A former Chinese soccer star and coach of the country’s national men’s team has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for corruption, state media reported on Friday.

Li Tie, 47, who played for the English Premier League Everton alongside Wayne Rooney in the early 2000s, is the biggest name to fall foul of a sweeping crackdown on rampant graft in China’s professional soccer league.

Despite leader Xi Jinping’s vision to turn China into a “world soccer superpower,” Chinese professional soccer has been mired with poor financial decision making, deep-rooted corruption and disappointing performance.

In 2022, after China’s national men’s team suffered a disappointing elimination in the preliminary stage of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the country’s anti-graft agency launched a far-reaching investigation into bribery and match-fixing in Chinese professional soccer.

Li was the first among about a dozen soccer officials ensnared in the crackdown. In March, Chen Xuyuan, the former head of China’s official soccer association, was sentenced to life in prison for corruption.

On Friday, Li was sentenced for multiple counts of bribery by a court in the city of Wuhan, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

During his trial in March, prosecutors accused Li of accepting more than 50 million yuan ($6.8 million) in bribes between 2019 and 2021, when he served as the head coach of China’s national team and national select team.

In exchange, he granted favors to certain players to be selected into the national team and helped certain clubs to win matches, according to prosecutors.

To become the head coach, Li and the club he was coaching at the time arranged bribes totaling 3 million yuan (US$412,800) to help him secure the role, the court heard.

Li was also accused of fixing matches for the two clubs he coached in Chinese leagues between 2015 and 2019, according to the prosecutors.

In a documentary about the soccer sector anti-corruption crackdown aired by CCTV in January – weeks before the trial, a remorseful Li said he “deeply regretted” taking the wrong path.

“When I was a player, I despised people who played fixed matches the most,” Li said during the show. But after becoming the head coach of a club, he realized it was a shortcut to improve his club’s ranking.

“Achieving success through such improper means actually made me increasingly shortsighted and eager for quick results,” he said. “It became a habit, and eventually, I even started to rely on it.”

China’s Communist Party-controlled courts have a conviction rate above 99 percent and it is not uncommon for state broadcasters to air confessions before trial in high profile cases.

Li is considered among the best Chinese players of his generation, and one of the most recognizable names in Chinese soccer.

In 2002, Li, along with star defender Sun Jihai of Manchester City, made history as the first Chinese players to play in the English Premier League, securing his status as a national sporting icon.

Li made 29 appearances for Everton during his debut season in England, as part of a memorable side that included a young Wayne Rooney and former Nigerian captain Joseph Yobo.

That year Li also represented China at the 2002 FIFA World Cup in South Korea and Japan, the first and only appearance for the men’s team at the quadrennial tournament.

Following his successful first season, Li signed a three-year contract with Everton, but his time in the first team was marred by a series of Injuries and he returned to China in 2008 after a brief but unsuccessful spell with Sheffield United.

Many Chinese soccer fans had hoped that Li, once the pride of Chinese soccer, could lead the men’s national soccer team into the World Cup when he was appointed the head coach in January 2020.

But Li resigned barely two years later amid an outpouring of backlash from fans over the team’s lackluster performance in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.

NATO head Mark Rutte warned the US-led transatlantic alliance on Thursday that it was not ready for the threats it would face from Russia in the coming years and called for a shift to a wartime mindset – with much higher defense spending.

Rutte said future spending would have to be much higher than the current alliance target of 2% of national wealth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).

“Russia is preparing for long-term confrontation, with Ukraine and with us,” Rutte said in a speech in Brussels.

“We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years,” the NATO secretary-general said, adding: “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset, and turbocharge our defense production and defence spending.”

The alliance estimates 23 of its 32 members will meet the 2% target this year.

“During the Cold War, Europeans spent far more than 3% of their GDP on defense,” Rutte said. “We are going to need a lot more than 2%,” he added.

NATO members are grappling with renewed pressure from US President-elect Donald Trump, who has called for America’s allies to spend 3% of GDP on defense.

Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, said that the alliance must step up on defense production, calling on governments to “stop creating barriers between each other and between industries, banks and pension funds.”

He sent a message to the defense industry: “There is money on the table, and it will only increase. So dare to innovate and take risks.”

The NATO chief also warned of a “coordinated campaign to destabilize our societies” including cyberattacks and assassination attempts.

Rutte also cautioned about China’s ambitions, saying that Beijing is substantially building up its forces “with no transparency and no limitations.”

France’s embattled President Emmanuel Macron has appointed Francois Bayrou as prime minister, he announced on Friday, as he seeks to calm a political crisis that has left his authority dwindling by the day.

Macron’s office made the announcement a week after the former office holder Michel Barnier lost a vote of no confidence, forcing him to submit his resignation.

But Bayrou must now look to pass a budget through a sharply divided parliament, where Macron faces an avowed opposition from both the left-wing and far-right blocs.

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Not many children can say they took their first steps on board a yacht in the Arctic’s northwest passage. But Tom can. He spent three of the first four years of his life at sea, with his parents Ghislain Bardout and Emmanuelle Périé-Bardout — ocean explorers and founders of Under The Pole, an organization on a mission to document the deep.

The Bardouts estimate that both their children — Tom and Robin, now aged 8 and 12 respectively — have spent around half their lives aboard the family’s expedition schooner, “The Why.”

They’ve explored the furthest reaches of the planet, from polar ice to tropical reefs, as part of a mission to document the ocean’s mesophotic, or “twilight,” zone, an area that lies between 30 and 150 meters (100 and 490 feet) below the surface.

The couple, both passionate divers, decided that they wanted a family but weren’t ready to give up on ocean expeditions. “So we invented the way we wanted to work and live,” says Emmanuelle.

When on land, the family is based in Concarneau, a small coastal town in Brittany, northwestern France. When at sea, the 18-meter-long yacht becomes their home, shared with around 10 other people, including scientists, doctors, a cook and a teacher.

Despite their unusual setup, Emmanuelle insists they still have a normal routine. “We work like normal people and have kids at school,” she says.

However, most ordinary people don’t do the same work as the Bardouts. In fact, few have seen what they have seen in the deep ocean – and that’s the point.

While oceans cover 70% of the planet, they remain some of the least explored and understood ecosystems on Earth. Less than 30% of the global seafloor has been mapped in any detail and experts estimate that up to 91% of marine species are still unknown to science.

What is known is that these ecosystems are coming under increasing stress, threatened by a rise in sea temperature, leading to mass bleaching events, as well as pollution and overfishing. The Bardouts believe that by documenting what lies beneath the surface, they may be able to raise awareness of the threats and aid its recovery.

“We go to places where nobody has been before,” says Emmanuelle. “I think when you are doing exploration like we are doing, it gives us a huge responsibility.”

Mediterranean forests

Most recently, the family were exploring waters a bit closer to home, in the Mediterranean Sea. For Under The Pole’s DeepLife program, which is part of the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, they went on a series of two to three-month missions, searching for what they call “marine animal forests” in Greece, Italy and France.

These are diverse ecosystems in the deep ocean, full of sponges and corals such as red gorgonia and black coral, that form something like a terrestrial forest, with its own microclimate that provides a refuge for a range of species.

However, like forests on land, they are fragile, and if disrupted the ripple effects are significant. “If you cut this habitat, all the other species are going to disappear and by the end you will just have a rocky desert,” says Ghislain.

He explains that in recent years the Mediterranean has suffered from more frequent and severe marine heatwaves that have killed a lot of surface ecosystems. It is also affected by bottom trawling, a fishing technique that tows a net along the ocean floor to catch fish.

Ghislain says the aim is to study the biodiversity, ecosystems and ecological function of these marine animal forests, in particular how the twilight zone is faring in comparison to shallower waters.

The team traveled to Fourni, Greece, because they had seen images of a potential forest captured by an underwater drone in 2021, which they wanted to document for the first time. After various unsuccessful dives and spotting signs of bottom trawling on the seafloor, they feared that it might have been destroyed altogether. Then, they discovered it: a rich marine animal forest about 100 meters (328 feet) deep.

“When you find a marine animal forest, you find an oasis, you find life, you find a very rich ecosystem that is living all together,” says Ghislain. “It’s really this oasis of life we want to show to the world.”

Over the weeks that followed, they collected data on every aspect of the ecosystem, from currents and acoustics to bacteria and sea life. They plan to collate all of this research and present their findings in June 2025 at the United Nations Ocean Conference in France. By proving the importance of these ecosystems, they hope to persuade governments to protect these areas and take action against the fishing practices that are damaging them.

Deep diving

It is only in recent decades that technology has advanced enough to enable dives into the twilight zone, and it is still an incredibly specialist operation, requiring years of training. Divers use “rebreathers,” originally designed for military purposes, which absorb carbon dioxide from exhalations and recycle it as oxygen. This allows them to stay underwater far longer than with scuba tanks, and because it doesn’t create bubbles, it causes less disruption to the sea life.

On a typical mission, lasting six or seven months, the team will complete between 300 and 400 dives, says Ghislain. Each one can last anywhere between three and six hours, with the majority of that reserved for the ascent, allowing the body time to decompress.

“When we are at 100 meters, time is running super fast,” he says. “We are focused on the mission, deploying samples, deploying sensors, taking some pictures… and then after 20 minutes more or less, it’s time to go up.”

It’s physiologically exhausting – you can lose 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of weight during one dive, says Emmanuelle – and it can lead to accidents, including decompression sickness and pulmonary overinflation syndrome, when the lungs expand beyond their capacity.

She admits her attitude to dives has changed since having children. There is more at stake, and sometimes she and Ghislain are cautious about diving at the same time. But despite this, she believes it is worth it.

She remembers as a young girl looking up to the French underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau. Now, she is living that very life, and so are her children. “I don’t think our kids realize how lucky they are,” she says, “we can nourish their curiosity.”

In some way, Robin and Tom also represent the future generation that the Bardouts are fighting for. Over years of expeditions, Ghislain and Emmanuelle have witnessed firsthand the consequences of climate change and understand the urgency of the situation.

“Humanity is destroying its environment, at sea, on land, everywhere,” says Ghislain. “This is a huge problem of this century and the one we have to try to solve for the next generation.”

The sentence was made on the grounds that the crime was a “major sexual infringement,” Judge Tetsuro Sato of Naha District Court said on Friday, according to public broadcaster NHK.

“The girl’s testimony that she told her age by gestures and other means is sufficiently credible from the security camera footage,” the judge said.

“The defendant was aware that the girl was under 16 years old. The defendant was aware that the girl may have said ‘stop’ and may not have consented. Given the relationship and age difference between the two, who had never met each other, it is a crime of great sexual violation that stands out for its maliciousness.”

The US Air Force member, Brennon R. E. Washington, was indicted on March 27 on charges of “non-consensual sexual intercourse” and “indecent kidnapping” after he was discovered to have taken a 16-year-old Japanese girl to his residence last December and sexually assaulting her, Japanese prosecutors said.

“We are heartbroken and deeply regret the damage done to the victims and their families,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Nicholas Evans, commander of Kadena Air Base, told local media on Friday. “Sexual assault is a serious crime and in no way reflects the values of US military personnel.”

The incident is the latest in a history of criminal cases involving US personnel in Okinawa, home to several US military installations. It could exacerbate tensions with residents who have long opposed the presence of American troops and weaponry on the island.

It also comes nearly 30 years after three US servicemen raped a 12-year-old Okinawa schoolgirl in 1995, sparking a backlash against the US military on the island.

In 2016, the rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman by a former US base worker in Okinawa triggered mass protests in the island’s capital, with tens of thousands of residents demanding the US move its bases outside of Okinawa. The fallout resulted in curfews for US personnel on the island.

In another crime involving US personnel in Japan, a US Navy officer killed two Japanese nationals while driving down Mount Fuji in 2021.

Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki told reporters in June this year that the allegations of rape and kidnap against Washington were “extremely regrettable,” adding it was necessary “to strongly protest against the US military and other related organizations.”

The governor also said his office will “take a tough stance in dealing with the situation.”

“All US service members are expected to uphold the highest standards, and the US military is committed to holding accountable those who are convicted of criminal acts,” Nelson said.