The Beautiful Game: The international soccer body FIFA has banned its president Sepp Blatter and senior official Michel Platini for eight years. Blatter has been president of FIFA for 17 years and Platini is the man who was expected to succeed him. The decision was made by FIFA’s ethics committee.

Blatter was supposed to step aside in February and allow the organization to elect a new leader.

The FIFA investigation involved a $2 million payment Blatter authorized for Platini. The internal investigation was separate from worldwide criminal investigations into FIFA corruption.

Astronomical: Without resorting to clichés about “The Force,” the latest Star Wars sequel “The Force Awakens” shattered weekend box office records around the world, hauling in at least $517 million, $238 million of it in the US.

By comparison the 2009 “Avatar,” considered the highest grossing movie of all time at $3.1 billion, made $85 million during its first weekend of domestic release.

The Force Awakens cost $350 million to make and market, but is obviously worth the expense. The Walt Disney Company, which bought the rights to the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas, has four more sequels in the pipeline. But they better be good and galactically profitable. Disney paid $4 billion for the Star Wars universe.

Permawar: Air strikes believed to have been carried out by Russian aircraft have killed at least 43 people in the Syrian city of Idlib, according people in the city. The bombs hit a marketplace, homes, and government buildings, according to local reports.

Idlib is occupied by anti-government rebels who have been targeted by Russia in support of President Bashar al-Assad. Russia has not claimed responsibility for the latest strikes.

The American President: In an interview airing on National Public Radio today, President Obama says that some of the vitriol directed against him is because he is black. He tells interviewer Steve Inskeep, “If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I’m different, I’m Muslim, I’m disloyal to the country, etc. — which unfortunately is pretty far out there, and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials — what I’d say there is that that’s probably pretty specific to me, and who I am and my background.” He said, “In some ways, I may represent change that worries them.”

Nation: One person was killed and 36 injured on the Las Vegas strip last night when a car drove down a crowded sidewalk. The female driver abandoned her car and ran away but was found and arrested.

Conspiracy Theory: Florida Atlantic University is taking steps to fire a communications professor who is among the conspiracy theorists who question whether the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut really took place three years ago. There’s a whole segment of people, similar to holocaust deniers, who immediately question the reality of mass killings.

James Tracy of Florida Atlantic has a blog called Memory Hole on which he written extensively about Sandy Hook claiming that, “the event did not take place as it has been described to the public at large by major commercial electronic and print media.”

In one interview Tracy said Sandy Hook was a hoax staged to advance the argument for gun control. His website now features an article questioning whether the San Bernardino terrorist attack actually happened as reported.

Tracy has even claimed that the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook were never even born. He sent a registered letter to the family of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, demanding that the family prove their son had existed.

Tracy is within his legal and professorial rights as a matter of free speech. But if his actions are deemed to be harassment, he might get fired.

Just Beautiful: Miss Colombia had already walked the runway with the crown when Miss Universe host Steve Harvey came back to the stage and announced he’d made a mistake; Miss Philippines had been voted Miss Universe, not Colombia. The tall Miss Colombia gracefully dipped while the crown was removed from her head.

One Twitter user posted that the real winner was “Miss Information.”

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