FILE – Utah Jazz center Walker Kessler (24) dunks during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Oct. 27, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Anna Fuder, File)

Walker Kessler is being traded by the Utah Jazz to the Los Angeles Lakers, who will have the center under contract for the next four NBA seasons and for a total of about $130 million, a person with knowledge of the agreement said Wednesday.

The Jazz are getting two first-round draft picks and two first-round pick swaps out of the deal, according to the person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the move is a sign-and-trade and has yet to receive the needed league approvals.

The Athletic and ESPN were among those to first report the agreement.

Acquiring Kessler is the first big move for the Lakers in their post-LeBron James era, after the NBA’s all-time leading scorer said Tuesday that he was leaving the team and would spend this coming season elsewhere. And it solves a need at center for the Lakers, plus gives the team a young big to pair with star guards Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves.

Kessler — who turns 25 later this month — was limited to five games this past season after having surgery to repair a labrum tear in his left shoulder in November. He and the Jazz discussed an extension last summer but never came to terms.

Kessler was averaging 14.4 points, 10.8 rebounds and 1.8 blocks on 70% shooting this past season before getting hurt. In his first three seasons, he averaged 9.4 points on 68% shooting.

He played for the U.S. at the 2023 FIBA World Cup in the Philippines.

DR Congo’s dream of reaching the last 16 of the 2026 FIFA World Cup ended in heartbreaking fashion after they suffered a 2-1 defeat to England in Atlanta.

The African side were on course for one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history after Brian Cipenga gave them an early lead. They defended bravely for much of the match and looked set to knock England out of the tournament.

DR Congo goalkeeper Lionel Mpasi produced an outstanding performance, making several excellent saves to deny England’s attackers. The Central Africans also had a great chance to double their advantage just before half-time, but Yoane Wissa struck the post when he had a clear sight of goal.

That miss proved costly.

With just 15 minutes remaining, England captain Harry Kane rescued his side by heading home the equaliser after a fine cross from substitute Anthony Gordon.

As DR Congo tried to hold on for extra time, Kane struck again in the 86th minute. The striker collected the ball outside the box, turned brilliantly and fired a powerful shot into the top corner to complete England’s comeback.

Despite their exit, DR Congo earned plenty of praise for their courageous performance against one of the tournament favourites. Their defence frustrated England for long periods, while Mpasi was arguably the best player on the pitch.

However, their inability to take their chances, especially Wissa’s missed opportunity before the break, ultimately cost them a place in the last 16.

England will now face co-hosts Mexico in the next round, while DR Congo leave the World Cup with their heads held high after producing one of the competition’s most spirited performances

A Mexico soccer fan reacts during the World Cup round of 32 soccer match between Mexico and Ecuador in Mexico City, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Mexico secured a landmark 2-0 victory over Ecuador to reach the FIFA World Cup 2026 Round of 16, but the celebrations at the Estadio Azteca may be overshadowed by the possibility of disciplinary action after the controversial “puto” chant was once again heard from sections of the home support. The chant, which has repeatedly led to sanctions against the Mexican Football Federation over the past decade, resurfaced during the knockout victory, despite years of awareness campaigns and previous FIFA punishments aimed at eradicating it.

Mexico’s historic victory overshadowed by familiar controversy

Mexico booked their place in the Round of 16 with a composed 2-0 victory over Ecuador at the iconic Estadio Azteca, ending a 40-year wait for a World Cup knockout-stage victory on home soil. Goals from Julián Quiñones and Raúl Jiménez ensured Javier Aguirre’s side continued their outstanding tournament, extending their record to four consecutive victories without conceding a goal. In doing so, Mexico also became the first nation since Italy at the 1990 World Cup to win their opening four matches of a tournament without allowing a single goal.

Mexico’s Julian Quinones (16) celebrates with teammates after the World Cup round of 32 soccer match between Mexico and Ecuador in Mexico City, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

The result also confirmed a blockbuster Round of 16 meeting with England, after Thomas Tuchel’s side came from behind to defeat DR Congo 2-1 later on Wednesday through Harry Kane’s late brace. The two nations will now meet at the Estadio Azteca on July 6 for a place in the quarter-finals. However, amid the celebrations inside the stadium, a recurring issue once again emerged from the stands.

Homophobic chant returns despite years of campaigns

During Ecuador goalkeeper goal kicks, sections of the Mexican crowd were heard chanting the one-word slur “puto”, a chant that literally translates to “male prostitute” in Spanish and has long been regarded by FIFA as discriminatory and homophobic. The chant has repeatedly landed Mexican football in disciplinary trouble. It first drew worldwide attention during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil before resurfacing again during the tournaments in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. The latest incident means it has now been heard at a fourth consecutive men’s World Cup.

Fans celebrate with Mexico players after their team’s victory over Ecuador in the World Cup round of 32 soccer match in Mexico City, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

According to the Daily Mail, the Mexican Football Federation has spent years attempting to eliminate the chant through supporter education initiatives and repeated appeals to fans, but those efforts have largely failed to eradicate it. Ahead of the 2026 tournament, the federation launched its latest awareness campaign, “La Ola Sí, El Grito No” (“The Wave Yes, The Chant No”), featuring members of Mexico’s 1986 World Cup squad encouraging supporters to perform the Mexican wave instead of shouting the offensive chant. Despite those efforts, the chant has reportedly been heard since Mexico’s opening match of the tournament and resurfaced again during the victory over Ecuador.

Previous sanctions could influence FIFA’s response

Mexico’s governing body has already faced significant disciplinary action over similar incidents. Before the start of the 2026 World Cup, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled on FIFA disciplinary proceedings relating to chants heard during international matches against Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil and the United States in 2024. According to CAS, anti-discrimination monitors documented the incidents before FIFA imposed fines totalling 140,000 Swiss francs (approximately $178,000 or £130,457). While CAS upheld the financial penalties, it overturned an additional sanction that would have required part of a stadium to be closed during a FIFA-organised competition. In its written decision, CAS acknowledged that the Mexican Football Federation had argued it had implemented educational programmes since 2015 aimed at preventing and eliminating the chant. However, the court concluded that those mitigation efforts were insufficient. “They observed that the conduct of the fans was collective and widespread, and not merely a one-off occurrence,” CAS said in its ruling. The incidents were also detected by the same anti-discrimination monitoring system operating throughout the 2026 FIFA World Cup across Mexico, the United States and Canada, meaning FIFA could once again review the latest reports before deciding whether disciplinary measures are warranted. Sports journalist Matt Slater of The Athletic has argued that financial sanctions alone have not solved the problem. “On the one hand, FIFA fines aren’t working. “But, on the other, we can’t just let some Mexican fans keep screaming an anti-gay slur each time the oppo goalie boots it. “Self-policing by fans is the best way to fix this… now would be a good time to start.” Mexico now turns its attention back to the pitch, where a high-profile Round of 16 clash against England awaits, but whether FIFA opens another disciplinary case following the events at the Estadio Azteca could become an unwelcome distraction as the co-hosts continue their World Cup campaign.

The Akwa Ibom State preliminary stage of the Sam Okwaraji U-16 School Football Championship kicked off on Wednesday, July 1, 2026, with four exciting matches played at the Community Secondary Commercial School, Ikot Okubo Offot.

The competition, organised by the Samuel Okwaraji Foundation in collaboration with the Nigerian School Sports Federation (NSSF), the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and the National Sports Commission (NSC), is aimed at honouring the late Nigerian football hero, Sam Okwaraji.

In the opening matches, Secondary School Etoi played out a goalless draw against Offot Ukwa Secondary School before emerging 4-3 winners in the penalty shootout.

Uyo High School recorded an impressive 3-1 victory over Itam Secondary School to book their place in the next round.

Community Comprehensive Secondary School, Four Towns, secured a comfortable 2-0 win over ACSS, Ikot Oku Nsit, while Community Secondary School, Aka Offot, defeated Community Secondary Commercial School, Ikot Okubo, 4-3 on penalties after both sides played out a 1-1 draw in regulation time.

The competition will continue on Thursday, July 2, at the Community Secondary Commercial School, Ikot Okubo.

In the first-round fixtures, Ibiono Ibom South Community Secondary School, Ikpedip, will face Etinan Institute at 10am, while Community Comprehensive Secondary School, Ikot Ekpene Udo, will take on Methodist Boys High School, Oron, at 12 noon.

The second-round matches scheduled for the same day will see Secondary School Etoi face Uyo High School at 2pm, while Community Comprehensive Secondary School, Four Towns, will battle Community Secondary School, Aka Offot by 4pm, for a place in the next stage.

The championship is designed to celebrate the enduring legacy of the late Sam Okwaraji, who died while representing Nigeria on August 12, 1989. The organisers said the competition aims to preserve his values of patriotism, discipline, courage, academic excellence and selfless service, while helping to develop young football talents from the grassroots.

Okwaraji, remembered as a lawyer, scholar and footballer, remains a symbol of dedication and sacrifice in Nigerian football history.

While the preliminary matches for the southern states began on July 1, the northern states commenced their qualifying rounds on June 26.

Over the past year, the WBC controversially stripped both Terence Crawford and Shakur Stevenson of their titles following their respective career-defining victories over Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Teofimo Lopez, sparking backlash throughout the boxing world.

Crawford was stripped almost three months after defeating Alvarez because he allegedly did not pay the WBC sanctioning fee for either of his previous two fights — against Alvarez and Israil Madrimov. Stevenson, on the other hand, was relinquished of his WBC crown just three business days after becoming a four-division champion when the prestigious sanctioning body claimed he did not pay a fee for his fight with Lopez.

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The part that boxing fans cannot understand? The WBC title was not even on the line for Stevenson vs. Lopez in January, yet the WBC still asked for a $100,000 sanctioning fee.

Crawford told Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show” on Wednesday that he believes the WBC’s hasty decision to strip his close friend, Stevenson, was a direct result of his own feud with the sanctioning body.

“I definitely agree with [Stevenson that the WBC targeted him because of my issue with them],” Crawford said. “And that wasn’t right at all, for them to put my name in the conversation that I didn’t have nothing to do with anything that Shakur had going on. So you blame me and try to punish him? It wasn’t right at all.”

Crawford claimed that WBC president Mauricio Sulaimán has since apologized to him in person over their public dispute last year, however the sanctioning body has not attempted to rectify how it handled the situation.

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“Nothing [has happened to make peace with the WBC since I was stripped],” Crawford said. “I saw Mauricio … not too long ago. He came up to me and he apologized to me, and he told me that he shouldn’t have said the things that he said. But I kind of felt some type of way, because in my mind, we’re face-to-face and you’re apologizing to me, but you talk negative to me in the public, online and in interviews.

“You should’ve done a public apology to me — that’s how I feel. But I’m not here to keep going back and forth with somebody, so cool, I accept your apology. He said he wanted to sit down with me and talk as men. I’m cool with that because we always had respect for each other face-to-face.

“Now when I’m not around, then it’s different, and I just didn’t like that,” Crawford continued. “I didn’t like the fact that instead of them coming back and [saying], ‘Hey, let’s talk about this, let’s renegotiate,’ they were just basically like, ‘No, we’re the WBC, we ain’t taking that. We’re not like all the other organizations. No, you’ve got to pay us this.’ I was just like, ‘Oh, really? Y’all ain’t getting nothing now because I didn’t agree to nothing.’ I didn’t agree to nothing, so I was just doing that off the strength that I was looking out for all the organizations because that’s what I was going to do.”

The WBC asked Crawford for a $300,000 sanctioning fee for his fight with Alvarez, which was .6% of his reported $50 million purse. Crawford responded at the time with an expletive-laden nine-minute rant, saying he’d reached agreements with boxing’s other three major sanctioning bodies — the WBA, WBO and the IBF — over a fee for the “Canelo” fight and that the WBC should’ve accepted what he was willing to pay them rather than demanding more.

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Crawford explained to Uncrowned on Wednesday that he isn’t a fan of the overall manner in which boxing’s sanctioning bodies currently operate. The former pound-for-pound king believes boxers should have more input into how sanctioning fees are spent and that fighters should be financially rewarded for becoming world champions instead of being hit with more expensive bills just days after the belts are wrapped around their waists.

“I think some of [the sanctioning bodies] are getting too much money, and we don’t have no say-so on where the money is going and what they’re doing with the money and things like that,” he said.

“I do feel some type of way about that because we put our life on the line and do everything that we have to do. We turn around and make it to be a world champion, and we have to pay to be a world champion — not only the time we become world champion, but every single time that we step in the ring. The more money we make, the more money we have to pay to these sanctioning bodies. I think that’s not right.

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“I think you should get a prize for winning [a world title]. I think it should be a bonus when you win a championship. And then when you become unified, I think it should be another bonus. And then when you become undisputed, it should be another bonus. I don’t think they should be constantly taking from the fighters that work they’re butt off to get to where they are right now. And knowing that most fighters come from nothing, it’s tough.”

The gaming PC is more than capable of 1440p gaming for those one a tight budget

With many separate PC components still suffering from high prices in relation to demands from the AI industry, many gamers could save money by grabbing a pre-built PC. Dell’s Alienware brand has long stood out for its high-performance gaming laptops and PCs.

Despite this, its high-performance machines similarly come with a high price. Fortunately, though, some shoppers could get their hands on a machine with all the newest gen parts while saving over £600 in the process.

Currently, those looking to upgrade their PC gaming setup can get their hands on an Alienware Autota Gaming Desktop ACT1250 at a 31% reduced cost. This brings its overall price down from £1,969 to £1,349.

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At this more affordable price point, you get access to an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F CPU that comes with 20 cores and a turbo frequency of 5.3GHz. This makes it more than capable of pushing out as many frames as possible when gaming, well into the 120fps range, even at 1440p resolution.

Alongside this, you’ll get the latest generation Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060Ti graphics card. This GPU is based on Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture and is more than capable of pushing out good-looking graphics up to 1440p resolution, without much struggle.

All this is paired with a 1TB SSD and 16GB of DDR5 RAM, providing access to the latest generation of memory, which should provide plenty of speed for multitasking and running games. However, if you want something a bit more powerful, such as for 4K gaming, you could upgrade the device on Amazon while still saving money in the process.

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The same PC can be upgraded with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF Series 2 CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 with 32GB of DDR5 RAM at a 17% discount. This brings the upgraded gaming machine’s price down from £2,469 to £2049 and also comes with the added benefit of liquid cooling that should more efficiently cool down the more powerful parts.

Otherwise, if you would rather spend a bit less, you could opt for this ASC Gaming PC Tower, which is available on Amazon for £709.99. This pre-built gaming PC is fitted with an AMD Ryzen 5500 CPU and NVIDIA RTX 4060GPU, making it more suitable for 1080p gaming.

If you would prefer to have an AMD GPU in your machine, you could also opt for the OcUK Gaming Mach 5R from Overclockers, which has dropped from £1,999.99 to £1,899.95. This PC comes equipped with a powerful AMD Ryzen 7500X3D CPU and a Radeon RX 9070XT, making it more than powerful enough for 1440p and some 4K gaming.

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Shoppers who already grabbed the Alienware Aurora from Amazon awarded it 4.8 stars, with one happy customer writing: “It’s a lovely machine in looks and performance. It runs my games at roughly 180FPS.

“It’s very quiet to run even in performance mode (there is a quiet option and I’m guessing it would be silent). Although I don’t use the lighting, it has so so many options. It kept me amused for quite a while trying them all and even making my own sequence!. You can buy it with confidence.”

Another added: “It seems to be working as expected. So far, I’m happy with the purchase. Plays everything I throw at it on High / Ultra settings at 60 fps.”

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While a third said: “Easy setup. Looks great. Great for games. Wanted Alien one of these for years, interest-free credit, well worth the money.” While a fourth said: “Purchased March 2026 and waited a few months to write a review… I use it every day for gaming, watching videos and browsing the net.

“I also use it to edit my GoPro and DJI videos, and it’s very fast at processing the cut edits. Pc plays games smoothly, and at the highest quality too, PC is silent even after hours of gameplay.”

While the PC has faced a major reduction, shoppers should keep in mind that while 16GB of RAM will be effective for most games and tasks, it may struggle somewhat with newer titles in the near future that may be more demanding for memory. Furthermore, the cheaper version of the PC is only air-cooled with a fan, which might not be enough for serious PC players who would prefer liquid cooling.

Philippines’ Alexandra Eala returns to Mexico’s Renata Zarazua during their women’s singles first round tennis match on the second day of the 2026 Wimbledon Championships at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, southwest London, on June 30, 2026. AFP

Alex Eala collected a milestone—for herself and for the country—with her victory at Wimbledon. She also earned something else: A shot at redemption.

Fresh off her first main-draw win at the All England Club, Eala will face Maya Joint in the second round of the Wimbledon Championships, a rematch of a showdown that produced one of the most unforgettable defeats of her young career.

The two last met in the 2025 Eastbourne Open final, where Eala came within a point of claiming her first WTA title before Joint rallied to deny her despite the Filipino ace holding four championship points. The defeat stung, but it also marked history as Eala became the first female player from the Philippines to reach a WTA singles final.

“A really great match,” Eala recalled after her Wimbledon opener. “I’d love to have the chance to improve on some things that I could have improved from that match.”

A year later, much has changed.

Eala has continued her steady climb on the WTA Tour, rising to a career-high No. 29 and arriving at Wimbledon as the tournament’s 29th seed—her first appearance as a seeded player at a Grand Slam. Joint, meanwhile, slipped outside the Top 80 after battling a back injury earlier this season.

Serena’s conqueror

Still, rankings offer little comfort against an opponent Eala knows can thrive on the biggest stages.

Joint opened her Wimbledon campaign with an eye-catching victory over Serena Williams in a three-set battle, 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3, on Centre Court, serving notice that she remains a dangerous contender.

Eala earned her place in the rematch with an emphatic 6-1, 6-2 victory over Mexico’s Renata Zarazua, collecting her first career Wimbledon main-draw win after exiting in the opening round in her debut last year.

“I’m very happy with my first round,” Eala said in an interview with the WTA website. “I think that I played really well and kept the intensity throughout the whole match, so I’m hoping to keep this momentum going throughout the week.”

Against Zarazua, the Filipina weathered several extended rallies before reeling off five consecutive games to seize the opening set. Backed by a vocal Filipino contingent, she carried that momentum into the second set, breaking early and never allowing her former doubles partner to mount a sustained comeback.