Goodman, a senior policy director at the China Strategic Risks Institute and an adviser to Hong Kong Watch, said to The Athletic. The city is trying to rehabilitate its image after "three years of a pretty draconian crackdown on basic rights," and the game came at a particularly sensitive moment because details on another proposed security law were released a couple of days before Inter Miami arrived, he said.

Do Hong Kong and China have any real beef with Argentina?
It looks that way. "Argentina's shift from a long-standing alignment with left-wing political forces toward the free-market stance championed by the newly elected president, Javier Milei, has been a source of contention," said Miles Yu in The Washington Times. Milei's rejection of socialism and Argentina's joining of the BRICS pact represents a "direct challenge to China’s influence." Messi is a "global icon of Argentine identity," so he has become an "unwitting participant in this ideological battle."

Statistic of the day

$399: The price of a new line of high-top sneakers sold by former President Donald Trump. The so-called Never Surrender shoes are covered in gold with MAGA-red soles. The sneakers were announced just one day after Trump was ordered to pay more than $355 million in a New York civil fraud case.
NPR

Talking Points

Implications of Alabama's frozen embryo ruling

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on Friday that frozen embryos created via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) are children and therefore protected under Alabama state law. The ruling came in response to a wrongful death lawsuit filed after a patient at an Alabama fertility clinic dropped a couple's frozen embryos.

Lawyers argued the lawsuit was moot because the embryos had not been implanted in a uterus. But the court declared that wrongful death "applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location," giving the embryos the same protections as living babies. Advocates for reproductive rights are concerned this could lead to similar restrictions on IVF in other states.

The end of third-party fertility?
Alabama's ruling is a "devastating hit to the third-party fertility industry," Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling said for The New Republic. This will lead to a "terrifying development for the one in six people impacted by infertility who need in-vitro fertilization," said Barb Collura, the president of Resolve: The National Infertility Association.

The ruling could make getting infertility care "so much harder in Alabama," Collura said to the Alabama Reflector. In addition to hindering couples' efforts to conceive, the decision could "leave fertility clinics vulnerable to lawsuits over frozen embryos," Alander Rocha said for the Reflector.

The ruling could open the door to lawsuits in "all cases where embryos don't survive being thawed and transferred to the uterus," Sean Tipton, the spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said to Al.com. This continued threat of legal action could "keep doctors and clinics from offering IVF in Alabama."

The 'next step' for the anti-abortion movement
Beyond Alabama, the court's ruling is the "logical next step for the anti-abortion movement as it seeks to broadly define human life," Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff said for The Washington Post. This is not the first time anti-abortion groups have tried to make the destruction of embryos illegal, but "no other state's high court has ruled on the matter in this way." Alabama now accounts for "nearly half of all criminal cases related to pregnancy across the country," said Pregnancy Justice.

The ruling is a "natural extension of the march toward fetal personhood," Dana Sussman, of the reproductive rights group Pregnancy Justice, said to the Post. "You only need one state to be the first out of the gate, and then the next one will feel less radical."

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Little by little, the truth is discovered in the film-making process."

Documentary director Li Yifan on the "unseen topics" covered in the banned films rescued by Newcastle University's Chinese Independent Film Archive. The collection recaptures the work of film festivals shut down by Xi Jinping, China’s "ultra-repressive leader," The Guardian said.

Good day 🎸

… for Sir Paul McCartney. The former Beatle was reunited with a bass guitar he used on hits like "Love Me Do" and "She Loves You" 51 years after it was nicked from the back of a van in London, BBC said. The Höfner bass was located in a Sussex family's attic during a search by a project called the Lost Bass. A spokesperson for McCartney said he was "incredibly grateful" for its return.

Bad day 📱

… for social media platforms. New York City filed a lawsuit against TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube, alleging the platforms are designed to "exploit young users' mental health" and cost the city $100 million in related health services yearly, CNN said. The uptick in mental health issues, the lawsuit said, imposed a "large burden on cities, school districts and public hospital systems that provide mental health services to youth."

Puzzles

Daily crossword

Test your general knowledge with The Week's daily crossword, part of our puzzles section, which also includes sudoku and codewords.

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The Week recommends

3 picturesque places to go snowshoeing

Spring may be just around the corner, but there is still plenty of time left to snowshoe your way through some beautiful scenery. Here are three impressive trails where you can embark upon a leisurely or tough snowshoeing adventure.

Ross Creek Cedars Scenic Area in Montana
You will want to carve out plenty of time for your trek across the Ross Creek Cedars Scenic Area. The trail is only a 0.9 mile loop, but there is simply no way you can rush past all those 1,000-year-old cedar trees. The trail also has signs providing information about the native plants and animals of Montana's Cabinet Mountains.

Mount Tallac Trail in South Lake Tahoe, California
This one is for expert snowshoers only. The trek up Mount Tallac is challenging in the snow, and at 9.6 miles out and back, you should plan on the journey taking up most of your day. The reward for all this hard work? The higher you get, the more breathtaking the landscape becomes. Once you reach the top, take your time savoring the panoramic views of the Desolation Wilderness.

Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary in Massachusetts
At 435 acres, this is New England's largest urban wildlife sanctuary, boasting five miles of trails that meander through woods, fields, streams and marsh. Rabbits, deer, owls and frogs abound, and the paths are "perfect for beginners — or anyone seeking a meditative walkabout through the winter elements,” Boston Magazine said.

WORD OF THE DAY

quasar

The bright cores of active galaxies with "supermassive black holes consuming huge amounts of matter," Sky News said. Astronomers discovered a quasar 500 trillion times brighter than the sun, which they dubbed the "most violent place that we know in the universe."

INSTANT OPINION

Today's best commentary

'How Russians and the West failed Navalny'
Garry Kasparov in The Wall Street Journal
Russian President Vladimir Putin killed the jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, "but there is blame enough to go around," says Garry Kasparov. Joe Biden once threatened "devastating" consequences if anything happened to Navalny, and the U.S. president now faces an "excruciating test." But we, Navalny's fellow Russians, "failed to match" his courage in challenging Putin's "dictatorship and war." Navalny might still be alive "if we had been as brave as the Ukrainians were" when Putin came for them.

'TikTok is on the decline'
Nitish Pahwa at Slate
"TikTok is not anywhere near dead or dying," says Nitish Pahwa, but the short-video app has seen a "sharp slowdown in user growth over the past year." People are getting annoyed by its "ad-heavy push into e-commerce via the TikTok Shop" and "never-ending deluge of AI-generated spam and misinformation." And Universal Music Group yanked its "vast catalog," including Taylor Swift. It might be time to "start wondering what on earth might be coming for us next."

'Women aren't showing up to vote. It could lead to disaster in 2024 election.'
Sarah Chamberlain in USA Today
There are "troubling signs" that women are "losing the habit of voting in greater numbers than men," says Sarah Chamberlain. Only 44% of voters at the Iowa Republican caucuses and 48% in the New Hampshire GOP primary were women. That's surprising now that "policies directly affecting women are being decided in a post-Roe country." It could also drive further polarization by letting candidates focus on partisan "brand-building" instead of topics like health care, education and child care.

Poll watch

President Joe Biden ranks as the 14th-best president in American history, according to a new poll from the Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey. The poll surveyed 525 political scientists and historians and found Biden’s 2020 defeat of Donald Trump to be his defining moment. Trump was ranked as the worst president in American history.

Why are Republicans leaving Congress?