NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Friday he was “deeply disturbed” after Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups were among those arrested in a far-ranging FBI probe into illegal gambling.”My initial reaction was I was deeply disturbed,” Silver said in an interview with Amazon Prime during their coverage of the New York Knicks’ home game against the Boston Celtics on Friday.”There’s nothing more important for the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition.”Heat guard Rozier and former NBA player and assistant Damon Jones were arrested for their alleged roles in a betting scheme that prosecutors say provided inside information on injuries and game absences to bettors between December 2022 and March 2024.Rozier, who has denied wrongdoing, was accused of advising co-conspirators that he would exit early with a supposed injury from a March 2023 game when he was with the Charlotte Hornets, allowing them to make bets on his performance accordingly.Portland Trail Blazers coach Billups, a former Detroit Pistons star and an NBA Hall of Famer, was arrested in connection with rigged illegal poker games tied to Mafia crime families, with Jones also indicted in that investigation.At a press conference in New York on Thursday, FBI director Kash Patel described “a criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra.”Both Billups and Rozier were immediately suspended by the NBA, but the league’s fledgling season rolled on with 12 games scheduled for Friday.Silver expressed regret that the allegations had taken attention away from the start of the season.”I apologize to our fans that we are all dealing with, now, this situation,” Silver said.”But in terms of the competition on the floor, it has been spectacular.”Billups and Rozier were both arraigned on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering on Thursday, Billups in Portland, Oregon, and Rozier in Orlando, Florida.Both have denied the accusations through their attorneys.Prosecutors said the 49-year-old Billups was one of more than 30 people indicted for alleged involvement in a nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games.Billups’s celebrity helped lure players to high-stakes games that used “high-tech cheating technology” including shuffling machines that could read cards, hidden cameras and barcoded decks.Rozier and Jones allegedly took part in a scheme that featured illegal betting on the performance of players on the Charlotte Hornets, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors.- Aberrational betting -Rozier, 31, was part of the illegal gambling probe that led to the lifetime ban of former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter last year.The NBA said in January they found no evidence Rozier violated league rules but were cooperating with an ongoing federal investigation.Silver said the league had been alerted to suspicious betting activity related to Rozier.”We then looked into that situation,” Silver said. “And while there was that aberrational betting, we couldn’t find anything.”Terry at the time cooperated. He gave the league office his phone. He sat down for an interview and we ultimately concluded there was insufficient evidence, despite that aberrational behavior, moving forward.”He noted that federal authorities have broader investigative powers, including the power to subpoena witnesses, and said the league had been cooperating with the ongoing investigations.Billups was not named in the sports betting indictment, but the description of one unnamed co-conspirator involved in alleged illegal betting on a Trail Blazers game includes a playing and coaching career that tallies with his.Since sports gambling was leagalized in most US states in 2018, American professional leagues have eagerly partnered with betting firms to garner a slice of a multi-billion-dollar industry.Therefore, the NBA wasn’t the only league chilled by the news of the indictments, with the NFL sending a memo to all 32 teams reiterating that players are prohibited from betting on NFL games and from any illegal gambling.They are reminded that players also must not throw or fix any NFL game or manipulate any particular plays, and they are barred from sharing confidential, non-public information regarding any NFL game, player or event, with a third party.

Early voting for New York’s next mayor begins Saturday with an outsider Democratic Party candidate the favorite to upend the city’s politics and face down President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked him.The twisting race has seen state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist, surge from the political wilderness to become the frontrunner in a campaign in which the current mayor bowed out and the onetime Democratic favorite lost his own primary.The 34-year-old Mamdani’s once unlikely campaign has been turbo-charged by eager campaigning by young New Yorkers in particular. An emphasis on the soaring cost of living has also resonated, with the Queens-based lawmaker promising to freeze rent for two million New Yorkers in rent-stabilized properties.In the latest twist, scandal-tainted current mayor Eric Adams backed the second-place candidate, 67-year-old former state governor Andrew Cuomo — after previously calling him a “snake and a liar.”Early voting allows New Yorkers to cast a ballot from Saturday until November 2, with Election Day on November 4 and the winner taking office in the New Year. Mamdani had 47 percent support and led Cuomo by 18 points in the latest citywide poll, conducted by Victory Insights between October 22 and 23. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, 71, was at 16 percent.Adams, who has been mired in corruption allegations linked to his term in office, dropped out of the race on September 28 but did not initially endorse a rival.”You can’t freeze rent, but you are lying and telling people you could — we’re fighting against a snake oil salesman,” Adams said Thursday with Cuomo at his side.”Gentrifiers have raised the rent in the city… and (Mamdani’s) the king of the gentrifiers.”It is unclear what impact Adams’s endorsement will have on the race.”It is possible, but extremely unlikely, Cuomo can catch Mamdani,” said Lincoln Mitchell, a political science professor at Columbia University, saying the former governor’s “tough guy persona” dates from another era.- ‘Affordability crisis’ -The race has been dominated by the issue of cost of living, as well as by how each candidate would handle Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funds from the city where he made his name as a property developer and reality TV star.Trump has branded Mamdani, who wants to make bus travel and childcare in the city of 8.5 million people free, a “communist.””I was always very generous with New York, even when you had opposition there,” Trump said this month.”I wouldn’t be generous to a communist guy that’s going to take the money and throw it out the window.”Mamdani has said he would cooperate with Trump if it brought down the cost of living in the city, while Sliwa has said he would seek to “negotiate” with the president and Cuomo has said he would “confront” the commander-in-chief.”I’ve lived in New York for 10 years almost. I’ve always been… not necessarily always struggling, but trying to hustle and get things together,” Mamdani supporter and tenant organizer Lex Rountree, 27, told AFP. “It feels strange to kind of think about what it would look like to have some of that ease” under Mamdani, Rountree added.Mamdani’s campaign received a lift on Friday when Hakeem Jeffries, a New York lawmaker and the top Democrat in the US House of Representatives, endorsed him.”Mamdani has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who do not support his candidacy,” the leading Democrat said.Mamdani will bring star firepower to the table Sunday when he appears alongside leftist Senator Bernie Sanders and lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio Cortez at a “get out the vote” rally in Forest Hills Stadium in Queens. 

In a picturesque town on the US-Canada border, workers under dark clouds were building a new entrance for Canadians into a library to replace one that had long symbolized bilateral closeness.For more than a century, Canadians in Stanstead, Quebec, could walk through a door in the Haskell Free Library into Derby Line, Vermont, without passing through customs.But President Donald Trump’s administration has canceled the arrangement, citing the need to counter “illicit cross-border activities.”Standing on the black line inside the library that demarcates the US-Canada border, Sylvie Boudreau, Haskell’s board of trustees president, said the Trump administration’s announcement caused “a lot of anger on both sides.””It’s the end of something,” she told AFP.As a result of the US action, a new entrance is being constructed on the side of the building to give Canadians access to the library.  Canadian access to the library has been restricted before, including when tighter controls were imposed following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and again during the Covid-19 pandemic.But the Trump administration’s announcement marks the first definitive end to an arrangement that signaled enduring US-Canada unity for many in Stanstead, a town dotted with large Victorian houses about a 90-minute drive from Montreal.– ‘Mistrust’ –The change has stirred emotions on both sides of the border.Derby Line resident Jonas Horsky, a Franco-American who frequents the library for its bilingual catalogue, told AFP he felt “nostalgic” for the days of unencumbered cross-border travel.”We’ve always been united, we’ve always visited each other, but now we carry our passports with us. It wasn’t like this before,” the 41-year-old said.For Canadian Erica Masotto, who works at Stanstead College — a boarding school in the town of 2,824 residents — it’s “strange” to have to enter through what used to be the library’s emergency exit.She said she was troubled by the “symbol” the change represents.”Why this sudden mistrust?”– ‘Never be the same again’ –The shift at the library comes amid a broader breakdown in US-Canada relations.Trump’s musings about annexing Canada — made regularly through the early weeks of his second term — enraged Canadians.His tariffs have forced job losses across several key sectors, and late Thursday, he announced he was ending trade talks over an anti-tariff ad produced by the government of Ontario province.As he laid out his vision for Canada’s upcoming budget, Prime Minister Mark Carney reiterated that the US-Canada relationship would “never be the same again,” stressing that decades of deepening economic ties had been permanently ruptured.Bilateral tension has impacted Canadian travel patterns, with the national statistics agency in June reporting “a marked decrease” in the number of Canadians visiting the United States.Marc Samson, a silver-haired retiree who was picking up his wife from her job at the Haskell library, affirmed what the data shows.”We don’t go to the United States anymore,” despite Stanstead and Derby Line existing side-by-side, Samson told AFP.But, he added, political change could help repair the relationship.”I imagine that if the government changes on the other side of the border, things will go back to normal,” Samson said.Boudreau said the changes in library access marked “a physical end” to an era of unique closeness.But, she insisted, “from the perspective of people, of friendship, of unity, the sense of community, that has been strengthened by what happened.”