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Teams with different motivations meet in Group E play on Thursday as Germany and Ecuador square off in the 2026 World Cup. The Germans have locked up top spot in the group, while Ecuador are still without a point and desperately need a win — along with help elsewhere — to advance to the knockout round. The Germans are expected to rest some key players, while Ecuador will press hard for the upset and the three points. Kickoff is at 4 p.m. ET in East Rutherford, N.J. The latest Ecuador vs. Germany odds from FanDuel Sportsbook list Germany at -175 (risk…

It is, quite simply, the most anticipated piece of entertainment since the Star Wars prequels and now, at last, you can reserve a copy. At midnight last night, Rockstar opened preorders on Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest title in the epic open-world gangster adventure series, five months before its 19 November release date on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X.Prices have also been confirmed, with the standard edition costing $80 in the US, £70 in the UK, and €80 in Europe. An Ultimate Edition (£90/€100/$100) will include exclusive in-game cars, clothes and weapons – the developer has confirmed that there…

48 countries competing. 96 jerseys on display. Vote for your favorite designs and see how they rank with Times readers.

London’s schools, some decades or over a century old, are baking in 90-degree heat. In France, teachers have covered windows with blankets or chalk and let children play in water outside. Most students are just glad to kick off their shoes.“I feel like I’m in an oven,” said one of them, Raya Petrova, 7, whose teachers were desperate to keep their London classrooms cool without air-conditioning. “It is really hot.”Extreme heat is broiling much of western Europe, but class is still in session for millions of students in countries such as Britain and France, where few schools are air-conditioned. The…

Barely 24 hours after a five-storey building collapsed in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, another building disaster struck on Thursday as a three-storey structure caved in in the Alakija area of Lagos State. As with the Rivers incident, several persons are feared trapped in the collapsed Lagos building. According to information shared by theCable, the building collapsed on Thursday morning, triggering an emergency response by security operatives and residents. PREMIUM TIMES gathered that police officers from the Area E Command and Satellite Division reportedly arrived at the scene shortly after the incident and joined local residents in efforts to rescue those…

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif (R) greets US Vice President JD Vance prior to a quadrilateral meeting between the United States, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar at the Burgenstock luxury hotel complex overlooking Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, on June 21, 2026, as part of high-level talks aimed at advancing a deal to end the Middle East conflict. A new round of negotiations over the Middle East war was set to kick off on June 21, 2026 with Iranian negotiators arriving in the Swiss host city hours ahead of US Vice President JD Vance, even as Tehran said it was closing the Strait…

I wasn’t surprised when I got the call that my dad was dying, even though we’d been estranged for many years. He’d suffered addiction for decades and eventually ran out of time, which also meant he ran out of time to reconcile with me. About 15 years after we stopped talking, my aunt and uncle held the phone up to his ear — 1,400 miles away, between me in Connecticut and him in Nebraska — to help me say goodbye. I’ll never be sure if he understood my words, but, as I watched waves crash on the shore from the…

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has told the BBC she will be turning Kemi Badenoch’s attack on her at Prime Minister’s Questions into a T-shirt.The Conservative leader called Phillipson a “spiteful class warrior” for taxing private school fees, claiming this was to pay for more teachers in state schools “but the number of teachers has gone down”.The two women exchanged harsh words after PMQs and continued their row on social media, before both doubled down again on Thursday.Asked whether she would apologise to Phillipson, Badenoch said she had also called the education secretary incompetent in the Commons and it was “interesting”…

There is a new record for tiny, powerful computer chips. IBM’s prototype chip is the size of a fingernail, yet packs in almost 100 billion transistors – nearly twice as many as the previous state-of-the-art chip – thanks to a three-dimensional technique. The company says the 10 millimetre by 15 millimetre chip will offer 70 per cent higher energy efficiency and 50 per cent higher performance than current leading chips, and will be in commercial devices within 10 years. For decades, the name given to chip-manufacturing processes referred to the size of individual transistors in nanometres: 10 nanometres, 5 nanometres,…

Jun 25, 2026, 08:15 AM ETWe continue the final round of group stage matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as three groups were decided Tuesday and another three will be decided Wednesday.To kick things off in Group E, we have Curaçao taking on Ivory Coast, and Ecuador taking on Germany. Later, we go to Group F as Japan take on Sweden, and Tunisia take on Netherlands. Finally, we wrap the day up going to Group D as Türkiye face off against co-hosts United States, and Paraguay taking on Australia.Enjoy all the features, news, video analysis and color from around…