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Lionel Messi said there “could have been a tragedy” after police clashed with fans during Argentina’s World Cup qualifier against rivals Brazil at the Maracana in Rio. The match was delayed by half an hour following crowd trouble in the stands, which started before kick-off and during the national anthems. In response, Brazilian police charged at the Argentina fans, with the fighting taking place in a section of the stadium that contained the visiting players’ families and friends. Some Argentina supporters ripped up seats to throw at the police, who were wielding batons, while others attempted to escape the scene. Led by Messi, the Argentina players went over to try and calm the situation. Images showed the Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez trying to grab a baton from a police officer’s hand as the Argentina players appealed for the fighting to stop. The World Cup winners then left the pitch and returned to the dressing room for more than 10 minutes. When the match eventually resumed, Argentina won a bad-tempered qualifier 1-0 to leave Brazil in crisis after suffering their third straight defeat. The clashes in the stands occurred just two weeks after similar scenes at the Copa Libertadores final between Brazilian side Fluminense and Argentine giants Boca Juniors, which was also held at the iconic Maracana stadium. “It was bad because we saw how they were beating people,” Messi told reporters after the match. “The police, as happened in the Libertadores final, were once again repressing the people with night sticks. “We went to the locker room because it was the best way to calm everything down, it could have ended in tragedy. “You think about the families, the people who are there, who don’t know what’s going on and we were more concerned about that than playing a match that, at that point, was of secondary importance.” The Argentina players were joined by Brazil captain Marquinhos as they appealed for calm in the stands. The defender said: “We were worried about the families, women and children that we were seeing in panic up there in the stands. “Down on the pitch it was hard for us to understand what was going on, it was a very scary situation.” On the pitch, Argentina took a huge step towards qualifying for the 2026 World Cup as Nicolas Otamendi’s header secured a 1-0 win, but the match was littered with fouls, skirmishes and cards. Brazil finished with 10 men after Newcastle’s Joelinton was sent off for hitting Argentina’s Rodrigo de Paul in the face. Brazil have now lost successive matches to Uruguay, Colombia and Argentina and are eight points behind the world champions in the qualifying table. The five-time World Cup winners sit sixth, which is the last spot that guarantees qualifying for the finals, after six rounds.

ESPN's Stephen A. Smith says the Chicago Bears organization is to blame for Justin Fields' early season struggles. He's not wrong.

Scientists have “heard” a chorus of gravitational waves rippling through the universe, in what they say is an unprecedented finding that could fundamentally change our understanding of the universe. The discovery, described in a range of newly published journal papers, suggests that spacetime is being rocked by intensely powerful gravitational waves all the time. Those waves carry a million times more energy than the one-off bursts of gravitational waves that were detected from a black hole and were themselves hailed as a major breakthrough in our understanding of the universe. The new results suggest that everything is being slowly shrunk and expanded by a new kind of gravitational wave as they pass through our galaxy. Scientists describe it as being akin to hearing a “symphony” of waves echoing through the universe. “It’s like a choir, with all these supermassive black hole pairs chiming in at different frequencies,” said Chiara Mingarelli, a scientist who worked on the new findings while an associate research scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics. “This is the first-ever evidence for the gravitational wave background. We’ve opened a new window of observation on the universe.” The new findings have been described in a range of journal articles, published in different academic journals. The research is the result of 25 years of observations from six of the world’s most sensitive radio telescopes, and have been simultaneously published by different collaborations across the world. The findings are not only notable in themselves. They also offer the opportunity to find out some of the universe’s secrets, since they can be used to find information about the binary black holes that form when galaxies merge, for instance. “These results signify the beginning of an exciting journey into the Universe, where we aim to unravel its mysteries,” Michael Keith, a lecturer at Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, UK, and contributor to one of the new studies, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. “After decades of tireless work by hundreds of astronomers and physicists worldwide, we are finally detecting the long-awaited signature of gravitational waves originating from the distant Universe.” Scientists made the discovery by analysing observations of pulsars, which are extinguished stars that can be used as reliable clocks in the distant universe. By bringing together such a large amount of detailed data, researchers were able to measure those pulsars with very high accuracy, allowing them to measure gravitational waves at a far larger scale than using detectors on Earth. “Pulsars are excellent natural clocks. We exploit the remarkable regularity of their signals to detect subtle changes in their rhythm, enabling us to perceive the minute stretching and squeezing of space-time caused by gravitational waves originating from the far reaches of the Universe,” said David Champion, a senior scientist at the MPIfR in Bonn, Germany, and contributor to the study, in a statement. For now, researchers are only able to “hear” the vast choir, rather than the individual pulsars that make up its singers. But together they are much louder than expected, meaning that there may be more or more heavy supermassive black holes to be found in the universe. Read More Astronomers find zombie planet that ‘shouldn’t exist’ Nasa to begin Moon mining within next decade Nasa rover spots bizarre donut shaped rock on Mars

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 13, 2023--

Pride organisers in Florida have called off events that were to take place during the Pride Month in the wake of the latest anti-LGBT+ laws signed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Organisers based in the town of St Cloud outside Orlando announced on Thursday that they have cancelled the upcoming 10 June event, saying they are aware that it is “unsafe to hold the event”. “As you know, Florida has recently passed a number of laws that target the LGBTQIA+ community. These laws have created a climate of fear and hostility for LGBTQIA+ people in Florida,” the organisers said. “We believe that holding an LGBTQIA+ event in this environment would put our community at risk.” Officials and organisers in Port St Lucie city announced the cancellation of Pride parades last month and limitation of other activities for those who are 21 years or older. Mr DeSantis, a 2024 presidential hopeful, has signed several bills last week that banned gender-affirming care for minors, restricted pronoun use in schools and forced individuals to use restrooms corresponding with their biological sex – an expansion of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill enacted into law last year. The laws have been dubbed as a “slate of hate” by activists and opponents. The new laws will target drag shows in the state, limit the use of preferred pronouns for pupils in schools, and ban trans people from using public bathrooms that do not match with their gender assigned at birth. NAACP, a civil rights group, issued a formal travel advisory for Florida, stating that the state has become “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of colour and LGBTQ+ individuals”. It denounced the state’s "aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes in Florida schools”. LGBT+ advocacy group Equality Florida also issued a similar advisory after Mr DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law. "That law, along with additional proposals being considered, has turned the state’s classrooms into political battlefields and is telegraphing to LGBTQ families and students that they are not welcome in Florida," the group said. Florida’s Lake County Pride, however, pushed back against the laws, saying: “No unconstitutional law will keep us from celebrating our PRIDE event”. “Lake County Pride will never back down, and we stood firm and united in fighting against the "Drag Ban,” it said. Read More E Jean Carroll targets Trump again after his derogatory CNN town hall smears MLK’s daughter backs call for tourists to boycott ‘racist’ Florida and blasts Cruz Founder of student aid startup Frank pleads not guilty to fraud Haley vs. Scott: From South Carolina allies to 2024 rivals Who is Tim Scott? 5 things to know about the newest 2024 GOP presidential candidate Two fishermen bitten by sharks just hours apart in the Florida Keys

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It’s no secret that consensual sex is healthy. Typically it can feel pretty good, bring you closer to a partner or partners, and give you that marvelous post-coital glow. But what if we gave you a reason to like sex even more? Getting busy is an even better antidote to our health than many of us realize. Sex can actually be a great source of stress and anxiety relief.