L'attaquant paraphe une entente de 3,6 M$ et évite l'arbitrage salarial.

• Batson says US federation will ‘take a break’

• Pochettino’s future remains unresolved

• Sporting director role unfilled after Crocker exit

The US men’s national team leaves the World Cup with some considerable gaps in their organizational chart. Mauricio Pochettino’s future is undetermined as his contract – funded in part by billionaire donors – ends with the conclusion of this tournament. In April, Matt Crocker resigned from his role as sporting director to take a similar position with Saudi Arabia.

Despite these crucial positions being open, there may not be resolutions for some time.

Seuls les délits de trafic d'influence et détournement de fonds publics ont été retenus contre Begoña Gómez.

• American responds to six-time major winner’s jibe

• Surprise name at top of leaderboard

From no clue and no strategy to no explanation. Who or what is eating Bryson DeChambeau? Maybe the coming days will reveal all. Then again …

A fine and widely unexpected start to the 154th Open Championship was not sufficient to alter DeChambeau’s uncommunicative approach towards anybody who may not be inclined to tickle his tummy. Following a fifth major round in a row, DeChambeau declined the opportunity to speak to eagerly assembled media. One once so garrulous has lost his tongue.

Exclusives

Russia’s port strikes leave Ukraine’s grain with almost nowhere else to go. Russia’s strikes have halted Ukraine’s deepwater grain exports—and there’s no way around the damage: one rail line carries almost all of it.

Ukraine is turning Crimea into an island. It just fired the minister who armed the effort. The same pattern that cost Zaluzhnyi his job in 2024—success, popularity, a Syrskyi clash, a possible rival.

The Syrskyi feud was not it: why Ukraine really dropped its drone-war minister. As crowds fill the streets in cities across Ukraine to support the forced-out minister, a deputy air force commander says he joined in 2022 to win the war, not to watch reforms stall.

Russia bet 50 vehicles that the drones would miss. The drones did not miss.. Russian commanders had banned their own vehicles from these roads, knowing what the drones do to them. Then they lined up 50 and sent them anyway.

Russia’s fuel crisis has moved from the pump to the harvest.

Military

Ukraine is deliberately building the fragmented fighter fleet every air force is trained to avoid. Militaries standardize to survive the logistics. Ukraine is doing the opposite, and there's a reason.

Ukraine reportedly strikes Russian airbase used to attack its cities, using a drone similar to the Russian Shahed. A reported overnight drone strike sparked a fire at Russia's Engels-2 airbase, home to the strategic bombers that regularly launch cruise missile attacks on Ukraine.

UK fast-tracks new ballistic missile for Ukraine with "pared-down" design. The UK's Project Nightfall will reportedly trade range and warhead size for faster development, as London seeks to arm Ukraine while expanding Europe's defense industry.

Ukraine's spy service and navy team up to strike two Russian crude tankers in the Black Sea. The "Mamai" naval drones destroyed vessels the SBU calls legitimate targets and working parts of Russia's war machine.

Ukraine hit 147 Russian shadow-fleet ships in 10 days. Now Moscow is pulling its best drone unit off the front to guard the tankers, partisans say. Rubicon built its reputation hunting Ukrainian logistics near Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. A partisan network says it's being sent to sea instead.

Ukraine's 412th Nemesis brigade destroyed rare Russian Zemledeliye system with FPV drones. Russia can scatter a minefield from 15 kilometers out. Ukraine takes out one of the machines that does it.

Intelligence and technology

You can't jam what you can't identify: Ukraine just fielded its first portable drone detector. Ukraine has gone the whole war without a portable, mass-produced drone-signature detector, while nearly every Russian soldier carries a Chinese "Bulat".

Brussels let Ukraine spend EU defense funds on Chinese drone components. The bloc does not turn out these parts in the volumes a front-line drone war burns through, so Kyiv looked east.

20,000 confirmed hits make General Cherry Ukraine's top FPV drone maker. Ukraine's combat-driven drone market crowned General Cherry its top FPV manufacturer in June after more than 20,000 verified target hits.

International

1,500 British and French troops are heading to Poland in September—the first physical test of Europe's plan to guarantee Ukraine's security. The Coalition of the Willing will hold its first joint military exercise in Poland this September, moving the European-led initiative for Ukraine's security from political pledges toward operational planning.

One Greek company keeps Russia's Arctic gas moving—and Athens won't let the EU touch it. Dynagas has carried more than 10 million tons of Russian LNG since 2025 across 144 voyages.

A nationwide bomb-shelter overhaul is underway in Belarus as Moscow pushes Minsk toward its war against Ukraine. Belpol documented shelter modernization at government offices, telecom sites, factories, utilities, and the National Bank, framing it as another stage of Minsk's war readiness.

A month's worth of Russia's oil exports is stuck at sea—135 million barrels loaded but not delivered. Bloomberg's vessel-tracking and price data put the four-week value of Russia's seaborne crude exports back near $1.7 billion, down from a weekly spike near $2.5 billion on the chart earlier this year.

Humanitarian and social impact

Ukraine repatriates 501 bodies Russia says are Ukrainian service members. The latest humanitarian operation returned 501 bodies from Russia to Ukraine, where forensic specialists will work to establish their identities and prepare them for return to their families.

"Cardboard" protests against Zelenskyy's firing of Fedorov erupt across Ukraine. The rallies were timed to the parliament session set to seal a wider government reshuffle.

From Russia's contract to death in about a month: Cameroon student and 23-year-old were found dead in Ukraine. Ukrainian intelligence identified two Cameroonians killed on the front weeks after signing Russian army contracts. HUR puts Cameroon's war dead at 106.

Political and legal developments

Zelenskyy defends the right to protest and hands defense to his strike-war chief. He passed over the expected frontrunner and gave the job to his special operations chief, the man behind Ukraine's long-range strikes.

Fedorov breaks his silence: Ukraine's army chief Syrskyi gave him an ultimatum—then blocked his reforms. He confirmed the feud with Oleksandr Syrskyi drove the dismissal, at a briefing hours before the vote.

Ukraine's deputy Air Force commander resigns the moment Fedorov loses the ministry. Pavlo Yelizarov, the No. 2 in the Air Force since January, made the departing minister's removal the sole reason for handing in his report.

"Symbolically," says Ukraine's departing defense minister: New ballistic missile was tested on day government resigned. On his way out, Fedorov said Ukraine ran a successful ballistic missile test on 14 July, developed in the Defense Ministry's zone of responsibility.

"Our state became further from victory": Ukraine's top volunteer, whose fund bought 286,000 FPV Drones, just lost his defense post. Serhii Sternenko, whose foundation delivered 118,000 FPV drones to the front, is out as defense adviser after Fedorov's exit.

Ukraine's reformist defense minister is out after six months. Earlier, his audit exposed $7.2 billion in defense overspending. Mykhailo Fedorov, the drone-warfare architect who became Ukraine's youngest defense minister, is leaving after six months, having opened his tenure with an audit that found $7.2 billion in overspending.

Russia built Crimea's power grid on sanctioned Siemens turbines. Ukraine has struck cooling system of one in Balaklava. Ukraine's Special Operations Forces struck Sevastopol's Balaklava power plant, damaging the cooling system of a Siemens turbine that sanctions leave unrepairable.

Read our previous daily review here.

Karoline Leavitt calls apparent bets on Kalshi prediction platform ‘deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace’

Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator has been placed on administrative leave, the White House said on Thursday, after reports that he used his position to win $100,000 by placing bets on the president’s speeches using the online prediction market Kalshi.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president had been informed about the situation, which she described as “deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace”.

After Thelma Gaston disappeared, her companion was convicted of second-degree murder

Authorities in southern California announced this week that, after more than 40 years, they had identified the remains of a Los Angeles millionaire missing since 1981.

The Riverside county sheriff confirmed in a statement that investigators, using genetic genealogy and dental records, had determined the remains found in a rugged area near Sugarloaf Mountain were those of Thelma Gaston.

• Former Arsenal boss calls out US pay-to-play model

• Wenger says academy setups are vital for growth

Arsène Wenger, Fifa’s head of global football development, has said that while the US faced numerous structural obstacles to becoming a real soccer power, many of those obstacles are being addressed by leadership at the US Soccer Federation and Major League Soccer.

Speaking Thursday in a roundtable with US Soccer chief executive JT Batson and chief operating officer Dan Helfrich, Wenger heaped praise on the federation for its new $250m headquarters in Fayetteville, Georgia, saying “I feel it’s important for every footballer, somewhere, to feel you’re at home.”

La représentation étrangère, à l'avenir, concentrera davantage ses efforts sur les institutions européennes.