Vox Sentences: FIFA’s long international nightmare is over

FIFA president Sepp Blatter hit with an 8-year ban from soccer; the FDA kind of fixes its discriminatory blood-donation policy; and a very confusing Spanish election.

TOP NEWS

FIFA finally drops the hammer on Sepp Blatter

Philipp Schmidli/Getty Image

• A FIFA ethics court has banned FIFA president Sepp Blatter (as well as Michael Platini, the head of the European soccer association) from any official FIFA football activities for 8 years.

  [AP / Graham Dunbar]

• Blatter was already supposed to step down in February, but this suspension (if upheld) would essentially end his career.

  [SB Nation / Conor Dowley]

• Blatter's being banned for making an illegitimate $2 million payment to Platini in 2011. (Platini's being banned for accepting it.) The two of them claim that the $2 million is long-deferred back pay from 15 years ago, but neither FIFA nor Swiss authorities have been persuaded.

  [AP / Rob Harris]

• As far as FIFA is concerned, the real reason Blatter paid Platini is irrelevant — it's an ethics violation simply because it's not legitimate. But the timing of the payment implies that Blatter was bribing Platini for Europe's support in the 2011 FIFA elections.

  [NYT / Sam Borden]

• This isn't related to the FIFA bribery scandal related to broadcast rights that broke earlier this year, or the FIFA bribery scandal related to World Cup picks.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias and Joseph Stromberg]

• Nor is it related to any of the other scandals with which Blatter has been beset throughout his entire 17 years as FIFA president.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• Of course, Blatter is fighting the suspension with characteristic self-pity, melodrama, and gratuitous Nelson Mandela references.

  [SB Nation / James Dator]

The FDA ends its ban on blood donations from gay monks

Joern Pollex/Getty Images

• The FDA is replacing its ban on blood donations by men who have sex with men with a ban on blood donations by men who've had sex with men in the past 12 months. In other words, it's still a ban for most gay men, as long as they are sexually active.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• The purpose of the ban, which is 30 years old, is to prevent HIV-contaminated blood from getting into the blood supply. All blood samples are screened for HIV, but current screening technology can't detect HIV for a few weeks after initial infection.

• The FDA developed its 12-month deferral period by looking at other countries — particularly Australia, which saw no problems after it replaced its strict donation policy with a 12-month deferral.

  [Transfusion / Clive R. Seed et al.]

• If the screening test can catch HIV within weeks, why does the deferral have to be a year? The FDA's answer is that there simply isn't evidence on shorter deferral periods.

  [FDA ]

• But in theory, scientists say, there's no reason that a shorter deferral period wouldn't be just as effective.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff and Julia Belluz]

• To others, the problem is with who's subjected to the deferral. Monogamous gay men are still banned. Promiscuous straight men aren't.

  [Reuters / Toni Clarke]

A victory for…something…in Spain

Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

• After parliamentary elections in Spain, no party has anywhere near a majority — and it might take a long time for a coalition to form. But one thing is clear: the country is no longer dominated by two parties.

  [BBC]

• It's not as big an upset for traditional politics as has occurred in, say, Greece. The center-right People's Party has a plurality of seats in parliament, and the PP and the traditional opposition Socialists came in first and second in voting.

  [The Guardian]

• But the two parties combined for less than 50 percent of the vote — thanks to the new anti-austerity party Podemos, which got 20 percent of the vote, and the only slightly less new, "business-friendly" party Ciudadanos (or "Citizens")..

  [NYT / Raphael Minder]

• Thanks to Spain's electoral system, which favors parties with established infrastructures, the two new parties don't have as many seats as their strong voter performance might indicate.

  [Financial Times / Ian Mount]

• But they certainly have enough to scramble any attempts by the PP to form a coalition. Podemos, for example, wants more independence for Catalonia — something the PP considers a dealbreaker.

  [Reuters / Julien Toyer and Adrian Croft]

• So while the parties are going to start negotiating, what happens next is a totally open question — and could result in the decision getting tossed back to the voters.

  [The Economist]

MISCELLANEOUS

Tracy Norman was a major '70s model. She did shoots for Avon, for Clairol, for Essence magazine. She's also trans, and couldn't ever let her colleagues know. [NY Mag / Jada Yuan and Aaron Wong]

• Did you know that Hillary Clinton "dribbles" Tabasco sauce on "nearly all foods," says eating raw jalapenos is "so refreshing," and had a collection of more than 100 hot sauces as First Lady? I did not know this.

  [Slate / Ben Mathis-Lilley]

• Pope Francis has announced he's making Mother Teresa a saint. Christopher Hitchens was wrong about a lot, but he was right about this much: Mother Teresa was a virulent fundamentalistd an coddler of dictators who did nothing of consequence to fight poverty.

  [Slate / Christopher Hitchens]

• The president of Guinea, who won another term in October in elections marred by violence and allegations of fraud, had to re-take his oath of office after he forgot to pledge to "uphold the law" the first time around.

  [AFP]

• Ever wondered if you have a doppelgänger halfway across the world? There's an app (well, a website) for that.

  [Quartz / Olivia Goldhill]

VERBATIM

"There’s zero evidence that playing professional football shortens lives on average. Those are the facts. Take ’em or leave ’em." [Slate / Daniel Engber]

• "After a couple miles, Hotz lets go of the wheel and pulls the trigger on the joystick, kicking the car into self-driving mode. He does this as we head into an S curve at 65 miles per hour … Amazed, I ask Hotz what it felt like the first time he got the car to work. 'Dude,' he says, 'the first time it worked was this morning.'"

  [Bloomberg Businessweek / Ashlee Vance]

• "Drill down and you discover there’s plenty to learn about Trump from this particular transaction. For one, he’d rather get sued than pay full price. For another, he won’t let an old friendship stand in the way of a good bargain. And while he may not enjoy getting bogged down in contractual fine print, he sure does love picking out drapes. One more thing: When he wants to, Donald Trump can be the neighbor from hell."

  [Washingtonian / Marisa Kashino]

• "The commission has found no evidence, for example, of any law stating that in the city of Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless in public except while working as a clerk in a tropical fish store."

  [NYT / Stephen Castle]

• "I’ve never been raped, and I only have a few nights I don’t remember, but I’ve been coerced time after time after time, I’ve said No many times and either been made to feel guilty or been placated until I went along with something I didn’t want to do. This is what consenting sex looks like?"

  [Art Parasites / Anonymous]

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