technician who then flogged it around and tried to make an approach to mathieu valbuena in the form of blackmail in order to get money from him to suppress this tape. this man and his cohorts failed initially to make an approach or at least the approach failed and then they had the idea of coming in via karim benzema. it was a childhood friend of karim benzema through which he heard about it and he agreed to make a pitch. famously at the french national coaching centre in 2015, karim benzema approached mathieu valbuena and said i can help you get rid of this problem of the sex tape. if you go and meet such and such a person it will come to an end. in court he said he was trying to help his fellow team mates but the court found otherwise, that he had to have
known this was a blackmail attempt and he was helping his childhood friend to make money out of it, even though benzema didn t want the money he was doing it out of a desire to help his friend and couldn t have known that blackmail was the root cause. that s where he was found guilty and he s been given a suspended sentence of the year which is tough but he will appeal, which means he is technically innocent and it does raise questions about his position in the french national side. he s been out of the side for several years and is now at the top of his game and they want him in the side but the federation have said a guilty verdict wouldn t necessarily have had any impact on him staying in the national side. an eight year old boy who was struck by a car which was driven through a christmas parade in wisconsin on sunday has died of his injuries, bringing the death toll to six. darrell brooks, the 39 year old accused of driving the red suv, appeared in court yesterday, charged with in