When a man in a black Air Jordan T-shirt walked up to a self-checkout kiosk at a Louisiana Lowe’s last spring, he looked like any other customer.
Over the course of about seven minutes, he methodically rang up different gift cards for $95 each, using his phone to tap-to-pay for each card as a red-vested associate circled nearby, surveillance video showed.
Unknown to the employee, the man was part of a sprawling Chinese crime ring, using stolen credit cards to buy the gift cards while a Southeast Asian scam compound coached him through each transaction through the wireless headphones in his ears, police say.
“We know that there are hundreds of individuals at any one time doing this across the country,” said Adam Parks, an assistant special agent in charge with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, who investigated the case. “Even though you think that’s $95 every transaction, that adds up to a lot of money.”
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A suspect that police said is connected to a Chinese organized crime ring using stolen credit cards to purchae gift cards at a Lowe’s in Hammond, Louisiana.
HSI
After the man left the hardware store, he purchased more gift cards with stolen credit card information at other retailers only to return to the original Lowe’s the same day to repeat the act, Parks said. He was not arrested and is still a suspect, he added. Lowe’s didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment from CNBC.
While credit card theft and fraud isn’t new, with the proliferation of tap-to-pay and growing use of retail apps, these digital thefts are shaping the next wave of organized retail crime and earning Chinese gangs as much as $1 billion annually, police said. Unlike typical retail theft operations — where criminals clear out shelves in big box stores and resell merchandise piece by piece on online marketplaces — the crimes can be carried out right under a store employee’s nose or from a computer anywhere in the world.
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“It’s very low risk for the bad actors,” said Scott Glenn, vice president of asset protection at The Home Depot. “It’s not the same thing as walking into a Home Depot, filling up a cart full of power tools, and then walking out. It’s just not as visible, it’s not as obvious to what’s happening out there and so it’s become a more preferred method over the last several years.”
Fraudsters have selected retailers as their targets because their platforms carry sensitive information such as stored credit cards and personal data but they do not have the same level of security as banks, according to industry experts and law enforcement.
A man police say participated in a tap-to-pay fraud scheme at a Target store self-
checkout in Tennessee
Source: Knox County Sheriff’s Office
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There’s no firm data on how much retailers are losing from digital forms of retail crime, but CNBC found around a dozen criminal cases across the country affecting a wide variety of retailers that police said involve a combination of organized groups and low-level fraudsters.
The cases are complex and often hard for local authorities to handle, said Capt. Matt Lawson of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee, who said he’s been investigating a fraud ring with ties to Chinese organized crime.
Unless the theft hits a certain dollar threshold or rises to the level of a federal crime, “it’s kind of like they get away with it almost,” he said.
Unpaid toll bills and pending criminal judgments
Tap-to-pay fraud, which involves a fraudster adding a stolen credit card to their digital wallet and using it to buy gift cards or merchandise,often starts with a familiar text message and can end with an unwitting consumer’s identity up for sale on platforms such as Telegram.
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Fraudsters send out mass text messages warning about unpaid tolls, expiring car registrations or pending arrests that are designed to scare consumers into providing their credit card information, email credentials or other sensitive data. AI has only made the schemes easier, as crime groups can scale the scams more quickly and make the messages appear more legitimate, experts said.
“Once a fraudster has a person’s email password and credit card, they can load that credit card into a device that they control,”said Jeff Otto, the chief marketing officer of Riskified, a tech company that works with retailers including Macy’s, Peloton and Prada to fight fraud.
Jeff Otto, the chief marketing officer of Riskified.
CNBC
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“Whenthe bank reaches out to say, ‘Hey, is that you loading the card?’ They’ve already got access to the victim’s email” and can often check it for a one-time passcode before the consumer notices, he said.
Low-level opportunists engaging in tap-to-pay schemes can operate independently, using the practice to either buy merchandise or purchase gift cards and resell them at a discount for cash.
But on the Chinese organized crime level, the practice involves an entire criminal network, Parks said. In order to get profits back to China, crime groups use tap-to-pay fraud to buy gift cards and then use those gift cards to purchase high-value goods that can be resold at a premium in China, such as iPhones with American settings, Parks said. The practice allows gangs to skirt strict banking laws both in the U.S. and China and convert higher amounts of cash into the legitimate economy.
At the heart of the strategy are foot soldiers such as the customer at Lowe’s who police say helped carry out the fraud, which in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic has ramped up along with a surge of Chinese nationals at U.S. land crossings, Parks said.
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People looking to enter the country illegally often rely on smugglers and organized crime networks, and they then owe a debt that crime groups require them to pay off once they’re in the U.S.
“So [they’re] going to instruct you on how to go into a store, convert the stolen credit card information into acquiring goods and then now you’re going to ship those goods back to China,” Parks said. “That’s where a lot of times we get our arrests, but that is the lowest level of the organization.”
Adam Parks, an assistant special agent in charge with U.S. Homeland Security
Investigations.
CNBC
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Tap-to-pay schemes also can include retail app fraud, which involves stealing someone’s credentials, logging into their account and using stored credit card information to purchase merchandise or gift cards.
Riskified’s Otto showed CNBC how data breaches, phishing and social engineering, which involves piecing together publicly available information about someone to steal their identity, can give fraudsters access to a consumer’s retail account.
CNBC saw that login credentials for Walmart‘s app and website were being sold on various Telegram channels for between $1.50 and $2.50 with information about how long the accounts had been active.
“They have Yahoo addresses that are 10 years old, Gmails that are 10 years old,” Otto said. “These are older accounts that often get past some of the more rudimentary fraud checks [because] we tend to trust accounts that have been with us for a long time. And in this case, these can be sold.”
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Telegram didn’t return a request for comment.
Compounding the issue is the fact that retail apps and websites don’t always have the same level of security as platforms like banking apps, Otto said. On their face, retail apps are for shopping, places for consumers to buy clothes, household necessities or makeup.
But they also contain stored credit cards, sensitive personal information and sometimes, access to a consumer’s store-branded credit card. For example, Macy’s customers can shop on its app and use the same platform to pay their Macy’s credit card bill.
“It has a lot to do with the fact that they are focused on convenience and they’re focused on conversion, generating the maximum amount of online revenue, and because of that, they do not use bank-grade security,” Otto said. “They don’t want to add additional friction.”
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In a statement to CNBC, Walmart said “customer privacy and safety is a top priority.”
“While we won’t disclose specific security measures, Walmart has systems in place to help detect bad actors, prevent, and respond to unauthorized account access and is continuously enhancing these protections,” the company said. “In addition, full payment card information is not stored in an unprotected form.”
Using anime to disguise fraud
In a review of tap-to-pay cases across the country, CNBC found a mix of low-level opportunists and organized crime rings.
In January,Dancliff Labady was arrested in Miami and accused of stealing nearly $95,000 primarily using TJX Companies’ store-branded credit cards for TJ Maxx, Marshall’s and Home Goods, according to a police report. Police allege he obtained access to about 15 different customer accounts by calling Synchrony Bank, the card issuer, and adding a phone number he controlled to the accounts. It’s unclear what customer information Labady needed to provide to Synchrony to make the account changes.
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Once Labady added his number to the accounts, he was able to add the cards to his digital wallet and conduct dozens of transactions at TJX stores across the Miami area over the holiday shopping season without having a physical card, police said. He was arrested after TJX’s asset protection team reported the suspicious activity to Synchrony Bank.
Labady has pleaded not guilty and his attorney declined to comment. A spokesperson for Synchrony said it doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations and is “cooperating fully with law enforcement.”
In a statement, a TJX spokesperson said “protecting our customers’ personal information and our technology systems is very important to us.”
“We have measures in place across our systems and stores designed to identify and address potential fraudulent account activity,” the spokesperson said. “We would also encourage our customers to maintain strong online account security practices, including not re-using passwords across websites or apps, and to report any suspected fraudulent activity to their bank or credit card company immediately.”
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There have been broader efforts to root out the fraud schemes, as well.
Since spring 2025, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office arrested more than a dozen suspects with alleged ties to Chinese organized crime who officials said were traveling across the country and using stolen credit card information to purchase gift cards and launder money.
In a review of cell phones seized in connection with the cases, investigators found the suspects were using special apps that contained the stolen credit card information but disguised them as games to evade detection.
“They look like anime games. They kind of look like Pokemon characters,” said Lawson, who’s been investigating the fraud ring. “We would just kind of start tapping on them … and we would find the ones that were the actual tap-to-pay apps.”
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On a national level, Homeland Security Investigations’ Project Red Hook targets gift card fraud and other forms of digital retail crime. So far, it has led to at least 239 arrests since January 2024 and is targeting some of the largest Chinese organized crime groups operating in the U.S., HSI said.
For several years, the retail industry and law enforcement organizations have been lobbying Congress to pass the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, which they say would increase information sharing and make these types of complex cases easier to tackle. It passed the House in May and was recently included as part of an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act in the Senate. It’s expected to be voted on before the end of the year.
Lawson said he’d like to see better sharing of information.
“Law enforcement sometimes likes to hold information and not share everything and kind of compartmentalize it … even the retailers are guilty of this.”
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“The more information that we get out when we notice these people are breaking these laws” the easier it will be to catch them, he said.
Soccer fans around the world will have multiple free options to watch Sunday’s 2026 World Cup final between Argentina and Spain, with broadcasters across dozens of countries offering the match on free-to-air television or through free streaming platforms.
In the United States, the match will air in English on Fox, with a Spanish-language broadcast available on Telemundo. Viewers with a basic TV antenna, typically costing between $20 and $30, can pick up both channels for free in most metro areas, allowing access to the final, halftime show and trophy ceremony without any monthly subscription cost. For those who have cut the cord entirely, Fox is also available through live TV streaming services including YouTube TV, Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, DirecTV and Sling, most of which offer free trial periods for new subscribers. Fox’s own streaming platform, Fox One, is priced at $19.99 a month but offers a three-day free trial, enough to catch at least part of the tournament’s coverage. Telemundo’s Spanish-language broadcast can also be streamed through Peacock, which offers an ad-supported subscription for $11 a month.
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In the United Kingdom, the final will be available completely free through both the BBC and ITV. Cord-cutters can stream the match on BBC iPlayer or ITVX, with STV Player carrying the ITV feed specifically for viewers in Scotland. The BBC is additionally offering an ultra-high-definition stream through iPlayer, along with full radio commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live. Access requires only a valid UK television license and a UK-registered account.
Ireland will also carry the match free of charge, with RTE broadcasting the final with English-language commentary. Kickoff in Ireland falls at 8 p.m. local time, matching the UK broadcast window, and viewers can stream the match through the RTE Player app or website at no additional cost beyond a standard internet connection.
Australia will offer free coverage of the final through SBS On Demand, giving fans in the country access to the match without a cable or satellite subscription. In Canada, the World Cup final will be broadcast on CTV and streamed through Crave at no cost to viewers, with kickoff falling at 3 p.m. Eastern time, or 2 p.m. Central time, matching the U.S. broadcast window.
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A number of other countries have also secured free-to-air rights for the final. Brazilian fans can watch the match for free through CazéTV’s YouTube channel. In Belgium, the game will be shown on RTBF and VRT. The Netherlands will carry the match on NOS, while Switzerland has multiple free options available through SRF Play, RTS Play and RSI Play, reflecting the country’s multiple language regions. Turkish viewers can access the final through TRT’s free coverage.
For fans traveling outside their home country during the final, or those hoping to access a specific national broadcast unavailable in their current location, a virtual private network, or VPN, offers one potential workaround. VPN services allow users to route their internet connection through servers located in a different country, which can make it appear as though a device is browsing from that location, potentially unlocking access to a broadcaster’s streaming platform available only within that country’s borders. Providers such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN have marketed World Cup-specific promotions around the final, often including 30-day money-back guarantees. Using a VPN is legal in most countries, though accessing a streaming service from outside its intended broadcast region may violate that platform’s terms of service, and users should be aware of the specific policies of whichever streaming service they intend to access.
One option that will not provide a live stream of the final is FIFA’s own streaming platform, FIFA+, which offers highlights and archival content but does not carry live match coverage. Live broadcasts of the final are instead handled exclusively through each country’s officially licensed broadcaster, such as Fox and Telemundo in the United States or the BBC and ITV in the United Kingdom.
Beyond the match broadcast itself, Sunday’s final will feature an extensive pregame and halftime entertainment lineup. According to reporting from Billboard, singer Jennifer Hudson is scheduled to perform the U.S. national anthem ahead of kickoff, while Nicole Scherzinger, Laura Pausini and Robbie Williams are set to perform during the pre-match ceremony, with additional appearances expected from internet personality IShowSpeed and actor Tom Cruise. The tournament’s halftime show is expected to feature performances from Madonna, Shakira, Justin Bieber and BTS, marking one of the most star-studded entertainment lineups in World Cup history.
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Sunday’s championship match will be preceded by the tournament’s third-place playoff between France and England, scheduled to kick off at 5 p.m. Eastern time at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, also airing on Fox and Telemundo in the United States.
For fans without access to any of the free broadcast options listed above, most major cable and satellite providers will carry Fox and Telemundo as part of standard programming packages in the United States, while international viewers are encouraged to check their own country’s officially licensed broadcaster for local availability, since rights holders and free-to-air arrangements vary significantly from country to country. With kickoff approaching Sunday afternoon, soccer fans across dozens of countries are expected to have some form of free or low-cost access to what promises to be one of the most closely watched World Cup finals in recent memory, pitting Lionel Messi’s push for a second consecutive title against Spain’s bid to add a second star above its crest.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said this week that his administration is still weighing whether to order the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he travel to the city for the United Nations General Assembly in September, reviving a controversial pledge Mamdani made during his mayoral campaign.
Speaking with Lulu Garcia-Navarro on The New York Times show “The Interview,” Mamdani said he continues to believe Netanyahu should face prosecution over Israel’s conduct in Gaza. “I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in the Hague,” Mamdani said, referring to the seat of the International Criminal Court. “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,” Mamdani added. “And what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.”
Mamdani acknowledged uncertainty over whether he possesses the legal authority to direct the New York Police Department, which falls under his oversight as mayor, to detain a sitting foreign head of state. He said his administration remains in “an active conversation” with the city’s Law Department to determine the scope of his authority on the matter. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” Mamdani said.
The comments echo a pledge Mamdani made during his mayoral campaign last year, when he told The Times he would direct the police department to arrest Netanyahu if given the opportunity, framing the move as an effort to honor an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over Netanyahu’s role in the war in Gaza. Mamdani and a United Nations commission have both characterized the conflict as a genocide, a designation Israel has strongly disputed.
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Netanyahu responded to Mamdani’s renewed comments during a recent appearance on a radio program hosted by Sid Rosenberg, a frequent critic of the mayor. Netanyahu said he was not concerned about the prospect of arrest and accused Mamdani of aligning himself with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls significant portions of Gaza and carried out the October 7, 2023, attack in Israel that preceded the current war. “I think he should look at who he’s condemning, who he’s praising,” Netanyahu said. “He’s condemning Israel, the one democracy that stands shoulder to shoulder with American values.” Netanyahu went on to say, “Who does he champion? Hamas, that calls openly to massacre every Jew on earth, that conducted that horrible massacre, the worst massacre on Jews since the Holocaust.” He further claimed that Mamdani “doesn’t care” that “those who hate the Jews and Israel ultimately hate America,” adding, “And in fact I think secretly, he hates America.”
Mamdani has consistently condemned the October 7 attacks and does not speak favorably of Hamas when discussing his criticisms of Netanyahu, though he has made his concerns about Israel’s conduct in Gaza a central and recurring theme of his political identity. Associates who know him well have said he views Palestinian liberation as one of the defining moral issues of his generation.
Mamdani’s positions on Israel, once considered outside the Democratic Party’s mainstream, have gained broader traction within the party in recent months. Nearly half of House Democrats voted this week in favor of ending U.S. aid to Israel, a measure that ultimately failed to pass but signaled a notable shift in the party’s posture toward one of its longstanding allies in the Middle East. Asked about the political significance of the Gaza war, Mamdani said the issue has motivated voters nationally, including in recent House races in New York where candidates he endorsed won their elections. “It is hard to find a more bankrupt policy approach than what our country has done to Gaza and to Palestine,” he said.
The wide-ranging interview also touched on national politics, with Mamdani speaking positively about the possibility that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a fellow member of the Democratic Socialists of America, could run for president in 2028. “I think she’d make a good anything,” Mamdani said.
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On immigration, Mamdani criticized the Trump administration’s enforcement approach while stressing that border security remains important to him. He said his administration is “willing to work with the federal government” in cases involving immigrants convicted of serious crimes, but drew a firm line against broader cooperation. “What we are unwilling to do is to participate in civil immigration enforcement with a federal government that has said openly it wants to deport a vast majority of people for crimes that we will never even know,” he said.
Mamdani also defended his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, against criticism from some fellow democratic socialists, crediting her with helping to reduce crime in the city, even as some of his own supporters have raised concerns about the frequency of low-level arrests conducted under her leadership.
The mayor addressed the media attention surrounding his wife, artist Rama Duwaji, who has largely stayed out of the public eye during his time in office but has faced criticism over past social media activity, including liking a post that celebrated Hamas’s October 7 attack. “She is her own person,” Mamdani said. “She’s an incredible artist, and yet so much of how she engages with the world today is framed through her being my wife.”
Mamdani also reflected on how he defines economic struggle in a city with a high cost of living, an issue central to his political rise. Asked whether someone earning $250,000 annually could be considered working class, he said he had not set a specific income threshold, instead focusing on people’s ability to afford basic necessities. “What I would say is those who are working to try and afford the basic dignities of life and aren’t able to do so, I think that that is also working class,” he said. When pressed on whether that framing could group a janitor with a lawyer, Mamdani said he was less concerned with rigid definitions than with a broader question facing residents: “Is there any way for them to actually be able to work this hard and afford a good life in the city?”
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Reflecting on his rapid rise to national political prominence, Mamdani offered a candid assessment of the mindset required for the role. “I think there is some level of absurdity that you have to have as a part of yourself to believe that it should be you,” he said.
HDFC Bank Limited (HDB) Q1 2027 Earnings Call July 18, 2026 6:30 AM EDT
Company Participants
Srinivasan Vaidyanathan – Chief Financial Officer Sashidhar Jagdishan – MD, CEO & Director Kaizad Bharucha – Deputy MD & Director
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Conference Call Participants
Mahrukh Adajania Pranav Gundlapalle – Bernstein Institutional Services LLC, Research Division Kunal Shah – Citigroup Inc., Research Division Seshadri Sen – Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd., Research Division Suresh Ganapathy – Macquarie Research Abhishek Murarka – HSBC Global Investment Research Nitin Aggarwal – Motilal Oswal Securities Limited, Research Division Piran Engineer – CLSA Limited, Research Division
Presentation
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Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to HDFC Bank Limited Q1 FY ’27 Earnings Conference Call on the financial results presented by the management of HDFC Bank. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.
I now hand the conference over to Mr. Srinivasan Vaidyanathan, Chief Financial Officer, HDFC Bank. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Vaidyanathan.
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Srinivasan Vaidyanathan Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Nirav. Good evening, and warm welcome to all the participants. We have today with us our CEO, Sashi Jagdishan; and our Deputy MD, Kaizad Bharucha.
I’ll hand off the call to Sashi, and then we can take it forward from there.
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Sashidhar Jagdishan MD, CEO & Director
Thank you, Srini, and thank you all for joining in on this investor call for the Q1 results for FY 2027. As you know, we’ve had a very — we navigated this during this period, certain challenges over the last 4 months. Our people have kept steadfast focus on customer needs and build — further build the franchise. It’s been a very tough period, but I really am proud of them, and thank you to each one of them who really stood behind in continuing the strength and resilience of the institution. We’ve had a very — I also sincerely thank the Board for their guidance and more so Keki Mistry
Josh Kerr broke one of track and field’s longest-standing world records Saturday, running a mile in 3 minutes, 42.66 seconds at the London Diamond League meeting to shatter Hicham El Guerrouj’s 27-year-old mark, completing an eight-month training project the British runner had publicly dubbed “Project 222.”
The record, previously set at 3:43.13 by Morocco’s El Guerrouj in Rome in July 1999, had stood as one of the oldest and most revered marks in outdoor track and field. Kerr’s winning time shaved 0.47 seconds off that record, finishing well clear of the field at London Stadium in a performance that fulfilled a goal he had announced publicly months in advance, naming the effort “Project 222” after his target time of 222 seconds, or 3 minutes 42 seconds.
Kerr, 28, executed the race with the help of pacemakers who guided him through the early stages at a precise, metronomic pace. His Brooks Beasts teammate Brandon Kidder led him through the first 800 meters, before Zan Rudolf took over pacing duties through the 1,000-meter mark. Kerr then closed out the race on his own, splitting laps of 54.75, 55.88 and 55.76 seconds to reach the bell before pulling away decisively over the final lap. American record-holder Yared Nuguse chased Kerr over the closing stretch but ultimately finished more than three seconds behind in a season-best time of 3:45.69, with Jake Heyward also unable to keep pace with the Scottish runner down the home straight.
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Speaking to reporters on the track immediately after the race, Kerr was quick to credit the team around him rather than take individual ownership of the achievement. “That was not me, that was my team every single step,” Kerr said, referencing the extensive support Brooks, his longtime sponsor, had provided in developing a bespoke racing spike and speed suit specifically engineered for the record attempt.
Kerr’s build-up to the record attempt had been unusually public for an athlete targeting a world record of this magnitude. Speaking to the BBC ahead of the race, Kerr described the mile world record as one of the sport’s most significant benchmarks. “It’s been a huge goal of my career. It’s one of the oldest world records on the track and I think it’s one of the most important ones,” Kerr told BBC Sport. “It has stood the test of time and needs a huge amount of respect. With the training numbers that we’re putting up, I think this year is such a great opportunity to have a real crack at it while not giving up other opportunities.”
Kerr entered the 2026 outdoor season on the back of a successful indoor campaign, having won his third career world title by claiming gold in the indoor 3,000 meters in Toruń, Poland, holding off a late charge from Olympic 1,500-meter champion and 5,000-meter world champion Cole Hocker. That performance capped Kerr’s return from a torn calf muscle suffered during his failed defense of the outdoor 1,500-meter world title in Tokyo roughly six months earlier. With no outdoor world championship scheduled for 2026, Kerr and his team made the decision to redirect his focus toward El Guerrouj’s mile mark, a target Kerr said carried special significance given the record’s age and stature within the sport.
In an interview with Olympics.com ahead of the attempt, Kerr framed the pursuit as part of a broader mission to elevate the profile of middle-distance running. “This is the legacy I’m going to leave for the sport. Showing the next generation what it takes to go after big records like this and to dominate a distance where it’s hard to find the guy who will do that consistently,” Kerr said. “I’m here to do the big things and hopefully continue to elevate the sport as much as I can. Not announcing that is not in my character.”
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Ahead of the record attempt, Kerr used a tune-up race at the LA Track Fest to sharpen his speed over shorter distances, clocking a personal best of 1 minute, 44.60 seconds in the 800 meters as part of his preparation. Kerr’s previous personal best in the mile stood at 3:45.34, a mark he set in 2024 when he broke Steve Cram’s 39-year-old British mile record at a Diamond League meeting in Eugene, Oregon, defeating Norwegian rival Jakob Ingebrigtsen in that race. Saturday’s world-record performance improved on that previous personal best by nearly three seconds, a substantial jump for an athlete already ranked among the world’s fastest milers.
Kerr’s rivalry with Ingebrigtsen has been a defining storyline of his career in recent years, dating back to his upset victory over the Norwegian in the 1,500 meters at the 2023 World Athletics Championships and continuing through their close battle at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where Kerr took silver behind Hocker. Cram, who set his own British mile record in 1985 and later became a BBC commentator, praised Kerr’s development following his 2024 Eugene performance, saying at the time that Kerr was “getting better and better and better.”
Saturday’s race also carried added weight given the venue. Kerr competed in front of a home crowd at London Stadium, a factor he had specifically cited as adding significance to the attempt. He is also set to compete for Commonwealth gold in the mile on home soil in the weeks following Saturday’s Diamond League meeting, giving the London record attempt additional context within his broader 2026 season plans.
With El Guerrouj’s mark now broken, Kerr’s 3:42.66 becomes the new benchmark for the men’s mile world record, a distance and event long considered one of track and field’s most storied and closely watched, dating back generations of milers who have chased sub-four-minute and record-setting performances on the world’s biggest stages.
A teenager driving for the first time since passing her test found herself trapped in gridlock for eight hours on the M25 in Essex this week, one of numerous drivers left stranded after a crash near a major shopping center triggered a full closure of part of Britain’s busiest motorway.
The disruption began around 5:30 a.m. local time Thursday following a crash near junction 31 for the Lakeside Shopping Centre in Grays, Essex. What was initially expected to be a routine incident response turned into a prolonged closure, with the affected stretch of motorway not reopening until 8:40 p.m. that evening. National Highways said the extended shutdown resulted from a combination of factors, including an oil spill that required roughly a quarter of a mile, or 400 meters, of road to be resurfaced, with the hot weather further slowing the cooling process needed before repairs could be completed.
Among those caught in the resulting gridlock was Beatrix, a 17-year-old from Romford, east London, who was making what should have been a 20-minute journey with a relative on one of her first drives since passing her driving test. Beatrix said she and her cousin lost all means of navigation early into the ordeal after both of their phones died, leaving them to rely on road signs alone to find their way. “It was me and my cousin in the car and both of our phones died. So, we didn’t really know how to get back and we were following road signs,” Beatrix said. “I’ve never driven on the M25… so, that was very scary.” Despite the pressure of the situation, Beatrix said she believed her driving instructor would have been impressed with how she handled the unexpected test of her still-fresh skills, even as one of her arms became sunburned from sitting in the stationary traffic for hours. Temperatures in Grays reached 29 degrees Celsius, or roughly 84 degrees Fahrenheit, on Thursday, adding to the discomfort for drivers stuck without air conditioning relief for extended periods. Beatrix added that her parents, unable to track her location and unaware of when she might eventually make it home, were “so worried” throughout the ordeal.
Beatrix was far from the only driver whose journey was dramatically extended by the closure. Rosie Potter, a 29-year-old civil servant, described what should have been a roughly hour-long drive from Lakeside to Colchester turning into a more than nine-hour ordeal. Potter left the retail car park at 1:30 p.m. and did not arrive home until 11 p.m. that night. She recalled growing increasingly anxious as evening approached without any resolution in sight. “I thought, ‘Oh no, am I gonna be stuck in my car overnight in the dark in an area that I don’t really know very well?’” Potter said. She described the practical difficulties of being trapped for so long without basic necessities. “You can’t sit there for eight, nine hours with your engine running and your aircon running,” Potter said. “There’s no water. There’s no access to any toilets. There’s no food. There’s nothing. There’s nothing around.” Potter also described encountering other stranded families in similarly difficult situations, including parents who had left home for a quick errand only to find themselves stuck for hours without supplies for their children. “There were people with babies that had literally nipped out to the shops and were then stranded for hours and had no milk, no bottles left for their children,” she said.
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Some motorists sought refuge at the Thurrock service station, only to find themselves unable to leave the car park once traffic backed up further. Sara Tidy, a 63-year-old journalist traveling from Stansted Airport to her home in Benenden, Kent, described the scene at the service station as chaotic but at times almost communal, with drivers finding creative ways to pass the time. “Literally hundreds of cars” filled the area, Tidy said, describing children playing tennis in the car park to stay entertained during the wait. Tidy also spoke with members of a band who were traveling to a gig outside Norwich and risked missing their performance entirely because of the delay. “They had their drums and guitars and stuff on the tarmac to entertain themselves,” she said. Tidy also described encountering a woman in the car park who was in urgent need of medication and growing increasingly distressed as the hours passed without any clear resolution to the closure.
The scale of the disruption extended well beyond the immediate crash site, with severe congestion reported across Grays, Purfleet and the wider Thurrock area throughout the day. According to reporting on the incident, two lanes of the clockwise M25 and an associated entry slip road remained closed for most of the day, with queues stretching approximately 10 miles back toward Brentwood. One motorist, Graham Potter, described the scene as “absolutely ridiculous traffic gridlock at Lakeside,” noting that his daughter had been stuck in stationary traffic for seven and a half hours.
National Highways issued a public apology following the extended closure, describing itself as “deeply sorry” for the eight-hour waits drivers endured. Responding to affected motorists on the social media platform X, the organization confirmed it would undertake a formal review of how the incident was managed, from the initial crash response through the extended resurfacing work that ultimately kept the motorway closed for more than 15 hours.
The M25, which forms a roughly 117-mile orbital route around Greater London, is one of the busiest and most heavily trafficked motorways in the United Kingdom, and closures of this length are relatively rare even given the road’s history of periodic congestion and incident-related disruptions. Thursday’s closure adds to a string of recent M25 disruptions in the Essex area, though the combination of an oil spill, resurfacing needs and extreme summer heat made this particular incident notably longer and more disruptive than typical crash-related closures on the route. With National Highways now committing to review its handling of the incident, drivers affected by Thursday’s gridlock said they hoped the review would lead to faster resolution of similar closures in the future, particularly given the extreme heat and lack of basic amenities many described enduring throughout the day.
Players of Minecraft, one of the world’s most popular video games, began reporting widespread access problems Saturday morning, according to outage-tracking service Downdetector, which recorded a spike in user complaints beginning at 10:48 a.m. Eastern time.
Downdetector, which aggregates real-time reports from users to identify potential service disruptions across websites, apps and games, flagged the surge in a post on its social media account, prompting the hashtag #MinecraftDown to circulate among affected players. As of Saturday afternoon, neither Mojang Studios, the game’s developer, nor its parent company, Microsoft, had issued a public statement addressing the reported disruption.
Minecraft’s core online services are managed through a combination of Mojang and Microsoft account systems, which handle player authentication, marketplace access, multiplayer server connections and the Realms subscription service that allows players to host private, always-online worlds for themselves and friends. Because these systems are interconnected, disruptions affecting authentication or login servers can cascade into broader problems across multiple parts of the game, even when a player’s local, offline single-player experience remains unaffected.
Saturday’s reported outage adds to a pattern of periodic service disruptions that have affected Minecraft over the past year, with player complaints on outage-tracking platforms ranging from login failures and marketplace slowdowns to more significant server-side authentication problems. According to data from outage-monitoring service StatusGator, Minecraft has received dozens of user-submitted outage reports within individual 24-hour windows on multiple occasions in recent months, even during stretches when the game’s official status remained listed as fully operational, reflecting how difficult it can be for automated monitoring systems to catch every localized or intermittent disruption affecting a portion of the game’s global player base.
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Some of Minecraft’s most disruptive outages in recent memory have specifically affected Realms, the game’s subscription-based multiplayer hosting service. In one previous incident, hundreds of players reported being unable to access their Realms servers after an outage began affecting login functionality, with many users encountering error messages when attempting to open the Realms tab within the game. That disruption, tracked heavily on Downdetector at the time, left affected players unable to reach their own privately hosted worlds even though other parts of the game continued functioning normally for many users.
Frustration among the Minecraft player community over the pace and clarity of official communication during past outages has also been a recurring theme on social media. Users posting on X during previous disruptions have criticized Mojang’s support account for slow or unclear updates during extended outages, with one user asking pointedly during a past incident whether it should take more than a day for the company to acknowledge that Realms was experiencing problems, and questioning whether future disruptions would be handled with similarly limited communication.
Common symptoms reported during past Minecraft outages have included failure to log in through the game’s launcher, error messages indicating the game “couldn’t connect to the Minecraft services,” extremely slow loading times when attempting to join servers or access the in-game marketplace, and, in some cases, players being forced into offline mode despite having a stable internet connection. Third-party launchers and modified clients that rely on Minecraft’s official authentication servers, such as the popular Prism Launcher, have also been affected during past outages, with some users reporting authentication failures even when attempting to verify server connectivity directly.
Minecraft remains one of the best-selling and most actively played video games in the world, with a global player base spanning both casual single-player users and large, persistent multiplayer communities hosted through Realms, third-party server hosting services, and Microsoft’s broader Xbox and PC gaming ecosystems. Given that scale, even relatively brief or partial outages affecting login or authentication systems can generate a large volume of user reports in a short period of time, as appeared to be the case with Saturday morning’s spike in Downdetector complaints.
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As of Saturday afternoon, it remained unclear how widespread the reported outage was, which specific services or regions were most affected, or how long the disruption might persist before service is fully restored. Given the pattern established by previous Minecraft outages, affected players may see functionality return gradually as different systems, such as authentication, marketplace access and multiplayer server connections, come back online at different times rather than all at once.
Players experiencing issues were advised to check both the official Mojang Support account on X and third-party monitoring tools such as Downdetector for updates, since the game’s own status indicators have not always reflected ongoing incidents in real time during past disruptions. In the meantime, players affected by connectivity issues were encouraged to try standard troubleshooting steps, including restarting the game launcher, verifying account credentials, and checking for any pending software updates that might be contributing to login or connectivity problems on their end before assuming a broader service-wide outage is responsible.
Minecraft’s ownership under Microsoft, which acquired the game and its developer Mojang in 2014, means the title’s backend infrastructure is at least partly tied to broader Microsoft cloud and authentication services, a connection that has occasionally meant disruptions affecting other Microsoft products, such as Xbox Live or Microsoft account services more broadly, have coincided with reported Minecraft issues in the past, even when the underlying cause originates outside the game’s own dedicated infrastructure.
For now, the scope and cause of Saturday’s reported disruption remain unconfirmed, with affected players continuing to share their experiences on social media as they wait for either the outage to resolve on its own or for an official acknowledgment from Mojang or Microsoft regarding what, if anything, is affecting the game’s services. Given the frequency of similar incidents over the past year, some players expressed hope on social media that any official response would come more quickly than during past outages, when communication from the game’s support channels was sometimes criticized as slow or unclear relative to the scale of the disruption being experienced by the community.
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