Spain will play for its first Women’s World Cup championship after Olga Carmona’s goal in the 89th minute lifted La Roja to a 2-1 victory over Sweden in the Tuesday semifinal.

Spain, which overcame last year’s near mutiny by its players against coach Jorge Vilda, will play the winner of tournament co-host Australia and England on Sunday in the final in Sydney.

The winner Sunday will be a first-time World Cup champion.

Sweden has now lost in four of five semifinals and will play for a fourth third-place finish.

Carmona’s goal capped a flurry of late scoring that saw Sweden tie the game, then Spain win it 90 seconds later on the surprise score.

Salma Paralluelo, the 19-year-old super-sub who also scored the game-winner in Spain’s 2-1 extra-time quarterfinals victory over the Netherlands, scored in the 81st minute to break a scoreless game. She gestured for the crowd, which thought it was celebrating Spain’s decider.

But the celebration was brief. Rebecca Blomqvist tied it for Sweden in the 88th.

Then just 90 seconds later, Carmona beat Sweden goalkeeper Zecira Musovic with the game-winner.

The Swedes have never won a World Cup, but they’ve come close: they were the 2003 runner-up and have finished third three times. Sweden won the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics two years ago and at the 2016 Games in Brazil.

Spain is making only its third overall World Cup appearance. Four years ago, La Roja advanced to the knockout round but lost to eventual champions the United States.

The Swedes swept their opponents in the group stage before knocking out the United States, the two-time defending champions, on a penalty shootout after a scoreless draw. Sweden then got by Japan 2-1 in the quarterfinals.

Spain fell to second in its group to Japan before downing Switzerland 5-1 and the Netherlands 2-1 to reach the semifinals. It was La Roja’s first appearance in a major semifinal since the 1997 European Championships.

Spain’s two-time Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas made her third start of the World Cup. Putellas ruptured her ACL last summer and has been working her way back to full fitness. She came off the bench in the team’s last two matches.

Putellas, who replaced Esther Gonzalez in the starting 11, was subbed off in the 57th minute for 19-year-old Paralluelo, who scored in extra time for Spain in the victory over the Netherlands.

Spain dominated possession and had the better chances in the first half. Defender Olga Carmona’s blast from the top of the box but the low shot went just wide. But Sweden’s defense, which had allowed just two goals in the tournament, held.

Putellas nutmegged Filippa Angeldal before delivering a cross in the 35th minute but Magdelena Eriksson was there to clear it away.

Spain goalkeeper Cata Coll dove to save Fridolina Rolfo’s shot late in the half, then punched the ball away on a corner kick to keep the game scoreless at the half.

Sweden had energy to start the second half but Spain still had chances. Paralleulo’s header in the 63rd minute sailed over the goal.

Alba Redondo was on the ground in front of the goal but got a foot on the ball and appeared to score in the 71st minute, but she was just wide and the ball was caught up in the side netting.

There were a few tense moments when Paralluelo’s goal was checked by video review, but the goal was awarded.

There were 43,217 fans on hand for the match at Auckland’s Eden Park.

That Spain made it this far was something of a surprise after a turbulent year. Last September 15 players wrote the federation saying they were stepping down from the national team to protect their mental health. The players called for a more professional environment.

Ultimately the Spanish federation backed coach Jorge Vilda. Three of the 15 players, including Bonmati, returned to the team for the World Cup.

Spain and Sweden had never met at the World Cup.
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((PLAYBOOK SLUG:   RUSSIA ECON RUBLE

HEADLINE: 

TEASER:  The Bank of Russia, which has struggled to keep the country’s economy on track since the invasion of Ukraine, will hold an emergency meeting Tuesday

PUBLISHED AT: 08/14/23 at 6:31p   

BYLINE:   Rob Garver

CONTRIBUTOR:     

DATELINE:    

SCRIPT EDITORS:   Page, Megan Duzor

PLATFORMS (mark with X):  WEB X TV __ RADIO __   

EDITOR NOTES: ))    

Nearly 18 months after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government is facing significant economic challenges, with the country’s currency, the ruble, plunging in value on global markets.

On Monday, the ruble’s value accelerated its monthslong decline against benchmark currencies, like the U.S. dollar. With the Russian central bank calling an emergency meeting for Tuesday, the exchange rate was above 100 to the dollar, a roughly 30% decline in value since the beginning of the year.

Russia also revealed that the country’s current account balance, which tracks the relative value of goods and services exported from and imported to the country, had fallen to $5.4 billion in the second quarter of the year, a 93% year-over-year decline. The shrinking number, which suggests a significant decline in exports, is a bad sign for an economy that is largely reliant on the export of commodities such as fossil fuels and grain.

Economic realignment

After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his country’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country was immediately placed under myriad sanctions by a broad alliance of the world’s largest economies.

The economic sanctions on Russia have only increased over time, especially with the recent imposition of a price cap on Russian oil and gas, which makes it very difficult for Moscow to sell its most lucrative exports on the open market without offering a significant discount to prevailing prices.

In response to both the international sanctions regime and the Kremlin’s need to continue supplying its invading army, Russia has taken steps to significantly reorient its economy toward the support of the war effort. The result has been the transition of significant productive capacity away from commercially lucrative production and toward military hardware and materials.

Kremlin comments

In an article written for the government-run media organization Tass on Monday, Kremlin presidential aide Maxim Oreshkin acknowledged that the drop in the ruble’s value is a challenge but insisted that the currency’s value will recover quickly.

“The current exchange rate has largely deviated from fundamental levels, though it is expected to normalize in the near future,” Oreshkin wrote. “A weak ruble complicates the economy’s structural transformation and negatively influences real household earnings. A strong ruble is in the interests of the Russian economy,” he said.

In the same article, Oreshkin pinned the blame for the ruble’s slide on the Russian central bank, which has been working to stabilize the nation’s economy in the wake of the invasion.

“Soft monetary policy is the main source for the ruble’s weakening and acceleration of inflation. The Central Bank has all necessary tools for normalizing the situation as early as in the near future and lowering lending rates to sustainable levels,” Oreshkin wrote.

For its part, the Bank of Russia, as the country’s central bank is known, has blamed the ruble’s weakness on declining demand for Russia’s exports and an increased demand for the imports that remain available to Russian consumers, a claim supported by the country’s declining current account surplus.

Central bank struggles

The Bank of Russia has had an extremely difficult job in the wake of the invasion, attempting to stabilize the country’s currency and to keep the economy on track.

In the weeks following the invasion, after the value of the ruble began to plummet, the central bank announced a sharp increase in interest rates, which did much to preserve the ruble’s value on the global market.

Russia entered the war with large foreign currency reserves, held in banks around the world, which might have allowed it to purchase rubles on the open market during times of stress, helping to keep its value stable. However, international sanctions blocked Moscow’s access to much of its holdings.

At first, the Russian economy appeared surprisingly resilient in the face of sanctions. At one point in 2022 — even after the beginning of the invasion and the imposition of sanctions — the ruble was among the world’s best-performing currencies.

However, preserving that resilience has been difficult, as Russia has been forced to rely increasingly on China for trade, and to rely on a shadowy network of countries and corporations willing to purchase Western goods and resell them into Russia in violation of international sanctions.

Possible action

The Bank of Russia said Monday that its leaders would hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday to address the ruble’s decline. The expectation is that the bank will authorize a significant hike in interest rates to shore up the currency’s value. The bank said on its website that an announcement of any decision would be made at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Moscow time.

The ruble recovered somewhat on global currency markets after the central bank’s announcement, however by late Monday afternoon, it continued to trade at more than 100 rubles to the dollar, significantly above its price from the previous trading session.
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Britain’s government Monday rejected claims that it was slow to evacuate asylum-seekers from a barge moored off the south coast of England once traces of the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s disease were found in the ship’s water system.

In the latest critique of the government’s ballyhooed efforts to control migration and reduce the cost of housing a rising number of asylum-seekers, local health officials said over the weekend that the barge operator was told about the bacteria last Monday — the day before asylum-seekers were moved onto the Bibby Stockholm.

But Health Secretary Steve Barclay said ministers weren’t informed about the bacteria until Thursday and they took “very quick action.”

The Home Office, the central government department that oversees migration, moved all 39 men who were being housed on the ship into other accommodation on Friday.

Questions about the government’s response to the bacteria issue came after immigration dominated the weekend news, with a surge of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats during a period of good weather and at least six people dying when one boat sank off the coast of France. More than 1,600 people arrived in England on 30 boats from August 10-12, the government said Monday.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made stopping the boats a key goal as he looks for issues that will bolster voter support for his Conservative Party, which is trailing badly in opinion polls, ahead of a general election that is expected to take place next year.

Part of that strategy is a plan to move asylum-seekers from hotel accommodations onto barges and disused military bases to make it less attractive for people to come to the U.K. and to cut the cost of housing those who seek shelter in Britain. Sunak also wants to deport people who enter the country illegally to Rwanda, though that plan has been stalled by court challenges.

The British government says it is spending about 6 million pounds ($7.6 million) a day on hotel rooms for 51,000 asylum-seekers. The number of people requesting asylum in Britain jumped to more than 167,000 at the end of last year, from about 45,000 in 2018, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

Ultimately the government hopes to house up to 500 adult men on the Bibby Stockholm.

Legionnaires’ disease is a serious respiratory infection caused when people inhale tiny water droplets containing the bacteria. It is not transmitted person-to-person but is found in the cooling systems of large buildings and water lines that aren’t in regular use. While symptoms are similar to the flu, Legionnaires’ disease can be treated with antibiotics.

The finger-pointing surrounding the bacteria is just the latest setback for the plan to move asylum-seekers onto the Bibby Stockholm. Fire officials previously raised concerns about safety precautions on the barge, and migrant rights advocates questioned whether it was appropriate to house people fleeing war and persecution in such cramped conditions.

In a reflection of simmering tensions even among Conservatives, former Home Secretary Priti Patel on Monday accused the government of being “secretive” and ”evasive” in its plans to house asylum-seekers at a former Royal Air Force base in Wethersfield, which is near her constituency in eastern England.

In a letter marked ”Urgent” and addressed to the present Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, Patel laid bare her frustration with the government’s failure to provide details about the plan after the Daily Telegraph reported that the former military bases could be used for three to five years, or even longer. Patel said she had asked a series of parliamentary questions but had received “no definitive answer.”

”They’ve bypassed the usual planning requirements, claimed the site is temporary for emergency use only and now we see they’ve been planning to use the site for five years,” she wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “This is unacceptable.”
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The United States announced Monday a new security assistance package valued at $200 million for Ukraine. U.S. officials say it’s the first installment of a $6.2 billion aid package previously authorized under presidential drawdown authority guaranteeing the speedy delivery of existing Pentagon stockpiles to Ukraine.

The aid includes air defense munitions, artillery rounds, anti-armor capabilities, and additional mine-clearing equipment, said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who plays a central role in coordinating drawdowns, said in a statement.

Two U.S. officials told the Reuters news agency last Monday that the U.S. government would commit the $6.2 billion in funds to Ukraine after discovering a Pentagon accounting error that had overvalued billions of dollars of aid.

In May, the Pentagon said it had mistakenly overvalued U.S. weaponry shipped to Kyiv by inputting “replacement value” instead of “depreciated value” to calculate the billions’ worth of ammunition, missiles and other equipment it sent to Ukraine. The accounting error works to Kyiv’s benefit because more equipment can be sent.

Washington is currently working on a supplemental budget request to continue aid to Kyiv, the U.S. officials said.

“Every day, Russia is killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying civil infrastructure, while also weaponizing hunger and contributing to global food insecurity through its destruction of Ukraine’s civilian ports and grain infrastructure,” Blinken said in his statement.

“Russia started this war and could end it at any time by withdrawing its forces from Ukraine and stopping its brutal attacks. Until it does, the United States and our allies and partners will stand united with Ukraine, for as long as it takes,” he added.

Ukrainian officials said Monday a Russian aerial attack on the southern port city of Odesa injured at least three people.

The military also said air defenses downed all 15 drones Russia used in the attack, as well as eight sea-based missiles, but that falling debris caused damage on the ground.

Firefighters battled several fires that broke out as a result of the falling rocket fragments, the regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said on Telegram.

Watch related video by Heather Murdock from Odesa:

Russian shelling Sunday killed at least seven people, including a 23-day-old girl, and injured at least 22 others in Ukraine’s Kherson region.

“Her brother, who was only 12 years old, was taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, they could not save him. He died from severe wounds. The children’s mother, her name was Olesia, she was only 39 years old, died. My condolences,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

Black Sea

Black Sea ports are trying to clear a backlog of cargo vessels around the waterway. Dozens of ships dropped anchor in various Black Sea ports after Russia’s navy fired warning shots Sunday at a Palau-flagged cargo vessel headed to the Ukrainian port of Izmail.

There is growing unease among insurers and shipping companies. They fear that war premiums could rise to cover the heightened risk of ships becoming damaged or sinking in the area.

The cost of a Black Sea war risk premium, which is typically renewed every seven days and is in addition to annual insurance expenses, was estimated at tens of thousands of dollars per ship for the voyage.

“The security guarantees given to shipping by both sides under the BSGI (Black Sea Grain Initiative) are no longer in effect, which means that the Ukrainian Black Sea ports are effectively blockaded and out of use for commercial vessels,” Norwegian ship insurer Gard said in an advisory note last week. It added that Ukrainian sea ports in the northwestern area were no longer categorized as “safe” ports contractually.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Monday condemned what it called gross violations of international law by Russia’s navy after the warning shots were fired.

A Ukrainian foreign ministry statement called on the international community to “take decisive action to prevent Russian Federation’s actions that impede the peaceful passage of vessels through the Black Sea.”

Ukraine also urged its partners to “strengthen their efforts to preserve the functioning of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is crucial to ensuring global food security.”

In July, Russia withdrew from the Black Sea grain agreement, which had allowed shipments to sail safely across the waterway.

The Russian defense ministry said Sunday the shots were fired because the captain of the Sukru Okan had ignored demands from the warship to stop. After firing the shots, Russian military troops descended from a helicopter onto the cargo ship.

After Russian forces inspected the Sukru Okan, the vessel was allowed to proceed to Izmail, the defense ministry said. Izmail is the main export route for Ukrainian agricultural products.

China-Russia

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu is visiting Russia and Belarus in a show of support for those nations which the West has sought to isolate over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Li Monday began the six-day trip. He is scheduled to deliver an address at the Moscow Conference on International Security and meet with defense leaders from Russia and other nations, the defense ministry said on its social media account, citing spokesperson Col. Wu Qian.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will deliver remarks on the topic of the “Majority World countries’ search for ways to development outside Western mechanisms, including strengthening multilateral associations of a new type,” Russia’s official TASS news agency reported.

It said representatives from about 100 countries and eight international organizations had been invited to attend.

Some information in this report came from Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
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