world

Born in 1884, the tortoise Gramma died at 141 years old

The oldest tortoise on the American West Coast died on November 20, according to the Associated Press . Named Gramma, she had reached the venerable age of 141. Due to a bone disease, she had to be euthanized by veterinary services at the San Diego Zoo.

Born in 1884 in the Galápagos Islands, she was captured and sent to a zoo in the Bronx. She was later brought to the San Diego Zoo between 1928 and 1931 (the exact date could not be determined). Nicknamed the “Queen of the Zoo,” she witnessed the passing of more than 20 American presidents and lived through two world wars.

A very strict diet

What’s the secret to its longevity? This giant Galapagos tortoise has spent its entire life eating romaine lettuce and cactus fruits such as prickly pear. Galapagos tortoises generally live for nearly 100 years in the wild, but can live up to twice that long in captivity.

The oldest known Galapagos tortoise was Harriet, born around 1830 and who died in 2006 at over 175 years old. The oldest living land tortoise is still Jonathan , a giant tortoise from the Seychelles, now 193 years old.

Story by Le Figaro

look at Arsenal super-fan Zohran Mamdani

The New York mayor-elect’s devotion to a north London club shows how the global game is winning hearts across the US

When Zohran Mamdani made an appearance on The Adam Friedland Show last week, the newly elected mayor of New York was expecting the typical nimble rundown of politics, jokes and conversational detours. What he wasn’t expecting was Ian Wright suddenly filling a phone screen with a congratulatory video. The former England and Arsenal striker saluted him on “what you’ve achieved”, urged him to channel that “winning energy” into the job ahead before signing off with a nod to the Arsenal manager,Mikel Arteta. Mamdani cheesed guilelessly as it played before finally blurting out: “I love this man.”

For a moment, the incoming mayor of the most powerful city in the United States was simply another geeked-out Arsenal obsessive left weak by one of his childhood heroes. And in that moment lies something revealing about how football fandom in the US has changed. This was not a politician deploying a sports reference for relatability; it was a display of genuine allegiance that’s planted at the intersection of two different stories about how Americans have come to love the global game.

What Mamdani’s reaction captured, in miniature, is the broader moment US soccer now finds itself in. Stateside interest has quietly climbed to unprecedented levels: Premier League audiences have grown for more than a decade; every big club now has thriving US supporters’ groups; and football has entered the cultural bloodstream through celebrity-ownership projects such as Ryan Reynolds and Wrexham (and its various rip-offs), through athletes drifting into national politics (Cristiano Ronaldo turning a White House visit into a surreal photo-op) and through the long on-ramp to next summer’s big, beautiful World Cup on home soil. The game is no longer niche, no longer coastal, no longer the preserve of immigrant communities or brunch-hour Europhiles.

Mamdani’s politics add another note. His petition against Fifa’s dynamic pricing for 2026 World Cup tickets – which he called an “affront to the game” on the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast – reflects a view of football as community infrastructure rather than luxury entertainment. It treats the sport as something that belongs to working-class people and immigrant families, not the unfolding late-capitalist hellscape of ticketing algorithms and resale platforms. That stance is both global and deeply local; both socialist and recognisably football-supporter logic.

Mamdani’s affinity with Arsenal lands with added weight because it reveals what the sport already means in the US: a cross-class, multi-ethnic, diasporic, online, joyful cultural force. For a couple of decades now, Arsenal in particular have occupied a curiously prominent place in the imaginations of American progressives. During the Arsène Wenger years, the club became a kind of cultural shorthand for the liberal intelligentsia. They played “European” football at a time when the term connoted sophistication: Henry gliding, Pires drifting, Wenger lecturing about diet and psychology. On the east coast, when matches were finally moved from pay-per-view to the broader availability of Fox Soccer channel, 7am kick-offs became ritualised social markers. For many, supporting Arsenal was less a sporting choice than a signal of curated worldliness.

But this is only one strand of the US’s football story, and not the one Mamdani comes from. He was born and raised in Kampala and Cape Town before his family relocated when he was seven to Morningside Heights in Upper Manhattan, as the great Wenger teams of the early 00s further informed his sporting consciousness. His Arsenal was the Arsenal of Kanu, Lauren, Kolo Touré, Eboué and Song – a club whose African spine made it beloved across the continent long before it became fashionable in Brooklyn. When he says that Arsenal might be the most popular club in Uganda, he’s expressing a deeper truth about the Premier League’s longstanding place in African diasporic culture.

And Arsenal itself increasingly leans in to this heritage. Last season’s alternative kit, designed by the Sierra Leone-born Foday Dumbuya, explicitly honoured its African fanbase. It followed the Jamaica-themed pre-match strip launched at Notting Hill carnival, part of a broader cultural moment that has long intertwined Arsenal with Black British identity and, increasingly, with the US-based Black creative community, where culture-shapers such as Spike Lee and Jay-Z have embraced the club’s diaspora-rich sensibility. The Arsenal that influenced Mamdani is the same Arsenal that helped define modern British multiculturalism, which helps explain why his reaction to Wright resonated so widely.

These two versions of fandom – the curated and the inherited – have long existed along parallel tracks in a country of 340 million souls. What feels new is the way these stories are converging. Mamdani’s reaction united them perfectly: the diasporic Arsenal of his childhood colliding with the online Arsenal of US millennials and gen Z. The Premier League’s rise in the US – via NBC’s deft marketing and commercial strategy, social media, Instagram fan accounts and matchday rituals – has flattened the cultural landscape. A Somali teenager in Minneapolis, a Mexican-American kid in Phoenix and a 38-year-old Brooklyn journalist all speak the same meme-literate Gooner dialect now. And a whole lot more of them are wearing Messi’s Inter Miami shirt. The effect is a US football culture that is finally shared. No longer the province of any one demographic, but a hybrid of diaspora, youth culture, TikTok, brunch spots and streetwear.

When the mayor-elect of New York fanboys over a message from Ian Wright, it’s tempting to treat it as charming ephemera. But it is also a small window into the country’s evolving sporting psyche – a signpost that the global game has taken root here through diaspora, culture, politics and play. In a country still figuring out what its football identity even is, Mamdani’s reaction offered up a clue: it won’t be imported or inherited whole, but fashioned out of all the places Americans come from and the paths the game has taken to reach them.

Story by The Guardian

world

Qatar vessel incident: One killed, one injured

The Ministry of Interior of Qatar has confirmed that maritime search operations were carried out after a vessel carrying two individuals failed to return at its scheduled time, prompting an immediate response from the General Directorate of Coasts and Borders Security.

According to an official statement, routine monitoring and verification procedures first flagged the delay, following which maritime patrols launched a search operation on the evening of Saturday, June 27, 2026

The Maritime Search and Rescue Team located the vessel in the early hours of Sunday, June 28, the ministry said.

One killed, one injured in incident

The ministry confirmed that a Qatari citizen was killed after sustaining injuries from shrapnel linked to military activity in the area.

An Arab resident on board was also injured and has been hospitalised in stable condition.

Condolences and ongoing investigation

The Ministry of Interior extended its condolences to the family of the deceased, praying for mercy upon him, and wished a swift recovery for the injured individual.

It added that investigations are ongoing in accordance with established legal procedures.

world

Philippines Leads Global Solar Boom

People in the Philippines are flocking to install solar power on rooftops and escape the burden of soaring electricity prices, making it the world’s biggest spender on solar panels since ‌the war in Iran started.

Top power distributor Meralco has raised prices by 10% since the Middle East conflict began in late February. Now, a median household spends around 12% of monthly income on electricity, assuming it consumes 200 kilowatt-hours — approximately the monthly average for three people.

The Philippines is one of the few countries in Southeast Asia with barely any power subsidies, and its residential power prices are the highest in the region. Only Singapore comes close, but its citizens’ average purchasing power is nearly 13 times higher.

Adrian Sabatera, a 39-year-old software engineer, thought about getting solar for years but found it too ⁠costly. That changed as costs came down and electricity prices kept rising.

“I wouldn’t be shocked if a third of the middle-class population eventually finds their way to this setup,” Sabatera said after recently pulling the trigger on a 570,000 peso ($9,300) installation at the Manila house he shares with three others.

The rooftop solar rush has resulted in $407 million in panel imports in the three months through May, a 145% increase from a year earlier, according to trade data from China, which accounts for most global supply.

Even when Chinese panel shipments fell 13% in May after a tax rebate removal, exports to the Philippines rose by almost a third.

On paper, the Netherlands remains a larger market for panels, but experts say that’s because it is a transshipment hub.

SURGE IN INQUIRIES

Philergy German Solar, a Manila-based installer, received more than 2-1/2 times the number of customer enquiries in the first five months of this year compared to last year. At one point it ‌fielded 3,000 ⁠inquiries a day, according to managing partner Jochen Staudter.

Customers are deciding to buy “much faster than before,” Staudter said. “Demand will continue to be driven by high electricity prices.”

In two years, distributed solar capacity could nearly triple to 3,500 megawatts (MW), matching the current size of the Philippines’ utility-scale solar fleet, as loan payback times shrink to 3.1 years from 4 years, said Alnie Demoral, analyst at energy think tank Ember.

Solar accounts for under 4% of national power consumption, government data shows.

SUPPLY CHALLENGES

A weakening currency has compounded the increase ⁠in power prices because the Philippines relies on imported coal and gas to generate power. That has pushed inflation to multi-year highs and slowed growth.

Manila entrepreneur Jason Porciuncula installed a 12-kilowatt system with battery storage in January. As prices hit record highs in May, his monthly bill dropped to a fifth of last summer’s 21,000 pesos.

But it’s not all smooth ⁠sailing. Installations are lagging behind demand due to component hoarding, volatile equipment costs and inadequate quality checks, said Brenda Valerio, Philippines director at New Energy Nexus.

The government provides loans for solar of up to 500,000 pesos at 5% interest, below market rates. But it excludes private-sector workers.

Another deterrent: high upfront costs, ⁠usually above average annual household incomes of 353,200 pesos.

“The opportunity is real, but the upfront cost is often too high for a household or business, no matter how quick the payback time is,” Ember’s Demoral said.

($1 = 61.2870 Philippine pesos)

Reuters

world

4-Year Stay Limit: What It Means for International Students

A sweeping change to US immigration rules could soon reshape how international students plan their education in the country, with a proposed policy introducing a fixed four-year limit on student stays.

The White House has cleared a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regulation that would replace the long-standing “Duration of Status” (D/S) system with a time-bound admission model for foreign students and exchange visitors.

According to Bloomberg reports, under the proposed changes, most international students would be permitted to stay in the US for up to four years. After this period, those continuing their studies would be required to obtain formal approval to extend their stay.

Currently, students can stay for the full length of their academic programme as long as they maintain valid status, without a fixed expiry date.

If implemented, the change could affect F-1 student visa holders, J-1 exchange visitors and other categories, requiring more frequent interaction with US immigration authorities.

The rule has cleared review by the White House Office of Management and Budget and is expected to move toward publication in the Federal Register, with implementation likely within 30 to 60 days of final notification.

What is the proposed change?

Under current plans reported by Bloomberg, international student stays could be capped at around four years, regardless of how long their academic programme runs.

The rule would apply to multiple visa categories, including:

F-1 student visas
J-1 exchange visitor visas
Other related study-based visa categories

If implemented, students whose programmes extend beyond the limit would need to apply for formal extensions through US immigration authorities.

The regulation has already cleared review by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and is expected to be published in the Federal Register, with an implementation window of 30 to 60 days after publication.

How the current ‘Duration of Status’ system works

At present, international students in the US are admitted under the Duration of Status (D/S) framework.

This allows students to stay in the country for as long as they:

Remain enrolled full-time
Maintain valid student status
Comply with visa conditions

There is no fixed end date attached to their stay.

This system allows flexibility to:

Extend academic programmes
Switch universities or courses
Progress from undergraduate to postgraduate studies
Complete Optional Practical Training (OPT) and STEM OPT

What would change under the new rule?

The proposed system would replace this flexible model with a fixed admission period, likely around four years for most students.

Key implications include:

Students would no longer have automatic stay based on enrolment
Extensions would require approval from USCIS
Additional documentation and biometric checks may be required
Processing delays could affect academic timelines
Overstaying without approval could lead to legal consequences

In effect, continued study in the US would depend on periodic immigration approvals rather than academic enrolment alone.

Why the US government is proposing the change

The Department of Homeland Security argues that the current system makes it harder to track compliance and identify visa overstays.

A fixed end-date model, officials say, would:

Improve monitoring of foreign students
Strengthen immigration enforcement
Standardise visa oversight across categories

Why Indian students could be most affected

India is the largest source of international students in the United States.

According to the Open Doors 2024 report, more than 331,000 Indian students were enrolled in US institutions in the 2023–24 academic year — nearly 30% of all international students.

Many of these students are in programmes that exceed four years, including:

PhD and doctoral research programmes
Long-duration master’s degrees
Technical and professional courses

Under the proposed system, these students may face:

More extension applications
Increased immigration scrutiny
Greater uncertainty around long-term academic planning

Key concerns raised by experts and institutions

Organisations such as the Association of American Universities (AAU), American Council on Education (ACE) and NAFSA have warned that fixed stay limits could:

Increase administrative burden
Create uncertainty for research-based programmes
Make it harder to maintain legal status in longer academic tracks

They also caution that changes could affect transitions into work pathways such as OPT.

What happens if a visa stay expires?

A major concern under the proposed framework is enforcement.

If a student’s authorised stay expires:

They may begin accruing unlawful presence immediately
Delays in extension processing could create legal risks
Immigration penalties could affect future US travel eligibility

According to immigration firm Fragomen, this could significantly raise the stakes for administrative delays or paperwork errors.

Impact on OPT and post-study work pathways

The effect on Optional Practical Training (OPT) is still unclear.

However, experts warn that moving away from the D/S system could:

Complicate transitions from study to employment
Add procedural steps before work authorisation
Increase pressure on visa timelines for STEM OPT participants

OPT remains a key pathway for international graduates seeking US work experience.

What about the grace period?

Earlier versions of the proposal suggested reducing the post-study grace period for F-1 students from 60 days to 30 days.

This period is currently used to:

Apply for OPT
Transfer universities
Change visa status
Prepare for departure

Any reduction would tighten post-graduation timelines significantly.

When could the rule take effect?

The rule is not yet in force.

OMB review has been completed
Final publication in the Federal Register is pending
Implementation could begin 30–60 days after publication

Experts suggest rollout may occur later in 2026, though timelines remain uncertain.

What should students do now?

There is no immediate change for current or prospective students.

At this stage, students should:

Continue under existing visa rules
Monitor updates from DHS and USCIS
Stay in touch with university international offices

What happens next

The regulation is not yet in force. It still requires formal publication before becoming law.

Once published, the government is expected to announce an implementation timeline, which experts say could begin later in 2026.

Until then, the current Duration of Status system remains unchanged, allowing students to stay in the US for the full length of their academic programme as long as they comply with visa conditions.

Agencies