Raphinha, a Barcelona winger, extended his contract until 2028 on Thursday following a fantastic season.
The Brazilian played a key role in Barcelona’s success, winning the Copa del Rey, La Liga, and the Spanish Super Cup domestically, whose previous deal was set to expire in 2027.
The Catalan giants announced in a statement that Barcelona and Raphinha have reached an agreement to renew their contract, which will keep him with the club until 2028.
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In 56 matches, Raphinha, a candidate to receive the Ballon d’Or, has scored 34 goals and contributed 25 assists.
The 28-year-old has 13 goals in the Champions League, but Barcelona were beaten 3-2 in a thrilling semifinal contest against Inter Milan.
In the recent Clasico win over Real Madrid, which saw Barca almost take control of the La Liga, he netted a hat-trick.
Hansi Flick signed a new contract with Raphinha on Wednesday, signing a new one until 2027, following the German’s.
Lamine Yamal, 17, is expected to agree to a new contract in the coming weeks.
After a lunch with Yamal on Thursday, his agent Jorge Mendes said to the media that he would “renew” his contract soon.
Both Raphinha and Yamal, who are both veterans strikers Robert Lewandowski, have been devastating on Barcelona’s flanks.
In their final La Liga game against Athletic Bilbao on Sunday, the Catalans hope to score 100 goals. They have already scored 99 goals in 37 of those matches.
Raphinha helped Barcelona win La Liga in his first season from Leeds United for around £55 million ($74 million).
However, despite having a bad 2023-2024 campaign, he was persuaded to leave the club by Flick.
Following the announcement that the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) has formally joined World Boxing, Team Ireland’s future participation in the Olympic Games has been secured.
Although the Irish Boxing Association (IBA), the governing body for amateur boxing in Ireland, has a long history, IABA members overwhelmingly voted in favor of changing.
In an extraordinary general meeting in April, 116 of the 117 clubs represented approved of constitutional reform, which made it possible for an international federation to join the IBA and World Boxing.
Following a provisional recognition of World Boxing, the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) executive board made the recommendation to include boxing in the Los Angeles 2028 summer Olympics program.
After the IOC stripped the IBA of recognition in 2023 for its failure to implement reforms in governance and finance, the IOC held the boxing competition at the Paris 2024 Games.
The phrase “The dream can live on”
When the schedule for LA 2028 was first announced in 2022, the IOC had encouraged the sport’s national federations to establish a new global body.
The IOC stated that only World Boxing athletes whose national federations were members of the World Boxing organization could compete in Los Angeles at the time the 2028 Olympics qualifying events began.
Niall O’Carroll, the head of IABA’s board of directors, referred to the development as “an historic moment for Irish boxing.”
Every boxing player in the Association has a right to the Olympic dream, and their clubs have ensured that dream will continue into LA 2028 and beyond, he said.
“Irish Boxing has always valued our Olympic journey, from our first team of nine boxers in Paris in 1924, to maintaining our position as Team Ireland’s most successful Olympic sport.”
We have more Olympic podiums to climb and medals to win, but Kellie Harrington, a double Olympic gold medalist from Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, Katie Taylor, a champion boxer from Ireland in 1992, and Michael Carruth, a champion of boxing, are “the best of us.”
The Eastern Security Network (ESN), established by Kanu, is an illegal organization, in contrast to Amotekun, which is supported by the law, according to the second prosecution witness in Nnamdi Kanu’s ongoing trial.
The witness made the claim while being reexamined by the prosecution attorney, Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN), who asked him to compare Amotekun and ESN’s activities under the codename “BBB.”
The ESN has no legal standing, despite the witness’ claim that Amotekun was established through laws passed by the six South-West states.
He further testified that the Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS) had once advocated for community-based policing initiatives to combat insecurity, provided guidance and approval from reputable security organizations.
The court accepted the fact that three video recordings from a flash drive were presented to defense counsel Paul Erokoro (SAN) earlier during the hearing.
After that, the three videos were played in an open court.
The DSS’s General Manager was spotted speaking at a public event in one of the recordings urging local communities to build a first line of defense against bandits and other external threats.
[Alleged Terrorism:] DSS denies involvement in Nnamdi Kanu’s Kenya arrest.
He was said to have said, “To mobilize people is to get everyone involved. That’s what we do.” Security forces cannot be deployed in every region of the nation.
The key thing we need to do is to establish communities as the first line of defense. Under the direction and consent of security agencies, we must allow the communities to rise and defend themselves first. It needs to start right away.
The witness clarified that the DSS DG had specifically stated that such efforts must be conducted under the supervision of security agencies when asked by Erokoro whether the DSS DG was not effectively calling for communities to arm themselves.
General Theophilus Danjuma, the former defense minister, was spotted speaking in a court video.
Danjuma claimed in the video that some armed forces officers were not impartial in the ongoing killings in the nation.
Erokoro asked the witness to explain what Danjuma’s remarks meant when he was identified as the speaker.
The witness objected, saying Danjuma should be the subject of the inquiry.
Hope Uzodinma, the governor of Imo State, lamented the state’s ongoing killings and attributed them to the actions of unnamed politicians in the third video.
Erokoro questioned whether Uzodinma’s statement was in conflict with the witness’ earlier claim that members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) were responsible for the killings in Orlu, Imo State.
The witness argued that the DSS’s position was based on the findings of its investigation.
We named the people who were killed by alleged IPOB members in our investigation. The witness claimed that the governor did not name the victims who he claimed were killed.
He confirmed that Kanu remained a member both before and after the group’s proscription, and that IPOB had been ordered by a judge.
The witness claimed that the protests were a response to calls for the police’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to be disbanded when questioned about his knowledge of the EndSARS protests.
He added that he was aware of the establishment of commissions of inquiry into the protests and related incidents in several states, including Lagos and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
He and Erokoro both agreed that IPOB was not listed as a participant in the Lagos State panel’s report and that it did not classify the protests as terrorist acts.
The Lagos State Commission’s report was later submitted, which was accepted as evidence by Erokoro.
Justice Omotosho ordered the prosecution to finish its case within six days and gave the defense nine days to make its argument before adjourning the proceedings for the day.
BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty has been a fixture on our TV screens for nearly two decades, but many people don’t realise that her first name is actually a nickname
The BBC Breakfast presenter opened up on her childhood struggles with an unusual nickname(Image: undefined via Getty Images)
BBC Breakfast’s Naga Munchetty has been a familiar face on TV for nearly two decades, yet many viewers are unaware that Naga is actually a nickname given to her by her mum.
Born Subha Nagalakshmi Munchetty-Chendriah in February 1975, she was quickly dubbed Naga, which means ‘cobra’ in Sanskrit, after her mum had snake dreams during her pregnancy.
Speaking to Saga Magazine, she confessed that she wasn’t fond of her distinctive name as a child, and was often teased at school. She said: “I’ve embraced it now, but when I was younger, it was all about assimilation and it was an unusual name.
“l’d get people asking, ‘Oh, does she nag a lot?’ all the time and there were some awful racist variations as well.”
She disclosed that she once contemplated changing her name to the more English-sounding Nadia to avoid racial slurs. Naga also endured further racist abuse upon joining the BBC, with some online trolls accusing her of being a “token” hire, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Naga has also spoken about her health challenges(Image: undefined via Getty Images)
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She says these days the insults are less frequent, and while she’s learned to brush them off, Naga concedes they still hurt. “Even though you think you’re not going to let these remarks influence you, of course they hurt,” she said.
Naga’s chronic medical condition is harder to overlook. In 2022, she was diagnosed with adenomyosis, a painful disorder where the womb’s lining grows into its muscle walls.
She revealed that she had been enduring this condition, which triggers extremely heavy periods, nausea and excruciating cramps for many years prior, but doctors had failed to correctly pinpoint the problem.
She only received an accurate diagnosis after suffering from severe bleeding for two weeks and experiencing such intense pain that her husband James had to dial for an ambulance.
She revealed she waited years for a diagnosis(Image: undefined via Getty Images)
She said: “I’m very lucky because you have to pick your moment with partners to tell them about everything you go through. You don’t want to do it on the first date, or the first time you sleep together.
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“We liked the life we had and we wanted to pursue that life,” she says.
Naga added that parenthood is “expensive, it’s exhausting and a commitment for life.”
Manchester United’s decline on and off the field has been laid bare for a number of years but was placed in even sharper focus with their defeat by Tottenham in the Europa League final.
It was a zero-sum game on Wednesday: Winner goes into the Champions League – plus the UEFA Super Cup game in August – and loser is out of Europe next season and gets nothing.
Tottenham won a painfully drab match 1-0.
As football finance expert Kieran Maguire noted on Thursday, the defeat came despite United having higher revenue than Tottenham and spending 64% more on wages for a more expensively acquired squad of players. Tottenham also beat United twice in the Premier League this season, and in the domestic League Cup.
“If I was teaching this at management school (I) would conclude that there is something seriously wrong with the culture of the organisation… which is set by senior management,” Maguire wrote on X.
What are the financial costs to Man Utd?
Beyond the loss of sporting opportunities and reputational prestige, the club owned by the Glazer family from the United States and British billionaire industrialist Jim Ratcliffe has short-term and long-term financial hits ahead.
No Champions League play next season is an instant loss of at least 80 million euros ($90m), and approaching 150 million euros ($169m) for a run deep into the knockout stage.
United also misses out on the 4 million euros ($4.5m) Tottenham will get from UEFA for playing the Super Cup against the Champions League titleholder – either Inter Milan or Paris Saint-Germain – on August 13 at Udinese’s stadium in Italy. The winner gets a bonus of 1 million euros ($1.1m).
UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin, left, Manchester United Chairman Avram Glazer, second left, major shareholder Jim Ratcliffe, second right, and former coach Sir Alex Ferguson, right, attend the UEFA Europa League final [Luis Tejido/EPA]
Can Man Utd recoup its losses in the FIFA Club World Cup?
After failing to qualify for the 2025 Club World Cup – which has a $1bn prize fund from FIFA and should pay more than $100m to a successful European team – United is now far behind in qualifying for the 2029 edition.
European teams qualify for the FIFA event only by being in the Champions League, either winning the title or building consistent results over four seasons.
United already will miss the entire first half of the 2024-28 qualifying period, and it is hard to project the team that last won the Premier League 12 years ago both qualifying for and then winning a Champions League title within three years.
What financial options do Man Utd have?
One clear solution to growing financial issues and the ability to comply with Premier League rules is selling the club’s best players, like captain Bruno Fernandes and out-of-favour forward Marcus Rashford, or its homegrown prospects. Some already earn high wages that are problematic for potential buyers.
A talent drain risks speeding a spiral of decline on and off the field if coach Ruben Amorim is left trying to rebuild with a weaker pool of players.
Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim, left, has been able to rely on captain Bruno Fernandes, right, as one of his most trusted performers [Vincent West/Reuters]
How do Man Utd match up to other clubs?
While United is still one of Europe’s highest-earning clubs, UEFA’s annual research shows its advantage is in decline, even though revenue was a club record 661.8 million pounds ($887m) last year.
A UEFA chart showed that over five years from 2019-24 – pre-COVID-19 through to the post-pandemic recovery in the football industry – United’s revenue grew at a slower rate than all of its biggest English rivals except Chelsea.
Will Man Utd’s revenue be affected?
Revenue now risks dropping, and another income cut is coming from falling to 16th in the Premier League standings with one round left on Sunday.
Premier League prize money based on final position in the standings means dropping from eighth a year ago to 16th is a difference of 22 million pounds ($29.5m) less.
It all adds up to another loss-making season after a 113.2 million pounds ($152m) deficit last season. The three previous years totaled losses of 236 million pounds ($316m).
Will Man Utd’s losses cost them further?
The Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) allow clubs to lose 105 million pounds ($140.7m) over a three-year period or face sanctions, though United can cite some exemptions.
Ratcliffe, who has operational control despite being a minority shareholder, is already the public face of unpopular cuts to jobs and staff benefits, and rising ticket prices for fans.
US President Donald Trump held a contentious meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday, when he repeated allegations that he and members of his administration have previously levelled, suggesting that white South African farmers are being systematically killed.
To prove his point, Trump showed the South African leader online videos, speeches and news articles.
“Generally, they’re white farmers and they’re fleeing South Africa, and …. it’s a very sad thing to see. But I hope we can have an explanation of that because I know you don’t want that,” the US president said, as the visiting delegation looked on in disbelief.
Tensions have been escalating between the United States and South Africa since Trump took office this year, with Washington cutting off aid to Africa’s largest economy and sending back its ambassador last month.
But how true were Trump’s claims during the meeting in the Oval Office? Here is a fact check:
Trump repeated claims that there’s a ‘white genocide’ in South Africa: Is there?
No, there is not. Suggestions by Trump that a white genocide may be taking place have been repeatedly debunked by South African officials and independent analysts — and by data.
“So we take [refugees] from many locations if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on,” the US president said in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
“And we had a lot of people, I must tell you Mr. President [Ramaphosa], we have had a tremendous number of people, especially since they’ve seen this – generally they’re white farmers, and they’re fleeing South Africa.”
Earlier this month, 59 white South Africans arrived in the US as part of a refugee programme set up by Trump to offer sanctuary to them.
US President Donald Trump hands South African President Cyril Ramaphosa articles that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, at the White House in Washington, DC, the US [Kevin Lamarque/Reuters]
Trump’s claim echoes white nationalist beliefs that legislation in South Africa aimed at rectifying apartheid is now, in fact, discriminatory against the Afrikaner community.
Right-wing organisations, such as the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, have been championing a narrative that Afrikaners are under an existential threat.
The facts suggest otherwise.
“There is no credible evidence to support the claim that white farmers in South Africa are being systematically targeted as part of a campaign of genocide,” Anthony Kaziboni, a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg, told Al Jazeera.
While South Africa does not break down crime statistics by race, according to the most recent data from April to December 2024 provided by the government, there were 19,696 murders during this period.
Only 36 of those murders were connected to farms, and only seven of the victims were farmers. The number of white victims is unclear. The remaining 29 victims were farm workers, who are predominantly Black in South Africa.
The scale of farm murders captured by the South African government’s data broadly matches the data of even AfriForum. The group says that 50 and 49 farm murders took place in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
“Genocide is a grave term, legally defined by the UN as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That threshold is not met in the case of South Africa’s farm attacks,” Kaziboni said.
White South Africans constitute 7 percent of the nation’s population but own more than 70 percent of its land. They also have about 20 times more wealth than Blacks on average. In corporate South Africa, white individuals occupy 62 percent of top management positions, while 17 percent of leadership roles are held by Black managers.
Are there white ‘burial sites’ on the side of a South African highway?
The White House staff played a video clip at the Oval Office that Trump insisted showed “burial sites of thousands of white farmers” with white crucifixes lined up along a local highway.
When Ramaphosa asked him where the footage was from, saying, “This, I’ve never seen”, Trump claimed it was in South Africa.
Trump was right — the visuals were from South Africa. But he was also wrong — they weren’t images of burial sites.
The images had been shared by Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier this year, too, as evidence that a white genocide was taking place.
However, local records and a report at the time from the South African Institute of Race Relations confirmed that crosses were symbolically planted on the side of the road during a 2020 protest related to the killings of white South African couple Glenn and Vida Rafferty on a farm.
They were not gravestones, as Trump falsely asserted.
According to South Africa’s Transvaal Agricultural Union — a group sympathetic to Afrikaner farmers — the total number of farm murders in South Africa between 1990 and 2024 stood at 2,229, which included 1,363 white farmers, 529 relatives of white farmers, 38 white workers, 30 white visitors, 88 Black farmers, 61 relatives of Black farmers, 188 Black workers, and seven Black visitors.
On average, 56 white South Africans were killed on farms per year during the 35-year period, according to this data.
“These crimes are brutal and concerning, but they stem from high levels of violent crime and poor rural policing, not from a state-sponsored or group-led intent to annihilate a racial group,” Kaziboni said.
Trump claims no justice for killers of white farmers
“You do allow them to take the land. And when they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them,” Trump complained to Ramaphosa.
A major topic of contention between the two countries is the recent passing of a land expropriation law by South Africa, which Trump has denounced as “persecution” of the country’s rich white minority.
The law allows the government to seize land from any private owner, white or otherwise, for public purposes and public interests. While the law spells out fair compensation, it also allows for seizure without compensation in certain instances.
However, unlike what Trump claimed, the law makes it clear that only the government – not vigilantes – can take land from farmers.
And Trump is inaccurate in his claims that “nothing happens” to those who carry out farm murders. In November 2022, two men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Glenn and Vida Rafferty, the couple whose death sparked the 2020 protest that Trump falsely claimed showed a line of gravesites by the highway.
What about South African politicians chanting ‘Kill the Boer’?
Trump’s team also showed a video of Julius Malema, an opposition figure and leader of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, singing the anti-apartheid song Dubul’ ibhunu (“Kill the Boer”) at a rally.
“Boer” is the Afrikaans word for farmer, and on one level, it simply means farmer, of any race.
However, the title is indeed often taken to mean “Kill the Afrikaner”. The song emerged during the 1980s, as opposition to more than three decades of apartheid rule spilled onto the streets of South Africa’s townships. The title of the song is often also translated as “Kill the white farmer”.
Julius Malema, leader of South Africa’s leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party [Ihsaan Haffejee/Reuters]
Ramaphosa told Trump that he has repeatedly condemned Malema and his statements, which do not reflect the official government position.
Meanwhile, Malema has repeatedly stated – both in court and in interviews – that “we are not calling for the slaughter of white people, at least for now”.
Anti-apartheid veterans argue that the lyrics are not an incitement to violence against white people, explaining that Boer symbolises the broader concept of an oppressor.
Courts in South Africa have also ruled that the song does not constitute hate speech.
Kaziboni said that these rulings “have been controversial”.
“Some fear they may leave vulnerable groups without sufficient recourse when threatened,” he said.
However, the University of Johannesburg researcher said, the courts and the South African government appear to be trying to find a balance between “freedom of expression, historical redress, and social cohesion”.
“The courts [have] emphasised the need to understand the song within its historical and political context, not as a literal incitement to violence, but as a symbolic act of resistance embedded in the country’s liberation struggle,” Kaziboni said.
‘Death, death, horrible death’: Trump presents sheaf of articles
Sitting next to Ramaphosa, Trump rifled through a series of articles that he said showed further proof of white farmers’ persecution.
“Death of people, death, death, death, horrible death, death,” Trump said as he showcased the news stories in front of reporters.
However, in the stack of papers was a blog post with an image from the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo showing Red Cross workers in protective gear handling body bags.
Kaziboni said that during a time of “rising global misinformation”, Trump’s framing of South Africa “misrepresents both the facts and the deeper history”.
