The Athletic: There are 99 French-born players at this World Cup. Welcome to the beating heart of global football
The Athletic reports that 99 players at this year’s World Cup were born in France — more than in any other country (the Netherlands is a distant second with 67) — and many of them represent other national teams: Senegal, Algeria, Haiti, DR Congo, Morocco. The main source of talent is Paris and the Île-de-France region, with its large immigrant communities from former colonies and a youth-training system built up over decades; in this respect Paris has now overtaken even Brazil’s São Paulo.
Financial Times: What wealth meant to Americans in 1776
Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, the Financial Times writes about what wealth meant to Americans in the 18th century. Today we picture it as a portfolio of financial assets, but in colonial times — when there were neither banks nor joint-stock companies — wealth meant land, debts owed to you (promissory notes) and enslaved people. A database of 1774 probate inventories compiled by historian Alice Hanson Jones shows that land was the largest source of wealth, but the southern tobacco colonies — Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina — were wealthier precisely because of the value of enslaved people.
NPR: But first, coffee: The drink that energized the American Revolution
For the US 250th anniversary, NPR recalls coffee’s role in the American Revolution: coffee was on the continent from the very start (the first coffeehouse opened in Boston in 1676, a century before independence), and coffeehouses became places where ideas of independence brewed. After the 1773 Boston Tea Party some patriots urged people to drink coffee instead of tea, which is why it is often seen as the turning point from tea to coffee — but historian Michelle Craig McDonald points out that Americans were already drinking plenty of coffee before then, so the Tea Party was not the dramatic pivot it is sometimes claimed to be.
Meduza relays RBC’s reporting that Russia has published a new edition of its 11th-grade history textbook (by Vladimir Medinsky and Anatoly Torkunov), with the most heavily rewritten part being the section on the so-called “special military operation”. The changes mostly concern the US: a reference has appeared to the Trump administration’s “positive role” in a peaceful settlement of the war, along with a mention of the August 2025 Trump–Putin meeting in Anchorage; the line about US determination to “fight to the last Ukrainian” was removed, wording about the US was softened, and the Chechen “Akhmat” unit commander was struck from the list of “SVO heroes”.
Al Jazeera: An AIDS-free generation is within reach, but not guaranteed
In an opinion piece, Al Jazeera argues that an AIDS-free generation is closer than ever — over the past decade AIDS deaths among children have fallen by almost 70%, new infections among adolescent girls have halved, and 22 countries have stopped mother-to-child transmission of the virus — but abrupt 2025 funding cuts threaten this progress: clinics are running short of medicines and health workers have been laid off. If prevention and treatment coverage were halved, UN estimates suggest up to three million children could be newly infected by 2040.
The Kyiv Independent: How European machinery helped build Russia’s deadly missiles
In a video investigation based on obtained customs records, The Kyiv Independent reveals that even during the war, specialized metalworking equipment made in EU countries — Germany, Italy, Spain and others — kept reaching Russian metallurgical plants through a Turkish intermediary, including plants that also work for missile production.
PBS News: Rescue mission launches to save NASA telescope that’s falling back to Earth thanks to solar storms
PBS News (via the Associated Press) reports that a rescue mission has launched to save a NASA telescope in danger of falling back to Earth: Katalyst Space’s “Link” spacecraft is due to reach and capture the Swift Observatory — launched in 2004 and now losing altitude faster than ever because of solar storms — within about a month. NASA is paying $30 million for the spacecraft to boost the telescope’s orbit; without it, Swift would burn up in the atmosphere by October.
Financial Times: How crowds become stupider
In a column, the Financial Times explains why the “wisdom of crowds” sometimes turns into foolishness. The idea that a large group judges more accurately than an individual dates back to 1906 (Francis Galton’s ox-weight guessing at a country fair), but it works only when the estimators are independent of one another — when everyone reads the same expert assessments and talks among themselves, errors reinforce one another rather than cancelling out. This, the author argues, is why markets and forecasts — from World Cup results to the dollar exchange rate — so often get it wrong.
DW: Sick leave: Germany rising but not the worst in Europe
DW reports that the number of working days lost to sickness in Germany has hit a record — an average of 19.5 days a year (up from about 13 in 2018) — though it is not the highest in Europe. Chancellor Friedrich Merz is promising stricter rules: from next January a sick note can no longer be obtained by phone, and workers must see a doctor in person on the first day. Germany’s system is one of the most generous (the employer pays full salary for up to six weeks), and critics warn the crackdown casts suspicion on the genuinely ill.
Meduza publishes an analysis by Alexandra Prokopenko, a researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, on the financial troubles of the Russian regime: in early June, in less than a week (all three readings in a single day), the State Duma allowed the Finance Ministry to raise spending and state debt above the ceilings set in the budget law. The federal deficit reached 6 trillion rubles — about €68 billion — from January to May, twice as much as a year earlier and already more than was planned for the whole year, while the National Wealth Fund’s reserves have been nearly drained. The author concludes that the budget thereby loses its predictability, and the bill will ultimately be paid by private business and ordinary Russians.
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