finally

I’m one of those rare Mexicans who never cared for soccer.

My family is from the north-central Mexico state of Zacatecas, where baseball is king and even volleyball was more popular in the ranchos of my parents than futbol. The childhood sports idols for my generation of cousins were Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela and boxing champion Julio César Chávez, not Mexican soccer legends Hugo Sánchez and Jorge Campos. Our dads bought us hats and bats to occupy our summer, not kits and cleats. I don’t even remember any of us ever owning a soccer ball — and I have nearly 100 cousins.

The first World Cup I remember was the 1994 edition hosted by the United States. I remember reading a huge Times special preview section on the affair and collected some of the commemorative pins that McDonald’s sold. But the matches were background noise in our living room during family parties as we splashed around in the swimming pool at our Anaheim home. When the tournament finale happened at the Rose Bowl, my favorite cousins and mutual best friend instead caught a baseball game at Angel Stadium and knew about Brazil’s victory over Italy only because the people above us in a private suite let us know.

As a sports fan, I paid enough attention to soccer as the decades passed to know who was who and what team was what and which sides kept winning — and that was mostly because I enjoyed EA Sports’ excellent video game version of it. What made playing soccer on consoles so fun — an exponential number of domestic leagues and international tournaments, the fact that every English-language match seemed to have a Scottish color commentator, the seeming aimlessness and formlessness on the pitch broken up by flairs of beauty — made it a slog when watching in real life.

As a reporter, I knew enough about soccer culture to file stories from watch parties across Southern California’s cornucopia of diasporas every World Cup. As a Mexican American, I cared enough about Mexico’s perpetually heartbreaking El Tri squad to watch their runs and sigh about how we’ll always have it harder than most. But I never bothered to tune in to other matches even as soccer leagues from across the globe have stormed network, cable and streaming channels in recent years.

I never hated the sport — it just never moved me. But when the final whistle blew on this year’s World Cup finale and three-quarters of the packed house at Chapter One: The Modern Bistro cheered wildly, I realized I was finally, truly a soccer fan.

Over 104 games, a bunch of questionable VAR calls, another heartbreaking downfall by Mexico, a bizarre Tom Cruise pregame monologue in the last match and the brilliant goal by Ferran Torres in extra time that let Spain squeak by Argentina 1-0, I slowly learned and felt why soccer is the world’s most popular sport, why a billion-plus people watched alongside me Sunday afternoon, and why this Cup kept setting viewership records in the United States and beyond until the end.

Who wouldn’t be moved by the heroic performances of underdog countries against the game’s traditional powers, such as tiny Cape Verde and ancient Egypt? Who couldn’t feel the thrill of seeing young stars meet the hype around them and exceed it — Erling Haaland of Norway, Lamine Yamal of Spain, Mexican midfielder Gilberto Mora, to name the most fabulous? Who didn’t want to interact with fan bases that distilled the best of their side’s cultures and traditions and showed it off to everyone and anyone — I’m doing Norway’s Viking Row even as I type.

Who can’t learn from the life lessons soccer offers — and I’m not talking about the obvious geopolitical metaphors? I knew some of them, yet I never really absorbed them until I decided to make Chapter One my gustatory church for the Cup and watch as many games there as possible. I caught so many that I effectively became a walking Manhattan cocktail for the summer, and while my liver won’t forgive me for a while, my heart and soul absolutely have.

The one thing I always admired about domestic leagues — well, except Major League Soccer — is the relegation system, where the bottom teams in one league swap places with the top teams in a lower-ranked league at the end of each season. For national tournaments, the corollary is how poorer countries always have to match up against richer ones for regional face-offs and qualifiers that culminate in the quadrennial dream that is the World Cup.

That makes soccer a beacon of hope and possibility that few other team sports can offer, especially in an era where top teams try everything possible to keep everyone else out of their riches (which is why relegation will probably never come to MLS). In a world where the haves are grinding down the have-nots, soccer is a reminder that anything truly is possible for anyone — you just have to keep at it.

The Chapter One gatherings quickly taught me how the long lulls broken up by spurts of passion that I once found a drag were actually as stirring as a religious experience. It’s impossible not to feel this watching even one game — but a succession of them have the effect of a full conversion.

Cheers and chants turned into prayers. Boos against opponents and bad referees and yells at your side to do better was the Spirit moving you to testify. Text threads among friends became daily missals. When your side scored, it was like the gift of life itself — I’ve never been in a louder environment than when Mexico scored against England, a roar that rivaled a jet engine.

When your side lost, like Mexico eventually, inevitably did, it was a reminder that we all must at some point — but that we shouldn’t dwell on defeat because while eternal glory isn’t guaranteed, it can happen. And that’s why soccer teaches we must continue no matter how bad our team performed, no matter how terrible things get or how hopeless life seems.

After every Mexico match, downtown Santa Ana became the most wonderful expression of happiness I’ve ever been lucky enough to join — fireworks, conga lines, street takeovers or just standing among thousands of strangers and soaking it all in. It was the revival of a people whom a year early were angrily protesting on those same city blocks if they weren’t sheltering in place because ICE was running roughshod over Southern California.

Only soccer could’ve caused such a joyous revolt. We should all channel some of that magic into our daily lives.

And in the middle of all this emotion, I actually watched what was going on. I saw talented teams such as South Korea collapse under pressure and my beloved Mexico valiantly fall against an English squad that was taller, faster and just better — for now. Haaland’s singularity was a testament to how humanity seeks heroes — but Spain’s ultimate triumph via crisp passes and selfless teamwork offered a stirring, convincing collective counterpoint.

Soccer probably won’t supplant my love for baseball, football, basketball and hockey — but I can now mention it in the same breath as them.

International and professional soccer is rife with corruption and avarice and increasingly embraces the worst tendencies of late-stage capitalism. And yet fans suspend their cynicism for a few hours — for a tournament, for a season — because they know that the communion that soccer offers is pure and holy.

It truly is the people’s game. And no amount of Gianni Infantino or mysteriously suspended red cards can ever take that away.

Now that the Cup is over, my mind is racing with what club teams I should start to follow and continue my World Cup experience. I already kind of like Bayern Munich because that was the side I chose in EA Sports FIFA 18 (to show how retrograde my soccer knowledge remains, I still think James Rodriguez, Thomas Müller and Robert Lewandowski play for them), but who will I root for in Premier League? I can’t do Arsenal even though Chapter One is the official Orange County home for Gooner fans because that would be too obvious. Maybe Crystal Palace, about which I know nothing other than that was also the name of the Bakersfield music hall owned by country legend Buck Owens?

Zacatecas has never had a successful club team — baseball still rules there, after all — so I think I’ll root for Pumas UNAM to honor all my Mexico City friends who urged me forever to give soccer a true chance. I don’t really know any La Liga squads besides Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid and FC Barcelona, so I have a lot of studying to do there. And between the Galaxy and LAFC? Well, time for me to catch a home-and-home El Tráfico and let their support groups court me.

One team I know I’ll now follow: Angel City, the L.A. women’s soccer side brilliant enough to rebrand itself “Immigrant City Football Club” last summer in the midst of President Trump’s deportation deluge while the city’s other professional sports teams stayed quiet. And I’m already counting down the months before Brazil hosts the Women’s World Cup a year from now and Chapter One becomes my Cheers anew.

Soccer: it’s been a long time coming between you and me. But here I am! Drop those hydration breaks, and you’ve got a fanático for life.

For nearly two decades, Nigeria fought Boko Haram and its offshoots, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Ansaru, largely with bombs, bullets, and casualties announced in press briefings. However, the slow process of delivering justice through prosecution was the part of the counterterrorism machine that never quite got built properly. 

Thousands of suspects, many of them innocent, disappeared into the barracks and detention facilities of Giwa, Wawa, and the Borno Maximum Security Prison, some for a decade or more, without ever seeing a judge. HumAngle has reported extensively on that. Now, that is visibly changing.

At least 865 convictions were secured between January and July 2026 alone, according to Nigeria’s Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA). The convictions are part of the country’s Mass Trial Programme, a series of tribunal sittings. That figure represents more than half of all terrorism-related convictions the programme has produced since its inception, according to Zakari Mijinyawa, the ONSA’s Director of Legal Services.

However, ONSA has not released comprehensive data on acquittals, dismissals, plea agreements, or pending cases within this period, making it difficult to assess the programme’s overall prosecutorial performance or conviction rate.

In April, a federal court in Abuja convicted 386 people in a single sitting after four days of hearings before a panel of 10 judges, with sentences ranging from five years to life. In June, 12 more defendants were sentenced to death by hanging in cases spanning terrorism financing, kidnapping, and the 2022 massacre at St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, where terrorists killed more than 40 worshippers.

The charges themselves read like a mirror of how an insurgency actually sustains itself: not only fighters but financiers, couriers, and suppliers. One man was sentenced to 20 years for selling cattle and goats to Boko Haram; the presiding judge, Justice Binta Nyako, called the offence “so gruesome” and rejected pleas for leniency. Another received ten years for exchanging roughly ₦750,000 with the group. A woman was convicted for ferrying hundreds of rounds of ammunition to a terror leader in the country’s northwestern region. 

This is prosecutorial attention to the economic scaffolding of terrorism – financing, logistics, and information-withholding; rather than a fixation on the terrorist with the gun, which has historically been the easiest and least useful person to punish.

Justice delayed – now being served 

Just as significant, though less publicised, is what has been happening on the other side of the ledger. The Department of State Services, under its current Director-General, Oluwatosin Adeola Ajayi, has spent the past year and a half reopening what officials describe as “inherited” detention files, including cases dating back to 2021 and 2022 involving people held for years on suspicion of terrorism before internal review panels ultimately found the allegations baseless.

A Kaduna farmer and herder, Nura Idris, arrested in 2024 over alleged Boko Haram links, was cleared and paid ₦3 million. A Yobe State resident, Ya’u Mohammed, received a similar package after two years in custody. Perhaps the starkest case is that of Sunday Ifedi, arrested with his wife, Calista, in 2021 over alleged links to the separatist group IPOB; Calista died in detention before either of them was ever tried. Sunday was released in December 2025 and paid ₦10 million, and the DSS says it now intends to rebuild the restaurant Calista once ran, in her name. Agency sources say more than 30 such cases have been reviewed and over ₦300 million has been paid out in total.

None of this restores what was lost. Years of a life lost, families destroyed, or a wife who did not come home. But as a matter of institutional behaviour, it is a genuine departure. Public compensation for wrongful terrorism detention remains unusual among West African security services. 

Even though it comes after years of pressure from human rights groups and media organisations, the reviews suggest a shift in institutional practice under the current DSS leadership, in which “we got this wrong” is no longer an unspeakable sentence inside Nigeria’s intelligence services. However, it is too early to know whether the approach will endure. 

For a country whose counterterrorism record has been shadowed for years by allegations of arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearance in military custody, allegations HumAngle and other outlets have documented extensively, that is not a small shift.

Communities in the North East, particularly in Borno and Yobe, where terrorism has been ravaging lives, have long complained that indiscriminate sweeps net far more innocent men than actual insurgents. In 2014, for instance, 42 men from Gallari, a community in Borno State, were arbitrarily arrested and detained by the Nigerian Army. By 2025, more than a decade later, only five were still alive. Of those five, only three were eventually released. 

Each acquittal or compensation payout, in theory, is a data point against that particular grievance, and a small deposit into public trust that has been overdrawn for a generation. 

Still, an important puzzle remains why this shift is happening, and if there are measures in place to prevent further arbitrary or illegal arrests and detention of innocent citizens. An official with the DSS, who pleaded anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media, offered some insight into this. 

“The Director-General, on assuming office, directed that no arrest is made until all reasonable evidence is gathered about the offence being committed or believed to be about to be committed and the evidence is substantial enough to secure conviction in court,” they said. 

The halt of Operation Safe Corridor? 

It is against this backdrop that the Senate’s intervention on July 8 lands. Meeting to discuss a wave of attacks on military personnel,  prompted by the abduction and death in captivity of retired Major General Rabe Abubakar, the Senate adopted a resolution urging the federal government to halt Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC), the decade-old programme that screens, deradicalises, and reintegrates former Boko Haram terrorists who surrender rather than fight to the end. 

In July, Senator Joseph Ikpea, who represents Edo Central Senatorial District, made an additional prayer, seconded by former labour leader and Edo North Senator Adams Oshiomhole, arguing that pardoning and rehabilitating people responsible for atrocities makes no sense while their victims and the families of fallen soldiers receive comparatively little. The Senate wants surrendering fighters prosecuted instead, and “made to face the full wrath of the law”. 

The instinct is neither irrational nor new. Communities that watched OPSC graduates return home with vocational grants while widows of soldiers got condolence visits have voiced exactly this complaint for years. HumAngle’s own reporting from Borno has documented residents’ fury, alongside cases of the programme’s supposed “clients” turning out to be non-combatants swept up in raids and warehoused there simply because army cells were overcrowded. 

HumAngle understands that not everyone who goes through a deradicalisation programme was once a terrorist. Some of them can, in fact, be described as victims. Sources confirmed to HumAngle that whenever Boko Haram or ISWAP terrorists storm a village, they often prevent anyone from leaving and force residents to choose between joining the insurgents or being killed. For some people, the instinct to survive leaves them with little choice but to go along with the terrorists, hoping they will eventually find an opportunity to escape and surrender to the military. 

Even after surrendering, such individuals are usually required to undergo the deradicalisation process because of the time they spent under the control of the insurgents and the possibility that their beliefs or worldview may have been influenced.

There are also people who are made to undergo deradicalisation because they spent long periods in military detention facilities or prisons alongside high-profile terrorist suspects. The concern is that prolonged exposure to extremist inmates could have affected their thinking, even if they are later cleared and released. That was the case for Abubakar, a man who was once accused of belonging to Boko Haram but was later freed after authorities established that he was innocent. He told HumAngle that because of the years he spent in detention, he was still required to pass through the deradicalisation programme at Mallam Sidi, a facility in Gombe State that serves as the OPSC rehabilitation centre.

However, civil society groups such as the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and the CREAP Africa Initiative, in response to the Senate’s move, called for something more surgical: an evidence-based review of the programme’s screening and transparency, not its abolition.

“CISLAC commends the Senate for responding to earlier calls drawing national attention to the worsening security situation and reiterates that protecting the lives of Nigerians, upholding justice, and restoring public confidence in national security institutions must remain central to all government responses to terrorism and violent extremism,” stated its director, Auwal Rafsanjani. 

But the Senate’s prescription runs into an operational reality that the mass trials should make obvious: Operation Safe Corridor and the tribunal system are not rivals competing for the same defendants. They were designed, from the start, to sort two different populations: hardened commanders and financiers who should be prosecuted, and conscripted or coerced low-level members whom the military itself has long argued should not be, because there would be nowhere to put tens of thousand of them, and because the promise of a “safe corridor” home is one of the few incentives that reliably pulls terrorists out of the bush faster than bullets do. 

Babayo Sule, a security analyst, put it this way in response to the resolution: the programme exists precisely because years of a purely kinetic strategy failed to end the insurgency on its own; scrapping it removes one of the few levers that can shrink Boko Haram’s manpower without a single shot being fired.

“The Nigerian government will not have opted for the choice of deradicalisation except that Nigeria’s security architecture is overwhelmed by the multi-pronged and multidimensional challenges of insecurity across the country,” he said.

There is also a due-process irony the Senate seems not to have registered. The same week lawmakers called for suspending rehabilitation in favour of prosecution, courts were demonstrating, at unprecedented volume, that prosecution is now genuinely available and increasingly being used. 

The danger of the Senate’s resolution, then, is less that it is emotionally wrong (grief for a murdered general and for civilians killed for a generation is entirely legitimate) than that it collapses two distinct instruments into one, at the exact moment when both are showing, separately, signs of working. 

That distinction has, in fact, just been reinforced by the federal government itself. On Monday, July 13, the ONSA, through the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), unveiled a comprehensive set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Nigeria’s Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme. Rather than expanding eligibility for rehabilitation, the framework seeks to formalise a process that has often been criticised as opaque by defining institutional responsibilities, referral pathways, case management procedures, human rights safeguards, and mechanisms for inter-agency coordination.

Perhaps more importantly, officials were explicit that DDR is not intended to replace criminal accountability. Abimbola Wońosikou, the NCTC’s Director of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, stressed during the validation workshop that individuals accused of serious crimes would continue to face prosecution through the appropriate legal processes, while only those who meet established eligibility criteria would proceed through rehabilitation and reintegration. 

In effect, the SOPs are intended to codify the distinction between those who should stand trial and those whose circumstances warrant disengagement and rehabilitation, an area critics have long argued lacked sufficient clarity and transparency.

“What needs to be done is to look at what is wrong, how to amend it and how to make it better. It is even better to expand the programme rather than discard it,” Babayo said.

This, HumAngle gathered, could include reforming screening, introducing tighter oversight of who qualifies as a “low-risk” defector, and ensuring faster referral of the genuinely culpable into the tribunal system. The newly adopted DDR SOPs appear designed to achieve many of these objectives by clarifying institutional mandates, strengthening oversight, and embedding human rights safeguards throughout the process. Such measures would address almost every grievance the Senate raised without discarding the one mechanism that has, for a decade, given terrorists still in Sambisa and the Lake Chad Basin forests a reason to walk out instead of dig in.

Whether these safeguards restore public confidence will depend less on the existence of the SOPs than on how consistently they are applied, particularly in deciding who qualifies for rehabilitation and who is referred for prosecution. 

The Grand Tour is back for its seventh series, but it has a brand new trio of presenters – and one you might recognise as a famous trainspotter from Instagram

The Grand Tour will return to screens later this year, it has been confirmed. But there are three new hosts replacing Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

In a huge shake up to the presenting line-up, fans might be surprised to know that all the new stars are online influencers – and one of them isn’t even known for his content about cars.

Taking over the reigns from Clarkson and his clan are James Engelsman and Thomas Holland, creators of the YouTube phenomenon Throttle House, which sees the pair take on track tests, car reviews and go on epic adventures.

But one face fans might be a little surprised to see – as his car knowledge is yet to be tested – is trainspotting Instagram icon Francis Bourgeois.

Though 26-year-old Francis has won legions of fans on social media with his hilarious go-pro videos when trains go past and boasts 2.7million followers on Instagram alone, he’s only recently began to post the odd bit of car content.

Though in a hilarious post on Tuesday, the self-professed railway enthusiast and mechanical engineer posted a photo of his head on a gear stick and captioned it: “Same show. New knobs,” in a promo for the new Grand Tour show, which is set to air on Amazon Prime from September 4.

The new line-up has divided fans who are yet to tune into the new six-part series. One wrote: “Hoping they do a sort of ‘passing the torch’ episode. I’ll give the new show a shot. Love the train dude lol.”

Another said: “The throttle guys are awesome too. They may have actually cooked with this trio.” A follower joked: “They should film the segments around Chipping Norton and have Clarkson kicking off at them in his tractor!”

But other fans were less convinced, with one saying: “Thanks, I’ll continue to rewatch Hammond, Clarkson and May on my Plex server.” a social media user chimed in: “No one is going to be better than Clarkson, Hammond and May… No chance.”

“It’s not Top Gear or The Grand Tour without Clarkson, Hammond and May. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. The format isn’t the show, those three ARE the show,” said a third. While a fourth added: “Yes, they should never make The Grand Tour or Top Gear again. Make something else.”

Speaking in 2024, when all three previous presenters retired from the show, Clarkson – who is now 66 – said: “My advice to Amazon would be – and I’ve given this to them already – for heaven’s sake, do not get well known people who ‘like’ cars. Because when you do that show it has to be your life.”

The Clarkson’s Farm star added: “I would get three complete unknowns. Start small, like we did. They’ve got to be absolute petrolheads.

“I’ve got to be able to show them a picture of a quarter of a door mirror from any car ever made, and they’ve got to know what it is. I’d go to motoring journalists. James, Richard and I are all motoring journalists. That would be my advice if you want to continue with it, and I would hope that Amazon do continue with it.” And it seems Amazon may well have listened…

*The Grand Tour returns to Amazon Prime on September 4

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A HUGE new attraction set to open in a trending seaside town has finally been given the green light.

Morecambe was named the fastest-rising place for Brits going on a staycation last month, according to Booking.com.

And the new Eden Project Morecambe in Lancashire is set to go ahead after securing planning permission.

It comes as the £100million attraction in the often overlooked town created new designs that needed approval from Lancaster City Council.

As for the attraction itself, everything will be centred around the Realm of the Sun, Realm of the Moon and an area called Metronome.

In the Realm of the Sun, visitors can expect a tropical landscape that adapts to both hot and cold seasons, with vertical plants, hanging mini gardens, a multi-sensory area and a waterfall.

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Then in the Realm of the Moon, the space will be darker with a “hyper-real rock pool” that has sped-up cycles of tides.

Outside, there will be a number of landscaped gardens and an arena to explore too.

And of course, there will be shops and restaurants for the visitors as well.

In the most recent announcement, there will be a £4.5million immersive experience called The Elder Tree.

The tree will stretch nearly 20 metres and take visitors on a journey from its roots to its hollows.

The attraction is expected to get around 585,000 visitors a year, with a capacity of up to 740,000.

Outside, in the arena, the capacity will be 6,000 people.

Parts of the attraction are expected to open in 2027, with other parts opening at a later date.

Plans originally approved in 2022 included four domes, but in the most recent plans this was reduced to two domes.

Emmerdale’s Serena Sugden’s secret was exposed to her cousin Robert by his ex Kev Townsend on Monday’s episode of the ITV soap, and it might not end well for some characters

Serena in Emmerdale seems to have finally been exposed, as her secret career was revealed.

Kev Townsend finally remembered where he knew Serena from, and he wasted no time in telling her cousin Robert Sugden. Kev shocked Robert as he outed Serena as a copper.

If he’s correct, this explains her shifty behaviour and her constant interrogations. But why is she asking questions about her killer cousin John Sugden and his victims?

Moira Dingle, Vanessa Woodfield and Aaron Dingle had all been suspicious of Serena as she quizzed them about John’s killer actions. While Robert wasn’t concerned, he was warned by Moira on Monday.

Moira told him how she’d been looking into Nate’s death at the hands of John, and she warned him not to tell Serena about how John died. It seems Moira could have been right to be so worried.

Kev then let himself into Robert’s house, leaving Robert stunned. But he was even more shocked when Kev dropped the bombshell that Serena “is police”, branding her a “copper”.

So is Serena a police officer, and is Kev right? He did say he never forgets a face and he’s rarely every wrong so it seems Serena has been sussed.

But what will Robert do with this information, and what is Serena up to? Of course Robert knows his sister Victoria Sugden, Serena’s other cousin, killed John in self-defence.

So Serena being a police officer could be bad news for them as they are covering up a crime. It comes as Aaron is set to make a discovery about his partner Robert’s cousin Serena, after he continues to be concerned about her presence.

When Robert is knocked unconscious by a runaway trailer on the farm, Serena helps him. But after she calls Aaron and tends to Robert’s injuries, Aaron shares his concern about Serena.

He questions the fact that Serena just happened to be at the right place at the right time. But spoilers could explain what really caused the incident with Robert, and it might have nothing to do with Serena.

A spoiler about a scene involving Mackenzie Boyd and Ross Barton, who are at the farm that same week, mentions a trailer. Is it just a coincidence, or is it linked?

So the spoiler reads: “A simmering tension from Mack towards Ross builds as they load bags from a trailer.” It’s at this point that the pair end up fighting, and Mack attacks Ross.

So what happens with the trailer? Is it the same trailer that ends up “running away’ and colliding with poor Robert on the farm?

Emmerdale airs weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Pickford made an uncertain start to the World Cup, at fault when he was beaten at his near post when DR Congo took the lead against England in Atlanta before captain Harry Kane’s two late goals saw them through.

In the pressure cooker of the Azteca, however, Pickford had his finest game for England, with two brilliant first-half saves from Mexico striker Raul Jimenez, followed by an outstanding display of penalty-area command in a frantic second period.

“It was a very brave display of goalkeeping,” said Robinson. “I really admired what he did out there in that second half and his two saves in the first half kept England in the game. They could have been out of it by half-time if it wasn’t for him.”

Pickford won widespread praise for the way he took charge of his penalty area, taking the initiative by coming for crosses and corners on a regular basis as England, down to 10 men after Jarell Quansah was sent off early in the second half, came under siege.

“He decided that he was going to stand up. He came for crosses, made decisions to go for balls, making life easier for his defenders because of how good he was.

“The easiest thing as a goalkeeper is to stay on your line because you don’t get criticised. If you stay on your line you can’t make a mistake, but he showed maturity and bravery.

“He showed the way his game has developed by coming off his line, making those decisions, making big bold calls. That’s where you see how much he has evolved.

“Jordan took it upon himself, punched the ball, caught the ball, made life easier for his defenders.

“He doesn’t mind what players are in front of him. It doesn’t faze him. He’s played with a different back four for most games, with the full-backs alternating and a change in central defence.

“The players know him and trust him. I think there is a good relationship there.”

And Pickford’s Mexico masterclass can bolster England’s confidence as they try to overcome the dangerous Norwegians and master striker Erling Haaland, who demonstrated their threat by beating Brazil 2-0 in the last 16.

“I think Jordan Pickford’s confidence will be at an all-time high and the team’s will be as well after their win against Mexico,” added Robinson.

“I questioned them on air when Thomas Tuchel went to a back five after 71 minutes. I was thinking I wasn’t sure they would hang on, and that would have been a stick he would have been beaten with.

“It did go right and Jordan Pickford was a big part of it going right.”

WORK will start in September on a new mega airport which will take on major hubs like London Heathrow and Dubai.

When fully operational, it’s expected to have as many as 60million passengers every year.

The airport called Port Polska, formerly Centralny Port Komunikacyjny, will be one one of the biggest in Europe once fully built.

Designs for the Polish terminal by Foster + Partners (behind projects such as Crossrail Place Canary Wharf and other major airports) and and Buro Happold were accepted in late-2025.

Now, Budimex has been contracted to start the work on its foundations which will start in September of this year.

This initial work is expected to be completed in 2027 at the cost of £28.6million.

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The entire project is expected to be built for £27billion.

It’s been said that the ‘infrastructure will make it the most modern airport in Central Europe‘.

Port Polska is scheduled to open in 2032 with two runways and capacity for more than 300,000 flights each year.

It will have just one passenger terminal which will cover 450,000m².

This means it will be almost three times the size of nearby Warsaw Chopin Airport’s passenger terminal.

The terminal at Port Polska will be across three levels.

Level two will be where travellers will find the ticket and baggage check-in, security control, arrivals and departures for the Schengen zone.

Level one will be where most of the arrivals and departures for the Non-Schengen zone, transfer centres and passport control.

Level zero will have coach gates for both Schengen and non-Schengen zones, baggage reclaim and an arrivals hall.

Initially, it will have two runways, but there are plans to expand with a third runway in the future, and even a fourth.

The project includes plans for over a thousand miles of new high-speed railway.

According to the schedule, the airport’s railway station will be completed by 2029.

In its first stage, Port Polska Airport is expected to handle up to 11,000 passengers per hour, and up to 34million per year.

By 2040, the airport could see over 60million passengers per year.

In comparison, 84.5million passengers travel through London Heathrow Airport each year.

Meanwhile, Dubai International Airport (DXB) handled a record-breaking 95.2 million passengers last year.

The airport was initially set to be called Centralny Port Komunikacyjny, or CPK.

In December last year, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the name had been changed: “We won’t be using a name that our predecessors discredited.

“Everyone who lands there, everyone who uses this airport, everyone who shops there should know: yes—this is the heart of Europe, yes—this is Port Polska.”

In the future, the iconic image of the commander-in-chief strolling through the grass of the White House South Lawn onto the Marine One helicopter will be a faded memory. President Donald Trump today said he had ordered a granite helipad be built on the South Lawn to protect it from the intense exhaust heat and rotor wash generated by the new VH-92A Patriot helicopter that will shuttle him, the vice president, their families, and their closest advisors, around, both at home and abroad. Based on imagery of the White House from satellite and far close to the ground, the helipad is already deeply under construction.

The helipad, he added, will be paid for by Sikorsky, the Lockheed Martin subsidiary that makes the VH-92A. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that the White House building a helipad on the South Lawn.

“For 50 years we’ve been landing helicopters on grass,” Trump told reporters at the White House today. “The grass is wet, soggy, and our other Marine Ones are about 40 years old.”

Aging VH-3Ds currently used for the mission are set to be retired completely sometime this year. However, the Marines expect to keep flying their VH-60Ns through at least 2030 because of their particular ability to operate in hot and/or high-altitude environments. 

The VH-92As “are about two and a half times more powerful than the old ones,” the American leader explained. “And when you land on the grass, it’s not that the grass gets discolored, it gets ripped out.”

The problem, as we reported on for years, led to a delays in the operational deployment of the VH-92A.

“This was a little bit of a planning mistake,” Trump explained. “So they landed the helicopter, and half of the grass was sitting in front of the Oval Office front door. The rest, it was scattered all over.”

The grass was also singed, Trump added.

“Everybody said, ‘well, we’ll keep using the old helicopters when we have to land at the White House, and for everything else we use the new helicopters.’ That’s a pretty expensive deal, you wouldn’t do that for your company.” 

Trump proffered that Sikorsky, who makes the new VH-92, is going to pick up estimated $5 million to $6 million construction costs.

“You know why?” Trump exclaimed, answering his own question. “Because they didn’t tell us how powerful these helicopters were, and they felt a little bit guilty.”

It isn’t clear how the same issue will impact how the VH-92s will be used when flying abroad, as using large fields as landing zones is not uncommon for such trips.

Trump didn’t offer a timeline for this project or name the company doing the construction work. Lockheed confirmed ⁠the contribution range shared by Trump.

“This specific contribution was made to the Trust for the National Mall, the National Park Service’s non-profit organization,” a ​Lockheed Martin spokesperson ​said in ⁠a statement.

“Our engagement with the federal government is guided by rigorous ethics and compliance standards and ​conducted in full accordance with all applicable laws ​and regulations.”

The “VH‑92A Patriot is a recognizable patriotic asset known around the globe for safety, security and reliability,” a Sikorsky spokesperson said. “It brings increased capabilities for the no‑fail mission supporting the Commander‑in‑Chief around the world. The helicopter delivers increased performance and reduced maintenance costs and time over the current fleet of presidential helicopters.”

It’s worth noting that Trump has been a corporate customer of Sikorsky helicopters for decades and has lauded their capabilities and reliability, having multiple S-76s in his corporate fleet.

Upon learning that Sikorsky was footing the bill, Trump said he decided to go for granite.

“Let’s do a beauty, let’s not just do a piece of concrete and paint it white,” he proclaimed. “This one is a beauty. It’s got the seal of the White House, it’s beautiful, the eagle, and it’s carved out of granite stone by some of the most talented people you’ll ever meet. And you’re landing on granite, which is the strongest stone that we can like.”

Trump suggested that when the helipad isn’t being used for Marine One, it can be used for events or even press conferences. The president also stated that once the helipad is finished, “we’ll be able to finally retire 45-year-old helicopters.”

The destruction of the White House lawn wasn’t the only issue delaying the use of the VH-92A as the only presidential helicopter. Communications systems problems were one of the hurdles these helicopters had overcome on its long road to reaching operational service, which was supposed to occur years ago.

Sikorsky, which won a $1.24 billion contract, delivered the 23rd and final VH-92A Patriot to the Marines on Aug. 19, 2024. That same day, then-President Joe Biden took the first presidential trip on one of those aircraft.

The U.S. Marine Corps achieved Initial Operational Capability (IOC) for the VH-92A in December 2021, and HMX-1 commenced operational missions with the new aircraft in 2022.

Trump’s helipad declaration comes as he is already turning the former East Wing into a new ballroom/military center. It should be noted that while Trump initially said the project would cost $400 million and be paid for by private donors, the administration wound up seeking a billion dollars in new funding from Congress for the U.S. Secret Service. Of that money, $220 million would go toward the facility, while the rest would go to other efforts to enhance security around the complex. The spending plan is now caught up in a legal battle.

In our story about that project, we raised the question about whether Trump would use the roof of that building as a new helipad.

From that story: “Not long after the East Wing was torn down, we inquired with the White House if the ballroom’s roof would work as a helipad for Marine One. This inquiry was spurred by the chronic landing area issues with the new VH-92A Marine One helicopters. We never got a response, but the news hit this weekthat the White House is now looking to build a helicopter landing pad due to this issue. It isn’t perfectly clear if the ballroom could serve in this role or at least be used as an alternative landing site.”

It’s also worth noting that the manicured grass where the helipad is going was already damaged by the temporarily set up for UFC fight on Trump’s 80th birthday, so the timing for the helipad install does make sense.

We don’t know exactly when the new granite helipad will come online, but it will likely be this summer. And while it is yet be another way Trump has put his mark on the White House grounds, above all else, it will finally usher in the VH-92 as the primary Marine One helicopter and will allow the long-serving VH-3D Sea Kings to fly off into retirement once and for all.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

A CHARMING English pier is finally getting a £550,000 upgrade next month.

The Grade ll-listed Victorian structure was forced to close two years ago after it was damaged during a heavy storm.

Worthing Borough Council has said work will start in August on new foundations for the town’s pier.

It comes after the original £930,000 cost estimate was reportedly revised to £550,000.

A storm damaged the pier in October 2024 but it reopened two months later with a temporary steel support in place.

Council bosses have said the pier, which was built in 1862, will continue to remain open while the work is undertaken.

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It is expected to be fully refurbished by the end of 2026.

In a statement, the council said the works “will give the pier new foundations to allow it to stand against the elements without the need for the steel support structure”.

Routine maintenance will take place on the underside of the pier during the structural works, according to the local authority.

Officials said the cost reduction to the project was due to contractors no longer requiring the removal and refitting of the pier’s timber deck.

Worthing Borough Council leader Caroline Baxter said: “Our pier is one of Worthing’s best-loved landmarks and a huge part of our coastal heritage.

“Looking after it isn’t just about maintaining a structure – it’s about protecting a place that means so much to local people and continues to attract visitors from across the country.”

LONDON — Claire Liu packed her bags and checked out of her London hotel room on Wednesday morning before heading to the All England Club.

It was more pragmatism than pessimism — a reality of a qualifier navigating her Wimbledon journey one day at a time.

But as her boyfriend reminded her while organizing her luggage: “Just because you’re packing doesn’t mean you’re leaving,” Liu recalled with a laugh.

He was right.

The Thousand Oaks native went on to win her second-round match against 51st-ranked Zeynep Sonmez of Turkey 7-5, 6-3, advancing to the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time in her professional career. She had tried 29 previous times at majors, including qualifying rounds, since 2015.

“I was just super relieved to get through that,” said Liu, noting she had blown a set and a break lead in the French Open’s second round last month.

For Liu, who turned 26 in May, returning to the manicured lawns of SW19 brings her tennis journey full circle. Nine years ago, she captured the 2017 Wimbledon girls’ singles title — the first American to do so since Chanda Rubin in 1992 — and was the No. 1 junior in the world. She still holds fond memories of that heady achievement, including chatting with her idol, Roger Federer, at the Wimbledon Champions Ball.

Yet, the transition from teenage phenom to professional mainstay has been anything but a linear ascent. When asked if she expected to be in the third round of a major this late in her career given her junior success, Liu was candid.

“Younger me would have believed it more than now,” she said.

That shift in perspective comes after weathering some brutal setbacks.

Liu climbed as high as No. 52 in early 2023 but then endured a wrist injury and took a months-long mental health hiatus in 2024 that eventually saw her ranking plummet outside the top 400 last year.

Currently sitting at No. 146, she’s been rebuilding her standing by playing a mix of WTA 125 events and ITF tournaments before returning to the main WTA Tour, with 2026 stops in far-flung places from Bahrain to Boca Raton and plenty of places in between.

“My goals haven’t changed, but I think the stress of how I got there really took a toll on me,” said Liu.

To navigate the darkness, Liu leaned heavily into both sports psychology and traditional therapy, including EMDR, a technique that helps people process traumatic experiences. She also started a Substack newsletter called “Finding Claire-ity,” where she openly chronicles her life and struggles on the tour.

The Southern California native, who has trained at the USTA facility in Carson since she was 9 years old and resides in Redondo Beach, also split with her longtime coach last season, a difficult decision, and hired Clemens Wagner.

The switch following the U.S. Open last year is clicking.

“I saw in her someone who fought a lot of battles inside herself,” says Austrian-born Wagner, who has a background in tennis analytics.

Together, they have focused on keeping an “aggressive undertone” on the grass, emphasizing coming to the net and squeezing the most out of her game.

Wagner notes that the 5-foot-7 player’s game isn’t the flashiest, but describes her as a “silent killer” who excels at “redirecting pace, standing close to the baseline, constantly putting pressure on her opponents.”

The reboot is starting to pay significant dividends.

Liu put together her best stretch in years this spring, winning a lower-tier title in Trnava, Slovakia, her first professional title since 2024, and then qualifying for the French Open.

Having again successfully navigated three rounds of qualifying to reach the main draw here, Liu has now won five consecutive matches at Wimbledon. Not surprisingly, she currently has no sponsors, just equipment support from Head Sport and Asics Corp., making her Wimbledon run particularly lucrative. By reaching the third round, Liu achieved her highest career payday: around $250,000. A victory Friday would boost that to nearly $400,000.

First, she faces her biggest test yet: a third-round contest against two-time major champion Coco Gauff on No. 1 Court, which perhaps fittingly is the same show court where Liu won the girls’ title almost a decade ago.

Gauff, 22, noted that she and Liu haven’t crossed paths much since Liu is older, but expects a serious battle. Gauff won both of their previous meetings on hard courts.

“I feel like anytime you’re playing a qualifier, it’s always tough because they have three matches already,” the seventh-seeded American said.

Liu, who didn’t even know she was playing Gauff until a reporter told her after her match, is purposefully keeping her focus narrow.

“I will just take today to be happy for winning, and then tomorrow I’ll think about it,” Liu said. “Obviously she’s one of the best players in the world right now, so that’ll be a good experience.”

Veteran Jessica Pegula, 32, the top-ranked American who also toiled away on the sport’s lower tier before becoming a top-10 mainstay, appreciates Liu’s resolve.

“It’s always nice to see girls that are figuring it out slowly but surely,” the No. 4 seed said. “I think I can relate to that.”

Liu’s accommodations? Fortunately, her mother was able to rebook the same hotel after the match, which eased some of the logistical issues for her unexpectedly extended stay in London.

“It definitely makes me stay in the moment, like, day by day,” Liu smiled of her lodging limbo.

On Wednesday morning, Liu packed her bags expecting she might leave Wimbledon. Instead, she emptied them one more time, with the biggest match of her career still waiting.

At the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, on June 17, Kenyan President William Ruto revealed that his country was nearing a critical minerals agreement with the United States. Far more significant was Kenya’s insistence that its rare earths, lithium, graphite, copper, nickel and niobium be refined and processed domestically rather than exported as raw materials. This was not simply another minerals deal; it was a signal that African governments are trying to rewrite the extractive bargain.

That demand, long voiced but rarely enforced, is beginning to reshape African resource governance. Namibia has prohibited exports of unprocessed lithium, cobalt, manganese, graphite and rare earths. Mali is constructing a 200-tonne-a-year gold refinery while requiring more local refining. Ghana will begin buying 30 percent of large-scale gold output from July 2026 to strengthen local refining and reserves. Across the continent, governments are increasingly requiring natural resources to create industries at home before generating profits abroad. The turn is not confined to critical minerals; it reflects a wider push to keep more value from natural resources at home.

Kenya’s move comes as the global race for critical minerals intensifies and Africa assumes greater strategic importance. Lithium consumption rose by almost 30 percent in 2024 as countries accelerated investment in electric vehicles, battery storage, renewable energy systems and advanced manufacturing. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects lithium use will increase fivefold by 2040, with graphite and nickel requirements roughly doubling.

This commodity boom differs in one crucial respect: The supply of critical minerals cannot expand rapidly. New mines often take well more than a decade to move from discovery through permits and development to first production, even as global demand continues to accelerate. The IEA estimates that, under its Stated Policies Scenario, announced mining projects will leave lithium supply 40 percent short of projected demand by 2035. Countries seeking secure supplies therefore have greater incentives to invest where the minerals already exist, giving African governments more room to negotiate local value addition, technology transfer and industrial investment.

For generations, the continent’s economic role has been brutally simple: Dig, ship and buy back the finished product. The transition minerals boom offers a rare opportunity to reverse that relationship. But this will require reliable power, transport, finance and skills, not export bans alone.

Mining is only the first step. The greatest wealth is created further along the production chain, when minerals are refined, processed and assembled into products that command far higher prices than the ore that left the ground. United Nations data illustrates how rapidly export value rises along the lithium-ion supply chain. In 2022, global exports of lithium ore and brine were worth about $20bn. Battery materials generated $51bn, cell components and battery packs $106bn, and electric vehicles $135bn.

Africa’s challenge is to move further along that chain. Every additional stage completed on the continent captures more income, creates more skilled jobs and embeds more technology before a single battery reaches the market.

Refining minerals is not an end in itself. It is the first step towards building the productive capabilities that distinguish manufacturing economies from extractive ones. Around every refinery cluster, engineering companies, chemical producers, equipment manufacturers, laboratories and specialist suppliers can emerge. Taiwan’s experience offers a broader lesson: With sustained policy, skills and supplier networks, industrial capabilities built in one generation can create higher-value industries in the next.

Africa’s growing confidence reflects a profound shift in supply chain politics. In a market this concentrated, countries that combine mineral deposits with downstream ambition can negotiate stronger terms. What has changed is not simply demand, but dependency: China is the dominant refiner for 19 of the 20 strategic minerals tracked by the IEA. For copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths, the top three refining countries control 86 percent of processed output. The continent should demand beneficiation, meaning the processing of raw materials into higher-value products before export, alongside technology transfer and industrial investment before those resources enter global supply chains.

History offers a cautionary lesson.

Gold, diamonds, copper and oil generated billions of dollars in exports across the continent, yet most resource-rich economies remained dependent on exporting raw commodities rather than manufacturing higher-value products.

The colonial economy was built around those outward flows. In what is now Zambia, copper from Nkana, Mufulira and Nchanga moved through Ndola and across the rail network to Beira, the Mozambican port that linked the Copperbelt to overseas smelters and factories. Across the Gold Coast, in present-day Ghana, cocoa from Kumasi travelled by rail to Sekondi and later Takoradi before entering Britain’s chocolate industry.

Today’s export restrictions, refining mandates and beneficiation policies seek to disrupt that flow. The prize is to capture the industries built around those minerals before they take root elsewhere.

The real wealth in Africa’s transition minerals boom will not be measured by what leaves its ports, but by what never has to. Every tonne of lithium refined, every battery precursor produced and every stage of manufacturing completed before export shifts more income, technology, investment and skilled employment onto the continent.

Research by Publish What You Pay suggests that expanding higher-value mineral processing across Africa could generate an additional $32bn in annual exports, add up to $24bn to the continent’s gross domestic product and create about 2.3 million jobs. More importantly, it would leave behind industries, technologies and expertise that outlast the minerals themselves.

Nigeria’s Dangote refinery provides Africa’s clearest demonstration of what beneficiation can achieve. Located in the Lekki Free Zone outside Lagos and built at a cost of about $20bn, the 650,000-barrel-a-day facility is Africa’s largest single-train refinery.

Since beginning production in early 2024, the refinery has helped transform Nigeria’s energy sector. For decades, the country imported much of its refined fuel, spending billions of dollars in foreign exchange. The refinery now supplies much of the domestic market while exporting petrol, diesel and jet fuel to Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

Between February and March 2026, Nigeria’s clean petroleum exports more than doubled from about 100,000 barrels a day to 214,000 barrels, while helping anchor a new industrial ecosystem of marine infrastructure, storage terminals, petrochemical plants and fertiliser production.

Indonesia exemplifies the same principle.

After banning exports of unprocessed nickel ore on January 1, 2020, Indonesia became a leading producer and exporter of processed nickel products. The country targeted $21.3bn in foreign investment in mining and processing projects, while the value of its nickel product exports rose from less than $1bn in 2015 to nearly $20bn in 2022. New smelters, refineries, battery-material plants and electric vehicle manufacturing have expanded rapidly, though the boom has also brought environmental and labour concerns.

Africa’s transition minerals require the same strategic intent. If Zambia refines copper, Zimbabwe processes lithium, the Democratic Republic of the Congo produces battery precursors, and South Africa manufactures battery components, engineering firms will expand, chemical industries will grow, and skilled workers will find opportunities at home instead of abroad. Railways will carry higher-value products instead of raw ore, tax revenues will become more stable, and manufacturing will increasingly replace extraction as the main driver of long-term economic growth.

No African country needs to manufacture every component of an electric vehicle or every battery cell. Copper, cobalt, lithium, graphite and manganese are spread across different economies, making regional integration an economic necessity rather than a political aspiration. Shared power systems, transport corridors, research institutions, standards and integrated markets will determine whether Africa exports minerals or manufactures products.

That makes the African Continental Free Trade Area indispensable. Properly implemented, it can turn isolated mineral deposits into regional manufacturing systems by lowering trade barriers and allowing countries to specialise. Together, African economies can develop an integrated industrial base that none could achieve alone.

Africa has lived through too many extractive booms that enriched others first. Copper built industries across Europe and North America while Zambia remained dependent on raw exports. Cocoa supplied Britain’s chocolate manufacturers while Ghana captured only a fraction of the value added.

The global energy transition gives Africa its best opportunity in generations to rewrite that history.

Africa can finally mine, beneficiate and industrialise on its own terms.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

A NEW UK train station has finally opened following a £183million building project.

The transport hub has been in the works since 2023 and opened to the public on June 28.

Cambridge South is the city’s third train station and will expand transport links for passengers.

The station will be run and managed by Greater Anglia.

Thameslink, Great Northern, CrossCountry and more services will also run from the station.

This is set to connect passengers to the likes of London, Brighton and Birmingham.

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A direct route from Cambridge South to London Stansted Airport is also set to run.

The station is located next to the famous Cambridge Biomedical Campus and boasts four platforms that will see up to nine trains per hour pass through.

The site also offers over 1,000 bicycle parking spots, ticket vending machines and lifts that provide step-free platform access.

The arrival of the new station will “deliver better transport options and connectivity for 1.8 million passengers”.

It’s also hoped the transport boost will “grow and level up the economy” by increasing employment opportunities.

Paul Bristow, Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, said: “With up to nine trains per hour and all passing services stopping, Cambridge South will make a real difference from day one. 

“Cambridge South will bring London, Stansted Airport and international markets closer, supporting the investment and skilled people we need, and creating opportunities locally too.”