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Soccer players given two-game bans after concealing anti-homophobia badge

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Reuters
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Olympique Lyonnais midfielder Nemanja Matic and Le Havre striker Ahmed Hassan have each been handed two-game bans with a further two matches suspended after they concealed Ligue 1’s anti-homophobia insignia on their shirts, the French top-flight said.

Serbian Matic, 36, had put on a tape over the anti-homophobia badge when he came on as a substitute during Lyon’s 2-0 home win over Angers on May 17, which was the final day of the Ligue 1 season. His Lyon contract is set to expire at the end of the month.

Egyptian Hassan, 32, also received the same punishment, with the incident having occurred during Le Havre’s 3-2 win at Strasbourg.

Both players concealed the Ligue 1 anti-homophobia emblem, pictured.

“In addition, the committee proposed to the player – who immediately accepted at the meeting – that he take part, within six months, in a campaign to raise awareness of the fight against homophobia in football…” Ligue 1 said in a statement on Thursday.

Ligue 1 had planned for players to wear rainbow-coloured symbols on shirts or armbands and display messages in stadiums as part of its annual awareness drive.

Yet participation has been uneven in recent years, with some players citing personal or religious reasons for opting out.



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Ukraine says it killed Russian agents suspected of assassinating intelligence officer

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CNN
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Ukraine’s Security Service said Sunday they had killed Russian special service agents suspected of gunning down a fellow officer in Kyiv earlier this week, saying it believed Russia’s Federal Security Service was responsible.

SBU officer Ivan Voronych was shot dead in Kyiv on Thursday morning in what authorities told CNN was an apparent assassination.

The suspects – a man and a woman – tried to “lay low” after the shooting, the SBU said in a statement Sunday.

However, SBU and National Police officers established their whereabouts in the Kyiv region, the statement added.

The head of the SBU, Vasyl Malyuk, said; “As a result of covert investigative and active counterintelligence measures, the enemy’s lair was discovered.”

He continued, “During their arrest, they began to resist, there was an exchange of fire, and the scoundrels were eliminated.”

“I want to remind you that the only prospect for the enemy on the territory of Ukraine is death!” he said in a video, which was apparently filmed in front of the suspect’s bodies.

According to the SBU, the two had been ordered to trail their target to establish his daily routine. They were then directed to a safe house where a pistol with a silencer was waiting for them.

The SBU is Ukraine’s main security service, responsible for both internal security and sabotage operations against Russia. Among others, it was responsible for Ukraine’s audacious drone attack against Russian airfields last month.

Voronych’s killing comes at a time when Russia has been escalating its attacks on Ukraine – this week saw both the largest and second largest drone attack of the conflict, now into its fourth year.



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Man convicted of Meredith Kercher’s murder facing trial for sexual assault

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CNN
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Rudy Guede, the only person definitively convicted of the brutal 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, will be back in court this fall facing charges of sexual assault and violence against a former girlfriend.

Guede, a 38-year-old Ivory Coast native who has lived in Italy since the age of five, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for Kercher’s murder in October 2008. His sentence was reduced on appeal before he was released early for good behavior in 2021.

The case sparked a media frenzy, spawning more than two dozen books and three films.

More than 100,000 photos, thousands of chats and audio messages between Guede and the unnamed victim are among the evidence to be considered in the trial, according to the investigating magistrate Rita Cialoni, who ordered Guede to stand trial in a preliminary hearing in Viterbo on Friday.

The two began dating while Guede was still in prison and ended their relationship in 2023 when the woman pressed charges against him, according to Italian media.

American student Amanda Knox, who was Kercher’s roommate at the time she was killed, and Knox’s then-boyfriend Italian Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted in tandem for their alleged role in Kercher’s murder in 2009, but were fully exonerated by Italy’s Supreme Court in 2015 following a topsy-turvy legal battle.

A reproduction made 06 November 2007 of an undated picture shows British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia.

Knox, remains convicted of slander for accusing her former nightclub boss Patrick Lumumba of Kercher’s murder in 2007.

Guede’s new indictment and trial stems from 2023 accusations of sexual assault, mistreatment and stalking, by a 25-year-old woman Guede dated from Viterbo, where Guede worked first on work release from prison and then after his release. His first hearing will be held November 4 in Viterbo.

His lawyer Carlo Mezzetti told CNN his client was innocent and feared he would not get a fair trial given his previous conviction.



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Trump announces new tariffs of 30% on Mexico and the European Union

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CNN
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President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened duties of 30% on products from Mexico and the European Union, two of America’s biggest trading partners, in an ongoing tariff campaign that’s upended global trade since he retook office in January.

“The United States of America has agreed to continue working with the European Union, despite having one of our largest Trade Deficits with you. Nevertheless, we have decided to move forward, but only with more balanced and fair TRADE,” Trump wrote in the letter to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, which he posted to Truth Social.

Trump has imposed a slate of tariffs on US trading partners this year – then paused, modified, raised or lowered them, in a chaotic barrage of policy actions that’s left everyone from major nations to individual Americans trying to figure out how to plan for the future even as economic uncertainty grows.

The EU and Mexico join a growing list of countries whose imports will face updated duties on August 1, since Trump began posting tariff letters on Monday with rates of up to 40%.

In his letters to the EU and Mexico, Trump said that all imports were subject to the 30% tariff, excluding “Sectoral Tariffs,” such as the 25% auto tariff.

Von der Leyen said in a statement that the EU remains “ready to continue working towards an agreement” by the August 1 deadline.

But, she said, a 30% tariff on EU exports would hurt supply chains, businesses and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. The EU “will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” von der Leyen wrote.

Products from Mexico, meanwhile, have mostly been able to enter the country duty-free, granted they were compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Trump negotiated in his first term. In his letter addressed to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump said that tariff barriers were imposed to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States, which he has previously used to justify earlier tariffs on Mexico as well.

“Mexico has been helping me secure the border, BUT, what Mexico has done, is not enough,” Trump wrote.

Mexico’s economy minister Marcelo Ebrard posted on X that a Mexican delegation told United States officials during a Friday meeting that plans to establish a new tariff rate would be “unfair treatment and that we did not agree.” But the United States and Mexico are negotiating to find an “alternative to protect businesses and jobs on both sides of the border.”

In the tariff letters, which were dated on Friday, Trump said that any retaliation of tariffs charged on US imports would be met with pushback from the United States. Trump said that “whatever the number you choose to raise (tariffs) by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.”

He blamed both tariff and non-tariff trade barriers as additional reasons for imposing tariffs on the EU and Mexico.

Tractor-trailers wait in line at the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge port of entry, on the US-Mexico border in Juarez, Mexico, on April 3.

The Trump administration has taken particular issue with value-added and digital services taxes, which are prominent in several EU member countries.

Digital service taxes are levied on the gross revenue that online firms collect from offering services to users. Countries with these taxes would be able to tax all the revenue large companies that operate online collect — even if the business is unprofitable. That can include what they collect from selling data, advertising as well as payments they receive for subscriptions, software and other kinds of online services users pay for.

Trump and members of his administration said on multiple occasions that the EU was not negotiating in good faith. And two months ago, Trump was so enraged by the lack of progress in trade talks that he was prepared to slap a 50% tariff on goods from the EU come June 1. “I’m not looking for a deal,” he said at the time.

A 30% tariff on the EU is more than the 20% “reciprocal” tariff which goods from there faced before Trump paused them in mid-April.

After Trump made the threat in May, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox News interview that the “EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we’ve seen from our other important trading partners.”

The letters to the EU and Mexico come after Trump threatened 35% tariffs on some Canadian goods on Thursday.

This story has been updated with additional content.



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