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President Donald Trump may have revealed just how corrupt FIFA’s 2026 World Cup really is. Just hours after top U.S. Soccer scorer Folarin Balogun received a red card and a minimum automatic one-game suspension, Trump urged FIFA President Gianni Infantino to review the decision, four people told The New York Times. FIFA announced Sunday that it had reversed Balogun’s suspension, making him eligible to play against Belgium on Monday as the U.S. tries to advance to the quarterfinals. This is the first time since 1962 that a player has been allowed to appear in a game after receiving a suspension. The unprecedented decision has sparked serious concerns of favoritism. Earlier this year, Infantino shocked his own top officials by cooking up the FIFA World Peace Prize, apparently to placate Trump after his campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize crashed and burned. It wasn’t just Trump who intervened—senior administration officials including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and World Cup task force director Andrew Giuliani worked quickly to engage lawyers to help U.S. Soccer mount an appeal.When FIFA delivered its decision, the organization offered no explanation for why Balogun was exempt from his suspension, sparking widespread outrage.The Royal Belgian Football Association released a statement Monday arguing that FIFA had failed to follow its own rules in processing an appeal and that the RBFA was “investigating all potential options.” Shortly after, the federation announced it was challenging the decision.The Europa League also released a statement saying the decision was “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable,” and that FIFA had “crossed a red line.”“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” the football club said. Meanwhile, Trump celebrated the decision. “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social Sunday afternoon.

Edward Curtin They crowded the gate, anxious for entry. It was a heavenly late afternoon, the sky blue, the sun radiant, you could see all the way to eternity. Most in the crowd were old, hungry for salvation, gnawing on their memories. It was Peter’s day off, but a man with a gun stood at […]

The Trump administration seems to be living in an alternate reality when it comes to the president’s vanity projects.Despite having to drain and fix the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool within weeks of insisting the renovation was complete, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum insisted to ABC News Sunday that the multimillion-dollar restoration was nonetheless a “big success.”“And so when we look in context, President Trump set out to make D.C. safe and beautiful. He’s done that,” Burgum said. “The Reflecting Pool was part of the original design of the Lincoln Memorial.… It was leaking 45,000 gallons a day.”Burgum then cited attempts by previous presidential administrations to remedy the pool’s leaks, including the Obama administration’s two-year, $34 million effort between 2010 and 2012. The difference now, according to Burgum, is a vast advancement in technology, such as “nanobubblers” that he claimed have completely rid the pool of algae, as well as an industrial liner that has stopped the pool from leaking.Neither of those details, however, appear to be true. Within days of refilling the pool, the algal bloom that the Trump administration had spent $14.7 million to eradicate had returned, while the painted liner at the bottom had begun to slough off.“So the Reflecting Pool has been a big success. And we’ve got 340 million people in this country that are celebrating 250. We did have a few vandals, but all that’s going to be repairable, and that’ll all be fixed in the coming weeks as we go forward,” Burgum said.“Well, you say it’s been a success, but the pool is going to be drained this week, isn’t it?” asked host George Stephanopoulos.“We don’t know if we need to drain the whole thing or not because, you know, the cutting happened on the edge,” Burgum responded. “And of course, again, when you’re talking about 340,000 square feet of surface, even though there was, you know, damage done by vandals that was there, it is a small, small—99.99 percent of the pool bottom is perfect.”Donald Trump had originally promised that the project would cost $1.8 million. Now it seems the total project will cost far more than $15 million.In another interview with CNN, Burgum again insisted—without evidence—that portions of the pool’s broken liner were caused by vandalism, echoing Trump’s explanation for the failing reno.“It didn’t peel off. There was vandalism. There were box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There were people literally trying to destroy part of a monument, the Reflecting Pool,” Burgum told the network.“There are photographs of a person or people cutting a 300- or 350-foot gash in the bottom of the Reflecting Pool?” pressed State of the Union host Dana Bash. The president initially announced late last month that the damage involved a 250-foot gash. The following day, the number escalated to 300, and then 350 feet the day after that.“Dana, I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not—think, this is an industrial liner,” Burgum continued. “Every farmer and rancher in America that’s had their pickup liner lined by this sprayed-on liner knows that you literally—literally, it would never just like peel off or fall off. This is, like, a strong material.“The only way you can end up with actual slices in one spot and not the other is that someone physically cut it,” Burgum said.

The display of diplomatic protocol drew criticism after Iranian organizers appeared to taunt the visiting delegations.

The UAE’s non-oil economy is experiencing its worst period since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Addis-Ababa-based studio behind ‘Sunday Morning’ took home two awards.

The Nigerian billionaire held talks with Tanzania’s president last week, and formal talks to finalize a deal are to be held soon.

When one has witnessed not only a colour revolution in her own country (Macedonia, 2015–2016) but also sensed its arrival during Ukraine’s Euromaidan in 2014, every new outburst of supposedly spontaneous revolt provokes scepticism. Regrettably, this scepticism is usually justified. Nearly two years ago, I wrote similarly about student protests in Serbia and later about Nepal. The point is this: [...]

The emirate approved an 18 billion-dirham ($4.9 billion) spending plan for new measures aimed at improving the attractiveness of the city.