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Palestinians mourn the loss of their loved ones killed in Nasser Hospital for after Israel opened fire at Palestinians trying to reach the points in the southern Gaza Strip, on July 30, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Gaza aid point killings climb, Oz slashes student debt, Buddha gems head back to India, DRC launches Big Barça sponsorship
91: Israeli forces killed 91 Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza on Wednesday, according to the enclave’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. A local hospital has confirmed at least 50 of the deaths. The latest toll adds to a string of killings at aid points, as global pressure mounts on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into the territory.
$10 billion: On Thursday, Australia’s parliament passed a law wiping out 20% of student loan debt – worth AU$16 billion (US$10 billion). It’s the first major legislative win for center-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who promised to address the rising cost of living prior to his election in May.
300: Sotheby’s will repatriate 300 jewels from the Piprahwa Gem collection – relics believed to be linked to the Buddha’s burial ground – following pressure on the famed auction house from the Indian government. The artifacts, excavated by English explorer William Claxton Peppé in the 19th century, were initially set to be auctioned off in May.
$50 million: Spanish football giant FC Barcelona has struck a $50 million 4-year sponsorship deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo to display the slogan “DR Congo – Heart of Africa” on the back of their training jerseys. The government hopes the deal will boost DR Congo’s international image, but some Congolese are questioning the decision to invest in global branding rather than domestic economic and social priorities.
Chelsea players celebrate next to US President Donald Trump after beating Paris Saint-Germain in the Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on July 13, 2025.
Three things we learned from the Club World Cup
On a muggy afternoon in New Jersey yesterday, a London-based, American-owned soccer club beat a Qatari-owned, French-based one to win the Club World Cup final, as Chelsea defeated Paris Saint-Germain 3-0. US President Donald Trump not only watched, but came down to the field for the trophy ceremony himself.
The United States hosted the tournament, which featured the world’s top soccer clubs, as a dress rehearsal for next year’s World Cup, which will pit national teams against each other in matches taking place across the US, Mexico, and Canada. As we look ahead to that tournament, the most-watched sporting event in the world, what did we learn from this year’s club tournament?
Donald Trump will embrace next year’s World Cup.
Just look at the trophy ceremony yesterday: the US leader descended from his box seats to hand the trophy to Chelsea captain Reece James, before standing among the team as they celebrated.
This is surprising to some degree: football is a global sport, and this was a global club tournament where none of the US-based teams advanced to the latter stages. The ticket prices were expensive and most of the games took place on the coasts. The tournament smacked of “globalism” and elitism — two things that sit uneasily with Trump’s America First styling.
But the president is also a born performer who wouldn’t miss a chance to be in the global spotlight.
Looking ahead to next year, expect the US president to cut a large figure in the World Cup tournament, even if that means jilting fellow hosts Canada and Mexico. If things go well, he’ll take the credit. If they don’t, he’ll almost certainly blame the neighbors. And at the very end of it all, don’t be surprised if he tries to throw a red MAGA hat on one of the winning side’s players – remember when the Qatari emir threw a traditional bisht robe on Argentine champion Lionel Messi during the trophy ceremony for the last World Cup in Doha?
This tournament tested the relationship between footballing authorities and the players.
Following the lead of many of the world’s top national football leagues, FIFA, the sports global governing body, wants players to play more and more games. Not only has it vastly expanded the Club World Cup – the tournament used to feature just 7 teams and was 10 days long, whereas this one gathered 32 teams and lasted a month – it has also increased the number of countries in next year’s World Cup to 48, up from 32.
The players are hitting back, voicing concerns about player welfare. It didn’t help that they had to play in the stifling American summer heat, nor that FIFA failed to even invite the players’ union Fifpro to a recent meeting about off-season breaks – the union also slammed the Club World Cup on Monday, as well as its organizers. Certain footballers like England’s Ben White have shunned international duty, and it’s possible that others may follow suit with the brutal schedule.
Could that affect whether some of the games top stars play in the World Cup next year? The world’s most celebrated athletes have labor disputes too.
Finally, international tensions will cloud next year’s tournament.
While the Club World Cup didn’t figure much in most Americans’ daily lives, next year’s tournament between international teams will dominate headlines and cities. The demand for tickets will be vastly higher, and thousands will come to support their teams from abroad.
Yet questions lurk about which fans will be able to attend next year, and which ones will want to attend.
However, Trump recently signed a travel ban that bars citizens from 12 countries from entering the United States. One of those countries is Iran, which has already qualified for the World Cup.
They might not be the only ones either. Haiti and Sudan could also qualify for the World Cup, yet both are on the travel ban list. What’s more, the Trump administration has warned another 36 countries – including likely World Cup qualifiers Egypt, Ivory Coast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – that it may add them to the list if they don’t fix certain safety concerns.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has been working hard to maintain the global aspect of the World Cup. He has also heaped praise on Trump each time he appears at the White House for a soccer-related event – he even attended the president’s second inauguration – as he hopes to keep the US president on board with his plans. With a travel ban already in place, and a possible expansion to follow, Infantino has his work cut out if he wants to keep soccer’s top tournament accessible to its most adoring and committed fans.
Survivors of the KMP Tunu Pratama Jaya ferry sinking wait to be identified by officers at Gilimanuk port, after the ferry carrying 65 people sank near the Indonesian island of Bali, in Bali, Indonesia, July 3, 2025.
HARD NUMBERS: Indonesian ferry sinks, Mercosur discusses long-stalled EU deal, Liverpool striker dies in car accident, French air traffic controllers walk off the job
65: A ferry carrying 65 people sank near the island of Bali, Indonesia, late on Wednesday. Six people have died as a result, and authorities have now ceased the search for another 30 passengers. The remaining 29 have been rescued. Ferries are a major mode of transport in the Indonesian archipelago, but safety standards are notoriously lax.
25: The South American trading bloc Mercosur will meet this weekend to discuss something that has been under discussion for 25 years: a trade deal with the European Union. The two blocs reached a deal in principle last year, but the EU has yet to ratify it due to opposition from France – specifically, French farmers. Mercosur did seal a separate deal, though, with a group of four non-EU European countries.
28: In an awful shock to soccer fans around the world, Liverpool striker Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva – also a professional footballer – died in a car accident early Thursday morning in western Spain. The Portuguese star Jota, who won every major trophy in England, was just 28 years old.
30,000: Europeans may not celebrate Fourth of July, but 30,000 of them are still having their travel plans disrupted this weekend after low cost carrier Ryanair canceled 170 flights due to an air-traffic control strike in France.A local Iraqi Kurdish footballer walks with his friends near a sportswear shop in the district of Soran, northeast of Erbil, Iraq, on April 6, 2019.
From football fields to classrooms: How FC Barcelona is reentering the political fray
If there’s a mention of FC Barcelona’s youth soccer system, fans of the Blaugrana will think straight to La Masia, the academy that produced legends of the game like Lionel Messi, Carles Puyol, and – more recently – Lamine Yamal.
What they might not think about is the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria. Yet that is exactly the place the famed Catalonian club has decided to set up another six youth soccer schools.
Called the “Hope League,” the aim of this initiative, per the club, is to “promote social cohesion and prevent future violent conflicts and radicalization processes among new generations — with special attention to the sons and daughters of victims of the Islamic State.” Kurdish fighters and the Islamic State fought violently from 2014 to 2019 for control of parts of Iraq, with the former coming out on top.
Despite the victory over IS, Kurdish independence efforts have languished. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey formally disbanded last month after a four-decade struggle to achieve independence. Their Syrian contemporaries, who would have thought the fall of Bashar al-Assad would bring them respite, now face attacks from Turkey.
The Catalonian independence push has also hit a bad run of form, albeit a less violent one. In 2024, seven years after a Spanish court blocked an independence referendum, an anti-independence socialist won the local government election – it was the first time a unionist candidate won in 14 years.
“The so-called ‘Catalan process’ has gone very much down,” says Toni Roldán, a former Spanish congressman from Barcelona who opposes Catalan independence.
What has the Catalan cause got to with Kurdish independence? Certain Barcelona fans see them as one and the same: A group of Barcelona fans once unfurled a banner at a game that read, “Kurdistan is not Iraq, Catalonia is not Spain.”
“[Catalan separatists] always presented themselves as sort of an oppressed region without a state,” says Roldán. “And these they always look at places like Kurdistan as similar to them, because they have their own language, their own history, their own culture, but they don't have their own states.”
So these schools are an effort to get these independence efforts back on their feet? Not exactly. After all, Barcelona’s archrival Real Madrid – a team not exactly renowned for supporting independence movements – is opening their own schools in these Kurdish areas.
Nonetheless, there’s “clearly a political driver” for the Catalonian club’s decision to open these soccer schools, per Roldán. The leader of the schools initiative is former Barcelona right-back Oleguer Presas, who despite his position, is renowned for his left-wing, nationalist sympathies.
The can of worms: There will be some outside of Catalonia who might be upset, namely those in Iraq.
Football is by far the most popular sport in this war-torn nation – it is home to the largest contingent of registered Barcelona fan clubs outside of Spain.
“When there is any kind of championship or game between Barca or Real Madrid with other teams, all the coffee shops are full of youth waiting for the game,” says Raid Michael, the country director for Un Ponte Per in Iraq, one of the organizations behind the Hope League.
Michael claims that Iraqis love for football transcends political and sectarian differences, noting that, “with football, youth especially forget about all these tensions — they support football in the end.”
But the initiative certainly won’t land well in Baghdad. Iraq’s central government has long been sensitive to independence movements in its northern region, where residents have previously voted in favour of secession from the federal government. There, the Iraqi Kurds operate a semi-autonomous government, maintain their own armed forces, and oversee the region’s natural resource exports. Tensions rose again last month, as Iraq’s Oil Ministry criticized energy deals directly brokered between the Kurdistan Regional Government and US energy companies.
Now, one of the largest football clubs in the world is setting up schools in Kurdish areas. What’s Arabic for conceding a goal?
OPINION: Here’s why I can’t watch soccer like a normal person
Politics and history have a way of intruding on – even ruining – everything for me, and these days, it’s soccer’s turn.
Right now, most of the Western Hemisphere is engrossed in two major soccer tournaments. In Europe, it’s the Euros, where the Old Countries are battling it out. In the Americas, it’s the Copa América, where the New Ones are.
All told, the countries participating in the two tournaments are home to more than a billion people. So, it’s a big deal – basically two half-filled World Cups at once.
The on-field dramas are rich enough. Will this be the last time an aging Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest player ever, puts on his country’s uniform? Is this unexpectedly strong Venezuela team for real? Across the ocean, how stacked is host country Germany still? Can England manage to not disappoint?
That’s all good, but when I watch the matches, look at the flags, and read the names on the jerseys, I can’t help but see or think about different things entirely – political things.
So when, for example, French striker Kylian Mbappé, whose parents are from Cameroon and Algeria, puts one in the back of the net, I don’t just wonder whether he really is the best player in the world now (is he?). I also immediately think of the backlash against immigration in France, which – as elsewhere in the EU – has boosted the far right. On Sunday in France, in fact, the overtly anti-immigrant party of Marine Le Pen topped the polls in the first round of the country's snap elections. This despite Mbappé's own direct appeals to young French voters not to let Le Pen's party win.
On that score, when Austria plays Turkey in a few days, help me NOT flip back to the 1683 Siege of Vienna , when the Habsburgs stopped the Ottomans’ last, best attempt to push into the heart of Europe. Far-right politicians in Europe today, of course, have embraced the symbolism of that exact battle as part of their calls to limit immigration from the Islamic world. Keep an eye on ultra-nationalist Euro Twitter on Tuesday when the match is on.
Back on this side of the Atlantic, the Mexico vs. Ecuador game on Sunday was the most exciting faceoff between the two countries since April, when Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican Embassy in Quito, in order to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice president who had taken asylum there while fleeing a corruption conviction.
But I couldn't help thinking of the bigger Ecuador story: the country is in a state of emergency as murders skyrocket amid a war between Mexican (and Colombian) cartels trying to claim turf in the small Andean country. That violence has driven Ecuadoran asylum seekers as far away as New York City, where a growing migrant crisis is defining the city's politics. (See our special on that here.)
Speaking of migrant crises: Venezuela, -- where political repression, economic mismanagement, and the effects of US sanctions have caused more than 7 million people to flee over the past several years -- is somehow fielding one of the strongest teams at the Copa. Could success at the tournament give a boost to strongman Nicolas Maduro? He could use the help. He is so unpopular that he might actually lose a July 28th election that he has spent years carefully designing in his favor.
You get the point.
I understand this is a little nuts. A sports match is just a sports match. But for any politically minded person, it’s never just a sports matchup when it’s national teams.
Like it or not, the politics of how nation-states define themselves — that is, who gets to be in them, who gets what from them, where their borders really are — is at the heart of so many of the most electric political questions in the world today.
The immigration debates in Europe or the US are about who gets to come in. The socioeconomic, political, and racial fault lines and conflicts within countries of Latin America are, in many cases, what is driving people out.
In just about every country represented at the Copa and the Euros, these questions are shaping -- or reshaping -- politics. I can't help if if I'm seeing that in every match. All I'm doing is watching some soccer, right?
British PM Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shake hands at Windsor Guildhall, Britain, February 27, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Post-Brexit trade, West Bank chaos, Nigeria’s vote count, Teddies for Turkey
A historic post-Brexit breakthrough
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a plan on Monday they say will finally resolve the complex problem of post-Brexit trade involving Northern Ireland. In the coming days, skeptics (and opponents) of the deal within Sunak’s Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland will read the proposal closely to decide whether to approve it. The deal is intended to ease the flow of trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, some of which will flow across the UK’s border with the Republic of Ireland and into the EU. The deal creates two lanes for trade: a faster-flowing green lane for goods transiting only between Britain and Northern Ireland and a red lane with more rigorous customs checks for goods bound for the EU. The two biggest (of many) issues that will now be debated in Britain’s parliament: How to determine which lane each shipment of goods will travel through and what role the European Court of Justice will play in resolving trade disputes that involve Northern Ireland. Sunak appears to believe that his plan will pass parliament, but the scale of this important political victory for the embattled PM will depend on how much opposition from his own party and the DUP force him to rely on the opposition Labour Party for the votes needed to get it done. Sunak was in Belfast on Tuesday to sell the deal to the DUP.
West Bank on the brink
The West Bank experienced one of the largest single acts of settler violence on Sunday, when scores of Jewish settlers stormed the town of Hawara, near Nablus, torching vehicles and houses and leaving at least one Palestinian dead. The assailants said it was a “revenge” attack for the shooting of two Israeli brothers by a Palestinian gunman. (Another Israeli was killed in the West Bank on Monday.) This comes as the security situation in the occupied West Bank has been deteriorating for the better part of a year, with a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel leading to raids on Palestinian terror cells by the Israeli army. While the Israeli Defense Forces have been criticized for not acting fast enough to quell the violence in Hawara, recent events have revealed stark divisions within the far-right government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu. While some members of the government egged on the settlers – including the finance minister, who originally supported calls for burning down Hawara before walking it back – Netanyahu, for his part, gave a rare speech calling on Israelis not to take the law into their own hands and condemning "anarchy." Many analysts say this is a sign that the strong-minded leader fears he’s losing control of the security situation in the West Bank, a sensitive issue that will continue to deepen government fissures if it goes unchecked. Indeed, Bibi can’t afford cracks in his coalition after a new poll found that he would lose elections if they were held today.
Nigerian election count walk-out
Nigeria's two main opposition parties on Monday walked out of the site where results from Saturday's presidential election are being gradually announced after crying fraud over the slower-than-expected electronic transmission of results from polling stations. But according to Amaka Anku, Eurasia Group's top Africa analyst, there is a process for political parties to register complaints over election results related to the new system without having to abandon the premises. All political party agents, she explains, receive copies of the results sheets from each polling station and must sign off on the tallies at various stages of the counting process well before the national count begins. Those are the same sheets that are then uploaded onto a publicly available website. Nonetheless, the inability of the electoral commission to meet the high expectations it created — that those sheets would be immediately published — "casts a shadow over the whole process," says Anku. Final results are now expected on Tuesday, with ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu in the lead so far.
Teddy bears for quake survivor kids in Turkey
It's not all bad news out there. On Sunday, fans attending a Turkish league soccer game in Istanbul between local club Beşiktaş and Antalyaspor in Istanbul showered the field with teddy bears and other toys to be donated to child survivors of the recent earthquakes, the worst natural disaster in Turkey's history. The outpouring of support happened when the match was stopped for a moment of silence at 4 minutes and 17 seconds, marking the exact time — 4:17 am on Feb. 6 — when the first quake struck. But once the ceremony ended, it all got political, with thousands of members of the Çarşı, a hardcore Beşiktaş fan club, chanting to demand that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan step down over his handling of the catastrophe and lax building standards enforced prior to it. There's no love lost between him and the famously left-wing, working-class Çarşı, rabidly loyal Beşiktaş fans with an anti-authoritarian streak whom Erdoğan knows will definitely not vote for him in the May 14 election.
Can sports fans save America?
You already know that America is getting more polarized by the day. Democrats and Republicans hardly live together, work together, or hang out together the way they used to.
But a new book called Fans Have More Friends argues that highly-engaged sports fans are less politically polarized, have greater trust in institutions, and generally live happier lives.
To learn more, GZERO's Alex Kliment met up with one of the book's authors, Dave Sikorjak, a marketing consultant who studies the motivations of sports fans. Where'd Alex and Dave link up? Where else -- at a tailgate in Philadelphia ahead of a game between the Giants and the Eagles. It all went great until Alex got taped to the front of a bus, but you'll get to that...
Iran nuclear deal is dead
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Iran has announced it will enrich more uranium. Is the nuclear deal dead?
Yeah, it is pretty dead at this point. It is inconceivable to me that the Americans or allies would be prepared to cut a nuclear deal for an Iranian regime that is under this much domestic pressure and repressing its civilian population to this degree. Not to mention the fact that there's been attacks into Kurdish territories in Iraq over the last several days. There's been enormous amounts of state police repression with lots of instability. It's only growing, frankly. I can't imagine a nuclear deal getting cut here.
And that leads to the question of what the Israelis are going to do in response? What the Americans are going to do? What the Gulf States going to do in response? Because of course, none of these countries want the Iranians to go nuclear. There're nuclear breakout capabilities if they want to go that direction is a matter of weeks. So it's something we're going to watch carefully.
India now takes over as G-20 chair. What are the risks and opportunities for Modi?
Well, I mean, kind of like the Indonesians, it is an opportunity to showcase a country that's doing fairly well. And both Indonesia and India are. India in particular, investing an enormous amount of money in digital infrastructure after having not invested for decades in conventional infrastructure. I think showing off India's growth, India's demographics, India's technology, and India's willingness to play a greater leadership role on the global stage, all something Modi wants to do, and also from the perspective of a pretty strong and politically stable government with about 70% approval ratings across the country right now. There are very few leaders and governments in the position that Modi and India are in right now. That makes it a great time for them to be hosting the G-20.
Will MBS pump more oil after the Saudis shocked Argentina in the World Cup?
No. If anything, they're probably going to reduce because prices have been still on the downside over the course of the last several weeks, even though OPEC took a million barrels off their total production. And that is because of concerns of global recession, Chinese economy under producing, not as much demand. That's still where we are as we look into 2023. The bigger question is whether the Argentines or the Iranians have a tougher reception at home. The Iranians, of course, very, very brave, courageous in refusing to sing the national anthem given what's happening on the ground in Iran. The Argentines had no problem singing the national anthem. They just had a problem performing against the Saudis. And I mean, this is a country that really... they don't do many things well on the global stage, but football is right up there, and they just got crushed by the Saudis two to one. Oof. Not fun if you're in Buenos Aires right now.
- Is the Iran nuclear deal dead – again? ›
- The hedge edge: India’s savvy but selfish non-aligned diplomacy ›
- Will politics or soccer win Qatar's World Cup? ›
- Iran v. the Islamic Republic: Fighting Iran’s gender apartheid regime - GZERO Media ›
- Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster - GZERO Media ›