By BOBBY MANZI, FOOTBALL REPORTER

Published: 18:08 BST, 4 August 2026 | Updated: 18:52 BST, 4 August 2026

Jordan FA president Prince Ali bin Hussein has accused Gianni Infantino of blackmail as pressure continues to mount on the FIFA president.

Infantino has come under intense scrutiny since plans to sell £3.1billion in World Cup stakes leaked last week.

The Swiss football administrator has since scrapped the proposals after widespread opposition – including an internal rebellion at FIFA.

UEFA and Concacaf – the body for North and Central America and the Caribbean – are both calling for Infantino to step down, with Europe declaring a lack of confidence in the FIFA president.

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Jordan, meanwhile, are the first Asian nation to rebel against Infantino – taking the total to 91, assuming all UEFA and CONCACAF nations follow the stance set by their continental bodies. 106 nations are needed to depose Infantino as president.

In a statement Hussein ripped into Infantino, accusing him of delaying prize money payments and refusing to address the problem unless Jordan endorsed him for a fourth term at the helm of world football.

Gianni Infantino has been accused of blackmail by Jordan FA president Prince Ali bin Hussein

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‘There is no shortage of issues regarding FIFA. Let me start by clarifying what some of these are from an FA perspective, in particular that of Jordan going into a World Cup for the first time,’ Hussein said

‘We are a small country with a minimal budget for our FA and had to deal with enormous hurdles.

‘First, getting our fans into the USA: not all were granted VISAS, even though they had tickets – which we also know were sold at exorbitant prices.

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‘Secondly, we are being taxed by the US government through FIFA for our participation. Money that should go to players and staff.

‘This was not the case for those who played and set up camp in Canada and Mexico. But we happened to be in the USA so now we face these huge costs in taxes for having participated.

‘Thirdly we have been waiting for reward money for our players since December for the Arab Cup in Qatar, which is a FIFA event.

‘The money our team should receive for having reached the final has not been delivered yet, while at the same time FIFA brags about how many billions they have in reserve.

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‘It is clear the problem really is with leadership. For months, FIFA has been refusing to help us on any of these or other matters – until it was verbally communicated to me during the World Cup that if I endorsed Infantino it would go a long way to helping our FA out.

‘We pride ourselves in Jordan in upholding ethical values. We did not endorse him before and certainly will not now.

‘But the whole situation amounts to blackmail and we refuse to give in to that.’

Daily Mail Sport have contacted FIFA for comment.

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Princess Eugenie has announced the birth of a baby girl.

Eugenie, who is married to Jack Brooksbank, made the announcement on her Instagram page on Tuesday.

The birth took place at a hospital in Lisbon, Portugal, on Monday evening, Buckingham Palace said.

This is the couple’s third child, following sons August and Ernest, and it is understood they are taking time to decide on a name.

In a short post, Eugenie, who is the daughter of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, wrote: “Jack and I are so excited to announce Baby Girl Brooksbank!!”

“We are beyond in love with our girlie.”

The birth is a rare occasion where a member of the royal family has been born overseas, with Eugenie and Mr Brooksbank having a home and other connections in Portugal.

Buckingham Palace said: “Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie and Mr Jack Brooksbank are delighted to announce the safe arrival of their daughter, born on Monday August 3 2026, at 6.20pm, at a hospital in Lisbon, Portugal.

“The baby was born weighing 6lb 9oz.

“Their Majesties The King and Queen and other members of the royal family were delighted to be informed of the news.”

More to follow.

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The reservoir has run almost completely dry amid a hot, dry summer

A new £3 million reservoir which can hold 200 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water has nearly run out less than a year after being built. The basin on the 22,500-acre Elveden Estate, in Suffolk, was built in October last year to protect its large vegetable and cereal operation during dry periods.

But the reservoir has almost run completely dry, despite storing up to 500,000 cubic metres of water. Managing director of Elveden Estate, Andrew Blenkiron, said it was “going to be tight” to support 10,000 acres of farmland.

He said: “This year has been incredibly testing. We’re used to dealing with a lack of water and whatever Mother Nature throws at us. That being said, one of the reasons for this new reservoir was to be able to cope with these incredibly long, hot, dry summers.

“This is the third year out of five we’ve experienced these conditions and the big danger is if we have a dry winter, we’ve got some really serious problems next year.”

The Elveden Estate is described as the largest ring-fenced arable farm in lowland Britain. It has felt the full impact of the drought and heatwaves. The estate finished its cereal harvest in July and winter barley was 30 per cent down on average.

The estate, which primarily produces onions, and potatoes and carrots for McDonald’s, has only seen a few millimetres of rainfall in recent months. The site is home to three reservoirs but the other two are down to their last 15 per cent of capacity and the estate is relying on their groundwater boreholes.

Mr Blenkiron added: “Those people who have put so much effort into irrigating crops deserve medals. It’s been flat out here for almost four months now, with only a couple of days off from watering in early June.

“It really is going to take a lot of rain to make any significant difference. People say we can import food from around the world but because of the El Nino event, we could see impact on crops across the globe in future.”

The £3m reservoir is filled with water from the River Lark during the winter months. The Environment Agency announced last month half of England was officially in drought, with July set to be the driest on record.

Wildfires are burning in North America and Europe. Deadly heat waves have parked over cities and the world’s oceans are the hottest ever recorded for this time of year. A strengthening El Nino is forecast to be off-the-charts, spiking global temperatures and warping weather all over.

While it may seem like the planet is baking through a record-shattering summer from hell, it’s not quite in record territory. Yet.

So far this is only the third-hottest year, behind 2024 and 2025, climate statistics show. But give 2026 time. Because of a one-two punch of accelerated human-caused global warming and a supersized El Nino, there’s an increasing chance that by the end of the year, 2026 could eke out the crown for the hottest year on record, eclipsing 2024 — or at least come close, scientists said.

Even if this year sets the record, it won’t last long. Although scientists disagree on whether 2026 will be the hottest year on record, they agree on it being a near lock that 2027 will beat out any modern year for heat, maybe by a great deal.

With wars around the globe in the last few years people didn’t pay much attention to climate change “because the world was on fire in different ways. The world is now on fire again with climate change in a way that’s increasingly difficult to ignore,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth. “It’s going to keep getting worse.’’

Increasing odds for a record hot year

Hausfather calculated there’s a 35% chance that 2026 will pass 2024 as the hottest year on record. But Hausfather keeps increasing those odds nearly every month — up from only 7% in March.

Former top NASA climate scientist James Hansen, often called the godfather of climate science for 40 years of accurate long-term warnings, predicted that 2026 will edge out 2024 at the end of the year.

The world’s daily sea surface temperature tied 2024 starting in May and since June it’s been record hot nearly every day. With oceans more than 70% of the globe’s surface, there’s generally a month-and-a-half lag between heat showing up in oceans and then being reflected in the global average temperature, Hansen said. So it’s about time that the entire globe starts shattering records, he said. About 82% of the world’s ocean surface is overheated with marine heat waves this year, according to Europe’s Copernicus climate service.

About a month ago the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast that there was a 66% chance that 2026 would be the fourth hottest and only a 0.1% chance it would be No.1 for warmth by year’s end. NOAA monitoring chief Russell Vose said those odds will be rising when NOAA finishes its analysis from July.

Hausfather said what’s changing outlooks is the increasingly strong forecasts for a “mind-numbing” record-setting El Nino.

El Nino is a natural temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific that heats up the globe’s average temperature and warps weather extremes across the planet. Most forecasts have El Nino becoming the strongest in history. El Ninos always release pent-up heat in the ocean, but because of greenhouse gases trapping heat and 90% of it going into the world’s seas, there’s more heat to release, said Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, a science and communications nonprofit.

The amount of heat in the world’s oceans — a marker of human-caused climate change — keeps setting new record highs, Labe said.

This summer’s heat is human caused, not from El Nino

Climate scientists said what we’ve seen this summer can’t be blamed on El Nino because its impacts really don’t kick in for a few more months. The fires, heat and extremes that have dominated the summer of 2026 are what scientists have long been warning about from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

“The driver of the record warmth is climate change in the background. And it’s a much larger — much, much larger — contribution than El Nino, which is just a tenth to two-tenths of a degree on top of that long-term trend,” Labe said.

That warming is accelerating, Hansen said.

That’s because traditional industrial pollution that creates soot and smog — which cool the planet and mask greenhouse gas-triggered warming — is decreasing, Hansen said. Also, it looks as if the climate might be reacting to greenhouse gases stronger than scientists anticipated, he said.

Heat waves keep hitting

This summer’s heat waves have hit hard in places where people aren’t used to triple-digit heat, unlike in the tropics, climate scientists said. And they’ve been especially noticeable at night, making it hard for people to sleep, which impairs their health and their ability to be productive at work, said Samantha Burgess, global strategic lead at Copernicus climate service.

She pointed to Europe, where there was an “exceptional” heat wave in May, another in June, two in July and another one going on now in France and Spain.

“European heat waves are not in isolation. So there’s also been shocking heat waves in North America. There’s been shockingly hot conditions in South America as well. There’s been devastating heat waves in India,” Burgess said. “There’s always heat waves somewhere in the world sometime, but what is very unusual for Europe for this particular year is the frequency and extent of the heat waves.”

Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said this is what scientists have long been warning about.

“These are vivid pictures of not just the future, which is what we used to say, but on the whole of what climate change is doing. There’s no question that climate change has increased the risk of wildfires. There’s no question that the climate change increased the probability of really hot, nasty, even unprecedented summers around the world.”

___

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Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank have welcomed their third child together.

The Royal Family confirmed the arrival of the baby girl in a statement.

It read: ‘Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie and Mr Jack Brooksbank are delighted to announce the safe arrival of their daughter, born on Monday, 3rd August 2026, at 6.20pm, at a hospital in Lisbon, Portugal.

‘The baby was born weighing 6 pounds 9 ounces.

‘Their Majesties The King and Queen and other members of The Royal Family were delighted to be informed of the news.’

This is a breaking news story… More to follow…

By SAM LAWLEY, NEWS REPORTER

Published: 18:07 BST, 4 August 2026 | Updated: 18:17 BST, 4 August 2026

Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank have announced the birth of their baby daughter in Portugal.

The royal posted on Instagram: ‘Jack and I are so excited to announce Baby Girl Brooksbank!! We are beyond in love with our girlie.’

The announcement was accompanied by a photo of the newborn and greeted with messages of goodwill from her many followers.

The baby, who will not be an HRH, is born 15th in line to the throne, with her great-uncle, the Duke of Edinburgh, moving down to 16th place. 

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The Royal Family‘s official Instagram account warmly received the news in a heartfelt message posted just moments after the birth was announced. 

A statement read: ‘Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie and Mr Jack Brooksbank are delighted to announce the safe arrival of their daughter, born on Monday, 3rd August 2026, at 6.20pm, at a hospital in Lisbon, Portugal.

‘The baby was born weighing 6 pounds 9 ounces.

‘Their Majesties The King and Queen and other members of The Royal Family were delighted to be informed of the news.’

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Buckingham Palace officials previously revealed the couple’s sons August, five, and Ernest, two, were ‘very excited’ to welcome a new member of the family.

In a photo shared by Eugenie in May, Ernest, wearing a Chelsea football kit, and August, wearing a long-sleeved grey T-shirt, can be seen holding a picture of a baby scan. 

Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank have announced the birth of their baby daughter

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Princess Eugenie pictured with Mr Brooksbank. The pair announced they were expecting in May

The couple pictured with their first child, August, in 2021

She will also be the 15th great-grandchild of the late Queen Elizabeth II, and the third to be born since her death in 2022.

The new arrival will be the fifth grandchild of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, following the birth of Princess Beatrice’s daughter Athena Mapelli Mozzi in January last year.

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The baby’s grandfather Andrew – the King’s brother – was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office in February amid the scandal surrounding his friendship with the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. 

Eugenie and married at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle in October 2018, and welcomed their first child, August, on February 9, 2021.

His younger brother Ernest was born on May 30, 2023.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow. 

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BALTIMORE (AP) — A Maryland man was charged with second-degree murder after police say he fought with another man and then pushed him into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

James Fitzsimmons, 36, of Parkville, is accused of killing James Britt, 37, of Baltimore, on Sunday afternoon.

According to court documents, police have obtained surveillance video showing the men fighting in an alley before Britt retreated and crossed the street toward the water. Fitzsimmons then caught up to him and pushed him into the harbor, police said.

Fitzsimmons told investigators that Britt jumped in the water, and that when Britt’s girlfriend said he couldn’t swim, he replied, “Oh well,” and walked away.

Rescue divers responding to a reported drowning found Britt, who was declared dead at a hospital.

Fitzsimmons, who is also charged with manslaughter and assault, is due in court Aug. 27. No attorney is listed for him in court records, and no phone number for him could be found.

Kelsie McInally and pal Chloe Kane targeted the victim outside a shop in Hamilton.

A man is scarred for life after a woman battered him 12 times with a glass bottle.

Kelsie McInally and pal Chloe Kane targeted the victim outside a shop in Hamilton.

Passers-by went to the victim’s aid after an initial attack by the pair but were then unable to stop McInally inflicting multiple blows with the bottle.

McInally, 27, of Holyrood Street, and Kane, 27, of Burnbank Gardens, both Hamilton, appeared at the town’s sheriff court.

They admitted assaulting the victim to his severe injury and permanent disfigurement at Burnbank Centre on August 9 last year.

The court heard the victim, then aged 43, knew his attackers.

Daisy Bentley, prosecuting, said: “He was approached by the women and spoke to them.

“Kane struck him on the head with a plastic bottle before punching him repeatedly.

“Both women then pursued the man, grabbed him and punched him repeatedly.

“He was pulled to the ground and they proceeded to kick him on the head and body.

“Then the women walked away, leaving him on the ground.

“He was approached by members of the public who checked on his wellbeing, but McInally, who had gone into a shop, returned with a glass bottle.

“She walked up to the man and struck him 12 times on the head and body with the bottle.”

Police officers arrived and treated the victim who had injuries to his head and face.

He was taken to hospital where wounds to the crown of his head and his chin were stitched.

When Kane was traced she protested: “I kicked him only three times. Why did I get lifted? I never touched him.”

McInally made no reply when charged. Sentence on the pair was deferred until next month for background reports and electronic tagging assessments. They remain on bail.

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EXCLUSIVE: Countdown’s Rachel Riley has opened up about the struggles of parenting during the summer holidays and the challenges she and husband Pasha Kovalev face when trying to bring up their chldren

Rachel Riley has admitted that it is “really hard” to be a parent during the summer holidays. The Countdown star famously met her husband Pasha Kovalev when they competed on Strictly Come Dancing together in 2013, and they went on to have Maven, six, and four-year-old Noa together.

But as the summer holidays have kicked in, Rachel, 40, who shot to fame fresh out of university when she was chosen to replace Carol Vorderman on Channel 4’s long-running letters and numbers game, has explained just how tricky it is to manage schedules, especially as she and her husband are both self-employed.

She said: “Pasha’s going to be going on tour from September through to November. So he’s about to get really busy and disappear. So we’re just at the moment, for the school holidays, we’re tag-teaming who’s around and who’s not. And every time, someone gets a bit of work or someone says, ‘Can we go and do this?’, you’re just lining up diaries and making sure it works. As a working parent, it’s really hard.”

But like many parents, Rachel and Pasha just seem to make it work despite the challenges and she insisted that comes from neither of them striving for perfection, and claimed that children don’t really need both parents around at any given time.

She said: “I think the secret is not to worry about being perfect. They don’t need both [parents] around all the time, either. I always think there’s more pressure on the mums than the dads to be there. Things are obviously different in different households, but if your kids are happy, then it doesn’t really matter.”

Even though Strictly Come Dancing is the reason they met, Rachel explained that by the time the BBC Saturday night favourite comes around, she won’t have time to tune in to see how the likes of EastEnders star Lacey Turner, singer Delta Goodrem and Kim Kardashian’s hairdresser Chris Appleton fare on the dancefloor.

When asked if she will be watching the new series, she said: “Well, by the time it comes on, Pasha will be on tour, so he won’t even be here. And I’ll be with the two kids by myself, so it will be all about trying to get through the bath and bed routine really.”

Around her busy schedule, Rachel is heading up Energizer’s Summer Safety Swap campaign she believes is something all parents need to hear about after finding out that one in five parents admitted they would not know what to do if their child swallowed a Lithium Coin battery, often found in key fobs and digital scales amongst other small electronic devices.

She said: “With something like lithium coin batteries, it’s a 999 emergency, and you’ve got a red light straight away. again. As a parent there are so many things where it’s like, ‘Danger of this!’ and ‘Life hack here!’ And then some things are actually really serious and you can’t ignore.

“If it comes in contact with saliva, it goes bright blue to alert the parent. It tastes disgusting, so to discourage kids putting them in their mouth, and it’s got child-proof packaging, if you’ve got any loose batteries, or any devices where the screws are dodgy, and then dispose of them properly by taking them to a supermarket or a hardware store because they can’t go in the bin.

“For me, it’s just about starting to talk about it because too often this sort of thing you might only hear about once there’s been a horrible tragedy.”

Rachel has partnered with Energizer to encourage families to check their homes for hidden battery hazards and replace old lithium coin batteries with the new Energizer® Ultimate Child Shield™ batteries, the world’s only lithium coin battery that prevents ingestion burns if swallowed

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The homeowner was gobsmacked to find something rather beneficial and useful in their kitchen during renovations – and many others said they were jealous of the find

In Wales, home renovations can easily cost six figures. But if you do embark on a project yourself, it’s likely you might come across a few surprises along the way like this couple who “won the lottery” after ripping up their old carpet.

That said, it takes a lot of patience to renovate an entire home, with the total price often over what you originally budgeted for. It happens when you uncover unexpected issues, like damp and mould, which all add up in the end. But in the off chance you are refurbishing, you might find something which will benefit your way of living – which is what happened to one homeowner.

When renovating their 1916 home, the person thought the discovery was a simple patch job, but it turned out to be even more exciting than that.

They said in a Reddit post: “I am currently in the process of renovating the kitchen in my 1916 house and came across what looked to be a patch job that I was not expecting.

“On a video call with my dad, we figured out in the basement that there was a patch of floor that didn’t make sense. To end the night, I decided to remove the sheetrock to get a look and lo & behold there is an old pantry!

“We obviously did not account for this in our initial plans, but I am dead set on reviving this corner and making use of it to add some original touches to the house, as over a 100 years of changing hands there isn’t a ton of original things like this left.”

The person shared the post in a bid to inform “fellow old house lovers”.

In the Reddit post, it also shows the dry wall and then inside the pantry where it racked up thousands of upvotes and dozens of comments.

One said: “I was immediately jealous and went ‘Ooooooooo’.” Another replied: “Lol, I did too. I have always wanted to find a secret room.”

While a third chimed in: “Seriously who covers over a PANTRY?! Awesome discovery. Love the paint colours!” Others had a theory that the owners would have covered it to have a continuous line of cabinets or counter space.

Someone else wondered whether something was left behind it. But the original poster said “just some nails in the drawer”, although they were hoping for millions of pounds.