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Andrew Giuliani claims actions of referee Raphael Claus over US player Folarin Balogun ‘very, very highly suspicious’

Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House’s World Cup taskforce, has defended Donald Trump’s lobbying of Fifa to lift the suspension of US player Folarin Balogun for Monday’s game against Belgium.

The US president claimed that Brazilian referee Raphael Claus, who showed Balogun a red card in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, was “a little bit suspect, if you check his past”. This was apparently a reference to a match-fixing investigation by Brazil’s senate in 2024 that examined how referees were assigned to games but did not accuse Claus of wrongdoing.

Shooting death at an extended-stay motel is fourth officer-involved death since initiative began in September

Federal agents killed a man at a Memphis motel on Wednesday morning in a Drug Enforcement Administration operation with the Memphis Safe Task Force, the fourth officer-involved death since the anticrime initiative began in September.

Donald Trump established the federal taskforce by executive order last year, amid a surge of troops and federal law enforcement agents to Democratic-run cities that he claimed were overrun with crime. All four of the deaths have occurred in the last two months.

Home secretary expected to amend Immigration Act but hurdles remain if Pakistan continues to refuse to take Shabir Ahmed back

Shabana Mahmood is planning to change the law so the government can move towards deporting the ringleader of the Rochdale grooming gang.

The home secretary is expected to amend the 1971 Immigration Act, which prevents Shabir Ahmed from being removed from Britain.

From high-profile influencers to live ticket-queue tracking, some fear aggressive marketing is ruining championships

From photos of influencers in crisp white linen dresses posing in front of floral displays at Centre Court to videos promising hacks to beat the queues and secure tickets, the hype around Wimbledon has never been bigger on Instagram and TikTok.

The social media frenzy has caused concerns that Wimbledon is increasingly becoming a tourist event rather than a tennis tournament, overrun with influencers using the championship’s iconic aesthetic to build their profiles and attracting attenders more interested in dressing up and taking photos than watching the games.

Met confirms inquiry after elections watchdog referred allegations that donations in 2024 were from foreign source

Police have launched an investigation into £37,500 of donations to Robert Jenrick’s campaign to become Conservative leader in 2024 after a referral from the elections watchdog.

The Metropolitan police confirmed on Wednesday they were undertaking an inquiry after the Guardian revealed in April that they were assessing the evidence about donations to Jenrick, who has since joined Reform UK.

В среде ИТ-специалистов сложился устойчивый миф: «Если нужна система управления ИТ-процессами — бери JIRA, она всё потянет». Давайте посмотрим правде в глаза: JIRA — действительно отличный трекер задач. Но только до тех пор, пока вы не пытаетесь построить на её основе CMDB-систему. Здесь и далее под JIRA, с одной стороны, мы понимаем конкретный продукт, а, с другой, объединяем класс подобных развитых ITSM-систем, которые выпустили модули ITAM и на хайпе пытаются автоматизировать процессы управления конфигурациями как в сервис деске.

Под CMDB мы понимаем не просто набор форм и полей, которые администраторы заполняют вручную (если не забудут) или импортируются из других источников, а полноценную CMDB, где каждая конфигурационная единица (CI) имеет актуальные атрибуты, корректные связи и понятное место в ресурсно-сервисной модели. Речь идёт об управлении конфигурациями с правилами поведения объектов — прямыми и косвенными зависимостями, которые система должна отслеживать автоматически. И, наконец, о приоритизации инцидентов, когда сообщение системы мониторинга превращается не в ещё один тикет, а в точное указание: где, что и как сломано и насколько это критично для бизнеса. Перед таким набором требований JIRA как трекер задач пасует: она не просто показывает низкую эффективность — она принципиально не предназначена для этого.

Как только ваш ИТ-ландшафт перешагивает определённую планку сложности, повышаются требования к работе ИТ-специалистов, обеспечивающих оперативное управление ИТ-сервисами, специалистов, которые выполняют задачи администрирования и развития информационных систем. Их деятельность начинает измеряться в количестве изменений, которые они способы реализовать, сроках и качестве таких изменений, скорости реакции и устранения аварий, переход на мероприятия по проактивному предотвращению аварий. И все эти показатели напрямую завязаны на CMDB. Формальное наличие списка серверов никого не устроит. JIRA загрузила из zVirt список виртуалок — это хорошо, осталось понять, что из этого прод и тест, что к какой системе относится и какие сервисы там крутятся. Без этой информации — это просто список виртуалок.

• Defender unable to train with squad on Wednesday

• Morgan Rogers says training base ‘feels like home’

Reece James is a doubt for England’s World Cup quarter-final against Norway in Miami on Saturday after he was once again unable to train with the squad on Wednesday.

The right-back has been unavailable since he injured a hamstring in England’s second group game, the 0-0 draw against Ghana in Boston. Thomas Tuchel knew he would be without him for at least two games – and most likely a potential last‑16 match, as well, which is what happened. James played no part in the epic victory against Mexico at the Estadio Azteca on Sunday.

• Statement says decisions ‘raised serious concerns’

• Association rues ‘controversial and influential incidents’

The Egyptian Football Association has questioned the “fairness” of the national team’s 3-2 defeat against Argentina in their World Cup last‑16 match on Tuesday.

Having gone 1-0 up through Yasser Ibrahim early on, Egypt thought they had doubled their lead in the second half when Mostafa Ziko scored at the end of an excellent move. The goal was disallowed after a review the referee, François Letexier, adjudged Marwan Attia to have committed a foul in the buildup.

Ceasefire appears close to collapse as two militaries target each other after after Iran strikes three commercial vessels

Iran and the US have threatened to reignite their conflict after the most extensive exchange of fire since an interim deal was signed last month.

On a chaotic day at the Nato summit in Ankara, Donald Trump said the US would probably hit the country again on Wednesday night and renewed his threat to take control of the strategic Kharg Island in the strait of Hormuz - a move that could provoke Iran to hit energy installations across the Gulf states.

From high-profile influencers to live ticket-queue tracking, some fear aggressive marketing is ruining championships

From photos of influencers in crisp white linen dresses posing in front of floral displays at Centre Court to videos promising hacks to beat the queues and secure tickets, the hype around Wimbledon has never been bigger on Instagram and TikTok.

The social media frenzy has caused concerns that Wimbledon is increasingly becoming a tourist event rather than a tennis tournament, overrun with influencers using the championship’s iconic aesthetic to build their profiles and attracting attenders more interested in dressing up and taking photos than watching the games.

World is witnessing a turning point, says ministry spokesperson, as Iran seeks to assert independence amid rising tensions

Before a foreign ministry press briefing at the Grand Hotel Tehran, the assembled reporters were asked to stand for the national anthem that duly blared from fuzzy speakers.

At the podium, the ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, claimed the world was witnessing a turning point in the history of Shia Islam. A century from now, he claimed, the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be revered as a second Imam Hussain, the martyred grandson of the prophet Muhammad. Donald Trump, meanwhile, would be seen as a latterday Yazid, the tyrannical 7th century caliph.

There’s a new kind of influencer making the rounds on TikTok and Instagram: the loneliness influencer. Most of these influencers are young women, and “loneliness” might be a slight misnomer. They claim they aren’t lonely, simply alone — no friends, no family, no kids. And they prefer it that way.

“I really wanted to convey a normal life of somebody that doesn’t have this big, great, fun social life,” one influencer, Lana Isa, told Vox. “Like, what does a life look like as someone that doesn’t really have this great big social life, is not really interested in dating and generally prefers nights in? If you were to watch a Friday night in my life, you’d essentially just watch a girl enjoying her peace.”

Isa, and influencers like her, are just one representation of a larger trend, though. The Atlantic’s Faith Hill, who recently wrote a story titled “The Strange Appeal of the Solitude Influencer,” told Today, Explained co-host Noel King that, even though you mostly hear about young men facing a loneliness epidemic, women are having a hard time, too.

“If you actually look at some of these statistics, young women are struggling a lot on a lot of these measures, and, in some cases, more than young men,” Hill said.

Hill spoke with Noel about what’s going on with young women, how their crisis looks different from men’s, and why they’re covered differently.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

In the first half of the show, we talked to a young woman who has made a name for herself as a loneliness influencer. What do you think is going on here?

My first impulse when I heard about this genre of video that people are watching is that there’s a lot of people spending a ton of time alone.

We’ve heard a lot of people talk about the loneliness epidemic, so I thought people were getting social connection through these videos from a safe distance, rather than spending time in person with people. Maybe there’s some of that going on. But, I also realized, as I was looking through these videos and reading all the comments, that a lot of the people commenting seemed to have a lot going on in their lives socially, so much so that they were busy, and exhausted, and burned out.

For some people, the appeal was actually in the fantasy of it, in the way that some people would look at influencers posting about these fabulous, exotic vacations they can’t afford to take. People have a very complicated relationship to solitude. People are working long hours. A lot of people [are] taking care of family members without much help. Many people are sort of torn between these needs for social connection and solitude.

Does that mean that this is, perhaps, not as sad as it appears on its face?

I don’t think it’s all sad. My heart goes out to people who are needing more solitude, as well as more social connection. Most people probably don’t have the perfect balance, and I can relate to that myself. I feel like I either have too many plans or not enough.

It’s not necessarily all happy, but it doesn’t mean that there are just so many people out there who are only getting social connection through these videos. I think there’s something a little more complicated going on.

We’ve all heard about the male loneliness crisis. You wrote a very interesting piece that basically said, actually, women are in crisis, as well.

I’ve just been hearing so much about men, and especially young men, being in crisis. I think there’s a lot of reasons we should take that seriously, and I do. But I felt like in those conversations, young women were kind of being flattened into a comparison point where, instead of people talking about how on some measures young men are struggling more than they used to, it got twisted into “young men are struggling more than women.”

There’s this image of the thriving girlboss, the one who is going to college, graduating college, entering the workforce on these conventional measures of success, doing so well. But if you actually look at some of these statistics, young women are struggling a lot on a lot of these measures, and in some cases, more than young men. And so, I don’t think it needs to be a suffering competition, but I did think part of the story was not coming through.

In what ways are women struggling?

Women have, for a long time, reported depression and anxiety at higher rates than men. That is getting worse. It seems like mental health on a lot of different measures — different kinds of stress and distress and suicidality — young women are reporting that at higher and higher rates. It turns out that women actually attempt suicide at higher rates than men do, on average. And the reason that more men die of suicide is that they’re more likely to use lethal means such as firearms.

A lot of times this conversation really revolves around college attendance rates, and women are attending and graduating college at higher rates than men. But a woman with a bachelor’s degree still makes less than a man with a bachelor’s degree on average, even within the same field of study.

When I talk to people for this story, researchers and therapists, I heard that a lot of young women are in for a rude awakening when they graduate from school. They’ve been in this bubble where they did feel like they could grow and thrive and they were taken seriously. And then, you go out into the real world, where sexism is still very real, and a lot of women are working in workplaces where they realize they’re not taken as seriously, or the people around them who are in positions of power are all men. That’s a difficult realization.

Why, if women and men are both in crisis, did men pull focus?

Women, as an overall population, tend to be a fairly high-functioning one in this narrative. I talked to someone who had trained as a medical sociologist, and she told me a saying that they used to use in this field was, ‘Men die quicker, but women are sicker.’

Women are more likely to endure a lot of chronic illnesses and to sort of soldier on with their pain unnoticed. And we might not be taking that as seriously, because the idea that women are struggling isn’t necessarily a new one or a super surprising one to a lot of people. I think men having a hard time is more of a news story, and we have become, perhaps, kind of inert to women’s distress in this way.

I wonder, as you found yourself covering this, where do you find the hope here?

I am heartened that we’re talking about [young adults] a lot. There’s been a lot of concern lately about Gen Z, and a lot of what we’re talking about when we talk about young men struggling also applies to young women, so we’re onto some of the right things.

I wrote another piece about young adulthood a while back that was really about the idea that young adulthood actually is a really hard developmental phase. And when I published that article, I think for a lot of readers, it seemed to be somewhat of a surprise that young adults are struggling, too. Even just since I’ve written that, people have talked more about young adults struggling. So I do think people are starting to take that seriously and understand that this is an age group that might need help.