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If the Los Angeles Angels decide to trade future Hall of Famer Mike Trout, these teams should be the first in line to acquire him.

Carlos Baleba finished his first Premier League start in tatters. The 19-year-old had given everything to Brighton’s cause, and in the final minutes, he could be seen bent double, gasping for breath, telling his goalkeeper to keep hold of the ball for a few seconds longer, like a man begging for mercy. By this point, he looked a little disheveled, with his socks fallen down and shorts rolled up. His final act was to chop down Liverpool’s galloping Ryan Gravenberch, for which he was rightly booked. And when the whistle blew on this wild 2-2 draw, he dropped to the grass in relief and stretched out the cramp coursing through his legs. Baleba hobbled over to shake the hands of various Liverpool players, most of whom wouldn’t have known anything about this Cameroonian teenager before their team meeting on Friday. But after a performance full of energy, guile, skill, outrageous confidence and physical dominance in midfield – one that sapped his body dry – they do now. Ask people inside Brighton who will be the next diamond in the rough, the player who will be sold for five times their asking price after doing wondrous things on this Amex Stadium pitch, then you might be pointed to Kaoru Mitoma or Evan Ferguson, Mahmoud Dahoud or Joao Pedro. But those really in the know will point to Baleba. That includes the manager, Roberto De Zerbi, who said without hesitation on Baleba’s signing this summer: “He will be the future of the club.” If that sounded like hyperbole, there was enough evidence in this 100-minute sample to suggest the Italian is right, as he has tended to be about most things in his short Brighton career. After a Carabao Cup start and a couple of league appearances off the bench, De Zerbi showed enormous faith in Baleba with this full Premier League debut against Liverpool, and that faith was repaid in spades. This was Baleba’s kind of match, stretched and full of holes, with little fires popping up all over the pitch that needed putting out. As the defensive shield, he rushed to cover off counter-attacks and snuff out threatening direct balls. He stood in front of his back four checking over his shoulder for Mohamed Salah’s movement, and then cut out the through ball when it came. When Lewis Dunk pressed so high up the pitch that he left a void in Brighton’s defence, Baleba instinctively slotted back and filled the space. In possession, he was calm and composed and occasionally he injected little jolts of energy, like early in the first half, in his own half, where he threw in a stepover before charging away from Liverpool’s midfield and setting Brighton’s attacking players away as the crowd urged him on. Or a few minutes after Brighton had scored their first goal, when he dribbled through the centre of the pitch from the halfway line, jinked away from a defender on the edge of Liverpool’s box and hit his shot just wide. Baleba was a source of calm in what was a wild game. The first half could have been the subject of an art installation simply titled: ‘Get rid’. All three goals were the result of kamikaze passing at the back that went disastrously wrong, enough to boil the blood of proper football men everywhere. First, it was Virgil van Dijk plodding a pass to Alexis Mac Allister, which Brighton’s Simon Adingra (like Baleba, the 21-year-old winger was exceptional) stole and quickly swept past an out-of-position Alisson Becker for Brighton’s opener. Liverpool hit back with two goals of their own, first when Dunk misplaced a pass and Salah finished off a flowing counterattack, and then just before the break when Pascal Gross lost the ball in his own box and hauled down Dominik Szoboszlai, and Salah scored from the penalty spot. Brighton went into the break 2-1 up, so it was a compliment to the Baleba-Gross partnership when Jurgen Klopp brought on Ryan Gravenberch at half-time to stabilise Liverpool’s overrun midfield. It worked, and for a period Liverpool took control, but they failed to score a third and Brighton went hunting for an equaliser, which came late through Dunk’s close-range volley. Baleba never stopped, and his defensive nous regularly kept counter-attacks at bay. “I have to congratulate the club on finding two more amazing players, in Adingra and Baleba,” De Zerbi said after the game. “Baleba is very young and I think this club needs the characteristics of Baleba. He is a great replacement for Caicedo. But we can’t forget Ansu Fati, Mahmoud Dahoud, Joao Pedro.” In other words, there is plenty more where that came from. Why give Baleba his first start now? “I gave him the right steps. He played a part of the game with Bournemouth, played 70 minutes in Stamford Bridge [in the League Cup] in a big stadium. I gave him time to understand the new style of play, the timing of when to receive the ball, the right line of passing: our idea. It is not so easy [to learn] because our style, in the defensive phase we can change depending on the opponent, our build-up play can change. “He’s very young, a very good player with incredible potential, and he can be one of the most important midfielders in Europe in the future.” De Zerbi believes. And after this performance, we’re all Balebas now. Read More Brighton v Liverpool LIVE: Premier League result and reaction Liverpool’s new double-act are surprising even Jurgen Klopp Rumours: Brazilian is Liverpool’s January target and City want Haaland renewal No need for a replay as Liverpool return to normality in Europa League Liverpool vs Union Saint-Gilloise LIVE: Latest Europa League updates PGMOL rejects Ben Foster’s claim that refs pressured Sky into VAR cover-up

President Joe Biden intends to appoint Dr. Mandy Cohen to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House confirmed exclusively to CNN, succeeding Dr. Rochelle Walensky in the critical public health role as the agency grapples with challenges in the aftermath of the pandemic.

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A top engineer at Twitter has announced he is quitting his role with the company following the glitch-ridden launch of Florida governor Ron Desantis’s 2024 presidential campaign on the social media platform. “After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday,” Foad Dabiri, who was an engineering chief at Twitter, tweeted on Thursday. The Twitter engineer’s exit from the company comes a day after Mr DeSantis’s long-anticipated 2024 campaign bid for the White House on a Twitter livestream. Mr DeSantis’s campaign launch announcement on Twitter Spaces – the platform’s audio group-chat feature – was marred by a a host of glitches, including long silences and persistent echoes. The Twitter app reportedly crashed for several users who tuned in to listen to the announcement and at one point the Republican governor himself disappeared from the livestream. Mr Musk – who had boasted about several overhauls to the microblogging site since his takeover of the company to make Spaces better – shut the initial Spaces event and started a new one. The second event where Mr DeSantis read a short speech, reportedly gathered fewer listeners than the first, attracting about 161,000 people, according to Twitter’s public-facing data. The buggy event, according to many users on the social media platform, is a reflection of how Twitter under Mr Musk is far from operating smoothly. Since Mr Musk’s takeover of Twitter, he has laid off nearly three-fourths of the company’s workforce, following which the platform has faced several technical issues. Earlier this week, a bug caused tweets deleted by some users in the past to resurface on their timelines, and weeks earlier, many users complained that they were unable to post images and share external links. Mr Dabiri was the engineering lead at Twitter’s Growth Organisation. He tweeted on Thursday that during his stint with the company, he “experienced two distinct eras” before and after Mr Musk’s takeover. “And then came ‘2.0.’ What an extraordinary journey it has been. To say it was challenging at the outset would be an understatement,” Mr Dabiri said. The engineering chief however did not comment on why he was leaving Twitter, and whether it is linked to the problems with the DeSantis livestream. Both Twitter and Mr Dabiri did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment. “Working with Elon Musk has been highly educational, and it was enlightening to see how his principles and vision are shaping the future of this company,” he tweeted. Read More Ron DeSantis news – live: DeSantis floats pardoning Trump and Jan 6 rioters after ‘train wreck’ Twitter launch AOC jokes more people watched her gaming online than listened to glitch-ridden DeSantis launch DeSantis pushes past embarrassing campaign start, outlines travel schedule for early state visits AOC jokes more people watched her gaming online than listened to DeSantis launch What is Twitter Spaces and why did it go so wrong during DeSantis’s 2024 launch? What are Elon Musk’s political beliefs?

Joe Biden suffers from sleep apnea, and has begun use of a medicial CPAP device at night to treat the condition, the White House said on Wednesday. Sleep apnea, which is a relatively common sleep disorder, refers to the condition that inhibits oxygen intake during sleep, often causing snoring. A CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) device is sometimes used in more aggressive cases to ensure proper oxygen flow overnight. The president’s press team made the revelation shortly after reporters noticed a set of indentations on Mr Biden’s face as he spoke to the press line — the indentations were a residual souvenir of the mask worn over one’s face while sleeping during use of a CPAP device. “Since 2008, the president has disclosed his history with sleep apnea in thorough medical reports. He used a CPAP machine last night, which is common for people with that history,” a White House spokesman said on Wednesday. Though many of the president’s supporters chafed at media reports disclosing the president’s use of the device, it’s commonly accepted that any medical condition which affects the US commander-in-chief takes on an importance which other politicians are often spared. Though sleep apnea is not a condition which could reasonably be considered likely to affect the presidency in any way, Mr Biden’s use of the device was nevertheless instantly picked up on by experts who were eager for a presidential light to be shown on sleep disorders. In fact, the White House’s statement only shortly followed an educated guess floated by the National Sleep Foundation, which this morning blasted out a press release to DC-area reporters in which a medical expert on sleep hypothesised that Mr Biden had CPAP-device indentations on his face. "It looks like the sort of indentation one would expect from a CPAP mask. If you look at photos of popular CPAP mask styles you can see how the strap would leave a similar mark as the one we see on President Biden. Sleep apnea is very common and the risk increases with age. As the oldest U.S. President ever, it would not be surprising if President Biden was being treated for sleep apnea,” said Dr Joseph Krainin, a sleep expert with SleepApnea.org and the National Sleep Foundation. Dr Krainin added: “We also know that President Biden has a history of a ruptured brain aneurysm which could predispose him to a certain type of sleep apnea where his brain forgets to breath during sleep." Mr Biden’s health has been closely watched by reporters since he took office in 2021, and with particularly renewed interest in 2023 following the official launch of his 2024 campaign for reelection. The president has attended a handful of campaign events since that announcement so far, but is due to see that ramp up as the election nears. In 2020, Mr Biden won election to office following a campaign season where many events changed from live to virtual venues as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read More ‘Any Republican not named Trump’: Paul Ryan says former president is only candidate who would lose to Biden What next for Biden’s billion dollar broadband expansion? Kevin McCarthy knows he crossed the line with Donald Trump Biden touts his economic record in fiery speech: ‘Guess what – Bidenomics is working’ US public debt is projected to reach 181% of American economic activity in 30 years Biden urged to declare climate emergency as millions under heat wave warnings and air quality alerts — live

In a sharp break from Arkansas education officials, the Little Rock School District said in a news release it will offer AP African American Studies for credit.

Meta has made good on its threat to block news via Facebook and Instagram in

Barbiemania is unstoppable. Merch is flying, people won't stop playing the soundtrack, and the Greta Gerwig film has been a huge box office hit. But now it has gone one step further and transcended pop culture to worm its way into the political realm - having influenced anti-Tory protesters, who have cast MPs as characters in the hit film and put posters of them around London bus stops and tubes. The posters show big name ministers and MPs Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Jenrick, Lee Anderson and Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Raab and doesn't cast them in a favourable light. Instead, they show quotes from the politicians or short bios about their failures accompanied with the hashtag "#ThisBarbieIsAC*nt". Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Liz Truss's poster, for instance, claims she is "as useful as a condom". It adds: "Liz Truss holds the record for the shortest time served as PM. She crashed the economy trying to make her pals richer. While we're struggling to buy food and pay our bills, she's making tens and thousands as a public speaker. "#thelettucewoulddoabetterjob". Another poster calls another former PM, Johnson a "f**king eejit". Pictures of the bus posters were uploaded to Twitter by the campaign group Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants. The group, who posted the images on Twitter on the same day that Barbie was released in cinemas, wrote: “This week not only marks the cinematic event of the summer, but the Illegal Immigration Bill also passed a few days ago and it looks as though someone has been doing some alternative promo.” They added: “This government’s treatment of migrants and asylum seekers is an outrage that violates human rights and fails to protect those fleeing from persecution and conflict. It will make life even more dangerous for people on the move.” As for the tube posters, they wrote: "We may not all be barbie girls, but we do live in this Tory world. The UK government targets and scapegoats asylum seekers, migrants and trans people, and fabricates fear to distract us all from their farcical failure to serve the people." They referenced Sunak's commitment to expand North Sea drilling today, which is controversial because of climate change, adding: "While Shell announces annual profits almost 10X their last, around one in five (20 percent) of our population live in poverty. Now just this morning the Tories have issued 100 new oil and gas licences. Make it make sense. "We’re being rinsed, financially and politically, now and for generations to come. No mojo dojo case house vibes please, we’ve had Kenough". But it looks like the poster campaign might be short-lived. When the bus stop posters appeared, Transport for London (TfL) spokeswoman told the Evening Standard: “These offensive adverts are not authorised by TfL or our advertising partner JCDecaux. “We have instructed our contractors to remove any of these posters found on our network immediately.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

After the worst season of Russell Wilson's storied NFL career, the Denver Broncos made the necessary head coaching change from Nathaniel Hackett to Sean Payton. Can Payton subsequently get Wilson back on track?Russell Wilson is already 34 years old, so this type of analysis and evaluation b...

If you’ve been waiting for the iPhone 15 to upgrade your phone, it looks like