Dwayne Johnson has detailed the nerve-racking health scare he had after discovering a lump on his left testicle.

During a new interview with Esquire, the 54-year-old actor, famously nicknamed “The Rock,” recalled noticing the lump when he was taking a shower. He made a doctor’s appointment two days later after hoping, to no avail, that the lump would get better.

“I didn’t even tell Lauren,” he said, referring to his wife of six years. “I didn’t want to worry her before I knew if it was anything to even worry about.”

The Moana star told the outlet that during his appointment, his doctor felt the lump and told him it was probably epididymitis, “an inflammation of the coiled tube at the back of the testicle,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

However, Johnson said that his doctor did warn him that the growth could be cancerous and urged him to have an ultrasound done. But since Johnson had a promotional event for his new Jumanji movie, alongside co-stars Kevin Hart and Jack Black, the test had to wait.

“So I had to live with that for those twenty-four hours, not knowing—and I had to be on all day, joking around, making speeches,” he added.

“By the way: I’m fine,” he said, confirming it was a case of epididymitis. “But I didn’t know that then, and the thing was really painful.”

The Smashing Machine star has spoken about his physical health issues in the past. During a 2025 appearance on The Mark Hyman Show, Johnson revealed that he had digestive tract problems for years.

“That was at the beginning of 2024, and I was just getting ready to launch into what would become a nine-month workload for me, nonstop work,” he said. “And I was thinking, ‘Holy s*** how am I going to get through this with my gut issues? I’m not digesting properly.’”

Host Dr. Mark Hyman said that the health issue occurred after Johnson took multiple rounds of antibiotics, which reduced the amount of Akkermansia — a bacterium that regulates the metabolism— in his body.

“We basically rehabbed your gut. Gave you probiotics and plant compounds—pomegranate, green tea, cranberry — to help rebuild,” Hyman said. “And we made you this amazing gut health shake with 10-plus ingredients personalized for you.”

Luckily, Johnson said he’s in a better place physically and emotionally, telling Esquire he’s “worked hard to just be at peace.”

“As dudes, as young men, teenagers, twenties, we’re trying to find ourselves. Then, in the thirties, that teenage bravado and confidence begins to wane because you’re like, Oh s***, I got to figure stuff out,” he said. “You hit your forties and you’re trying to figure who you are. Feels like you got your job locked down. Hopefully you got your family.

“But wait: Who am I? What’s my why? By the time I hit my fifth level—I’m fifty-three—I was working hard just to find what peace meant. Things in my world have become less presentational, less broadcast-y, more ‘I’m going to put in the work, and I’ll keep it as quiet as I can.’”

Midfielder Themba Zwane was shown a red card for violent conduct in the 84th ‌minute as South Africa finished with ​nine men, while Mexico defender ‌Cesar Montes was ⁠also sent off for a foul ⁠in stoppage time. Mexico face South Korea in Guadalajara ‌on Thursday, ​while South Africa ‌play the Czechia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration put up $750,000 to charter a private yacht to evacuate a single American citizen from a remote South Pacific island after she had been aboard a cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak, a move that has further strained the State Department’s emergency budget.

The woman, who may have been exposed to the virus while aboard the Dutch MV Hondius cruise liner in April, had gotten off the ship and then flown to San Francisco before traveling to the isolated British territory of Pitcairn Island through Tahiti, according to two U.S. officials and an internal government document obtained by The Associated Press.

The exact amount of the total evacuation payment is still being assessed because the operation is still underway. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a medical case covered by U.S. privacy laws.

The costly effort to pick up the woman has added to the expense of rapid evacuations for diplomats and private U.S. citizens from the Middle East since the start of the Iran war as well as preparations for possible evacuations from Ebola-stricken countries. All have stressed the State Department budget for unforeseen emergencies, known as the “K Fund,” and brought its balance to the lowest level in seven years.

State Department emergency budget strained by multiple evacuations

Another internal document said the State Department is looking at transferring as much as $50 million into that emergency fund from other accounts — $35 million from the budget for embassy security, construction and maintenance and an additional $15 million from an account that pays for broader diplomatic programming. No decision on the transfers has yet been made.

One of the officials said the State Department has another option, to ask Congress to replenish the fund. However, the official said the department is expected to be able to handle payments for both ongoing and “emerging contingency needs.”

The official would not say what the potential shortfall is but insisted that the department is “well positioned” to support diplomats, other U.S. government employees and private Americans who have been forced to leave the Middle East because of the Iran confict, as well as U.S. citizens who may need assistance due to developments such as the Ebola outbreak in Africa.

How the US is evacuating an American exposed to hantavirus from a remote island

The State Department declined to comment on the specifics of the woman’s case on Pitcairn Island but said that “when an American is at risk abroad and unable to access commercial transportation, the Department of State seeks to provide appropriate assistance to get them home to the United States or to another safe location.”

After the woman departed the cruise liner where the hantavirus outbreak occurred, the ship continued to other destinations in the South Atlantic, with some passengers falling ill and at least three dying. The unidentified American woman was stuck on Pitcairn, an island with only about 50 inhabitants, no airport and infrequent maritime options to depart.

Pitcairn is well-known as the island on which Fletcher Christian and other British mutineers from the HMS Bounty took refuge after the 1789 events that toppled Capt. William Bligh, which have entered into the public lexicon with books and films about the “Mutiny on the Bounty.” Their descendants make up most of the island’s current population.

Complicating matters, British authorities had sought urgent American assistance in evacuating the woman from the island, which is their territory, according to the government document about the cost of the evacuation and the second U.S. official.

But initial attempts to send her to Tahiti, a French dependency, about 1,350 miles (2,160 kilometers) — or a 30-hour sea journey — from Pitcairn, were rejected by French Polynesian authorities. They did not want to allow her in because she had not disclosed her exposure when she transited the island on her way to Pitcairn.

The U.S. is transporting the woman, who was not symptomatic, from Pitcairn to Easter Island, another remote location in the Pacific about 1,400 miles (2,253 km) away, which is a territory of Chile and has direct flights to Santiago, so she can return to the United States for any necessary treatment.

All of those factors mean the process of getting her moved from Pitcairn to Easter Island took many weeks to arrange, the officials said.

The government document, which was confirmed as accurate by the two officials, said moving the woman from Pitcairn eventually was arranged via the “Titaina Explorer” trimaran yacht owned by a wealthy Frenchman, who uses it for personal exploration in the South Pacific. Pitcairn has no airport and only limited sea access.

The officials said the woman had no political or celebrity connections and they did not know exactly when she will return to the U.S. Maritime tracking sites show that the Titaina Explorer departed Pitcairn Island on June 5. The voyage to Easter Island can take up to 10 days depending on the speed of the boat and the weather.

In sport, fairness matters. But when it comes to buying tickets to watch the world’s biggest ever sporting event, money matters too.

Attending the men’s Fifa World Cup 2026 will be much more expensive than any previous World Cup. And that’s not what fans were promised.

In fact, when the US, Canada and Mexico set out their original bid to host the tournament, they said a seat at the final would cost a maximum of US$1,550 (£1,174).

But by April 2026, the cheapest standard final ticket had reached US$5,785. The most expensive seats hit US$10,990 and later tripled. Just two days before the start of the tournament there were reports of 180,000 unsold tickets.

Politicians in New York and New Jersey have launched a formal investigation into allegations that Fifa has confused fans and inflated prices. Fans have complained of a lack of clarity, with many waiting hours in online queuing systems with no idea of the amount they’d have to pay when (and if) they were allocated tickets.

Overall, prices went up for 90 out of 104 matches.

The increase in costs may remind some music fans of the 2024 scandal over Oasis concert tickets when customers watched prices more than double from £148 to £355 as they waited in online queues.

“Dynamic pricing”, when prices go up and down depending on levels of demand, will also be familiar to anyone who has been surprised by swift changes in the price of flights before a holiday. The same seat can cost more today than it did yesterday simply because more people want it.

Fifa denies that it is has engaged in dynamic pricing, saying that they use “variable pricing” instead. But from a consumer’s point of view, it amounts to the same result – the price of tickets that they want to buy changes, usually in an upward direction.

In response to the Oasis dynamic pricing episode, UK regulators later forced ticket sellers to commit to showing price ranges before fans join a queue. By using a “variable” system, Fifa positions itself outside that regulatory precedent entirely.

It faces no obligation to disclose prices in advance and no requirement to explain how they change.

A game of monopoly

But dynamic pricing isn’t always a bad thing for consumers. In fact, it can help them to get a better deal. Economists studying airline markets found that dynamic pricing can reduce prices as different airlines compete for passengers.

The trouble is that Fifa operates in a market with zero competition. No rival sells World Cup tickets. No substitute product exists.

The work of Nobel prize-winning economist Jean Tirole demonstrated that when a single firm controls an essential platform and operates at every level of the market, competitive discipline on pricing disappears. The operator stops seeking an efficient price and starts trying to extract the very maximum that the consumer will tolerate.

For football World Cups, Fifa sets the primary price. It runs the only sanctioned resale marketplace. It pockets 30% on every secondary transaction when unwanted tickets are sold on. It makes money on the first sale, and earns a bit more on the second.

No outcome costs Fifa money. No regulators intervene. But not everyone is prepared to pay out.

Adjusting for inflation, World Cup ticket prices have been stable for 30 years. Then Fifa introduced its new model and the entire pricing architecture shifted. This would explain all the unsold tickets.

For example, England’s semi-final and final allocations failed to sell out. Every fan who applied got a seat.

But the cheapest final ticket through the England Supporters Travel Club still cost £3,119. At Euro 2024 in Berlin, fans paid £83 for the equivalent.

After the backlash, Fifa introduced a US$60 “Supporter Entry Tier” for every match, including the final. It amounts to roughly 10% of each national association’s allocation, a few hundred seats in stadiums holding up 80,000. As a pricing intervention, it changes nothing apart from an attempt to absorb criticism.

The day before the World Cub began Fifa president Gianni Infantino defended the level of ticket pricing, claiming that if they were cheaper the majority would have been resold on the black market. He added that the money generated was required to fund football development across the world.

Consumer research explains exactly what went wrong. When people buy a service rarely and can’t understand how the price was set, they don’t just feel frustrated, they feel cheated.

And when they feel cheated, they walk away. Fifa treated fan loyalty as guaranteed demand. Supporters’ reaction proved it isn’t.

Some football supporter groups have now filed a complaint with the European Commission. Uefa has already gone a different direction, capping prices for Euro 2028 with nearly half of all tickets under £60.

Then, at the start of June, Fifa quietly slashed prices across all 104 matches and returned 70% of its block booked hotel rooms due to low demand – a last minute change of tactics probably designed to save face and avoid empty seats. But to many, desperately chasing lost fans after trying to extract more revenue than any World Cup in history already looks like foul play.

Almost two thirds, about 63.7 per cent, of the 13,000 people who responded to City of York Council’s consultation said switching to bins would make recycling easier for them.

But around 38.7 per cent said storage space could be an issue, with others raising concerns about how they would look on the street, capacity and moving them for collections.

A council report on the findings stated the amount of responses showed people felt strongly about the issue but there was no one size fits all solutions to concerns raised.

The consultation comes after the council first unveiled plans for recycling bins in February.

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It would see most York household’s existing recycling boxes replaced with two wheelie bins, one for paper and cardboard and another for glass, tins and plastics.

Each bin would be collected every four weeks on two-week alternating cycles.

The estimated cost of the changes is £2.8 million, including making and delivering the bins, versus savings of around £310,000-a-year.

Council officials said the changes would make collections more efficient, recycling easier for the elderly and disabled, reduce the risk of staff injuries and stop litter blowing off boxes.

The proposals also come as the council looks to save £520,000 from its waste collection services over the next two years.

York’s current recycling boxes could be ditched under council plans (Image: Supplied)

They also come ahead of requirements for soft plastics to be collected from kerbsides by March next year.

But concerns have previously been raised about changes to the frequency of collections and how they could affect people such as those in terraced houses who lack storage space.

The roughly 63.7 per cent of people who said the changes would make recycling easier for them compare to around 23.9 per cent who said they would make it harder.

Those who said they may do or were not sure accounted for about 12.5 per cent of respondents.

About 71.9 per cent of those surveyed said having wheelie bins would make it easier to recycle larger cardboard packaging such as boxes for TVs.

It compares to 18 per cent who said it would make it harder and about 10 per cent who did not know.

The visual impact of bins on the street was said to be a barrier to using wheelie bins by about 16.7 per cent of respondents.

About 8.8 per cent were concerned about capacity for the amount of waste they recycled while about 3.1 per cent said the distance to collection points was an issue.

More than half, about 55.1 per cent, said they saw no barriers to using wheelie bins.

The main challenges people said they faced with the current boxes was litter being left behind on the street following collections, according to almost 65.7 per cent of respondents.

Others included not having enough capacity, boxes breaking too easily, being too heavy, them getting wet due to the weather and a lack of storage space.

About three quarters of those who responded to the survey, about 75.9 per cent, lived in households with between two and four people.

Almost a fifth, about 19.5 per cent, were single households and almost 4.6 per cent lived in homes with five or more people.

The council’s report stated options for households concerned about space could be to offer them 180L or 140L bins, rather than the 240L currently proposed.

They added there was no substantial evidence to suggest that storing waste for longer would pose a fire risk, including due to antisocial behaviour.

Councillors are set to discuss the results of the consultation at the Place Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday, June 16.

A teenager who was allegedly part of a crowd who threw a petrol bomb into the open front door of a police Land Rover was arrested after the Coastguard retrieved him from Belfast Lough, a court heard today.

Belfast Magistrates Court also heard claims that as he was being chased by a PSNI inspector who had been set on fire by the petrol bomb, 18-year-old Ryan Fowles discarded a face covering and gloves when he entered the water in Carrick.

Appearing in the dock, Fowles, with an address on the Larne Road in Carrick, was charged with rioting on 9 June this year.

During a contested application for bail, a police officer outlined how a crowd of masked rioters were attacking police in Carrick on Tuesday evening, hurling masonry and paint bombs at a police Land Rover.

A street had been blocked by bins set on fire in the middle of the road and the court heard that when an inspector opened the door to move one out of the way, a rioter stepped forward and threw a lit petrol bomb through the open passenger door. The petrol bomb ignited and the inspector was set on fire and suffered burn injuries but after it was extinguished, he gave chase to one of the alleged rioters.

Fowles ran across the Marine Highway and into the sea, allegedly discarding gloves and a face covering into the water. The court heard he remained in the water until the Coastguard and his dad arrived to retrieve him.

Although initially arrested, Fowles was released to go to hospital for treatment for a broken arm but following a phone call on Wednesday, he voluntarily presented himself to police.

Submitting that Fowles should be refused bail over concerns about further offending and the risk of further public disorder, the officer added that a remand in custody would send a “strong message to deter others from participating” in further disruption.

Defence solicitor Hamill Clawson, from Reid Black Solicitors, argued that despite the statement of the police inspector, Fowles could not be identified on CCTV footage as taking part in the riot. He told the court that interviewing officers accepted that Fowles could not be seen on the footage.

According to the defendant, he had been watching the disruption rather than taking part when “he was struck with a baton and in fear, he ran and got into the sea”.

Submitting that the sole evidence was the alleged observations of the inspector, Mr Hamill highlighted that in addition to mental health difficulties and a diagnosis of autism, Fowles has a completely clear record so with conditions, he could be granted bail.

District Judge Anne Marshall said while Mr Clawson had made every point that he could, “given the ongoing public disorder, I am satisfied that there is risk of further offending, a risk of harm and public disorder”.

Accordingly, she refused bail and Fowles was remanded in custody with the case adjourned to 9 July.

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Today, the UK Defence Secretary John Healey has resigned.

In his resignation letter to the PM, Healey set out his reasons for leaving, telling the PM the defence investment plan “falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time”.

The sixth minister to resign for Starmer’s cabinet in a month, and one of its most loyal, the question will now turn to what lies ahead for the PM.

Adam and Chris are joined by Shashank Joshi Defence Editor of the Economist

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Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. The presenter was Adam Fleming. It was made by Jack Maclaren with Anna Harris and Gabriel Purcell-Davis. The social producer was Joe Wilkinson. The technical producer was . The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

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