As the 2025 FIFA presidential re-election campaign approaches, a growing storm of controversy has engulfed incumbent head Gianni Infantino, with the global football governing body issuing a fierce public rebuke of what it calls an organized, sustained campaign to weaken both its leadership and reputation. The latest wave of criticism comes on the heels of the collapse of Infantino’s controversial private World Cup investment plan, and new unproven allegations published by a major British newspaper last Friday.
The claims published by *The Telegraph* center on actions Infantino took during his tenure as Secretary General of UEFA, European football’s top governing body, between 2009 and 2016. Citing anonymous sources, the outlet reported that Infantino abused his influence to secure a promotion for a female UEFA staff member with whom he allegedly had an intimate relationship. The newspaper further alleged that the employee received a six-figure payout when she left the organization, in addition to roughly £45,000 (equivalent to $60,700) to cover tuition fees for an elite business school program. When reached for comment by Agence France-Presse (AFP), UEFA confirmed that a departure settlement and MBA tuition payment were provided to the individual in question, but did not address the broader allegations of improper influence.
In an official statement posted to social media on Saturday, FIFA pushed back forcefully against the cascade of negative coverage and calls for Infantino’s resignation. The organization acknowledged that it welcomes legitimate oversight of its work, but drew a clear line between constructive scrutiny and bad-faith attack. “Scrutiny is not a licence to distort facts, amplify unsubstantiated allegations or manufacture distractions designed to undermine progress,” the statement read. “Where reporting is inaccurate or misleading, FIFA will challenge it directly and vigorously.”
Infantino’s current crisis began in late October 2024, when he first unveiled a plan to open World Cup tournament operations to private investment. The proposal sparked immediate widespread backlash from global football stakeholders, most notably UEFA, which ultimately forced Infantino to shelve the plan. Even after the proposal was withdrawn, UEFA has stood firm in its opposition, reaffirming its threat to organize a boycott of future World Cup tournaments last Thursday, arguing that the u-turn was not enough to resolve concerns over Infantino’s leadership.
With Infantino set to stand for re-election next March, FIFA’s Saturday statement also addressed efforts by opponents to alter the election outcome through non-democratic means. The organization made clear that it “will not support, facilitate or tolerate any process concerning the election of the FIFA President that is inconsistent with FIFA’s Statutes, democratic procedures and established governance framework.” It added that critics who lack sufficient backing from FIFA member associations have no right to push their agenda through false claims and innuendo, rather than the established democratic processes already set out by the governing body.
标签： Oceania
大洋洲
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FIFA condemns ‘concerted and ongoing effort’ to weaken Infantino
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Australia is the planet’s extinction hotspot, but one animal offers a glimmer of hope
As our four-wheel drive rumbles along the dusty bush tracks of Western Australia’s Dryandra Woodland, a sharp instruction cuts through the quiet: “Eyes peeled.” Every passenger leans forward, scanning the crevices of fallen logs, the edges of low scrub, and gaps between bright wildflower blooms, searching for a flash of distinct stripes or a sudden dart of movement. We are hunting for the numbat – one of Australia’s rarest marsupials, a small, striped creature that looks like a cross between a chipmunk and an anteater.
Once widespread across the entire southern half of the Australian continent, numbats now cling to survival in just a handful of isolated protected pockets, Dryandra Woodland chief among them. Every spring, a team of volunteer researchers and conservation scientists gathers here to conduct their annual population survey, a painstaking process that maps the species’ trajectory and tracks whether decades of work are paying off. This year, there is good news to celebrate: after being classified as endangered for decades, the numbat has just been removed from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of threatened species, reclassified as near-threatened. It is a rare glimmer of hope in a country facing what scientists call an unfolding extinction emergency.
South-western Australia is the frontline of this crisis. This small region is one of the last remaining refuges for a host of species on the brink of extinction: the endangered Carnaby’s cockatoo, which glides overhead during our survey; the Gilbert’s potoroo, the world’s rarest marsupial, which survives only on a single small island off the coast; and the increasingly rare Australian sea lion, which hunts in the sapphire coastal waters nearby. Australia has long been famous as a global biodiversity hotspot, home to more than 80% of plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth. But today, it is widely recognized as the global extinction capital, losing an average of four unique species every decade, a rate of decline that is accelerating.
For decades, underfunded conservationists and dedicated volunteers have fought to slow the tide of threats pushing species toward disappearance. But without urgent systemic change and political courage, experts warn the biodiversity Australia claims to cherish faces catastrophic collapse. “It’s not even a case of imagining it, it’s happening in front of our own eyes,” Professor Euan Ritchie, a leading mammal ecologist, told the BBC.
Spotting a numbat in the wild is no small feat, explains Dr. Tony Friend, the pioneering conservation biologist who has led numbat recovery efforts at Dryandra since the 1980s. Roughly the size of a squirrel, the numbat is a master of camouflage, blending perfectly into the sun-dappled bush. When Dr. Friend first arrived at Dryandra, the local numbat population numbered fewer than 50 individuals. The threats he documented then – habitat loss, invasive predators, disease, and climate change – remain the same drivers of extinction across Australia today.
Each spring, when young numbats first venture out of their burrows, the Numbat Taskforce, a volunteer group that makes Dr. Friend’s under-resourced work possible, conducts a daily survey circuit. Teams of spotters position themselves at every window, with one volunteer perched in the open bed of a pickup truck, ducking low to avoid overhanging tree branches. For every numbat spotted, the team logs GPS coordinates, measures distance from the road, and uses a statistical model to estimate population density and overall species health. This year, the team reports, sightings have been unusually frequent.
On our five-hour cruise through the woodland, we spot brightly colored parrots, grazing wallabies, a large goanna, and a pair of foraging echidnas – but no numbats for hours. Along the route, constant reminders of the threats numbats still face are visible: razed farmland tightly borders the protected woodland, and purpose-built poison bait stations sit along the trails, designed to kill feral cats and foxes – invasive predators that kill an estimated 3 billion native Australian animals every year.
Across the country, multiple overlapping threats are pushing species toward extinction. Vast swathes of critical native habitat are cleared annually for urban development, farming, mining, and timber production. Invasive species – from fire ants and cane toads to foxes and feral cats – leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Invasive weeds choke native bushland, chlamydia has pushed koalas to the brink of extinction across most of their range, and the skin-eating chytrid fungus has already caused seven native frog extinctions, with more expected to follow.
Climate change has amplified every existing threat. Extreme heat events kill thousands of native flying foxes, which drop dead from trees when temperatures climb past tolerable limits. For many other species, rising temperatures eliminate critical food sources or destroy habitats. Climate change also increases the frequency and severity of catastrophic natural disasters: the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires killed an estimated 3 billion animals, and subsequent years of record-breaking flooding have caused widespread wildlife loss that researchers have not yet been able to fully quantify.
As threats stack up, once-widespread species are now confined to small, disconnected fragments of habitat, making them far more vulnerable to extinction. But while the overall trend is dire, small, determined recovery efforts are delivering rare wins. At Perth Zoo, a captive breeding program prepares young numbats for release into Dryandra Woodland, boosting the wild population’s genetic diversity. “When you get that feedback: your babies have got babies, it’s very satisfying,” Vicki Power, a senior zoo keeper, says of the program. Captive breeding has helped establish new wild populations for dozens of threatened species, though many cannot survive in unfenced wild areas due to persistent predator threats, and isolated fenced reserves face their own challenges of inbreeding and overpopulation.
While habitat protection and restoration projects are expanding across the country, they are not keeping pace with ongoing habitat destruction, particularly in the most biodiversity-rich regions. Scientists are also working to combat wildlife disease and preserve genetic material of threatened species for future resurrection efforts, but these efforts are expensive, labor-intensive, and only buy limited time for most at-risk species.
The world is currently in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history, the first driven entirely by human activity – and Australia is leading this grim trend. Australia has more mammal extinctions than any other country, and ranks among the highest for species loss across all taxonomic groups. “Despite Australia being one of the wealthiest countries per capita in the world and having more than its fair share of world-leading scientists… we have a truly awful record of conserving species,” Ritchie says. “And things aren’t getting better.”
The Australian government’s official list of extinct species stands at 67, but independent researchers estimate at least 100 unique Australian plant and animal species have already been lost forever, with the true figure likely far higher, as new extinct species are still being discovered decades after they disappeared. While the rate of extinction has held steady at roughly four per decade, the number of species currently classified as threatened continues to climb rapidly, and the decline of many at-risk populations is accelerating.
This trajectory carries severe, far-reaching consequences for all Australians, experts warn. Australia’s biodiversity underpins the entire national economy, supporting sectors from agriculture to tourism. Potential scientific breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, and climate adaptation could be lost forever if species go extinct before they can be studied. For First Nations Australians, biodiversity loss also threatens deeply held cultural traditions and connections to country. “We think of ourselves as custodians of all life on Earth… so there’s a much more personal and social feeling of loss that comes when these things are not doing well or we lose them forever,” says Jack Pascoe, an ecologist and member of the Yuin Aboriginal nation.
While environmental protection is primarily a state responsibility in Australia, the federal government oversees matters of national biodiversity importance. The center-left Labor government took office in 2022 promising that no new extinctions would occur on its watch, and has positioned environmental protection as a core priority for its term. “It’s well understood that nature is facing many challenges in the world today, both here in Australia, and overseas… we are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate,” Environment Minister Murray Watt told the BBC in a statement.
The government has significantly increased national emissions reduction targets, scaled up investment in renewable energy, earned some praise for its work to recover critically endangered mammal species, and passed landmark environment law reform last year, hailed as the most significant in a generation. Australia has also committed to an ambitious national target to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. But many conservation experts remain skeptical that these commitments will translate into meaningful change.
The new laws only provide the regulatory framework for change. The critical substance – binding national environmental standards and a powerful federal watchdog to enforce them – is still being developed. Many in the conservation sector argue that the core problem is not a lack of regulatory tools, but a lack of political will to use them to protect the environment over economic interests. Robert Hill, Australia’s longest-serving environment minister, who led the last major national environment reforms in 1999 under the conservative Howard government, admits that successive governments over the past 30 years have failed to do enough to protect biodiversity – including his own. “We should have done more too,” he says.
Many of the challenges Hill faced three decades ago still plague current leaders. Australia’s national wealth has long been built on the extraction of natural resources, a sector that remains a core part of the national economy and a major source of government funding for public services like healthcare and housing. Powerful industry lobbying, overlapping jurisdictional conflicts between state and federal governments, and bureaucratic red tape all create major barriers to meaningful action. Even when federal leaders want to act, these pressures often derail environmental protections, as seen in 2023, when the Albanese government rushed through laws to protect Tasmania’s A$1.4 billion salmon farming industry, ignoring internal departmental warnings about the threat the industry poses to the endangered Maugean Skate, a rare ray found only in Tasmanian waters. “The axe falls on the environmental outcome if there’s the alternative of an economic one,” Hill says. “Even if [the federal government] does want to act, it’s still got to have the political strength to turn its aspirations into reality.”
Many conservation leaders also argue that greater regulation alone is not enough. Currently, most on-the-ground conservation work relies on donations from philanthropists and unpaid volunteer labor, and dozens of critical projects are stalled due to lack of funding. The federal government currently spends roughly A$700 million annually on nature protection. Conservation experts estimate the country needs to spend A$33 billion – 1% of national GDP – annually to reverse biodiversity loss. A major imbalance in government spending exacerbates this gap: research by conservation analyst Paul Elton estimates that the Australian government still spends more than A$26 billion annually on subsidies for harmful industries including mining, intensive agriculture, and fossil fuels – despite signing global pledges to phase out these harmful subsidies. “For every dollar the government is spending on positive biodiversity conservation action, there’s A$26 being spent on subsidies that are causing harm to nature,” Elton says. “That’s a pretty stark imbalance.”
Minister Watt did not directly address questions about funding demands from conservation groups, but said: “We remain committed to long-term environmental recovery, in partnership with state and local governments, community and environmental groups.”
While public support for environmental protection has grown in recent years, experts are skeptical that governments will prioritize biodiversity action over competing political and economic demands until voters demand change. “The community will say to you, we should spend a lot of money on the environment. And then if you say, ‘Well, what are you prepared to sacrifice to ensure that funding base?’, then they’re no longer interested,” Hill says.
Against this backdrop of systemic challenge and slow progress, conservation advocates say small wins like the numbat’s recovery are what keep them going. Today, there are roughly 3,000 numbats living in the wild across Australia, and the Dryandra population has grown tenfold since Dr. Friend first began his work in the 1980s. After five hours of fruitless scanning on our survey, excited shouts ring out from the driver’s seat and the back of the truck: a numbat stands frozen, alert, at the end of a hollow log. Within the next hour, we spot eight more numbats, including two pairs of curious young pups blinking in the dusky afternoon light. This year’s full population count, Dr. Friend says later, is one of the best on record.
Even so, Dr. Friend warns the numbat is not yet out of danger. He fears the species’ removal from the endangered list will lead to cuts in critical funding and support needed to cement its recovery. He points to the woylie, a small native marsupial also known as the brush-tailed bettong, which recovered enough to be removed from the threatened list, only to be added back a decade later in a more precarious state. “But I remind people they’re not out of the woods yet,” Dr. Friend says. “We can’t walk away, and say ‘no, they’re fine,’ you know? It’s got to be accepted that continued work is needed to keep that animal on the planet.”
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Ukraine denies targeting Bulgaria as drone explodes near pipeline
A fresh incident of an errant drone has escalated tensions in Eastern Europe, after an unmanned aerial vehicle carrying a substantial payload of explosives detonated close to a critical energy infrastructure site in northeastern Bulgaria, near the country’s border with NATO member Romania. Ukraine has issued a categorical denial that it deliberately targeted Bulgarian territory, in the wake of the blast that has put the spotlight on growing risks of conflict spillover into NATO member states amid Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The explosion unfolded around 1 kilometer from a compressor station of the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline, a strategic artery that transports natural gas from Turkey through Bulgaria to Ukraine. The drone ultimately crashed in an unoccupied sunflower field near the Kardam border crossing with Romania, close to the Black Sea coast, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev confirmed in an official video address following an emergency security council meeting with his cabinet. While no injuries or fatalities were reported in the incident, Radev emphasized that the amount of explosives on board the drone was “significant”, noting the blast produced a loud shockwave visible as black smoke that was detected by border patrols in both Romania and Bulgaria.
Notably, neither Bulgarian nor Romanian air surveillance systems detected the drone before it crashed, a gap Radev acknowledged reflects the widespread challenge facing European nations in countering unidentified unmanned aerial threats. Following an initial analysis of the drone debris, Bulgaria’s defense ministry stated the UAV is a model commonly deployed by the Ukrainian military, though officials also confirmed that there is currently no conclusive evidence the incursion was deliberate. In response to the event, Bulgaria’s foreign ministry has summoned Ukraine’s ambassador to Sofia for an emergency meeting scheduled for Monday.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry has pushed back against any suggestion of intentional targeting. “We can say with certainty that the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not intentionally direct any assets toward Bulgaria,” said ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhyi. Kyiv added that it is maintaining close communication with Bulgarian authorities to fully clarify the circumstances of the incident, and placed blame for the stray drone incident on the broader context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This event marks the latest in a rising string of unauthorized drone incursions into NATO territory, a trend that has stoked concerns about accidental escalation of the Ukraine conflict. For months, neighboring Romania, a NATO member that shares a long border with Ukraine, has faced repeated drone incursions, including multiple crashes on Romanian soil. In late July, Romania expelled a Russian embassy staff member in response to the escalating incursions.
Bulgaria itself has maintained a nuanced position on the Ukraine conflict: in June, Sofia halted all military aid to Kyiv, with Radev stating the country does not wish to join the coalition of arms-supplying allies and prioritizes diplomatic efforts to end the war. Following Saturday’s drone incident, however, Radev announced immediate security upgrades: Bulgaria will boost border surveillance, redeploy additional troops to its northern and eastern borders, and implement new anti-drone countermeasures to prevent similar events.
The Black Sea, where both Russian and Ukrainian forces conduct regular drone operations, has become an increasingly volatile flashpoint in recent weeks. Just earlier this week, Turkey reported that a drone attack on two civilian cargo vessels transiting the Black Sea left multiple crew members injured, and Ankara voiced deep concern over the escalating military activity in the international waterway.
The spillover risks are not limited to Eastern Europe, either. On the same day as the Bulgarian drone incident, German military officials confirmed that unidentified drones were spotted earlier this week over a sensitive army installation in western Germany. The Mechernich base houses an underground weapons depot that stores components for US-made Patriot air defense systems, a weapons system that Ukraine has long requested to defend its cities and infrastructure. The sightings come just days after an explosives-laden drone was discovered near a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig-Halle Airport, a key hub for military cargo shipments for the German military and NATO allies.
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Infantino denies allegations of affair, favouritism while at UEFA: report
Global football’s top administrator is facing a new wave of controversy, just weeks after being forced to scrap a divisive private investment plan for the World Cup. FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who is currently campaigning for re-election next March, is now confronting explosive allegations of an improper affair and workplace favoritism stemming from his time as Secretary General of UEFA, European football’s governing body, between 2009 and 2016.
According to a report published by British newspaper The Telegraph in late Friday, the Italian-Swiss football executive is accused of engaging in an intimate relationship with a female UEFA employee during his tenure. The outlet, which did not name its sources for the story, further claims that Infantino abused his position at the organization to secure a promotion for the woman. The report also alleges that upon her departure from UEFA at an unspecified date, the employee received a six-figure severance payout, in addition to coverage of roughly £45,000 (equivalent to $60,700) in tuition fees for a graduate business program.
Infantino, who has been married to his spouse since 2001, has issued a full and categorical rejection of all claims made in the report. A FIFA spokesperson told The Telegraph that the allegations are “categorically untrue”, adding that any suggestion of inappropriate conduct or violation of organizational regulations amounts to defamation. The statement further noted that no formal complaint regarding Infantino’s behavior has ever been filed by any staff member at either UEFA or FIFA, because no such improper incident ever occurred.
When reached for comment by Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Saturday, UEFA confirmed that a departure payment and MBA tuition coverage were indeed provided to the individual in question during Infantino’s tenure. However, the European governing body emphasized that both payments were fully compliant with the staff departure regulations in place at that time, noting that these rules have been tightened significantly since 2016. As of Saturday afternoon, AFP had not received a response from a FIFA spokesperson to its request for additional comment.
This latest scandal comes amid an ongoing crisis for Infantino, which began when he introduced a controversial plan to open FIFA World Cup tournaments to outside private investment late last month. The proposal drew fierce pushback from multiple global football stakeholders, with UEFA emerging as one of its most outspoken opponents. Even after Infantino was forced to shelve the plan earlier this week, UEFA maintained its hardline stance, confirming Thursday that its threat of a future World Cup boycott remains in place, as the withdrawal of the proposal alone was not enough to address its concerns.
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Ukraine warns of tough winter as Russia strikes kill 4 in Kyiv region
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made his first official visit to Belgrade as head of state, where he delivered a stark warning about the coming winter amid a fresh wave of deadly Russian long-range strikes that claimed multiple civilian lives, including a young child, in the Kyiv region.
During a press conference alongside Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Zelensky confirmed that Russian overnight missile and drone barrages, paired with intensified shelling across frontline communities, had killed 13 civilians across Ukraine in the 24-hour period. Among the fatalities was a three-year-old boy killed in a strike on a village outside Kyiv; four additional people, including the child’s parents, his 15-year-old brother, and a neighbor who rushed to provide aid, were hospitalized after a follow-up double-tap strike on the residential site. Local reports and on-the-ground accounts from AFP correspondents in Kyiv documented roughly a dozen explosions across the capital region, as Ukrainian air defense units issued urgent alerts for incoming ballistic attacks from the north.
Zelensky emphasized that Russian forces are deliberately targeting Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure to break civilian morale, leaving the country with virtually no undamaged thermal power plants as it prepares for the winter heating season. Thermal power facilities serve as a critical backup to Ukraine’s nuclear energy fleet, which forms the backbone of the country’s national power grid. With more than three years having passed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, both sides have sharply escalated long-range strike operations, leading to a steady rise in civilian casualties. Moscow has ramped up attacks on Kyiv in recent months, primarily using salvos of ballistic missiles that are notoriously difficult for existing air defense systems to intercept, prompting repeated Ukrainian appeals for additional U.S.-manufactured Patriot interceptor missiles and other advanced Western air defense systems. In response to the intensified strikes, Kyiv has launched a growing number of drone attacks against targets inside Russian territory.
During his meetings with Serbian leadership, Zelensky renewed his call for tougher international sanctions on Russia, aiming to cut off the flow of missile components that he says are reaching Moscow from nearly every continent, including from some of Ukraine’s closest international partners. “These components arrive, and then missiles strike people, killing children, civilians and soldiers,” he told reporters, reiterating that expanded access to interceptor missiles is a non-negotiable priority to counter the growing wave of long-range attacks.
Serbia, which maintains long-standing close ties to Moscow, remains one of the only European countries that has refused to implement formal sanctions against Russia. While Vucic’s government has provided non-military humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, it has not altered its long-held neutral policy on the conflict. Vucic confirmed that no military cooperation agreements were discussed during Saturday’s meeting, noting that any future arrangements would be addressed only after the war concludes. He reaffirmed that Serbia’s policy of recognizing Ukraine’s territorial integrity remains unchanged, and has repeatedly denied Kremlin accusations that Serbian firms have supplied munitions to Kyiv. Vucic previously traveled to Ukraine for a regional summit in 2025 and visited Kyiv earlier this year, but has declined to sign any formal declaration of support for Ukraine in the ongoing conflict.
Zelensky’s visit to Belgrade comes as part of his years-long global diplomatic tour to rally international support for Ukraine, a campaign he has led consistently since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
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Lionel Messi’s father Jorge dies aged 68
Jorge Messi, the father, first coach and long-time professional agent of global football icon Lionel Messi, has passed away at the age of 68, according to an official announcement from Newell’s Old Boys, the Argentine club where Lionel Messi launched his childhood football career. The confirmation was made public by the club on Saturday.
Local Argentine media outlets have reported that Jorge Messi died on Friday at a hospital in Rosario, the central Argentine city where the Messi family has deep roots. The 68-year-old had been facing publicized health struggles in recent months, during which the Messi family made a public plea for media privacy and empathy amid widespread speculation over his condition.
In a heartfelt social media statement shared Saturday, Newell’s Old Boys paid tribute to Jorge Messi’s foundational role in his son’s unprecedented career, noting: “His constant companionship and behind-the-scenes leadership were essential in backing every step of Lionel.”
The story of Jorge Messi is inextricably tied to Lionel’s rise from a young prospect in Rosario to one of the greatest footballers in history. He served as Lionel’s first coach when the future star began playing the sport at the grassroots level in Argentina, and was the only person to accompany the 13-year-old Lionel when he moved across the Atlantic to join FC Barcelona’s youth academy, a move that set the stage for his legendary career. Later, he stepped into the role of Lionel’s official agent, managing the off-pitch business and logistics that allowed the footballer to focus on his performance on the pitch.
Looking back on his father’s influence in a 2022 interview with DirecTV Sports, Lionel Messi publicly acknowledged the outsized impact Jorge had on his career and personal growth, saying: “My father helped me enormously. He is very critical of me. That made me always want to push myself further.”
The news of Jorge’s passing has prompted an outpouring of tributes from across the global football community in the hours following the announcement, with fans, fellow players and football institutions extending their condolences to the Messi family.
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Arsenal sign Brazil midfielder Guimaraes from Newcastle
In a high-profile transfer move that shakes up the Premier League landscape, reigning English top-flight champions Arsenal have finalized the acquisition of Brazilian midfielder and Newcastle United captain Bruno Guimaraes, both clubs confirmed in official statements released on Saturday. Reports peg the transfer value at £75 million, equal to roughly $101.2 million.
After four and a half seasons with the Magpies, the 28-year-old Brazil international has put pen to paper on a long-term deal with the Gunners, who ended a 20-year trophy drought to claim the Premier League title last season. Guimaraes marks Arsenal’s most high-profile incoming transfer of this summer transfer window, joining already completed signings goalkeeper Illan Meslier and winger Christos Tzolis at the Emirates Stadium.
Arsenal sporting director Andrea Berta emphasized the transformative impact of Guimaraes’ arrival, noting that the addition further solidifies the club’s midfield core. “As we have all seen, Bruno can operate both as a holding midfielder and a dynamic box-to-box option. He blends technical quality with relentless work rate, and has contributed consistent goals and assists for his side every season across his career,” Berta explained. “Bruno will give Mikel [Arteta] greater flexibility to evolve our playing system, while also boosting healthy internal competition – a key factor if we want to maintain the high standards needed to compete for major honours.”
While the full transfer fee remains officially undisclosed by both clubs, Newcastle confirmed that the deal ranks among the top 10 highest transfer fees ever received for a player aged 28 or older. This is not the first time Arsenal have been linked to Guimaraes: the club was in the running to sign him back in January 2022, before he ultimately left French side Lyon to join Newcastle.
Across his tenure on Tyneside, Guimaraes made 195 appearances for Newcastle and found the back of the net 31 times. Playing under former manager Eddie Howe, he was a central figure in the club’s 2023 League Cup triumph, which ended a 54-year wait for a major silverware for the St James’ Park side.
Reflecting on his departure, Guimaraes called the choice to leave one of the hardest decisions of his career. “When I first arrived at the club, we were in a really difficult position, and I am incredibly proud of everything we built and achieved together,” he said in Newcastle’s official statement. “I fell in love with this place, and I truly mean that.”
Guimaraes’ departure comes just one week after Howe stepped down from his role as Newcastle manager, with the club already appointing German coach Matthias Jaissle as his replacement. The Brazilian, who represented his nation at the most recent FIFA World Cup, will now compete for a starting spot in Arsenal’s midfield alongside established names including Declan Rice, Martin Zubimendi, and Mikel Merino, as well as young prospect Myles Lewis-Skelly.
The new Premier League season is fast approaching, with Arsenal set to kick off their campaign against last season’s second-place side Manchester City in the FA Community Shield next Sunday. Five days after that showpiece, they will get their title defense underway against newly promoted Coventry City. Newcastle, meanwhile, will open their 2025-26 campaign at home to Liverpool at St James’ Park on August 23.
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Melbourne produce stunning late comeback to shatter Fremantle in MCG classic
In a high-scoring, edge-of-your-seat Australian Football League clash at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday, home side Melbourne pulled off a stunning late comeback to defeat ladder-leading Fremantle by four points, leaving major question marks hanging over the Dockers’ ability to claim a maiden premiership title in September. The match lived up to every bit of its pre-game hype, ending as a 34-goal shootout that kept a sellout crowd of more than 40,000 fans on their feet until the final siren.
Fremantle entered the encounter as favorites, having only played one prior match at the MCG this season – a 43-point blowout of bottom-placed Essendon in Round 10. The Dockers got off to a blistering start, leading by 15 points as late as the middle of the final quarter, thanks to a dominant performance from their elite tall forward group. The trio of Jye Amiss, Josh Treacy and Patrick Voss combined for 11 goals on the day, with Voss notching four before halftime, including a candidate for goal of the year that came just before the main break. The star forward picked up possession 65 meters out from goal, spotted an open goalsquare, and slotted it home to swing all momentum firmly in Fremantle’s favor heading into the second half.
However, the result would ultimately be shaped by a controversial pre-game call from Fremantle head coach Justin Longmuir, who opted to rest star captain and starting key defender Alex Pearce for the cross-country trip. It was Pearce’s third missed match of the season, with Longmuir justifying the decision by pointing to Pearce’s long history of injury issues, even as he conceded post-match that the absence likely cost the Dockers the win. With Pearce sidelined, Fremantle’s remaining backline defenders failed to contain Melbourne’s attacking pressure, conceding 65 first-half points – the most the Dockers had allowed in a single half all season. By the final siren, Melbourne notched 113 points, the highest score any side has put up against Fremantle in the entire 2024 campaign.
Melbourne, who entered Saturday with 10 wins from 10 previous home games at the MCG this season (their only prior loss a 20-point defeat to Geelong in Round 20), found another gear in the final 15 minutes of play. Timely goals from Harrison Petty and Bailey Fritsch, followed by a crafty soccer-style finish from Harry Sharp, turned a 15-point deficit into a four-point victory that will go down as one of the most memorable wins of Melbourne’s season. Petty turned in one of his best performances of the year, finishing with three goals and nearly adding a fourth from point-blank range.
The result has thrown renewed scrutiny on Fremantle’s ability to win high-stakes matches at the MCG, which would be required for the club to win its first ever premiership should it advance to the September decider. Longmuir acknowledged post-match that his side lacked the necessary composure in the tight final stretch, noting that the club had not faced a high-pressure away situation like this in 12 weeks. “We haven’t been in that situation much over the last 12 weeks so we’ll learn a lot out of that,” Longmuir told reporters. He added, “We’ve obviously been practicing those situations, but it’s different, you’re away from home, then the opposition crowd gets into it, the scoreboard is real.” Despite the loss, Fremantle remains almost mathematically guaranteed to claim the 2024 minor premiership, and will close out the home-and-away season with matches against top-10 sides Adelaide and Carlton before hosting their first home qualifying final since 2015.
For Melbourne, the comeback win has injected massive belief into the club’s premiership push, with acting head coach Steven King jokingly coined the side’s late-game surge “demon time” – a playful nod to the club’s “Demons” nickname. King called the win the biggest of his coaching career so far, noting that the statement victory over the league’s top side was a critical step for his group. “We needed to signify to our opposition that ‘yeah we’re here’,” King said. “We’re not just shooting to play a final, we want to make it count and we’ve got as much right as every other team in the competition to have a crack at this. Not saying the players didn’t believe beforehand, but it just builds more belief the way the game was played, especially here where grand finals are played against Fremantle, they’re the best team in it, make no mistake about it.”
The opening half of the match was so high-octane that former West Coast head coach Adam Simpson called it “the best half we’ve seen this year” during his commentary for SEN radio, with 21 of the match’s 34 total goals scored before halftime.
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US Senate confirms Trump’s ex-lawyer as attorney general
In a closely watched and deeply partisan vote early Saturday, the United States Senate confirmed Todd Blanche, former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement official as permanent attorney general. The final vote tally ended at 50-49, split almost entirely along party lines, with only two moderate Republican senators — Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — breaking with their caucus to join all Democrats in opposing the nomination.
Blanche, who has already led the Department of Justice (DOJ) in an acting capacity since April, when Trump fired former acting attorney general Pam Bondi, carries a long history of representing Trump in high-stakes criminal cases. Prior to his appointment to the acting role, Blanche stood as Trump’s private defense counsel in his 2024 New York hush money trial linked to payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. He also served on the former president’s legal team in two federal indictments brought by special counsel Jack Smith: one over improper retention of classified documents after Trump left the White House, and a second for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Both cases were dismissed immediately following Trump’s victory in the 2024 general election.
From the outset of the confirmation process, Senate Democrats uniformly opposed Blanche’s nomination, raising urgent alarms that Trump intended to transform the traditionally independent DOJ into a political weapon serving his personal interests rather than the American public. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat Dick Durbin argued that the role of attorney general demands the holder serve as “the people’s lawyer,” not personal counsel to the sitting president. “Mr Blanche continues to operate as the president’s personal lawyer, treating the Justice Department like a law firm serving one client — the president,” Durbin said ahead of the vote.
The nomination faced a last-minute threat from within Republican ranks, after a handful of GOP senators raised objections to two controversial proposals tied to Blanche’s appointment. The first was a plan for a $1.8 billion fund to compensate what Trump labels “victims of politicized prosecutions” — a category widely expected to include hundreds of rioters who participated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a violent attempt to block the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump. The second was an unprecedented proposal to grant Trump, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization permanent immunity from future federal tax audits.
To shore up support from wavering Republicans, Blanche released a written concession over the weekend that reversed both policies. The controversial “anti-weaponization fund” was scrapped entirely, while the tax immunity agreement was revised to apply only retroactively to past tax filings, with no protections for future returns. The compromise was enough to secure the narrow majority needed for confirmation.
Following the vote, Blanche took to social platform X to express gratitude for the outcome. “I am deeply honored by the trust and confidence President Trump has placed in me to lead the Department of Justice,” he wrote. “I am grateful to the Senate for staying late to complete this process. To the dedicated public servants of the Department of Justice, thank you for your work each day to uphold the law and keep our country safe.”
President Trump has praised Blanche as a “star” throughout the nomination process, framing his appointment as part of a broader effort to bring independent federal agencies under more direct White House control — a shift that has already upended longstanding U.S. political norms. Critics, however, warn that Blanche’s leadership aligns with what Democrats have labeled a Trump “retribution campaign” targeting the president’s political opponents. Blanche has also faced sustained criticism from survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who have condemned his oversight of the public release of investigative files tied to the case, given Epstein’s longstanding personal ties to Trump.
The close final vote underscores the intense political sensitivity surrounding the nomination, which has renewed national debate over the separation of powers and the independence of the nation’s top law enforcement agency at the start of Trump’s second term.
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Buddha and a road trip: Sussan Ley breaks silence on life after Liberal spill
Almost a year after her abrupt ousting as leader of Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition, former opposition leader Sussan Ley has opened up for the first time about the fallout of the February leadership spill that ended her top political role, and the unplanned cross-country American road trip that helped her rebuild her sense of purpose.
The long-serving Member for Farrer stepped into the Liberal leadership role in 2023, but her tenure collapsed in just months amid two turbulent, public splits between the Liberal Party and its coalition partner, the Nationals. In a candid opinion piece published in *The Australian Financial Review* on Saturday, Ley described the leadership spill that removed her from office as the most catastrophic turning point of her life.
In the immediate aftermath of the spill, Ley withdrew from public life entirely: she switched off her phone, retreated from the political sphere, and spent days in reflection. Drawing on two unexpected sources of guidance, she turned to Buddhist teachings — which reminded her that “you only lose what you cling to” — and the uncompromising ethos of The Clash’s frontman Joe Strummer, who long championed radical honesty in public life.
Recalling the emotional toll of the moment, Ley compared her burnt-out state to a windscreen cracked by a falling rock: all the structural pieces remain in place, but the driver can no longer see clearly through the damage. “Recognising the symptoms of burnout does little to blunt their impact,” she wrote.
Rather than lingering on the political defeat, Ley soon acted on a long-held dream of exploring Middle America. She booked a one-way plane ticket to Los Angeles, traveled north to North Dakota, and embarked on a rambling, unscripted journey by Greyhound bus all the way to the southern tip of Texas. Traveling light, she brought just one backpack, a single pair of sturdy boots, and a playlist packed with punk music.
Along the route, she stayed in budget, modest hotels and rode alongside ordinary passengers she described as “people in transition and disarray”. Crossing through South Dakota, she noted the omnipresence of small-town convenience stores; as she moved further south into the border regions, Spanish became the primary language heard along highways, and the landscape took on the rough, unregulated energy of the historic Wild West. On her rides, she encountered people moving through the region carrying everything from cash to narcotics to undocumented migrants, she said.
During her trip, Ley made a stop to search for the controversial border wall built under former U.S. President Donald Trump, and spoke with a U.S. Border Patrol officer who declined to have his photo taken. What struck Ley most about the country was not the deep political divisions that have long defined American public life — “America has always argued with itself,” she noted — but a widespread, underlying weariness that cut across all regions and groups. While it remains a cultural truism that hard work brings success, Ley observed that many ordinary Americans now feel that working hard is no longer enough to get ahead.
By the end of her journey, Ley reached a stark conclusion about the current state of the U.S.: the country does not feel like a single unified nation, but rather a collection of separate societies that barely communicate with one another. Despite that sober observation, the trip left Ley with a renewed sense of connection to marginalized people, and she wrote that she felt “harmony with the downtrodden” while riding the public bus network across the country.
Ley contracted influenza A during her travels and returned to Australia physically unwell, but the numb, defeated feeling that had lingered since the leadership spill had completely lifted. Following her departure, Angus Taylor was selected to replace her as Liberal leader. For Ley, the weeks of traveling alongside ordinary people carrying far heavier burdens than her own helped her accept the end of her career in national leadership, and restored a clear, balanced perspective on her place in the world.