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Stephan Shemilt
The Kia Oval’s chief cricket reporter
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Chris Woakes, an England pace bowler, was sidelined for the remainder of their crucial fifth Test against India because he injured his shoulder on the opening day of play at The Oval.
When Woakes landed awkwardly late on Thursday, he was tumbling to make a boundary stop. In a clear disorientation, he left the field while wearing a makeshift sling.
The 36-year-old was assessed overnight, and England gave the all-clear assurance that he would not play any more until the following day.
At the conclusion of the series, England stated that a “further assessment will be conducted.”
The home side must avoid defeat in the fifth Test to win the series, which places them in a precarious position.
After Ben Stokes’ shoulder injury caused him to miss the first game, England already had a new lineup.
With only Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton, and Josh Tongue serving as frontline seamers, Jacob Bethell and Joe Root’s spin is now available, leaving England with only Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton, and Josh Tongue.
After England won the toss and chose to field first, India finished the first day with a score of 204-6.
Woakes, the only pace bowler from England to have played in each of the grueling five-match series, is suffering from a broken ankle.
In his previous four Test matches, he struggled to make an impact on flat surfaces, taking ten wickets. KL Rahul, the opener for India, was playing on his stumps at The Oval on day one before getting injured.
Woakes was already in a fight to make an appearance in England’s winter ashes tour due to his poor home record. He may be concerned that his future in international cricket will be harmed by this injury.
Woakes’ injury also has a significant impact on an England pace attack that has already been slowed due to injuries and exhaustion.
Mark Wood has a long-term absence from Stokes. Following a knee injury, Olly Stone is only just beginning to recover.
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England’s bowling unit already had a makeshift look even before the Woakes injury, with Matthew Potts, who was centrally contracted, being overlooked for the entire Test summer and Sam Cook missing after making his debut against Zimbabwe in May.
After being overlooked for the previous two Tests, Tongue returned to the team, and Atkinson is playing his first senior professional match in more than two months, and Overton is clinching his second Test cap after being injured for his first.
On the opening day of The Oval, it meant that England would frequently be erratic in favorable circumstances. An unbeaten 52 from Karun Nair kept India in a strong position despite the extras’ 30 runs conceded.
With a score of 2-31, Atkinson claimed that his enforced injury absence will help him recover from the Woakes’ absence.
Atkinson remarked, “I feel fresh and good.” To push the boundaries a little bit, I know I have just one game to play.
England came away with a poor ball play to defeat India to 153-6, but Nair and Washington Sundar’s unbroken stand of 51 earned the match.
According to Atkinson, “I think it should be easy for the bowlers to hit runs on the pitch and overheads,” but I don’t believe it should be so.
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Festus Akingbaso, a member of the Idanre/Ifedore Constituency’s House of Representatives, who also served as the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) deputy governor in the 2024 election, has resigned from the All Progressives Congress (APC).
At the Thursday event in Idanre, Akingbaso’s teeming supporters and loyalists also defected with him.
Akingbaso was applauded for the decision by Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, who was represented by his deputy, Olayide Adelami, at the reception.
Due to the Court of Appeal decision confirming Governor Aiyedatiwa’s victory in 2024, Adelami described the defection as “divinely ordained.”
Senator Olujimi, [2027] ADC Not Properly Anchored, Does Not Have Structures
Ade Adetimehin, the APC chairman in Ondo State, stated that Idanre and Ifedore are now running for the APC as a result of the federal lawmaker’s and his supporters leaving.
Adetimehin urged people to support President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which aims to bring comfort to the average person.
Aiyedatiwa thanked Governor Aiyedatiwa for taking the lead in the state and placing a high priority on the welfare of the state’s citizens during his address.
He stated that he had chosen to support the governor in bringing governance to the people.
A vote of confidence was cast in President Tinubu’s administration by Chief of Staff to former governor Olusegun Mimiko, who spoke on behalf of the defectors.
Ademujimi applauded Governor Ayedatiwa’s enormous accomplishments in every sector of the state.
Brian Eno and Together For Palestine are collaborating to hold a fundraiser for Palestinians, which is described as “a gathering of artists, musicians, and people for whom silence feels impossible.”
Musician and activist Brian Eno has made a huge announcement(Image: Getty Images)
English musician, songwriter, and activist, Brian Eno has just announced a one-off fundraiser show at Wembley in support of the people of Palestine.
Termed as a ‘gathering of artists, musicians and people for whom silence feels impossible’, Eno took to his social media pages to announce the one-off show called Together for Palestine.
The show will take place on September 17 at OVO Arena Wembley and will see Eno donning the hat of an executive producer along with Khaled Ziada, Khalid Abdalla and Tracey Seaward. It comes after furious Bob Geldof issued a desperate plea on Sky News to save babies in Gaza.
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Eno will executive produce the show which will take place on September 17 at OVO Arena Wembley (Image: REUTERS)
Captioning his post as “a letter to artist friends”, Eno explained why he is organising the event via a carousel of pictures with text, stating: “I’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the world’s most remarkable artists for over 50 years. But one of my biggest regrets is that during that time so many of us have remained silent about Palestine. Often that silence has come from fear — real fear — that speaking out could provoke a backlash, close doors or end a career.
However, that is now changing, partly because some activists and artists have blazed the path, but mostly because the reality of what is happening has become unfathomable.
Eno continued, “It’s not a mystery, and it’s not a blur of competing narratives that makes it “unintelligible.” The moral message is clear when dozens of non-partisan organizations, including Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders, refer to it as genocide. We are unable to remain silent.
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The musician then stated that he is supporting Together for Palestine by hosting a concert at Wembley Arena on September 17th. “A night of music, reflection, and hope.
This evening should serve as a courageous opportunity for artists to speak the truth to their hearts, as I believe it should be. This is a chance for us to stand together and say, “This can’t continue, whether it be on stage or on video.”
The Spider and I singer added that “every penny raised will go to Palestinian partners through Choose Love, a UK charity that supports local humanitarians in conflict zones.” We can raise millions of dollars to provide desperately needed aid to Gazan families.
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Beyond financial support, the With or Without You producer asserted that the show is about “sending a message of love and solidarity to the Palestinian people that they haven’t been forgotten.”
We hear and see them, and even though we may be far away, we are profoundly connected, Eno said.
Brian Eno has consistently used his platform to support Palestine. Earlier this year, he urged Microsoft to cut ties with Israel and pledged to donate his fee from composing the Windows 95 chime to aid Palestine. In 2024, he called on the International Criminal Court to prosecute war crimes through an open letter addressed to the judges of the body.
Eno and Nadine Shah both previously attended a benefit event for Palestine in April at the London Union Chapel. Eno and Fontaines D. C., R. E. M., and Bastille members also read Palestinians’ letters as part of the “Voices For Gaza” initiative.
More recently, he joined Kneecap, Fontaines D.C., Garbage, and others in publicly supporting a musicians’ alliance led by Massive Attack, which speaks out against “intimidations from within” the music industry towards those supporting Palestine.
A violent crime was the beginning. A Venezuelan man fatally stabbed Polish woman Klaudia, 24, to death as she was leaving work in a park in the center of Torun, central-north Poland in June.
On Sunday, July 6, thousands of protesters marched silently through Torun following that horrific incident. According to local media reports, far-right Konfederacja political alliance supporters planned the march, and demonstrators carried signs that read “stop illegal immigration.”
Then came the misinformation and rumors. A Paraguayan man allegedly photographed children on a playground on July 14 when someone in Walbrzych, southwestern Poland, called the police.
The man was stopped by the police, but his phone was unincriminated. Two Polish men soon after that began beating him up. A group of about 50 people stormed the hostel where he and other migrants were residing the following day. The owner has since been forced to shut down the hostel after some people threw flares into the building.
Anti-immigrant sentiment in Poland has increased in recent weeks, fueled by far-right rhetoric, which claims that there has been “unconstrained illegal migration” in Poland. Legislators frequently and even encourage claims that migrants take local jobs and that they pose a threat to Poles both physically and figuratively due to their “foreign lifestyle.”
Konrad Berkowicz, a member of Konfederacja’s Konfederacja, said that xenophobia is a crucial component of our national unity. We should cherish xenophobia because it has been condemned and stifled in the West by rapes and terrorist attacks.
Elmi Abdi, 62, a Somali refugee who immigrated to Poland in 1996, claimed that all parties are using us as scapegoats despite the fact that politicians are aware that this is all untrue. Abdi is currently the founder of the Good Start foundation, which assists migrants by providing assistance in terms of legal assistance, language classes, and other issues.
“It’s sad because we [immigrants] do everything possible to work safely here, pay taxes, and become members of society.”
The Polish Migration Forum, a rights organization, has described Poland’s culture as “pre-pogrom-like” as misinformation about immigrants spreads, such as in the Walbrzych incident.
The violence is what makes the current situation unique. The forum’s head, Agnieszka Kosowicz, stated that “we are in a very bad place.” People are insulted, threatened, and displayed hostility and contemptuously in acts of violence already occur. A swift response from the state is required because this situation is very alarming.
On Monday, July 21, 2025, at the Polish-Belarusian border in Polowce, Poland [Czarek Sokolowski/AP]
Rumors of “illegal returns”
Poland’s border controls with Germany and Lithuania were reinstated on July 7. That was in response to restrictions that Germany earlier in the year made Poland unaffordable.
According to EU regulations, Poland is also currently actively monitoring the return of migrants by the German police, both as asylum seekers and non-asylum seekers. These people first crossed into Germany after arriving in Poland from outside the EU.
Unofficial, far-right patrols have been stationed at the borders to monitor the situation and make “citizen arrests” of people they believe are entering the country illegally, but this is not the case because rumors about “illegal returns” of migrants by the German authorities continue to spread.
The EU charged Belarusian and Russian authorities with inciting the continent’s migration crisis by encouraging people from the Global South to visit Belarus and then travel through Poland to Europe.
Poland constructed a fence along its border with Belarus in 2022 to stop illegal entry of foreigners into the nation. However, the fence didn’t effectively stop people entering.
In order to deter visitors, Poland suspended the right to seek asylum altogether in March of this year.
All of this has heightened anti-migrant fear in Poland, which far-right organizations have gotten even more vocal about to their own political goals.
On Saturday, July 19, far-right organizations [Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska/Al Jazeera] march through central Krakow.
We are being humiliated, they say.
Anti-migrant marches organized by the far-right Konfederacja party and football fans slurred racist slurs and slogans through 80 Polish towns and cities on Saturday, July 19, bringing the hysteria to a new high nearly two weeks ago.
Nikola, a 16-year-old girl, reported to Al Jazeera that she had traveled 125 kilometers (80 miles) from Gorlice, southern Poland, to the Krakow march. She claimed she came along after watching YouTube videos that claimed Western Europeans were “afraid to leave their homes” due to the large number of undocumented immigrants.
She argued that joining a cause that “unites Poles today” was important to her.
I desired to belong to a group. People are demonstrating to the leaders that Poland is our nation and that they are concerned about security. She argued that we should take every precaution possible to stop what is happening in Western Europe.
She continued, “I want to feel safe in my city, and I’ve already seen a few people who appear to be from elsewhere.”
Nikola walked to Market Square alongside a sizable crowd of several hundred people, many of whom were wearing Polish flags and Wisla football team t-shirts. They passed tourists as they passed, some of whom were filming the protesters.
White-and-red Polish flags were waved proudly among the football fans by three elderly women. The current state has been sufficiently repressed by the country. Danuta, 60, said she was waking up because she was living in fear and suffering. She continued, referring to the right-wing organizations that patrol the Polish-German border and saying that the borders are not sealed and that civilians must guard them.
The march crossed paths with a smaller counterdemonstration led by local left-wing organizations in Market Square, and the two organizations exchanged insults as the police separated them.
No significant incidents were found during the day by the police. However, Abdi and other immigrants Al Jazeera spoke to via phone and confirmed they did not dare to leave their homes on Saturday.
On Saturday, July 19, 2025, police officers in Warsaw, Poland, attempt to disperse and secure a small group of anti-immigration demonstrators.
Fans of fake news, the flames
According to experts, false information and fake news about the number of people entering Poland have fueled anti-immigrant sentiment.
Kosowicz claimed that Poland is not experiencing any large-scale irregular migration. People who sought asylum in Poland and then entered Germany are returned within the Dublin procedure, according to EU regulations. In 2024, there were 688 such people, and this year – 318. Nothing about this is new.
In Poland, 2.2% of the population was born abroad in 2023, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) report on the global migration outlook for 2024. Comparable to other European nations like the UK (15.4%), Germany (18.2%), and France (13.8%), this is not very high.
According to the OECD, 152, 000 immigrants in Poland obtained residence permits for more than a year in 2022.
Since 2021, migrants from Global South countries have been attempting to cross the Polish-Belarusian border, but the number of migrants arriving in Europe has not been particularly high either. Official data indicates that 15, 022 illegal crossing attempts were made between January and late June of this year, of which only 5% of the attempts were successful.
In 2024, there were nearly 30, 000 attempts, out of which, by contrast, one-third (10, 900) were successful. Before Poland constructed a fence along Belarus’s border in 2021, there were 52 000 attempted.
Kosowicz also attributes hate attacks to the government, which she claims has failed to raise awareness of the costs and advantages of immigration and development, making foreigners all the more vulnerable.
According to a study conducted by Deloitte and UNHCR, 2.7% of Polish GDP is solely generated by Ukrainian refugees. However, she claimed, “This isn’t the information we hear from politicians.”
Abdi worries a lot about their futures because he is married to a Polish woman who he has two children with.
“Poland welcomed me so warmly when I arrived, and I’m very proud of Poland because it’s where I call home. He fluently told Al Jazeera, “I want it to be safe for everyone.
Mikey Moore has signed a season-long loan deal with Rangers.
The 17-year-old has 21 appearances for the London club and is regarded as one of English football’s brightest young talents.
The teenager said to RangersTV, “It was a huge opportunity for me once I learned that Rangers were interested and wanted me to come.”
“I think it’s a great place to be right now,” said the new boss and our play. I made the easy choice to come here.
In May 2024, Moore made his Premier League debut at the age of 16 years and 277 days. He is the youngest player to have played for Tottenham.
The England Under-19 international also became the club’s youngest player to start a Premier League game in October.
He broke Jimmy Greaves’ record as the youngest English scorer in a major European competition during the club’s Europa League-winning campaign last year, breaking the club’s record of Jimmy Greaves.
We were interested in adding him to the squad because of his brave, aggressive attacking skills, and he is undoubtedly a player who, despite his age, can impact the team right away, according to Rangers head coach Russell Martin.
Massive Ibrox endorsement from Defoe
Before making the temporary switch, Moore sought counsel from former Spurs and Rangers striker Jermain Defoe.
While coaching Moore for the Tottenham under-18 side at Ibrox, the former England international spent 32 goals between 2019 and 2022.
When I called him, he said, “You get an opportunity to go to Rangers,” the teenager said.
I spoke to him incredibly well and was very close to him. He only praised the club and its members.
Atiku Abubakar, the former vice president and the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate for president in 2023, Paul Ibe, the media adviser, addressed a popular video of Atiku making the rounds on social media.
The former vice president was heard expressing confidence in his presidential ambitions in the video.
However, Ibe stated in a statement that the footage in question should not be taken out of context and that it was not recent and should not be taken out of context in a statement released via his official X account (previously Twitter).
Ibe wrote that “Atiku’s older video is being used for mischief.”
Read more about Atiku’s security clearance, Threat to Obi Against All of Us.
He clarified that the video was shot in the course of Atiku’s press conference and not as a response to any upcoming political decisions or announcements.
Atiku Abubakar, the former vice president of Nigeria (1999-2007), addressed journalists ahead of the PDP presidential primary in 2023.
He explained that he sounded confident because that is what one person expects from a man who has worked hard and is optimistic about winning the election in 2023.
Ibe urged viewers to avoid intentionally spreading false information, and emphasized the importance of putting the video in context.
He continued, “It is crucial to provide the context of this video to prevent mischief makers from misrepresenting what this video is all about.”
PRESS ELEASE
The old video of Atiku is being used for a Mischief is occurring in Atiku’s video.
Yes, Atiku Abubakar, the former vice president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007, addressed journalists before the 2023 PDP presidential primary. Because of what was expected of a man with a picture, he sounded confident. twitter.com/AuAV2bFHN2
On the PDP’s platform, Atiku Abubakar placed second behind All Progressives Congress (APC) President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who won the election for president in 2023.
