Chris Eubank Jr has been fined £10,000 by the British Boxing Board of Control over the “misuse of social media” in the build-up to his fight with Conor Benn.
Benn was beaten by Eubank Jr in their grudge match in April and much of the fight week build-up was dominated by weight cut and rehydration clauses.
Eubank, 35, missed weight, incurring a £375,000 fine, but was then under the rehydration limit on the day of the fight.
The board called Eubank to a hearing at the Southern Area Council after the Englishman posted several videos of his weight cutting process, which implied the use of a sauna.
The board’s statement, released on the ‘notices’ section of their website last Friday, did not mention the use of a sauna, the evidence they heard, how their decision was reached or what the misuse of social media related to.
The use of a sauna is not banned by the board – there is no written rule or regulation that specifically outlaws it.
However, the board told BBC Sport last month boxers and their teams are verbally advised not to use a sauna as a way to “rapidly lose weight” and it is seen as an “inappropriate means” to cut weight.
It means the sauna use was being investigated in regards to Eubank’s weight cut and how much weight he might have lost using a sauna.
The Southern Arena Council met on July 1 and Eubank appeared to satisfy the board in his explanations.
The board, Eubank Jr’s team and promotion company Boxxer did not respond to a BBC Sport request for comment.
After handing over his weight fine to Benn and being penalised £100,000 by the board for slapping an egg across Benn’s face, Eubank has now lost a total of £485,000.
A South Korean court has issued an arrest warrant for former President Yoon Suk-yeol over his attempt to impose martial law on December 3.
The arrest warrant was issued in the early hours of Thursday, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap. Yoon had appeared in a Seoul court on Wednesday for a seven-hour hearing to review the arrest warrant requested by prosecutors, and was then taken to a detention centre while he waited for the court’s decision.
Yoon, a conservative, was removed from his position as president by South Korea’s Constitutional Court in April over his martial law attempt, after being accused of overstepping his authority. Parliament had voted to impeach Yoon on December 14, but needed the approval of the Constitutional Court.
Yoon was previously arrested in January while he was still president, but was released in March after his arrest was overturned.
However, the Seoul Central District Court accepted on Thursday Special Prosecutor Cho Eun-suk’s argument that there was a risk Yoon would seek to destroy evidence if he was not arrested.
Cho’s team had questioned him twice before submitting a request for Yoon’s arrest warrant on Sunday. Yoon’s lawyers had said that the request was excessive and without basis.
The former president is accused of abuse of power, falsifying official documents and obstruction of official duties, as well as charges related to his attempt at imposing martial law on South Korea, in what prosecutors have labelled an attempted rebellion and an attempt to seize total power and detain his opponents. He denies the charges.
Yoon’s martial law attempt fell flat, however, after protesters and lawmakers quickly descended on South Korea’s parliament, defying soldiers, before the parliamentarians voted to lift the martial law order.
South Korea voted in Yoon’s liberal rival, Lee Jae-myung, in June elections. He approved legislation to launch investigations into Yoon’s martial law attempt and other criminal allegations involving his wife and administration.
Yoon could potentially now spend months in custody, with the possibility of more charges against him being filed, until his trial begins.
If he is found guilty of the charges he currently faces, he may be punished by life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
Much of the South Korean public reacted with vitriol towards Yoon’s actions against a liberal-majority legislature he accused of blocking his agenda. The country is one of the most economically advanced in Asia and has had a strong democracy for more than 30 years.
Footage from the occupied West Bank city of Hebron shows Israel installing mobile housing units in a section of the city formally under the control of the Palestinian Authority, raising fears of further settlement expansion.
Red Bull’s removal of Christian Horner may appear sudden, given only three days have passed since he oversaw Max Verstappen’s fifth-placed finish at the British Grand Prix.
But this was a decision at least 18 months in the making.
Horner, in charge for two decades, will go down in F1 history as one of the sport’s greatest team bosses.
Yet his long-standing grip on Red Bull Racing had been slipping for some time.
Horner’s future was first called into question when it emerged in February last year that a female employee had accused him of sexual harassment and coercive, controlling behaviour. He has twice been cleared of the allegations by internal Red Bull investigations.
There is a whole lot more to Horner’s demise than that episode, the ultimate conclusion of which remains unknown. But it added extra momentum to the mix that led to Red Bull’s decision.
Looking at the state of Red Bull right now, it’s almost hard to believe that Verstappen is the reigning world champion.
Verstappen – regarded by almost everyone in F1 as the best driver in the world – is third in the championship, 69 points off the leader, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, at the halfway point of the season.
The Dutchman has won only two races this season. He has won just four out of 24 races in the past year. Red Bull are fourth in the constructors’ championship – or to put it another way, last of the top four teams – with no obvious way of improving on that position.
At the same time, Verstappen’s future is in doubt. Horner has been emphasising that the driver has a contract until 2028. But that has not stopped Mercedes courting him.
If Verstappen left, with Red Bull in their current plight in terms of performance, it would be potential armageddon for the team. He has scored 165 points this season. Their second driver has scored just 10.
So what do we know about what happened and the events that led to his departure? Well, while Red Bull were keeping their own counsel on Wednesday, plenty is known about the machinations behind the scenes, with power struggles, disagreements and concern over both car and driver decisions.
Power struggles ‘rife for close to three years’
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The hatches have been bolted down at Red Bull, who are saying nothing other than their public statement that Horner has been “released from his operational duties with effect from today”.
Even the few internal sources who might normally brief reliably are refusing to talk off the record.
So it is impossible to know for sure what was the straw that broke the camel’s back to lead to this decision being taken now.
But although the decision might be a shock, with a bit of reflection, perhaps it’s not as much of a surprise. Let’s take a step back and ask: How did things get to this point?
To find the beginnings of an answer to that, one has to go back to October 2022, perhaps even earlier, and the death of Red Bull co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz.
Horner saw an opportunity to enhance his power. He started manoeuvring, and the first person in the way was Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s long-time motorsport adviser and a close friend of Mateschitz.
A power struggle ensued. For some time, there was talk that Horner was trying to get rid of Marko, and the situation was not resolved until March 2024, when Verstappen stepped in and backed the Austrian. He made it clear that if Marko left, so would he.
Verstappen’s father, Jos, also made his unhappiness known. In the wake of the allegations against Horner, Jos Verstappen said the team would fall apart if Horner remained in place.
Meanwhile, Horner was managing internal tensions within the design department between chief technical officer Adrian Newey and technical director Pierre Wache.
Through 2023, Horner was briefing that Newey – regarded as the greatest designer in F1 history – was no longer as important as he was. Newey effectively worked only three days a week, Horner would say, bigging up the roles of Wache and the technical leadership team around him, especially head of aerodynamics Enrico Balbo.
When the female employee made her allegations about Horner, Newey was unimpressed by what he heard. That, along with the feeling that others were claiming credit for work he believed was his own, led to Newey resigning in April last year.
He was immediately removed from any involvement with the F1 team, until his formal departure from the company later in the year. Newey started work for Aston Martin in March.
At the time Newey left, Verstappen had won three consecutive world championships – the third of which in 2023 was the most dominant in history.
Verstappen started the 2024 season with four wins in the first five races. Following Newey’s departure, he won three of the next four. Then two of the following 13.
That performance level has continued into 2025. At the halfway point of the season, Verstappen has won just twice in 12 races.
Was Red Bull’s loss of competitiveness a direct consequence of Newey’s departure? No-one can be sure, but it has to have had an effect. A team does not lose someone of Newey’s wisdom, experience and wide-ranging expertise without some consequences.
In July, long-time sporting director Jonathan Wheatley also resigned. He is now team principal of Sauber/Audi. Horner, much to Wheatley and Audi’s annoyance, announced the move for them.
Red Bull’s second car a big problem
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Meanwhile, Red Bull have been having a second car problem.
While Verstappen won a record 19 of 22 races in 2023, his team-mate Sergio Perez took just two victories – in the first four races. After that, his form slumped alarmingly.
Kept on for 2024, Perez did not win again. And although he finished second to Verstappen three times in four races while they were dominating at the start of last season, his form had already started to decline again – following the trend of the previous season – by May.
And yet at that point, around the time of the Monaco Grand Prix, Horner signed Perez to a new two-year contract, to take him to the end of 2026.
The decision seemed baffling at the time. Not only was Perez not performing, but Red Bull held all the cards.
Even if giving Perez a new contract beyond the end of 2024 was a good idea – and many thought it was not – they had no need to sign the Mexican for two more years.
Fast forward to December 2024, and Perez’s results had been so bad for the remainder of the season that Red Bull felt they had no option but to drop him. Sources say the decision cost them a pay-off in the region of 18m euros (£15.5m).
That might be chicken feed for a company of the size of Red Bull. But it’s still an obscenely large amount of money wasted, because of a managerial miscalculation.
To replace Perez, Horner chose Liam Lawson, who at that point had done just 11 grands prix spread over two seasons for Red Bull’s second team.
The decision was calamitous. The New Zealander floundered, and was replaced by Yuki Tsunoda after just two races.
The Japanese was the more obvious choice of the two – he had done four seasons, and been faster than Lawson when they were team-mates.
But it was also equally obvious to anyone with any real insight into F1 drivers’ abilities that Tsunoda was not someone capable of getting close to Verstappen’s level of performance in a car that by now was known to be extraordinarily difficult to drive.
No-one knows how a driver of the level of, for example, George Russell or Charles Leclerc, would do in a Red Bull. But no-one has had a chance to find out, because Red Bull – for which, read Horner – have refused for years to sign one.
And it’s the lack of performance from the second driver that has left Red Bull floundering in the constructors’ championship – which determines the end-of-year prize money.
Lower-order concerns in the mix? Earlier this year, Horner aligned himself with a push from FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem to bring V10 naturally aspirated engines back to F1.
Rivals believed Horner was doing it out of concerns that the engine Red Bull were designing for next year in their new in-house facility will be uncompetitive compared to Mercedes. He may even have been doing it for what he perceived to be ‘the good of the sport’. No-one knows for sure.
But strategically it was unwise. Red Bull’s new engine partner Ford entered F1 because of the new 2026 rules, which double down on hybrid. So it was hardly likely that Ford – already uncomfortable about the allegations surrounding Horner – would approve of this stance.
Adding to the miscalculation, it was obvious the V10 plan had no legs – there was too much opposition from Mercedes, Honda and Audi, who together were always going to be able to block it. So why stick your neck out?
Horner or Verstappen? Red Bull ‘ran out of reasons to keep Horner’
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When the sexual harassment allegations broke, Horner was saved by the Thai main shareholder Chalerm Yoovidhya, who backed him and kept him in his role.
But within a year, Horner had been told that he now reported directly to Oliver Mintzlaff, Red Bull’s chief executive officer of corporate projects and investments. He is the man whose quote was on Wednesday’s statement announcing Horner’s exit.
The big rumour doing the rounds within F1 on Wednesday was that Red Bull had been given some kind of ultimatum from the Verstappen camp – either Horner went or Max would.
At the moment, it is impossible to know whether that’s true. Red Bull have not given a reason publicly. They may never do.
But what can be said is that Verstappen has repeatedly said that he wants to work in a calm, relaxed environment. And Red Bull has been anything but that for at least the past 18 months, and probably longer.
In the end, it probably comes down to this. Results were on the slide. Senior staff, integral to Red Bull’s success, had left. A series of questionable decisions had been made. A major reputational threat was still hovering around. And there were questions over their star asset.
Italian top seed Jannik Sinner did not let an elbow injury hamper his performance as he beat American opponent Ben Shelton to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals.
Sinner, 23, who wore a sleeve on his right elbow, occasionally shook out his arm in a 7-6 (7-2) 6-4 6-4 victory but the injury did not hold him back.
The three-time Grand Slam champion had hurt himself after falling in the early part of Monday’s fourth-round match against Grigor Dimitrov, who led by two sets before retiring injured himself.
Sinner made the most of his reprieve with a dominant display against American 10th seed Shelton, who saved two match points on his own serve before succumbing to the third.
“I’m very happy with this performance,” said Sinner, who has reached at least the semi-finals in the past four majors.
“When you are in a match with a lot of tension you try not to think about [any pain]. It has improved a lot from yesterday to today.
“It is no excuse. Three is no better stage to play tennis and I showed this today.”
Sinner’s serve speed returned towards its normal pace and he was not broken, while his returning game was crisp and clinical.
To reach his first Wimbledon final, the world number one will have to beat 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic or Italian 22nd seed Flavio Cobolli in Friday’s semi-final.
Antakya, Turkiye – The darkening sky and thick, acrid smoke carried by scorching winds filled residents of Turkiye’s Hatay province with dread.
“It was like waking up, but you’re back in a nightmare,” said Hatice Nur Yilmaz, 23, her voice trembling on the phone as she described seeing flames from her container home in Antakya, Hatay’s largest city.
Yilmaz studies at Osmangazi University, in northwest Turkiye’s Eskisehir, almost 400 miles (643 kilometres) away from Antakya.
But she was back in her family’s temporary home – Antakya is still rebuilding following the earthquake – when the fires broke out in Hatay. And, despite the home being untouched this time, it brought back some of the scars of the past.
“We looked at the sky … confused at first. Smoke billowed from the mountains. The wind picked up and the flames kept rising,” Yilmaz recounted, describing “the same panic, the same suffocating fear”.
Turkiye has been battling wildfires since the end of June, but a particularly bad outbreak at the start of July has killed at least three people and displaced more than 50,000 others.
Hatay, in southeastern Turkiye, has been particularly badly hit, stirring painful memories for survivors of the earthquake that devastated this region two and a half years ago.
On February 6, 2023, Yilmaz had been fast asleep in her family’s now-destroyed home when the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck near dawn.
The quake and powerful subsequent tremors killed more than 53,000 people in Turkiye and destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings across the country’s south and southeast, including the family’s home. About 6,000 people are also believed to have died in neighbouring northern Syria.
More than two years after the quakes, Yilmaz’s family is among nearly half a million people still displaced, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“As soon as I saw the news [of the fires], I called my uncle’s wife because their house was very close to the fires,” Yilmaz said.
“She was weeping. She said, ‘We’re gathering what we can, they’re telling us to flee.’”
Yilmaz’s uncle had moved to Gulderen, on the outskirts of Antakya, to get away from the city centre of Antakya, where reconstruction work is continuing.
The fires consumed fragile threads of normalcy that survivors had painstakingly rebuilt. “Gardens with fruit trees, vegetables, all burned … but thankfully not their houses”.
“A neighbour’s haystack was gone. Animals trapped, perished,” Yilmaz relayed from her call with her relatives.
The earthquake destruction in Hatay was immense. People are shown searching through the rubble of collapsed buildings during rescue operations in Hatay on February 12, 2023 [Bulent Kilic/AFP]
Chaotic self-reliance
The wildfires are believed to have been caused by a combination of factors – including human activity and suspected arson – coupled with high summer temperatures in the mid-30 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and dry conditions.
As flames first engulfed the hillsides, residents reported taking immediate action with improvised methods.
Neighbours formed bucket brigades using well water and garden hoses, while others scrambled for generators to power pumps due to electricity cuts.
For Ethem Askar, 42, a steel contractor from Antakya’s neighbourhood of Serinyol who was involved in volunteer initiatives during both catastrophes, the parallels in disaster response are inescapable.
“Just as it was late in the earthquake, it was the same in the fire,” he stated bluntly, adding that during one of the fires, it took hours for the emergency services to send enough helicopters to put out the blaze.
“If there had been a proper first intervention, this scale of devastation wouldn’t have happened,” Askar said.
To compensate, Askar and other residents attempted to help out.
“Our group, about 45 volunteers – the same ones who did debris removal, food distribution, teaching children after the quake – we mobilised again,” Askar said.
“The initial response is minimal, then, when it’s almost too late, more resources arrive. By the next day, the fire was massive.”
He described frantic evacuations, a grim replay of digging through rubble.
Firefighters were able to evacuate residents and their animals from highland villages and relocate people to student dormitories and animals to other stables, but the villages sustained significant damage.
But Ilyas Yildirim, the chief of Hatay Metropolitan Municipality’s fire department, denied any delay in the firefighters’ response.
“There was no delayed response to the fire. Our initial response teams were already positioned in Hatay and intervened immediately,” Yildirim said.
“While additional units deployed to address simultaneous outbreaks at four locations, this operation differs fundamentally from earthquake response protocols,” he added.
“No operational delays occurred during the latest fire incidents.”
Echoes of an earthquake
Like Askar, Yilmaz has also felt as if her family and neighbours have had to rely on themselves to deal with the wildfires – a sentiment similar to that felt during the earthquake.
“There was no electricity … My two uncles … tried with their neighbours to beat back the flames with buckets and hoses, utterly alone,” she said.
News of fires breaking out elsewhere in Dortyol being partially extinguished, then flaring again, has become unbearable for Yilmaz. Fires started in Antakya on June 30 and reached Dortyol by July 4.
“It’s overwhelming now, staying here. Returning to this city … it feels shrouded in perpetual dust, a city of ghosts,” Yilmaz said.
Graffiti was written after the earthquakes on the ruins of destroyed houses in Hatay. On the left it reads: ‘We’re going to die tomorrow,’ and on the right: ‘We are demolished.’ [Courtesy of Eda Yılmaz]
Hatay Governor Mustafa Masatlı said on Monday that 920 households and 1,870 citizens had been evacuated from nine plateaux. Damage assessments continue.
While the fires in Antakya and Dortyol have largely been contained, flare-ups continue in other areas, according to department chief Yıldırım. New outbreaks have been reported in places like Samandag and Serinyol, just southwest and northeast of Hatay, respectively.
These flare-ups are keeping the firefighters and rescuers on their toes and draining their energy.
Across the Dortyol and Antakya regions of Hatay, about 6,500 people were evacuated as a precautionary measure, Hatay Fire Department’s Sergeant Deniz Nur said.
“The psychological toll of continuous instability is immense,” Askar, the volunteer, explained.
“People wake up every single day with the fear that something else will happen,” he said. “Even if they get new housing – and many are still in containers, like my parents were for months – the underlying anxiety doesn’t vanish.
“How can you feel normal? I knew a nurse who lived in her car for three and a half months after the quake. Building roads and apartments doesn’t erase these experiences. The trauma is embedded,” he said.
“All of us need serious psychological help even after two years,” Askar added. “I haven’t even started processing it myself. There is no time to cry, to grieve properly … We postponed it. We just keep doing what we can.”
Life amid the rubble
Once known for its rich multicultural heritage blending Turkish, Arab and Christian influences, evident in its architecture, cuisine and festivals, vast swaths of Hatay, known historically as Antioch, remain defined by mountains of rubble.
Yilmaz, the student, recalled better times in her large two-storey former family home, when summers meant meeting childhood friends home from university in cafes along bustling Kurtulus Street, now in ruins.
Her parents now live in a 21-square-metre (226-square-foot) container comprising one room and a combined kitchen-living area that they keep tidy, folding clothes into storage boxes to make the most of space.
In the summers and during holidays, when she and her three siblings return to Antakya from their universities, the whole family spreads mats out on the floor to sleep.
“The biggest problem is the lack of private space,” she explained. “I used to have my own room that overlooked the mountains … and we would have lots of guests.”
A view of the container city [Courtesy of Hatice Nur Yilmaz]
Now, gatherings still happen, but people sit on plastic chairs set up outside the containers, playing cards.
“I long to go out, to travel, to simply breathe as a human being. But the old places I knew are gone, demolished,” Yilmaz said.
“Are there new ones? Where? And even if I knew where, how could I get there? Transportation is just one barrier. These problems are piling up, becoming unbearably heavy,” she added.
Yet, amid compounded devastation, an unbreakable bond with Hatay persists.
Askar moved to a new house only six months ago after living for nearly two years in a container with his wife, 10-year-old son and his parents.
“All my memories, my life, my childhood, my friends, they are here,” he said.
“People from Hatay cannot live or breathe properly anywhere else. After the quake, I took my father away for three months,” Askar added. “When he returned, he vowed never to leave again, even if he had to live in a container forever. This land is in our blood.”
