An incredible match, the joint-highest scoring EFL Cup tie in history, and it took extra-time to find a winner.
Still without a win in their return to the Premier League, Reading threw away any joy their fans were feeling as they led Arsenal 4-0 by capitulating to lose 7-5.
Arsenal found themselves four down after 35 minutes, but Theo Walcott’s goal before half‑time sparked a comeback that dragged the match into extra-time.
Marouane Chamakh put Arsenal in front for the first time on the night with a goal in the first period of extra-time, only for Reading striker Pavel Pogrebnyak to make it 5-5.
But Walcott restored Arsenal’s lead before Chamakh completed the scoring.
A remarkable night was further added to by the faintly ridiculous moment when Olivier Giroud and Francis Coquelin threw their shirts into the crowd, thinking the match was over, only to have to awkwardly ask for them back once they realised extra‑time was still to come.
Teendong Lho Rum Faat is celebrated by Lepcha people. It takes place on Tendong Hill in South Sikkim and other parts of the state
Tendong Lho Rum Faat is one of the oldest festivals of the Lepchas and is usually held on August 8th. The name, Tendong is derived from the Lepcha dialect, which translates to ‘the hill of the raised horn’ The three-day celebrations begin with the offering of prayers to Mount Tendong in South Sikkim.
Legend has it that Mt. Tendong saved the Lepcha people during the great deluge which flooded the entire Mayel Lyang country, now known as Sikkim. The festival is an annual thanksgiving to the saviour mountain.
During the festivities, people make a model of the mountain in the facade of their homes and worship it. It is exclusively made of nine stones and the people dance and sing wearing traditional masks to get the blessings of the mountain.
As per the Lepcha mythology, at the time of creation, Tendong Hill had risen from the horns of a deity. It was a volcanic peak that erupted and destroyed Naho and Nather Pokh, the sources of the Teesta and Rangeet rivers which caused a deluge. As the lower region started to flood causing loss of life and property, the horn rose miraculously and the tribesmen hurriedly started to ascend the Tendong Hill, which became their only chance for survival.
Various literary and cultural programmes are held in the state capital to commemorate the occasion. On the concluding day, exhibits of traditional Lepcha food, costumes and ornaments are displayed.
In 1819, Colombia was known as New Grenada and involved in a war for independence from Spain.
Bogota was seen as a key strategic location for both the Republicans and the Royalists to hold, and so both armies were heading to secure the town.
Some 150km north of Bogota the forces met at a bridge over the Teatinos River. The Republican army consisted of Colombian and Venezuelans, with support from the British Legion. The army was led by Brigadier Generals Francisco de Paula Santander and José Antonio Anzoátegui.
In just two hours they defeated the Royalist Colombian-Venezuelan forces.
Even though fighting with the Royalists continued for a few years, the victory at Boyacá is seen as the definitive battle in the war and the precursor for Colombia’s eventual independence from Spain.
This bridge (El Puente de Boyacá) is no longer used, but has been kept as a reminder of South American independence.
Eighty-three lawsuits filed against the Trump administration in 18 months, at a cost of more than $20 million.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced those stats this week, part of an annual report to the Legislature on how we’re spending a special fund set aside to combat President Trump’s overreach.
That doesn’t include more than 120 friend of the court briefs the Golden State has written in legal matters brought by others, or the multitude of cases in which the Trump administration has sued California and Bonta’s office is defending us.
That’s a whole lot of litigation. Is it worth it? Are we huffing and puffing for political points, or do all these lawsuits actually do something positive for the average Californian?
You get what you pay for
I’m going to sound like a bus bench ad for the legal profession, but, at this point, “the courts are standing as the only barrier to the president doing anything that the president wants to do,” Hiroshi Motomura, a professor of law at UCLA, told me.
And what the president apparently wants to do is make the poor and vulnerable poorer and more vulnerable. And don’t think there’s a middle-class exemption. In his second term, Trump has attacked healthcare coverage, special education, education in general, reproductive rights, gender rights, the environment, endangered species, immigrants and more.
“The disastrous impact of Trump’s lawlessness isn’t theoretical or hypothetical. It’s not imagined. It is real. It is hurting real people,” Bonta said. “It is hurting Californians, real families, real businesses, real communities every single day.”
You name it, if it’s not rich and connected, it’s probably under attack. President Lyndon B. Johnson launched a very different war on poverty in 1964 with social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start. This new war on poverty seems intent on increasing it, not eradicating it.
It would be nearly impossible for the people affected by these attacks on government services to fight them on their own, said Richard Abel, a professor emeritus of law at UCLA and the author of multiple books on the Trump presidency.
“They don’t know why it’s happening,” he said. “They don’t have access to lawyers. Many of them are undocumented or afraid to mobilize the legal system.”
That leaves the states, which are often the only other entities that have a legal right to sue, because they too are being harmed by the cuts.
So yeah, our $20 million is well spent. Bonta said his legal work has protected about $207 billion in funding. But I’ll argue the true return on investment is California residents who have been protected in ways they don’t even realize.
Risks we don’t even realize
Take Massachusetts vs. Department of Agriculture, one of the cases California is involved in. This is Trump’s attempt to put new rules on USDA grants for food programs including emergency food assistance, school lunches and food stamps. It would tie compliance with his right-wing, discriminatory policies on immigration, gender ideology and diversity issues to receiving those funds.
Then there’s New York vs. Administration for Children & Families, in which Trump goes after child welfare funds; Washington vs. Department of Education, which attacks mental health grants that help hire school psychologists and counselors; and Illinois vs. Vought, which targets California and three other states run by Democrats for cuts to transportation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for no other reason than politics, the states argue.
Food benefits, access to mental health care, lead poisoning prevention. Just a few more things most of us didn’t realize could be at risk for some of us.
In each of those cases, Bonta and the other Democratic attorneys general stopped the federal actions, even if only temporarily. Some of those cases are ongoing, but with restraining orders or injunctions in place.
Then there’s United States vs. Baass, Trump’s attempt to force Michelle Baass, the director of the California Department of Health Care Services, to turn over a bunch of applications for Medi-Cal benefits for the last five years so the federal government can go on a witch hunt for undocumented folks.
Supposedly these applications, which Baass and her agency were subpoenaed for, are needed for an immigration investigation in the Central Valley. California won in court in March, when a judge denied the federal government’s petition to enforce that subpoena.
Now, the feds are appealing to the 9th Circuit — and California continues to fight to protect the privacy and maybe even safety of the residents who just needed medical care, but could see their sensitive information, including addresses, turned over to immigration authorities if Trump had his way.
How could they possibly fight that on their own?
Then there’s a lawsuit in which Trump is trying to prevent California from continuing to give in-state tuition to Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as youngsters.
In battles such as that one, fought because it’s the right thing to do, Motomura sees a benefit greater than just protecting funding.
It forces us to push back against the federal government’s framing that immigration is “about invaders, you know, climbing walls,” Motomura said.
“This is about people who live in our communities,” he said. “And I think that when Bonta claims that space, he’s not just pushing back. He’s saying, ‘Let’s think about this in terms of building stronger communities,’ and I think that’s a significant shift.”
The rule of law may be battered and bruised, and even at times a bit hinky. But so far, it has held — in no small part because of Democratic attorneys general like Bonta who aren’t just filing lawsuits but have built the staffs and networks to do it effectively. It’s a much larger effort than we give it credit for, but one that has fundamentally protected our everyday lives so well that many have barely noticed the wolves at the door.
I’m sure there will be losses, wolves that crawl through windows, and we will all feel the bite of that. But 83 lawsuits will soon likely be 84, 94, whatever it takes to protect Californians.
Each one is a fight worth having, because every Californian is worth fighting for.
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Across most Caribbean islands, cricket is the national sport, with athletics becoming more prominent in recent years. Uniquely Anguilla’s national sport is boat racing, easily surpassing cricket as the most popular pastime.
The popularity of the sport is said to have evolved from when Anguillans had to find work on other islands and would race each other home.
The boat racing season runs from May to August, climaxing during the Anguilla Summer Festival. The big event on August Thursday is the Meads Bay Boat Race.
The festival and carnival draw to a close on the Sunday after August Thursday, fittingly with another boat race, when the Champion of Champions boat race final is held.
The July Mass Uprising Day has been categorised under the Cabinet Division’s “Ka” category, which includes national and international days of major significance. These days often involve extensive ceremonies, official participation, and may be observed as government holidays.
The day will be officially celebrated every year.
The decision was made at a meeting of the advisory council at the State Guest House Jamuna. After the meeting, Cultural Affairs Adviser Mostofa Sarwar Farooki told reporters at the Foreign Service Academy that a preliminary decision had been made to celebrate August 5th as the Student-People Uprising Day.
August 5th is going to be a national day, so the Student-People Uprising Day will be celebrated every year in the future, he said.
The Awami League regime fell on August 5th 2024 amid a mass uprising.
On August 5th 2024, Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left her official residence as a violent mob was marching towards it. With a serious threat arising over her security, Ms Hasina fled the country.
This winding path has been used for centuries – and is just as popular today.
This is one of the oldest roads in Britain(Image: Getty)
A winding road which meanders through Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire is thought to be the oldest in Britain. The Ridgeway is an ancient path which has provided safe routes through the country for centuries.
The road follows a ride of chalk hills for 139 kilometres to reach Ivinghoe Beacon in northwest London. This same route is the one that travellers, farmers and soldiers have walked for more than 5,000 years.
Nowadays, the road is popular with cyclists and walkers as well as people who use mobility scooters.
Along the trail, walkers can gaze out over wide views of rolling chalk hills and find all kinds of archaeological marvels.
There are Iron Age forts, as well as the White Horse of Uffington, which is thought to be the oldest hill figure in Britain.
The White Horse is carved into the chalk hillside and is an incredible 374 feet in length. According to the BBC it’s thought to date back to 1,000BC in the late Bronze Age.
The path also takes walkers past Wayland’s Smithy – a Neolithic ruin that is thought to have once been the home of Wayland, the Saxon god of metalworking.
It’s an atmospheric area.
The visible ruin is actually a secondary structure – the original, which lies beneath the stones, is thought to have been a burial structure where 14 people were interred between 3460 and 3400 BC.
Wayland’s Smithy was constructed on top of the burial site, and has remained there over the centuries.
The track fluctuates between the wide open chalk paths along the hillside and the deeply embedded lanes between ancient beech trees.
Once you are East of the Thames, The Ridgeway travels through the sun-dappled woodland and the intimate hills and valleys of the Chilterns – an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The walk is rich in history, but also makes for a stunning walk. You don’t have to tackle the whole thing at once – there are plenty of circular routes dotted along the trail, and multiple places to start and finish.
Arbaeen is one of the most important ceremonies in the Shi’ite Muslim calendar.
Arbaeen means forty in Arabic as forty days is the traditional length of mourning after the death of a family member or loved one in Muslim traditions.
Imam Hussein was killed at the Battle of Karbala in central Iraq on 10 October 680 AD.
Hussein was seen by his followers as the rightful heir of the prophet’s legacy. When he refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliphate, he was killed in the battle, cementing the schism between Sunni and Shiite Islam. Hussein’s half-brother Abbas was also killed in the battle.
Millions of pilgrims will gather in Karbala on Arbaeen, making it the world’s largest annual human gathering. Making the pilgrimage, known in Arabic as the Ziara, many of the pilgrims travel barefooted from across Iraq and more than 50 countries. Over three million Iranians travel to Iraq for the Ziara.
In Iran, thousands in Tehran will march to a town south of the capital to mourn at the shrine of Shiite saint Abdul Azim.
SACRAMENTO — Today we’re talking about California’s Proposition 39, a bid to turn Trump’s election conspiracy fantasies into California law, and a proposal so disingenuous it’s caused Democratic legislators to sue the Democratic secretary of state in an attempt to stop the misinformation surrounding it.
As these lawsuits move forward and the November election rolls closer, we’re going to hear a lot about Proposition 39 — a measure that would require in-person voters to present government-issued identification, among other provisions. I fear most if not all of this debate will revolve around the false claim that large numbers of undocumented people vote illegally in our elections.
“It’s directly a product of all of the rhetoric that Trump has been putting out there regarding election fraud and voting fraud,” said Mindy Romero, founder and director of the nonpartisan Center for Inclusive Democracy.
Romero stresses that there is not and has never been any evidence of widespread voter fraud in California, and the state already has a system that effectively checks voter eligibility.
Proposition 39 is “seeking a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist, and a solution that actually could cause additional problems,” she said. “So in and of itself, it perpetuates this false and dangerous narrative that there has been voter fraud in California.”
That lie is part of the ongoing grievance-fueled Trump campaign against non-white “replacement” Americans, meant to undermine trust in elections — you may recall he’s gone so far as to say immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” It’s a venal and dark vein of partisanship aimed at keeping the far-right in power even at the expense of democracy.
I’ll tell you more about Proposition 39, but I’m starting with a story about an all-American teenager I’ll call “Sofia.” I’ve been helping Sofia,18, attempt to get her first government-issued identification. I stress attempt.
Folks, there’s been hoops, there’s been hurdles, there’s been Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
For people like Sofia that don’t have bills or jobs or even accurate student records (she’s moved a lot), scraping up enough documentation to convince the DMV you are who you say you are is tough. First, you really need a certified birth certificate.
Sofia wasn’t born in the county where she lives (it’s county recorders that keep them), which means she had to either drive hours or go through the state’s third-party online vendor to order one, at a cost of about $30. But here’s the catch — she needed proof of identity to order it.
So to get a birth certificate to get her ID, she needed ID.
Stuck in this circular nightmare, we found, after much effort, a loophole: I could appear in front of a public notary with Sofia, to testify using my ID that she was indeed Sofia. Strange, but whatever. We did it.
That wasn’t enough for the DMV. Sofia also needed two bills or other documents verifying her address. Because they will literally give a credit card to anyone, she applied to an online company, and got her first statement. One document down.
Again, scouring the DMV rules for days, we found another weird loophole: The second document can be a letter from a nonprofit with the person signing it vouching for Sofia’s identity. We got the letter, and Sofia’s Real ID was issued.
But then she had to move before it arrived. She tried to arrange mail forwarding with the postal service, but guess what? They required ID.
So the ID was lost in transit, and we are back to square one.
Who Proposition 39 really targets
That means Sofia is one of thousands of Californians, born and raised in the Golden State, who lack official identification because its not as easy to obtain it as some want you to believe.
And because she lacks it, she could be prevented from voting if Proposition 39 is passed, even though she is a legal citizen with every right to have her ballot counted, and California already has a system in place to ensure only citizens vote.
Sofia is exactly the kind of voter that Proposition 39 is actually aimed at. This is a voter suppression law, plain and simple, and it will harm women with name changes, naturalized citizens, young people, older people and virtually anyone who cares about not returning to Jim Crow-style laws that push people out of voting with subterfuge.
Proponents of the proposition would like you to believe it’s something very different from what I just described. Their fight about how we talk about this proposal has led to two lawsuits so far — one filed by the backers of Proposition 39 because they don’t like the official title the California attorney general put on it, and one filed by the leaders of the state Legislature because they argue the statements written by proponents for official voting materials aren’t truthful.
I’ll give you a taste of both of those arguments. Right now, the state is proposing to title the measure “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”
State Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), the always-Trumper behind Proposition 39, helped lead a lawsuit claiming that is inaccurate.
DeMaio issued a statement claiming Democrats are “trying to deceive voters by putting a false ballot title on it and are now even distracting voters from their tampering of the ballot title with this frivolous lawsuit.”
That frivolous lawsuit he’s complaining about is the one where the Democratic leaders of the Legislature last week sued the Democratic secretary of state and others over the language included in the state voter guide. The Democrats aren’t really angry at each other, it’s just that Secretary of State Shirley Weber is in charge of voter materials, so she’s one of the folks they’ve got to sue to make their case.
The lawsuit alleges, among other complaints, that proponents are falsely framing Proposition 39 as making it “easier to vote” when in fact it does the opposite.
“Prop. 39 requires no burdens be placed on voters,” the materials at issue read, according to the lawsuit. “No additional documents (birth certificate, marriage license, etc.) are required.”
So I take you back to Sofia. Because while Proposition 39 might not ask her to bring her birth certificate to the polls, it would ask her to bring her ID, which required her birth certificate to get.
A distinction without a difference.
“The fact that Donald Trump has endorsed it tells you everything you need to know,” wrote the lawsuits’ plaintiffs, House speaker Robert Rivas and Senate pro Tempore Monique Limón, in a statement. “As Californians and Latinos, we will not let MAGA cronies take Constitutional rights away from voters.”
That lawsuit will likely have its first hearing in court this week. But whatever a judge decides, the ballot box is where the fate of Proposition 39 rests.
Though it seems like average Californians could see through this sham, there are big bucks backing it, and money always speaks loudly.
The donors in support read like the guest list for a White House dinner. So far, they’ve raised more than $15 million. That includes $4 million from Richard Uihlein, the Illinois billionaire and Trump supporter who often funds organizations and causes that promote election conspiracies and far-right candidates.
The crypto-billionaire Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, have each donated $250,000, along with other Silicon Valley types including former RFK Jr. running mate Nicole Shanahan, who ponied up $370,000 in support of Proposition 39.
Oh, and by the way, L.A. developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso has donated $25,000 to the effort.
That’s a lot of dough being poured into stopping certain Californians from voting. If they succeed, it won’t just be an inconvenience at the polls — but instead a double victory for Trump, both suppressing the vote ahead of the presidential election and legitimizing his election lies through law.
The colonial history of the islands is dominated by one crop – sugar cane. In the 17th century, the British started to establish sugar cane plantations. These plantations needed a plentiful supply of cheap labour which meant the arrival of African slaves, a practice which continued until the transport of slaves from Africa was banned in 1807.
The ending of slavery in Antigua and Barbuda differs in two ways to the rest of the British Caribbean colonies.
Firstly, in 1680 Charles II granted Barbuda to the Codrington family. As Barbuda was not under British control, it did not have to abolish slavery on August 1st 1834 like Antigua but decided to free its slaves anyway.
Secondly, and uniquely among the British Caribbean colonies, Antigua gave immediate full emancipation rather than having a four-year ‘apprenticeship,’ or waiting period.
To commemorate the earliest abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean, Emancipation Day is celebrated with Antigua’s annual carnival.
The second of August has been an important date in the Macedonian calendar for centuries as it is a major religious holiday – Ilinden, or St. Elijah’s Day, marking the prophet Elijah’s ascension into heaven.
Macedonia had come under the control of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century. On August 2nd 1903, an uprising against the Ottomans was led by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO). The Ilinden uprising resulted in the liberation of the town of Krushevo, where the first republic in the Balkans was proclaimed. The republic was short-lived, lasting only 10 days before the Ottomans took back Krushevo.
On August 2nd 1944, during the second world war, the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) proclaimed the People’s Republic of Macedonia as part of the People’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
On Republic Day shops will close but restaurants and bars will remain open. The main formal celebrations take place in Krushevo at the area called Mechkin Kamen (Bear’s Rock), where the battle with the Ottoman army took place during the Ilinden uprising.
Heading into the final weekend of this summer’s World Cup, The Guardian reported that support for FIFA president Gianni Infantino had climbed to record levels. More than 200 of FIFA’s 211 member associations formally endorsed Infantino’s bid for a fourth term as head of world soccer’s governing body, the paper reported, making next March’s vote more of a coronation than an election.
Two weeks later, that support disappeared. Not only is Infantino’s reelection campaign in tatters, but there’s a chance he won’t survive until the spring, with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Javier Tebas, president of Spain’s soccer association, calling for his resignation and close confidants such as Carlos Cordeiro, the former president of U.S. Soccer, and Kevin Lamour, FIFA’s chief operating officer, publicly breaking with their boss.
At the center of that reversal was a closely guarded scheme to raise $4.2 billion by selling a 20% stake in the World Cup to private investors, who would be given influence in planning and executing future events, including broadcasting and commercial deals tied to the tournament.
In short, Infantino was planning, in secret, to sell shares in the World Cup. And once details began leaking in the media, he was forced Friday to scrap the whole thing, an embarrassing retreat that has left him vulnerable just two weeks after he had seemingly reached the heights of his third term as FIFA president.
Infantino’s idea, called the FIFA Forward Enterprise, was intended to turn the World Cup, FIFA’s milk cow, into a golden calf. But to do so, he needed the approval of at least 106 of FIFA’s 211 member countries, so he promised countries that backed him that they would receive $20 million each by mid-September. Those who declined would get just a fraction of that.
Infantino was certain the piles of cash would buy the acquiescence — or at least the silence — of enough members for the plan to go through. Instead, the bribe blew up in his face and FIFA issued a statement late Friday, under Infantino’s name, that basically said “never mind.”
“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” the statement read.
The question now becomes whether Infantino’s presidency will proceed.
He wouldn’t be the first FIFA president to be grievously wounded by unbridled ambition, but the speed and depth of his fall is staggering. The 2026 World Cup was, by nearly every measure, wildly successful. The largest and most complex sporting event in history the tournament, hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, exceeded expectations, drawing more than 6.8 million live fans and a global TV audience of more than six billion. The four-year World Cup cycle brought FIFA revenues of about $15 billion, making it the first sporting event in history to earn more than $10 billion.
Infantino has never been shy about pushing boundaries despite heading a Swiss-based organization that, its wealth notwithstanding, is officially a nonprofit. Nor was this the first time he tried to bring private equity into the World Cup: In 2018, two years into his first term as FIFA president, he considered a plan to raise $25 billion to fund tournaments, only to cave in the face of massive opposition.
He didn’t give up the idea of squeezing more money out of the World Cup, though.
This summer, he introduced three-minute hydration breaks in the middle of each half — ostentatiously a nod to the heat and humidity, but in reality a ruse that allowed broadcasters to generate millions in additional revenue through TV commercials. FIFA also staged a halftime show for the first time ever during the final, sold VIP tickets priced at more than $1 million each and introduced dynamic pricing for the tournament’s 104 games, driving prices for some seats to four times what fans paid four years ago in Qatar.
That pushed the tournament beyond the reach of many of the sport’s most loyal supporters — and soccer, more than any other sport, belongs to the fans. It’s why teams are called clubs and fans are called supporters.
The World Cup, then, wasn’t Infantino’s to sell. So the pushback to his latest idea was immediate and unsparing.
“Football does not belong to investors,” Burnham said in an Instagram post. “Once you have sold a piece, you have sold out. Football belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.”
What really angered stakeholders, however, was Infantino’s brazen move to develop the FFE in secret, only to have its details leak out.
Bernd Neuendorf, president of the German soccer association and a member of the FIFA Council, the group’s most influential body, said he first learned of the FFE by reading about it.
“I was very surprised, and also annoyed, that we had to find out about something like this from the press,” he told a German news outlet last week.
Another self-inflicted wound was Infantino’s decision to launch the project with Thrive Eternal, a venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner, the 41-year-old brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a kind of all-purpose White House advisor and negotiator. Thrive Eternal focuses on long-term investments in scarce cultural institutions that technology cannot replace, but it has little relevant experience in managing something as large and complicated as a World Cup.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino, left, and President Trump wave during an award ceremony following Spain’s win over Argentina in the World Cup final July 19.
(David Ramos / Getty Images)
Moreover, the partnership would draw Infantino further into the orbit of Trump, whom the FIFA president has openly courted for years. Infantino, who has been a frequent visitor to the Oval Office and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, attended the president’s inauguration and accompanied him on visits around the world.
Trump’s relationship to Infantino was questioned when Infantino presented him with the first FIFA Peace Prize last December, then became even more controversial when Trump phoned Infantino three times to lobby to have the red-card suspension of U.S. forward Folarin Balogun overturned ahead of a World Cup elimination game last month.
FIFA eventually cleared Balogun to play, marking just the second time in tournament history a red card ban has been lifted. For some, Infantino’s decision to partner with someone close to Trump on his latest venture was a bridge too far.
“It’s a really bad look for Infantino given the concerns about political interference that were already there after Balogun,” said Steven A. Bank, a professor of business law at UCLA who has written and lectured extensively on the economics of soccer. “Especially with the fund led by Jared Kushner’s brother.”
Once details of Infantino’s secret plan began to leak, UEFA, the confederation that governs European soccer, held an emergency meeting during which all 55 members — including Spain, the reigning men’s and women’s World Cup champion — voted to boycott all FIFA competitions.
“Some things are simply too important to sell. The FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will,” UEFA, the largest and most powerful of FIFA’s six continental confederations, said in a statement.
CONCACAF, which oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, said its 41 countries also rejected the plan, an opinion the U.S. Soccer Federation backed in a sparse post on X.
“U.S. Soccer stands with CONCACAF and its members,” it wrote.
The Asian Football Confederation joined in, saying in a statement its 47 members stand “in solidarity with UEFA and CONCACAF in expressing serious concerns over FIFA’s proposal to introduce private investment into FIFA’s flagship competitions.”
When it became obvious Infantino would not get the votes he needed to go forward, he pulled the plug on his plan. But it may not have been so much that the idea was bad as it was the execution.
Soccer is awash with private investors. The biggest clubs are owned by billionaires or sovereign wealth funds and many leagues — including Spain’s La Liga, which Tebas oversees — have sold commercial stakes to private equity firms in much the same way FIFA proposed.
Alan Rothenberg, a former U.S. Soccer president and the driving force behind the 1994 men’s World Cup and 1999 women’s World Cup, among the most successful tournaments in history, said the idea of selling a private equity stake in the World Cup isn’t a bad idea. But the way Infantino tried to implement his plan led it to failure.
“What is proposed is not that revolutionary,” Rothenberg said. “There have been private equity investors in MLS, in one of the subsidiaries of the NFL, in F1.
“But I think the combination of everything has doomed it. It does raise the possibility that Infantino, he’s finally become Icarus and gotten too close to the sun. It actually may doom him politically.”
Others including Cordeiro, a former vice chairman at Goldman Sachs, questioned the need to bring in outside investors.
“FIFA already has access to extraordinary financial resources. The organization sits on billions of dollars in reserves and no debt,” Cordeiro pointed out in his resignation letter. “If member associations believe additional investment is needed to develop the game, FIFA already has the financial capacity to provide that support from its existing resources.”
Infantino has flaunted consensus before without significant consequence, cozying up to autocrats while overseeing the 2018 World Cup in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the 2022 tournament in Qatar before being accused of awarding the 2034 tournament to Saudi Arabia in a rigged vote.
This time, however, the stakeholders within FIFA were pushed too far by Infantino’s penchant for wielding unilateral power, so they pushed back and the president blinked. Hours before he backed down, an ally of Infantino’s told the Financial Times that he would not bend, seeing the standoff as “a fight to the death.”
Infantino’s presidency might not be dead, but it is surely in critical condition.
Located on the Gulf of Guinea, the hot and humid West African nation shares borders with Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north.
The region of modern day Benin first came to the attention of the Europeans as a source of slaves with the shores of the region earning the name ‘the Slave Coast’.
Local warlords made agreements with the Portuguese to supply slaves from captured prisoners. One important local kingdom at the time was the Dahomey, known for their military discipline, who grew to be the dominant power in the region.
Dahomey means ‘on the belly of Dan’. Dan was the name of a rival king. Defeated by the Dahomey, they built their royal compound over his grave.
With the abolition of the slave trade, the control of the Dahomey was weakened, allowing the French to take over the region at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1904, the colony of French Dahomey was incorporated within French West Africa.
In 1946 with the establishment of the Fourth French Republic, Dahomey became an overseas territory of France with its own parliament and representation in the French national assembly.
On December 4th 1958, it became the Republic of Dahomey (République du Dahomey), a self-governing autonomous republic within the French Community.
On July 11th 1960 France agreed to Dahomey becoming fully independent. Dahomey gained its full independence on August 1st 1960, with Hubert Maga becoming Dahomey’s first president.
In 1975, the country changed its name to Benin, after the Bight of Benin, a large bay in the Gulf of Guinea.
Mary Prince was a Bermudian slave who published her autobiography, “The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave“. Published in 1831, the book was a first-hand account of the brutality of slavery in Bermuda and the first account of the life of a black woman to be published in England.
Her book remains the only first-hand account in existence of the daily life of a Bermudian slave. The book didn’t make its way to Bermuda over 150 years later when an American scholar doing research on Mary Prince presented a copy of the book to the Bermuda Archives.
Oh the horrors of slavery! – How the thought of it pains my heart! But the truth ought to be told of it; and what my eyes have seen I think it is my duty to relate; for few people in England know what slavery is.
I have been a slave – I have felt what a slave feels, and I know what a slave knows; and I would have all the good people in England to know it too, that they may break our now it too, that they may break our chains, and set us free.
The second day of the Cup Match holiday was previously named after Admiral Sir George Somers, who ran aground in Bermuda on July 28th 1609, which led to the founding of the English colony of Bermuda.
It was a one-off official holiday in 1931 and incorporated into the two-day Cup Match public holiday in 1947.
Since 2018, there had been a push to rename Somers Day to Mary Prince Day, so that Emancipation Day is followed by a holiday that recognises a Bermudian who made an important contribution to the abolition movement.
On announcing the change, Lovitta Foggo, the community minister told the House of Assembly that Ms Prince was “recognised on the world stage for the crucial role she played in the abolishment of slavery throughout the British Empire”.
The friendliest of neighbors, the country has fought alongside the U.S. in conflicts going back to World War I, purchased many trillions of dollars worth of American goods and blessed this country with, among other gifts, ice hockey, Drake, Joni Mitchell and Alex Trebek.
While you can question the nation’s culinary sensibility — the unofficial dish, poutine, is an abomination consisting of French fries, cheese curds and hot gravy — Canada is basically a very large, very pretty country filled with a lot of very nice, extremely polite people.
After more than a year of trading tit-for-tat tariffs, Trump recently escalated the conflict by slapping a new 50% tax on a variety of Canadian exports, including cement, furniture, dairy products and, most iconically, hockey sticks. The added levy, which will further burden inflation-weary U.S. consumers, is set to take effect in mid-August.
The move makes little sense from an economic or foreign policy standpoint. It’s best to regard Trump’s trade moves as a wind gauge charts a blustery storm; his on-again, off-again tariffs are not the result of some carefully thought-out policy but, rather, a measure of the president’s shifting moods and pique toward certain foreign leaders.
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For decades, the industry has been a vital and growing part of California’s agricultural economy. Recent years, however, have seen a number of setbacks.
Costs are rising. Sales are falling, as younger generations favor hard seltzers, canned cocktails or premium beers over crushed grapes. At the same time, climate change and the growing incidence of wildfire threaten the viability of some of California’s premier wine-growing regions.
A Canadian ban on alcohol imports
Then there’s the trade war with Canada, the industry’s largest export market and formerly a major customer of California wines. Until recently, the Canadian market accounted for more than a third of the state’s exports.
But last year, several provinces stopped purchasing U.S. alcohol in response to Trump’s tariffs and his threats — more slapstick than real — to annex the country and make Canada the 51st American state. While two provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, soon lifted their bans, the two most populous, Ontario and Quebec, have not.
As a result of this “geopolitical friction,” to use the words of University of California researchers, California wine exports to Canada fell by nearly 80% in 2025 compared with the year before. Unsurprisingly, Canadian sales of homegrown wines have soared.
In response to the dramatic drop in exports, more than a dozen California members of Congress wrote last month to Quebec’s premier, Christine Fréchette, urging her to lift the retaliatory ban on U.S. wine and spirits.
“Reopening the market to American wine would restore consumer choice and signal a commitment to restoring fair and balanced trade for Québecois consumers and American wineries who have no connection to the underlying trade disputes,” the letter read.
Sen. Adam Schiff also wrote Fréchette asking her to resume the sale of California wine and U.S. spirits.
“The restriction on American wine has had damaging consequences for regional consumers, businesses, and producers who have no influence over national policies,” the California Democrat stated. “In fact, I have repeatedly voiced my opposition to and voted against the President’s harmful trade policies, including as they pertain to Canada.”
Fréchette’s response was, in a word: “Non!”
“In the context of the ongoing trade war, the premier continues to defend Quebec’s economic interests,” a spokesperson for Fréchette told CBC Radio. “This measure will remain in place as long as the United States maintains these unjustified tariffs. Our government will re-evaluate its position when the American administration reverses these measures.”
And that statement came before Trump upped the ante, along with the tariffs on Canada, which, presumably, doesn’t help matters.
Red or white?
Mike Thompson has seen the damage of Trump’s economic warfare firsthand. The St. Helena Democrat represents the heart of Wine Country and spearheaded, along with Democratic Rep. Jimmy Panetta of Carmel and Republican Rep. David Valadao of Hanford, the bipartisan overture to Quebec’s premier.
“I talked to a vintner today,” Thompson said during a drive this week through his sprawling Northern California district. “They went from an $11-million annual wine export to a $2-million annual wine export to Canada because of this.”
Thompson has introduced legislation, including a measure to reimburse wine producers for the money they’ve lost due to Trump’s tariffs, but the proposals have stalled in the House despite bipartisan support. His effort, Thompson dryly noted, “has not been warmly embraced by the administration.”
Meanwhile, the cross-border hostilities continue. Neither Trump nor Fréchette seems ready to budge, with California vintners still stuck in the middle.
So the question in Montreal and Toronto remains: What pairs best with poutine? Canadian white or red?
Vanuatu is an archipelago of 82 islands (65 are inhibited) and is located about 1,750 kilometres (1,000 miles) east of Australia.
Despite their remote location, the islands were permanently inhabited as early as 500BC and were part of the Tongan Empire in the 14th century.
European colonial contact began in 1606 when the islands were visited and claimed by Spain which established a short-lived settlement before they were forgotten again.
The islands were rediscovered in 1768 and were given the name ‘New Hebrides’ by Captain James Cook on his visit in 1774.
It was the French who established the first permanent settlements in the 1850s, with the British claiming parts of the archipelago. In 1906, the modernity of the 20th century meant that rather than beat each other to a standstill for overall control, the two European superpowers instead agreed on a unique framework arrangement called a condominium to share the rule of the New Hebrides. To this day, the three official languages of Vanuatu are Bislama, English and French.
The national dish of Vanuatu is ‘lap lap’, vegetable paste, coconut milk and meat cooked in a banana leaf.
In the 1960s, the movement to secede from the dual colonial control gathered momentum, leading to the establishment of a locally elected assembly. The assembly only lasted a few months due to political differences and infighting. A party of national unity was formed in 1978 and a new constitution providing for independence in 1980 was adopted on October 5th 1979.
The archipelago gained independence on July 30th 1980 as the Republic of Vanuatu (the name comes from two local words meaning ‘home’ and ‘stand’) and joined the
This day, the first full moon of the fourth month in the Burmese calendar, commemorates the Buddha’s first sermon to five monks in the Deer Park in Benares, India and the founding of the Buddhist sangha (monkhood) about 2,500 years ago.
In the sermon, which is known as ‘Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion’, the Buddha first spelled out the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.
Waso Full Moon Day marks the beginning of Buddhist lent (Wasso), which generally coincides with the height of Myanmar’s rainy season. Buddhist Lent last for three months from the full moon of Waso until the full moon of Thadingyut. It is normally a time of heightened religious activity around the country. Pilgrims throughout the country gather wild flowers to offer at pagodas, and offer new robes to monks. Almost all monks will not leave the grounds of their monastery during this time.
During the period of Buddhist Lent, many Buddhists will abstain from eating meat, drinking alcohol or smoking. It is also traditionally a time when Myanmar people are not allowed to move house.
Peru was first colonised by the Spanish in the 15th century. Despite the wars of independence being fought across Latin America in the early 19th century, Peru remained loyal to the Spanish crown. There had been some insurrection but this had been quashed by the government.
The Viceroy of Peru then initiated a military campaign against Chile and their fight for independence. Despite some early success, the tide turned against the Viceroy and the Royalist forces. Argentina and Chile then signed a treaty to pursue the ‘liberation’ of Peru. On entering Lima, the Argentinian commander, Jose San Martin declared the independence of Peru on July 28th 1821, with the phrase: “Peru is from this moment free and independent by the general will of the people and by the justice of its cause that God defends.”
However, it wasn’t until 1824, following the decisive victory at the Battle of Ayacucho under the leadership of Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, that independence was achieved.
The Tour de France has a chequered history that cannot be forgotten.
“He knows what the record is,” Lance Armstrong said on social media following Sunday’s result, referring to Pogacar.
The American’s record of seven Tour de France victories between 1999 and 2005 has long since been wiped from the record books following the revelation of his systematic doping.
And those in the sport have fairly diligently avoided mentioning his name since.
But the night-time anti-doping tests during this year’s Tour, which the International Testing Agency (ITA) told BBC Sport were undertaken as an “exceptional operation” and because time was of the essence, once again raised questions in a sport which doesn’t need them, thanks to that dark past.
Testing at such anti-social hours is rare and requires additional permission, and some suspect it may have been a factor in Jonas Vingegaard’s Tour-ending crash after he was woken at 2am the previous night, and Pogacar himself at 5am.
Others were tested at night, too, and all riders were tested during the race. But what were the ITA looking for?
They wouldn’t say, specifically, but one possible explanation for night-time testing of professional cyclists appears to be to gather as much information as possible to try to understand micro-dosing. That is where an athlete could take performance-enhancing drugs, such as red blood cell stimulant EPO or anabolic steroids, in very small quantities to evade detection on the Athlete Biological Passport, which is endorsed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and used across cycling.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing in the case of Pogacar, Vingegaard or any of those tested at night this year.
Past findings produced by Wada suggest micro-dosing could evade detection methods, and so the scope to cheat in professional sport remains, meaning all efforts must be taken to ensure nobody beats the system.
The ITA cannot confirm when the results of the Tour tests will be made public, but EF Education-Easypost boss Jonathan Vaughters told BBC Sport: “Doubts? Actually [those tests] solve my doubts.”
Vaughters, who doped during his riding career, is now reformed.
He said during this year’s race: “If we had 24-hour testing in 2001 when EPO tests were first introduced we would have had a huge number of riders excluded from the sport, including me. And it would have saved 25 years of drama.
“So I mean we wouldn’t have had to go through Lance Armstrong… The problem would have been solved immediately in 2000.
“If you introduce a low enough dose of a peptide hormone, the clearance time can be four hours – if you take it at 11 it’ll be out of the system at 3am, so it makes a difference. The testing technology is evolving quickly.
“If you want to watch a clean sport, watch cycling, most other sports’ testing is a complete joke.
“Why is cycling so hyper-focused? History. This is human F1 car racing; this is edge of human performance; boundaries are always going to be pushed.”
Many riders and team bosses won’t go near the ‘D’ word, and the consensus is ‘believe what you are seeing’ when Pogacar accelerates away and wins by, at times, a matter of minutes, and when others perform their own remarkable feats in the saddle.
SACRAMENTO — Last week, news broke that an artificial intelligence thingamajig broke free from the constraints of its maker, OpenAI, and committed what could be considered a string of white-collar felonies if it were human.
Because the AI thingamajig is in fact not human, the incident raised a big kerfuffle but is largely being treated as a giant oopsie we can learn from, without needing the pesky intervention of new rules or laws to stop it from happening again.
Such is the state of AI regulation in America right now.
California Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) would like to change that. Last week, he introduced the bipartisan Frontier Act with Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.). While the bill might not make either safety advocates or big tech companies entirely happy, it offers up the most comprehensive and strongest regulations of this dangerous industry that we’ve yet seen at the federal level.
Roman Yampolskiy, an AI expert and professor at University of Louisville, called the Frontier Act a “positive step because it acknowledges that frontier AI presents risks requiring dedicated oversight.”
Now, the challenge becomes passing it, and passing it in a meaningful, not-watered-down form — no easy task in a dysfunctional Congress driven by money and Donald Trump, and paralyzed by its own sycophancy to both.
If anyone has a shot, though, it’s Obernolte, who is that rarest of birds, a legislator who understands science, and his colleagues.
Obernolte represents Inland Empire areas around San Bernardino, but grew up in Fresno back in the era when the movie “War Games” was just hitting theaters.
Those of a certain age will remember how far-fetched it seemed when Matthew Broderick’s high school genius character accidentally breaks into a military AI system to play chess, but “Joshua,” the computer, takes it too far and tries to blow up the world. Now, of course, that just sounds like a regular Tuesday.
By the time he was in high school himself, Obernolte was giving that Broderick character a run for his money. An apparent computer savant, Obernolte was competing in artificial intelligence contests as a teenager, back when most of us were still playing Pong on Atari. Then he headed off to Caltech and then UCLA for advanced AI degrees. He said AI was his “first calling,” sparked when his father bought him an Apple II computer when he was 8.
He ended up dropping out of UCLA after getting his master’s because his side hustle making video games, including “NFL ’95,” turned out to be more lucrative than being a starving student. He ended up founding his own video game company, FarSight Studios, and building up a personal net worth close to $100 million.
For the past few years, he has pushed hard, if unsuccessfully, to create a framework for regulating AI, combining his deep understanding of the technology with his equal understanding of MAGA distaste for intervening in business.
Now, though, we’re in a moment, thanks to more than one big oopsie by technology companies. Just a few months ago, Anthropic and the Pentagon had their own tense encounter after Anthropic questioned how its AI was being used by the military. Huffy Pete Hegseth is still huffing over that one.
The public is increasingly skeptical of allowing the AI industry to govern itself, which is pushing legislators to rethink their hands-off approach, even as AI money pours like Niagara Falls into elections. Even Trump seems more inclined to consider it, signing an executive order recently that largely called for voluntary restraints on AI companies.
The introduction of the Frontier Act “shows how far the Overton window has shifted just in the past few months,” wrote Charlie Bullock, a senior research fellow with the nonpartisan Institute for Law & AI. “Not too long ago, a bipartisan bill this good and serious would have been a pipe dream. But things change quickly.”
Obernolte said the bill has been “a long time in the making,” but he hopes to package it with other legislation and is “cautiously optimistic” he can get something passed and signed by the end of the year.
As written now, the bill would allow the federal government to set minimum safety requirements and set up a framework for licensed, independent auditors to monitor compliance. That third party verification has been a key push by safety experts.
The bill would also give the government emergency powers to pause an AI model if it has a “present or impending catastrophic risk.”
It also borrows from state laws including California’s Proposition 53 that require some (not enough) transparency on the part of AI companies when things do go wrong.
To the consternation of some, the bill still contains curbs on what states can regulate on their own — basically carving out AI regulation as federal turf. This has been a huge sticking point in the fight over AI regulation because AI companies hate state laws and want them squashed. Their argument is that a patchwork of rules across states is too complicated.
“You don’t want to have 50 different state requirements for every single product that gets sold on a market, and that is particularly true of AI,” Obernolte told me.
To some extent that’s reasonable — but the problem so far has been that states such as California and New York have been the only level of government willing to try at regulation. California in particular has created some of the most comprehensive AI regulations to date and has about 30 pending bills on this issue this legislative season. The Frontier Act threads the needle on this by creating lanes where states can still pass their own laws — such as around consumer safety that would protect children or stop pornography.
But preventing catastrophic risk would largely be dependent on the federal oversight, which is great when the federal government is up to the task. Currently, we can’t even keep measles in check. So that’s a bit worrisome.
And Obernolte’s bill isn’t the only one vying for attention. Another Californian, Rep. Ted Lieu, introduced a bipartisan measure of his own with Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas). Dubbed the AI Kill Switch Act, it would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to shut down problematic models.
Yampolskiy, the Louisville professor, said that bill had promise as well, because it’s important for companies to have a way to “rapidly disable or contain systems that exhibit dangerous or unexpected behavior.”
But, he warns, that’s just one part of the “complete solution” we need. Regulation is going to require more than one law.
For Obernolte’s part, he’s shown a willingness to work on a practical solution, not just a political one. That alone is worthy of notice. The Frontier Act is a genuine attempt to govern a nascent industry that is too powerful and unpredictable to be left to its own devices.
“I’m hoping that this is we’ve landed somewhere that everyone can understand and be happy with,” Obernolte said. “AI is not something that needs to be a partisan issue, and I don’t think it should be.”
They say that the Rio Carnival is the greatest show on Earth as the streets of Rio de Janeiro explode in a riot of colour and noise as partygoers from across the world welcome the onset of Lent in early spring. That tradition had made its way from medieval Europe via Africa to the Americas during the age of exploration and the slave trade.
It wasn’t just Brazil that began a tradition of Carnival. From Louisiana in the USA, across the Caribbean and into South America, different geographic, ethnic and religious influences shaped each Carnival to form its unique identity.
Take the Saba Summer Festival as an example. Part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Saba is a tiny island only five square miles nestled in the northeastern Caribbean, yet its colourful and exuberant annual festival packs enough “spice per mile” to compete with the grandest of carnivals!
According to Saba Tourism Bureau, Carnival, also known as Saba Summer Festival has been taking place since 1975. It’s held in July as many Sabans living abroad, in particular students furthering their education elsewhere, return home for the Summer holidays. The Saba Summer Festival may use terms familiar to Lent Carnivals such as Jouvert and Last Lap, but the focus here is on having fun rather than a last splurge before the austerity of Lent.
The public holiday for Carnival Monday replaced Whit Monday, which is no longer observed as a public holiday.
Highlights of the festival include the Opening Night Jump-Up, which is when islanders parade through the street, dancing and revelling in the joy of the celebration, live concerts, various competitions, comedy shows, costume competitions, and the costumed parades that take place on the final Saturday and Sunday.
The Republic of Liberia began as a settlement of the American Colonization Society (ACS), who believed black people would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the United States.
Between 1822 and 1861, thousands of free blacks were relocated to the settlement at Cape Mesurado on the Pepper Coast of West Africa. In 1824 the colony was named Liberia, and the main settlement was named Monrovia, which remains the present-day capital.
Monrovia is named in honour of U.S. President James Monroe, who supported the colonization of Liberia by the American Colonization Society. This makes it the only other national capital to be named after a U.S. President; Washington, D.C. being the other.
The settlers faced immense hardships in the initial years with atrocious mortality rates due to disease and conflict with the indigenous peoples. Within twenty years, the colony had grown and established economic stability.
On July 26th 1847, the settlers issued a Declaration of Independence and promulgated a constitution. The constitution was heavily based on the United States Constitution and established the independent Republic of Liberia. The United Kingdom was the first country to recognize Liberia’s independence, the United States only recognized Liberia’s independence in 1862 during the American Civil War.
Liberia was the first African republic to proclaim its independence, and is Africa’s first and oldest modern republic, maintaining independence despite the colonial expansion in Africa in the late nineteenth century.
The Star and Stripes
The Liberian flag is based on the flag of the united States and was adopted on July 26th 1847. It has 11 horizontal red stripes representing the 11 men who signed the Liberian Declaration of Independence. The single star represents African freedom.
