• Goodell confirms review after Ohio prostitution sting

• York pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges

• NFL has previously disciplined owners for misconduct

Commissioner Roger Goodell said the NFL is looking into whether San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York will be punished for violating the league’s personal conduct policy after he was caught in a prostitution sting in Ohio.

“It’s being reviewed under the personal conduct policy,” Goodell said Wednesday at the owners’ meetings in Atlanta. “We’ll do that and when there’s something to be reported we’ll talk.”

• League ends flag football and skills competitions

• Only original 88 selections will earn Pro Bowl status

• Players to be honored at Super Bowl week in LA

The NFL is ending the Pro Bowl Games after repeated format changes to its annual all-star event.

Beginning ⁠with the 2026 season, 88 Pro Bowlers will be selected but the NFL no longer plans to stage an ⁠AFC-NFC game, a ⁠flag-football matchup ​or an accompanying series of competitions. The players chosen will instead be invited to next year’s Super Bowl site in ⁠Los Angeles for an in-person celebration in February.

• $13m fee is an outgoing record for Portland

• Kelsy not expected to feature this weekend

Rangers have acquired forward Kevin Kelsy from Major League Soccer’s Portland Timbers, a source with direct knowledge of the deal told the Guardian on Wednesday. That source requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the agreement. The deal, worth $13m (£9.5m) – potentially more if Kelsy hits certain performance goals for Rangers – also includes a sell-on fee for the MLS club.

The Athletic’s Tom Bogert first reported details of the deal on Wednesday morning.

Portland acquired Kelsy from Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk last January, paying $6m for the Venezuela international. The 22-year-old has been erratic but ultimately productive for the Timbers, scoring 16 times in 43 appearances.

• Sisters to appear in New York for first time since 2022

• Serena played mixed doubles with Alcaraz on Tuesday

Serena and Venus Williams are teaming up again at the US Open.

The sisters will play doubles at the tournament after receiving a wild card on Wednesday into the event they have won twice.

World No 10 is one of the best players yet to win a major and heads to Flushing Meadows in fine form after learning to embrace being uncomfortable

Amanda Anisimova can see the signs now. It is just over three years since the American announced she would be taking an indefinite break for mental health reasons. A brilliant junior, she was a semi-finalist at the French Open in 2019 and seemingly destined for the top, only for her world to be rocked by the sudden death of her father, Konstantin, a few months later. Struggling for motivation and burned out, in May 2023, she revealed she would be stepping away from the sport.

It turned out to be the best decision she ever made. “I learned how important it is to have a great balance on and off the court,” Anisimova says in an interview from New York, ahead of the US Open, where she will try to go one better than last year and win her first grand slam title.

Frontline Rolls, a documentary photography project by Ukrainian photographer Serhii Melnychenko, began in February 2025, when Serhii started sending disposable film cameras to soldiers serving in different areas of the front line. He asked them to document their daily lives, routines, and work.

The project has since been published as a standalone photobook and adapted into an exhibition, with photographs, handwritten letters, and artifacts returned by the participants. In 2026, it won the PhMuseum 2026 Photography Grant Main Prize.

The Ukraine War Archive calls Russia’s war against Ukraine the most documented war in history. Frontline Rolls records it from the soldiers’ own perspective through their photographs, letters, and chosen objects.

How Frontline Rolls began

Serhii spent nearly all of 2024 working on Along the Dnipro. Since he did not have time to travel to soldiers’ positions but wanted to document their experiences, he began looking for alternative ways. He asked himself one question:

“Do I really have to be there in person to document this?” Serhii writes in the foreword to the book, the project’s print format.

The answer was for the soldiers themselves to document their lives for a period of time. Serhii reached out to Fotovramci, which agreed to provide him with disposable film cameras free of charge.

The photographs that came back document the soldiers’ daily lives and the spaces in which they served.

Project participants also shared their stories in the book:

“I joined because I have to protect my family from the orcs. Before the full‐scale invasion I was an artist–designer, worked in advertising. Now a tank commander and reconnaissance pilot on a Mavic. In my free time I decorate shell‐casings and send them to volunteers for help,” says Oleksii, a soldier and participant in the project who goes by the call sign “Lapa.”

“For almost 3½ years I have remained in my soul a civilian. This system is very alien to me. In it I suffer a lot, in particular due to the huge restrictions on freedom. But I am here so that my country remains free. And for my values and convictions I have already paid a considerable price. If I had the option to choose another path—I would still choose this one,” says Oleksii “Photographer,” a soldier and project participant.

“I don’t have a callsign, because everyone knows me as Holikov. In the military since November 2023. From the very start of the full‑scale invasion I volunteered, but with each trip to the front I felt that I was doing not enough and decided to join the ranks of the 109th Separate Brigade of Territorial Defence,” says Viktor Holikov.

“In the army I... feel calmer. I have finally found a certain peace of mind during the full‐scale invasion, despite the difficulties. Partly I still feel that I’m doing not enough, but now it doesn’t haunt me like it used to,” says Kseniia, a servicewoman who goes by the call sign “Jane.”

“The army for me is, first of all, what is called brotherhood. It is hard to describe—you can only understand it by being inside,” says Danylo “Doc.”

The artifacts tell their own stories

Participants returned handwritten letters and personal objects with the exposed film. Serhii describes the resulting collection as a record of “personal experiences, struggles, and memories.”

“I collected artifacts that will remain part of our nation’s history after victory, reminding us of these challenging times,” Serhii says in the book.

Frontline Rolls travels beyond Ukraine

In 2026, Serhii also received the PhEST International Award in Italy, ex aequo with photographer Victorine Alisse.

The photographs were also presented in Copenhagen as part of The War They Live, an exhibition curated by The Kyiv Independent photo editor Irynka Hromotska together with Serhii. The project was also shown at the Athens Photo Festival in 2026. According to Serhii, the exhibition is also scheduled to open at Fotografiska Stockholm in October 2026.

“I sincerely hope that when the war ends, every participant in this project will be alive. Because each of them has become much more to me than just a contributor—they’ve become true friends,” Serhii concludes the foreword to the book.

The Portland Thorns midfielder fills a role few in the US player pool can match, and she’s in a race against time to be fit for Brazil

Olivia Moultrie is no stranger to setting her own timeline. Half a decade ago, her desire to go pro at age 15 helped change NWSL rules, which previously forbade teams from signing players under 18. The ensuing five years have seen her go from one of the country’s top prospects to a high-level midfielder, a developmental success with the Portland Thorns.

Today, Moultrie instead finds herself in a race against time. The 2027 World Cup kicks off in 302 days, and her recovery from a torn ACL suffered at the start of this month has only just begun. Moultrie may not be among the biggest stars in the United States’ player pool, but her recovery from this injury should be closely monitored. Simply, there are few like-for-like alternatives who operate in possession as tidily and dangerously as she does.

The star known as Bayou Barbie is shining in Atlanta. The longer her haters dwell on her lowlights, the more they miss her transformation into an all-around force

On 16 August, the Atlanta Dream faced the Indiana Fever in the WNBA’s showcase matchup, and Angel Reese had a chance to don the cape. Tied at 81, the Dream had possession with five seconds left in regulation when Rhyne Howard launched a deep three-pointer. Reese was perfectly positioned under the basket, snagging Howard’s air ball with an outstretched hand. But in the rush to win the game, Reese forced a shot off the backboard that caromed off the front rim – and Naz Hillmon’s putback fizzled as the buzzer sounded. After Indiana escaped with a 95-91 overtime victory, Reese beat herself up over the loss.

“I didn’t sleep,” she told reporters days later. “The competitor in me wanted to win that game so bad. I replayed that play so many times.” Reese vowed to shrug the game off and do better. Damned if she hasn’t proved herself to be a woman of her word.

• Raducanu’s 2021 win played role in Sky interest

• Sky’s tennis audience in 2025 was 60% female

Sky Sports is close to agreeing a new deal to extend its live coverage of the US Open. The three-year contract extension, which is expected to be announced when the singles draw from Flushing Meadows begins next week, will keep the tournament live on Sky until 2030.

Under the terms of the new deal, Sky will broadcast more than 12 hours of live tennis each day across the extended three-week tournament, including the new mixed-doubles event which is taking place this week.

The San Francisco 49ers owner’s arrest in Ohio over the weekend was quickly put behind him. Others are not so lucky

The Wheat Hill Mobile Home Community sits off state Route 170, on the edge of East Palestine, Ohio, a town most Americans only learned about because a train derailed there in February 2023 and released toxic chemicals into the creek. I grew up in a trailer park like this one, and know the sights. The grid of aluminum boxes in rows. Skirting the color of old teeth, some of it buckled, some patched with a piece of lattice. The window units huff and puff in August, dripping dark condensation on to the gravel.

I’m sure there were drugs on my street. I’m sure somebody was selling sex. I never saw it. What I saw were families raising kids in 800 square feet and people the country had already written off, living next to each other and mostly getting along.

• US star plans to return for 2027-28 season

• Liu will continue training during year away

• Skater says break ‘makes the most sense’

Olympic champion Alysa Liu will sit out the 2026-27 figure skating season, taking another break from competition while continuing to train ahead of a planned return the following year.

The 21-year-old American announced her decision on social media, saying she wanted time to “recalibrate” and develop her skating away from the demands of competition.

• Center Kate Koval departs after one season with Tigers

• Anna Minaeva of Russia joined team earlier this month

• Kim Mulkey hoped two could be ‘ambassadors’ for peace

Ukrainian center Kate Koval is leaving LSU less than two weeks after the Tigers brought in a player from Russia.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey said Monday night that Koval was leaving for “personal reasons”, adding that the program will “respect her privacy on her decision”.

US president has been obsessed with restricting the ability to vote by mail, despite using it himself. Plus, why we are still fascinated with Meg from the White Stripes

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Good morning. The US supreme court has sided with Donald Trump in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it is unclear whether or not his administration will be able to take action before the midterm elections in November. The court’s justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction that a judge in Massachusetts had placed in June on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in place, and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.

Trump has repeatedly likened voting by mail to cheating, despite his own use of it and overwhelming evidence that the system is secure. In March he ordered the government to create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters, requiring that mail-in ballots only be delivered to people on that list. He also directed the justice department to prioritise investigations and prosecutions of state and local election officials who issue ballots to people deemed ineligible to vote in federal elections.

What did the dissenting judges say? In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”.

How have rights organisations reacted? The president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, said: “Let this ruling be a reminder that democracy is never, ever guaranteed. We have to fight for it, we have to fight to keep it and we have to protect the rights we do have within it … they are trying to do everything they possibly can to make it difficult for you to vote.”

How has Canada reacted? The country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, told reporters that Trump’s announcement was largely expected. “It’s not a surprise for us that the US would take some form of reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariff,” he said. Carney has vowed to match the American tariffs “dollar for dollar”, and said Canada could not accept any proposed trade deal that would weaken French language protections.

• 24-year-old breaks single game and single season record

• Reese’s 26 rebounds help Atlanta to win over Los Angeles

Angel Reese rebounded her way into the record books not once, but twice in one night. Reese set a WNBA record with 26 rebounds in the Atlanta Dream’s 78-71 win over the Los Angeles Sparks on Monday, pushing her past the season record in the same game.

“Last time I was here, I didn’t miss any shots. Tonight I couldn’t hit [anything] so I knew I was going be able to get them on the rebounding side,” Reese said after the game. “I just want to be there for my team. Offensively, defensively, whatever it takes to win.”

• 215 of 235 donated brains showed signs of CTE

• Condition can only be diagnosed after death

• Symptoms include problems with memory and mood

At least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 was found to have had chronic ⁠traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), according to a study released on Tuesday.

Out of the 878 former players who died during that time frame, 235 donated their brains for study, researchers said, with 215 ⁠of those donated brains ⁠found to have CTE, ​a degenerative disease that can only definitively be diagnosed after death. CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, including concussions. Symptoms include difficulty with attention and memory, dementia, mood disorders and headaches.

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• South Carolina chooses Darline Graham as Republican nominee for US Senate

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On Truth Social, however, the president shot down assertions that the US talks with Canada collapsed in part due a proposed trade deal that would have weakened French language protections.

“I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French!” he wrote. “In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing. This lie was made up by a weak and ineffective Prime Minister in an attempt to gain political support, which he has totally lost, from the people of Quebec.”

A recent memo claiming executive privilege over communications with private advisers invites corruption

A recent office of legal counsel memo on executive privilege maintains that private advisers to a president can avoid responding to a subpoena by asserting the president’s executive privilege. The ability of presidents to shield communications from public view through claims of executive privilege, whether their own or those of a senior adviser, was already a powerful tool for presidents to avoid accountability. But if courts accept the OLC’s new interpretation of presidential privilege, it will be substantially harder to call witnesses to testify before Congress or in court proceedings regarding possible wrongdoing by the presidents.

Equipping presidents with extensive power to block witnesses in legal proceedings is a dangerous practice that invites corruption by presidents and their advisers. Consider the former White House counsel Don McGahn’s 2019 refusal to testify in response to a subpoena by the House judiciary committee in connection with the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump. McGahn didn’t come up with that idea on his own. It was the Trump White House that sought to bar McGahn from testifying through an assertion of a type of executive privilege known as “testimonial immunity.” Ironically, Mueller was investigating whether Trump obstructed justice, among other things, by demanding that McGahn fire Mueller himself. Trump’s insistence that McGahn not testify, backed up by a 2019 OLC opinion, effectively made the first Trump administration complicit in the very obstruction under investigation.

German investigators now count three drones around the failed 4–5 August attack on a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig airport, Tagesschau reported on 25 August. Officers found the third machine and a suspected military explosive in a field near the runways. Security circles assume Russian intelligence services helped plan the attempt, and Russia denies any role.

A third drone and about 50 grams of suspected hexogen

Investigators found the third drone on the early evening of 14 August in a field in Kabelsketal, security circles told NDR, WDR, and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). The area borders the airport's western edge in Saxony-Anhalt. Forensic technicians from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) arrived that day, and the next day they reportedly found a substance at the site. First assessments put it at about 50 grams of hexogen, a military explosive known internationally as RDX. The perpetrators may have had a far larger attack in mind than what has become public, according to Tagesschau. 

The target was a Ukrainian plane

The drone found on the tarmac was meant to hit a Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft that moves military goods, according to the investigation cited by the public broadcasters NDR and WDR and SZ. The bomb never went off, because its detonator was apparently defective. The plane had been apparently loaded with ammunition the previous day. Leipzig/Halle carries military freight for the German armed forces and NATO allies, and Ukraine's Antonov Airlines uses it as a base, Euronews reported the same day.

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A bomb-laden drone hit a Ukrainian An-124 in Germany, then lay unnoticed for hours

The first drone turned up on the airport grounds at around 23:42 on 4 August. Shortly afterward, at about 00:03, a second drone reportedly collided with a cargo plane of the delivery company DHL. That aircraft had broken off its landing because the first find shut the airport, and it probably hit the drone at fence height at several hundred kilometers per hour. Neither that drone nor parts of it have turned up, NDR, WDR, and SZ reported. The German broadcasters placed the damage on the tail unit, while Bild gave a different account, putting the collision about six kilometers out with minor damage to the nose, Euronews said.

Camera footage analyzed after the attempt showed a quadcopter carrying Semtex plastic explosive fly into the wing of a parked An-124 Ruslan without detonating, and Washington assessed that the drone belonged to Russian intelligence. The same airport saw a parcel ignite in July 2024, before crews could load it onto a DHL cargo plane, in what security services treated as a suspected Moscow-linked arson plot.

State-protection officers at the BKA work under orders from Federal Prosecutor General Jens Rommel to establish how the attack was meant to run and who is responsible. Investigators are following several leads, among them recovered DNA. Germany ranks among Ukraine's biggest military backers, and its authorities suspect Russia of orchestrating many of the drone incidents as part of a campaign of sabotage, espionage, and disinformation, Euronews said.

Nearly a decade after I watched him defy Erdoğan at great personal cost, the ex-NBA player is using his hard-won freedom to turn transgender people into a punchline

Nine years ago, I watched Enes Kanter ask America to take him in. It was May 2017, inside the National Basketball Players Association’s offices in midtown Manhattan. Kanter had just returned from a frightening detention at Bucharest airport, where Romanian border police told him Turkey had canceled his passport. He’d just turned 25, an NBA center with a green card and no country he could safely call home.

“I’m open for adoption,” he joked from the head of a table in a nondescript conference room, addressing a dozen reporters hastily summoned by his manager. Then he turned serious: “My next move is to just become an American citizen.”

While Cavan and Quinn Sullivan star in MLS with the Philadelphia Union, brothers Ronan and Declan have connected with their South Asian heritage

Ronan Sullivan had tried a panenka twice in his life. Both attempts were at practice on the other side of the world, and one hit the crossbar. But his twin brother, Declan, was hardly surprised when Ronan turned to him and told him he’d chip the fifth penalty of a shootout that could win a scoreless tournament final, as millions tuned in online to see his Bangladesh side play against India in the Under-20 South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship.

“He didn’t even need to say it. I knew he was gonna do that the whole time,” Declan remembered, sitting next to his brother on the couch of their dorm room at Saint Joseph’s University. “I knew that if he got the last pen to win it, he was gonna do that. That’s just the him thing to do.”

The Slovenian is one of the best players on the planet. But factors largely beyond his control have started to turn his career into a slog

Luka Dončić must feel as though, these past few months, he’s been twirling in a washing machine. He announced a separation from his fiancee in March; reports followed of a prolonged custody battle over their two daughters. As Dončić plays in the NBA and his children live in Slovenia, he doesn’t see them much as is. But after the reports of the rift with his ex emerged, he started playing some of the best basketball of his life: he led the Los Angeles Lakers to a 15-2 record in March, a stretch that included a torrential 60-point display against the Miami Heat. Behind Dončić’s brightening star, the Lakers seemed to be sharpening into a real contender. Then Dončić tweaked his hamstring in April and the illusion shattered. He watched from the sidelines as the Lakers limped out of the playoffs with an inevitable second-round defeat to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Actually, Dončić must feel as if he’s been in turmoil for the past few years. He made his first – and so far only – NBA finals in 2024, leading the Dallas Mavericks there with a barrage of awesome shotmaking. As the best offensive player on the court while playing through multiple injuries, Dončić and his Mavs lost to the far deeper Boston Celtics in five games. As thanks, the Mavericks traded Dončić to the Lakers, citing defensive concerns, when what had really doomed them against the Celtics was that no one aside from Luka – who led his team in points, rebounds, assists and steals in that series – could play at the requisite level to win.

Justices’ ruling comes after lower courts had blocked president’s election order ahead of November midterms

The US supreme court sided with Donald Trump on Monday in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it remains unclear if his administration can take action ahead of the midterm elections in November.

Justices on the court voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction from June that a judge in Massachusetts placed on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in place and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.

• 46-year-old charged with possessing criminal tools

• York fined and sentenced to two days in jail

• 49ers CEO also owns stake in Leeds United

The San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York has pleaded no contest to two criminal charges after being arrested at an Ohio trailer park over the weekend.

KRON4 News in San Francisco reported that York was initially arrested on suspicion of engaging in prostitution but that count was amended to a charge of disorderly conduct. He was also charged with possessing criminal tools.

• Child wandered on field during MNUFC’s 5-1 win

• Minnesota posts win was ‘Like taking money from a baby’

A toddler interrupted a Major League Soccer match between Minnesota United and San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday by invading the pitch – a bizarre scene punctuated by an on-air analyst saying, “There’s a baby on the field.”

With a minute and a half to play in the game that Minnesota won 5-1 at PayPal Park in San Jose, California, the small child took to the field – and the referee blew his whistle to stop play.

The president’s border wall plan could damage or destroy ‘the oldest-known books in North America’

On an overcast summer morning, Carolyn Boyd, an archeologist at Texas State University, stood at the foot of a cave in west Texas, looking up toward a series of towering murals painted on a rock wall. Three massive human-like figures soared toward an overhang that had sheltered the painting from the elements since they were drawn here perhaps 4,000 years ago.

An artist herself, Boyd knows how hard it would have been to paint these long, crisp lines. Before starting, the bands of Indigenous hunter-gatherers who lived in this west Texas valley, where the Pecos River empties into the Rio Grande, would have spent weeks pulverizing gypsum, hematite, limonite and manganese to make paint. They would have gathered massive quantities of sotol stalks to fold its fibers into scaffolding. The painting itself would have required teamwork and precision, with people at the bottom guiding artists on the wall as they painted figures stretching up to 30ft tall.

The WNBA has attracted grifters who care little for basketball – and whose latest stunt exposes the hollowness of their supposed concern

I regret to inform you that yet another dildo has hit a WNBA court. The Chicago Sky v Golden State Valkyries game was sullied by sex toys being chucked on to the playing surface on Friday. Aren’t we tired of all this yet? To paraphrase the Sky’s Natasha Cloud, it takes a lot of effort to bother with such a juvenile act.

This is yet another controversy for the WNBA, a league that up until a few years ago, most media observers ignored. The WNBA is full of incredibly talented players and has a rich history, but most sports fans treated all but ignored it for the majority of its 30-year existence. But when Caitlin Clark went pro, the league surged. Ratings, attendance, and interest exploded. But not all attention is good attention.

• American beats compatriot Jessica Pegula 6-2, 6-4

• Gauff claims first title of season, her second in Cincinnati

One year ago, Coco Gauff departed the Cincinnati Open with her career at a crossroads. On serve, she had capitulated, offering up countless double faults in most matches, and she had lost confidence in her progress and game. She believed she had to make drastic changes to her team before it was too late.

It has taken an enormous amount of resilience, patience and toil, but this week Gauff began to feel the consequences of those efforts as she closed out one of the ­smoothest tournaments of her career with her best performance of the season, thoroughly outplaying the third seed ­Jessica Pegula to win 6-2, 6-4 and clinch the Cincinnati Open title for the second time.

US president, pushing on with Freedom 250 festivities, makes over nation’s capital for Trump rally on wheels

• Kyle Kirkwood wins Freedom 250 IndyCar race after Trump waves the green flag

He got the wrong end of the stick. Donald Trump couldn’t figure out how to hold the green flag until his wife, Melania Trump, and Command Sgt Maj Matt Williams set him right. Then the US president waved the flag fast and furious like an excited schoolboy. The race was under way – and his conquest of Washington DC was complete.

Since returning to Washington, Trump has deployed the national guard, wrecked the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, demolished the East Wing of the White House and run the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts into the ground. His face adorns the Department of Justice, and he still has grand plans for a triumphal arch worthy of a Roman emperor.

• American driver wins in a dominant performance

• DC Mayor Muriel Bowser served as grand marshal

Kyle Kirkwood gave the Freedom 250 an American winner, racing to his second victory of the IndyCar season on the streets of downtown Washington in a dominant performance Sunday.

In a race set up as part of the country’s 250th birthday celebration, President Donald Trump gave drivers the green flag at the start and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser served as grand marshal. Kirkwood crossed the finish line in front of the Capitol 3.09 seconds ahead of Christian Lundgaard, after leading for 128 of a possible 147 laps.

• López wins majority decision to claim WBA crown

• Romero brands judges’ verdict a ‘robbery’

• New champion adds to previous 135lb, 140lb belts

Teófimo López became a three-division world champion on Saturday night, winning a 12-round majority decision over Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero to claim the WBA welterweight title at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

López prevailed by scores of 115-113 and 116-112, while the third judge saw the fight even at 114-114. Romero, making the first defense of his title won against Ryan Garcia 15 months ago, disputed the result in the immediate aftermath.

• Player booed during team’s preseason loss to Bills

• QB has battled injuries during time in Cleveland

• Watson was suspended over sexual assault allegations

Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson has called the booing he heard from the team’s own fans during Saturday’s home loss to Buffalo “disrespectful” and “personal.”

Watson, who has a complicated relationship with Cleveland fans because of injuries, off-field issues – including an NFL suspension in 2022 – and a massive, $230m contract, was booed repeatedly during the second half of the 31-7 loss to the Bills.

• French youngster beats No 7 seed 6-3, 6-4 in Cincinnati

• Jessica Pegula battles past Swiatek to reach women’s final

In the middle of a tense, erratic start to a rain-delayed semi-final day in Cincinnati, Arthur Fils found himself locked in defence and miles behind the baseline on his serve at 3-3. He scurried from sideline to sideline, lunging toward the ball at full stretch, seemingly with no real chance of turning things around. As Flavio Cobolli swept to the net with the intention of finishing Fils off, however, the Italian soon learned that his opponent had another gear to reach. From far wide of the court, Fils pulverised a forehand passing shot winner beyond his astounded opponent, drawing a roar from the crowd.

That one point alone provided evidence of the athleticism, explosiveness and sheer audacity that have long marked Fils as such a rare, exciting talent, and it also set the tone for a monumental victory. From that moment onwards, Fils took control of the match and he marched into his first Masters 1000 final at the Cincinnati Open with a supreme performance, defeating Cobolli, the No 7 seed, 6-3, 6-4.

• Toddler was found unresponsive in residential pool

• Player has been practicing with team since June tragedy

Members of the Buffalo Bills have expressed their condolences to Ed Oliver after the death of the player’s two-year-old son.

“Obviously, very unfortunate what happened and as a teammate of him, as someone in this locker room, all we can do is love on him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said after Saturday’s win over the Cleveland Browns. “There’s nothing that you can say to make the situation any better except being there in whatever ways he needs.

• Incident happened when Inter Miami met Philadelphia Union

• Argentinian lashed out at Quinn Sullivan in 2-2 draw

Lionel Messi has been fined for slapping an opponent during a Major League Soccer game. The 39-year-old Inter Miami forward lashed out at Quinn Sullivan of Philadelphia Union during their match on Wednesday, catching the midfielder around the back of the head.

The Argentinian appeared to be angry Sullivan had elbowed him after he had played the ball, with the referee intervening before the situation could escalate. The match at Subaru Park finished 2-2.

MLS wants to build on the momentum of the World Cup. America’s top domestic cup competition is an obvious place to start

The new commissioner of Major League Soccer, Larry Berg, isn’t keen on the idea of promotion and relegation, but he is a fan of jeopardy. When asked the obligatory pro/rel question in his introductory press conference, Berg responded, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for our league, but I think there are other ways to create jeopardy during the regular season, [and] again in the playoffs.”

He referred to this summer’s World Cup, which was co-hosted by the US, and the excitement it provided, adding, “Millions of people across North America experienced that passion firsthand. They fell in love with the drama, the atmosphere, the supporter culture and the emotion that makes soccer unlike anything else. In the World Cup, we all enjoyed knockout games after the group stage. I call those games of consequence or games of jeopardy.”

• 39-year-old collapsed during event in June

• American won world title in 2011

Former 1500m world champion Jenny Simpson says she will not return to running after she collapsed during a track event in June.

Simpson, a three-time Olympian and one of the most accomplished American female runners in history, was pacing a mile group at an event in North Carolina when she went into cardiac arrest. She was given CPR before she was rushed to hospital, where she was placed on life support due to issues with her heart and lungs.

• World No 1 makes ‘difficult decision’ to miss slam

• Draper still recovering from bone bruise in left arm

Jannik Sinner will miss the US Open with a right knee injury. The world No 1 has not played a match since beating Alexander Zverev last month to successfully defend his Wimbledon title, missing the Masters 1000 events in Canada and Cincinnati. Great Britain’s Jack Draper is also out of the event.

The news comes a day after his great rival Carlos Alcaraz, whom the Italian lost to in the final in New York 12 months ago, revealed he will make his comeback at Flushing Meadows after four months out with a wrist injury.

• Transgender woman has never played in the league

• Engelbert says league being used as ‘political football’

The WNBA commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, has denounced people she said are trying to “sow divisiveness” as the league grapples with a debate over transgender athletes.

Engelbert made the comments on Thursday before the Indiana Fever’s loss to the Dallas Wings at the home of the Dallas Mavericks. Demonstrators showed up outside American Airlines Center, as they have at other venues since the Fever’s Sophie Cunningham voiced support for barring transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s sports.

• Kai Spears incorrectly linked to death of young mother

• Times says it had not lost libel case in more than 50 years

An Alabama jury has awarded $9.25m in damages after finding that the New York Times defamed a college basketball player by incorrectly reporting that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting.

Kai Spears, who played for the University of Alabama men’s team, sued the Times in 2023 after it published a report, citing a person familiar with the investigation, that said he was a passenger in a car involved in the shooting. The Times reported that the person had spoken “on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.”

The US is engaged in a lawless quest to protect American and Israeli officials

The Trump administration has taken another step in its crusade against the international criminal court by imposing sanctions on two more senior ICC officials. The growing number of sanctioned jurists – now 13 – does not change the lawless nature of this quest.

Donald Trump and his henchman, Marco Rubio, want to make the world safe for US and Israeli war criminals. No one should let them.

Russia's propaganda machine has mobilized against Ukraine's new defense minister within days of his appointment. Russian resources have spread more than 1,000 posts in two days against Ukraine's new Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara, the Center for Strategic Communications reported.

The effort aims to portray Khmara as a "terrorist" and again push the Kremlin narrative of "Ukraine as a terrorist state," running through the same coordinated pipeline of Russian outlets and laundering networks that Russia uses to seed disinformation abroad.

The campaign ran through a familiar pipeline

The disinformation has followed a coordinated path. The first injections appeared on Tsargrad's resources, were then amplified through the Pravda/ZOV network in various languages, and were later picked up by RT, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti, according to the Center for Strategic Communications.

A narrative seeded on a fringe Russian outlet, amplified through a multilingual network, then carried by Russia's state media, reaches foreign audiences looking like independent reporting rather than a Kremlin operation, the method Russia uses to push its narratives into Western information spaces.

The false claims and their purpose

Russia's outlets attached fabricated accusations to Khmara. As purported "proof," the propagandists attribute to him involvement in the Kerch Bridge explosion, the Crocus City Hall attack, and the car bombing of Darya Dugina, while also pushing claims of "total corruption" and "external control" of Ukraine.

These are assertions Russia makes, not established facts, and Ukraine's monitors identify them as disinformation designed to serve the "terrorist state" narrative. The choice of accusations, tying Khmara to attacks Russia blames on Ukraine, is meant to frame Ukraine's defense leadership as criminal and justify Russia's war to audiences at home and abroad.

The campaign targets foreign audiences

The operation was built to travel. About 65% of the identified posts appeared on Telegram, and about 30% on web resources, and the campaign is being translated into English, French, Spanish, and other languages to reach foreign audiences, according to the Center for Strategic Communications.

Boxing’s most mercurial star is putting an old friendship aside as he moves up to 147lb to challenge Rolly Romero for the welterweight title he won against Ryan Garcia

For more than a decade, Teófimo López’s friendship with Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero endured through amateur tournaments, Las Vegas sparring sessions and the mismatched peaks and troughs of two volatile careers. That friendship ended, López says, the moment they signed to fight one another.

On Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena along the Vegas Strip, the 29-year-old López will challenge for Romero’s World Boxing Association welterweight title. The former lightweight and junior-welterweight champion is moving up to 147lb in pursuit of a belt in a third division. For Romero, himself a three-weight belt-holder after stacking titles at 135lb and 140lb, a victory would add another marquee name to a résumé transformed by last year’s upset of Ryan Garcia. The fight will be broadcast globally on Dazn pay-per-view and will see the champion go off as a roughly 2-1 underdog.

Bob Iger and Josh Kushner’s $12.5bn bid to buy the Lakers shows that NBA teams are no longer family dynasties, but quick flips for private equity sharks

For years, the NBA was built on the alliance of patient money and marketing pizzazz, and no team captured that curious mixture better than the Los Angeles Lakers. Through Showtime in the 1980s and the dominance of the Shaq-Kobe years, the Lakers became the benchmark for a league and a sport intent on global conquest: charismatic, ambitious, and flashy, a sporting-cultural amalgam in which athleticism and celebrity held equal rank. Through careful front office recruitment, savvy coaching, and the harnessing of Hollywood’s star power, the Lakers evolved from a team into a “brand,” establishing a template that virtually every other outfit in the NBA has felt compelled to mimic in the years since. But the razzle-dazzle on the court – the Laker Girls, Magic flinging no-look passes, Shaq smashing the glass, Jack Nicholson smiling his Joker smile in the front row, all eyebrows and mischief – depended on a far more staid and stable arrangement off it. Real estate investor Jerry Buss bought the Lakers for $16m in 1979, and remained the majority owner until his death in 2013, when his children assumed control of the franchise.

When Jerry Buss died, the Lakers were valued at $1bn. Now, the team looks set to be sold to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, for $12.5bn. The sale is still under negotiation and will need to be approved by the NBA’s board of governors; the Buss siblings are also now bickering over whether to join the stampede and sell their minority 17.8% stake in the franchise to Iger and Kushner, which has added a subplot of Shakespearean family intrigue to proceedings. But in the likely event it goes through, the sale would make the Lakers the most valuable franchise in basketball. It would also signal an acceleration in private equity’s scramble to get its claws into the world of sport.