South Korean military says between 20 and 30 soldiers crossed early on Tuesday but quickly retreated.
South Korea’s military has said between 20 and 30 North Korean soldiers crossed the border between the two countries early on Tuesday, but returned after South Korean forces fired warning shots.
The incident took place at about 8.30am (23:30 GMT on Monday) when a group of North Korean soldiers in the central part of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) crossed the military demarcation line, Yonhap news agency reported, citing the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
The JCS said the group quickly returned after South Korean forces fired warning shots.
A similar incident took place in the central zone of the DMZ just over a week ago.
Biden camp hits out at viral videos that have been seized on as evidence of president’s frailty.
United States President Joe Biden’s administration has accused his opponents of spreading disinformation about his physical and mental fitness after a series of viral videos reignited concerns about the Democratic standard-bearer’s age.
In a news conference on Monday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the clips purporting to show Biden’s decline had been deceptively edited or misrepresented.
“It tells you everything that we need to know about how desperate Republicans are here,” Jean-Pierre told reporters, labelling the clips “cheapfake” videos.
Republican social media accounts and conservative media outlets have shared videos purporting to show Biden, 81, freezing up or wandering off on his own in recent days.
In one clip, Biden is shown appearing to wander away from other world leaders during a skydiving demonstration at the G7 summit in Italy.
However, versions of the clip circulated by right-wing social media accounts and the New York Post were cropped to obscure a parachutist that Biden was walking towards when appearing to wander off.
Another widely circulated clip shows Biden standing motionless while surrounded by people who are dancing to music at a Juneteenth celebration held last week at the White House.
“The president stood there listening to the music, and he didn’t dance… Excuse me, I didn’t know that not dancing was a health issue,” Jean-Pierre said.
“That is a weird thing to actually flag. If you look at the people around him… there were some folks who were not dancing either.”
In the most recent clip to go viral, Biden pauses in front of the crowd at a fundraising gala for about seven seconds before being led offstage by former President Barack Obama.
Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a post on X on Monday that Biden’s critics were pretending that “taking in an applauding crowd for a few seconds is somehow wrong” to distract from the president’s achievements.
Former US President Donald Trump, who is running against Biden on the Republican ticket in November, has repeatedly attacked the president over his age and fitness, although, at 78, he is just three years younger.
Either Biden or Trump would be the oldest person to ever hold the office of the presidency by the end of his term.
While some videos of Biden appearing frail or confused have been deceptively edited, opinion polls have shown that voters view his age as a concern and are less worried about Trump’s health.
In a New York Times/Siena poll released in March, 73 percent of registered voters said that Biden was too old to be an effective president, compared with 42 percent who said the same about Trump.
As the war enters its 844th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Tuesday, June 18, 2024.
Fighting
At least 22 people, including three children, were injured in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s east-central Poltava region. Poltava Governor Filip Pronin posted footage of himself at the scene of the attack, which he said caused major damage to residential buildings and cut power supplies to thousands of people.
Regional authorities in the southern region of Kherson, which is partially occupied by Russia, said a 50-year-old civilian was killed in a Russian drone attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces were pushing Russian troops out of the northeastern Kharkiv region where Moscow seized several villages near the border last month. Vitaly Ganchev, a Russia-appointed official in occupied areas of the Kharkiv region, said Ukraine’s military was pouring men and equipment into the area and that the “fiercest clashes” were in Vovchansk, 5km (three miles) inside the border, and near Lyptsy.
Politics and diplomacy
Russian President Vladimir Putin will arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday for a two-day visit as the two countries deepen their relationship. In a letter published in North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper, Putin thanked the country for supporting the war in Ukraine and promised support for Pyongyang’s efforts to defend its interests despite what he called “US pressure, blackmail and military threats”.
US Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will go on trial on June 26 in the city of Yekaterinburg. The Sverdlovsk Regional Court said the trial will be held “behind closed doors”. Gershkovich, who has been jailed since his arrest in March last year, is accused of spying. He and the Wall Street Journal deny the charges. Washington has designated the reporter as “arbitrarily detained”. The Kremlin said that contacts had taken place with the United States over a possible prisoner exchange involving Gershkovich.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg accused China of “fuelling the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II” even as it seeks to maintain good relations with the West, arguing that the security alliance needed to impose costs on China over its support for Russia. The US last week imposed sanctions on several Chinese companies it said were involved in the sale of dual-use technologies to Russia. Beijing says it is neutral in the war, but has not condemned Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
The nuclear-powered Russian submarine Kazan on its way out of the port in Havana after a five-day fleet visit [Ariel Ley/AP Photo]
Putin sacked four deputy defence ministers in a continuing reshuffle that began last month when he unexpectedly removed longstanding defence minister Sergei Shoigu. Anna Tsivileva, the daughter of Putin’s late cousin, was among those appointed to replace them. Her responsibilities will include improving social and housing support for military personnel. She previously headed a state fund to support those involved in the war in Ukraine.
A fleet of Russian vessels, including a nuclear-powered submarine, left Havana’s port after a five-day visit to Cuba following military drills in the Atlantic Ocean. Their next destination was unclear, although US officials have said that they could possibly also stop in Venezuela.
Weapons
One soldier was killed and eight other people injured in an explosion at a Czech military base where Ukrainian troops have been training since late 2022. Military police spokeswoman Katerina Mlynkova told the AFP news agency the soldiers involved “were not foreigners”.
Bangkok, Thailand – Thailand’s nearly one-month-long Senate selection process kicked off last week, amid accusations that the system is skewed in favour of the conservative establishment, and as legal threats against the opposition risk derailing tentative steps back towards democracy.
After seizing power in a 2014 coup, the Thai military directly appointed 250 people to the upper house in a move seen as an attempt to stymie meaningful political reform as the country transitioned back to a flawed democracy. After last year’s election, the senators blocked the progressive Move Forward Party (MFP) from forming a government, even though it had won the most seats in parliament and the largest share of the vote.
The Senate’s role in choosing the prime minister was temporary, however, as was its direct appointment by the military. This month a new batch of 200 senators is being selected from the leaders of key industries, in a complicated weeks-long process where only registered candidates are allowed to vote.
Candidates must be over 40 years old, have 10 years of experience in their field, not be a current member of a political party, and pay a registration fee of 2,500 baht ($68). Ten candidates will be selected from 20 occupational groups, including government, law, education, arts and culture, and women’s affairs. The final round of voting is expected on June 26, with results announced on July 2.
“The new lot of senators will have two key roles,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor and senior fellow at the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
“Constitutional change requires one-third of the 200 new senators. Equally important, the new senators will have oversight over appointments of the Election Commission and Constitutional Court.”
The current constitution was promulgated under the military in 2017, and calls for it to be amended or scrapped have grown in recent years. Rulings by the Election Commission and Constitutional Court, meanwhile, have seen pro-democracy political candidates and parties dissolved and banned.
Most recently, they have turned their attention to MFP. The Election Commission recommended that the Constitutional Court dissolve the progressive party based on its calls to reform the controversial lese-majeste law, which criminalises criticism of the monarchy. The Constitutional Court is still deliberating and could announce its decision on Tuesday. It previously ruled in January that MFP’s reform attempts were tantamount to attempting to overthrow the monarchy.
Candidates must be checked beforehand to make sure they are over the age of 40 and have 10 years of experience in their field. They must also not be a member of a political party [Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo]
Thitinan said that given the continued importance of the Senate, it was “being contested fiercely”.
“There will likely be moves by the conservative establishment, including the Election Commission, to make sure the Senate does not end up with enough progressive voices to change the constitution,” he said.
Even the constitutionality of the senate selection has been challenged, with the Constitutional Court expected to deliver a verdict on its legality on Tuesday morning.
Ruchapong Chamjirachaikul, a member of the legal advocacy group iLaw, said the process was “neither fair nor democratic” and that was intentional.
“The problems you see in the process are a feature not a bug… a lot of them are by design,” he said, adding that the process should not be called an “election” but a “selection”.
Chamjirachaikul said his team has already received some reports of irregularities, like former generals registering to represent the agriculture sector, or people being offered 10,000 baht ($270) to register and vote for a specific candidate.
‘Tainted’
June, a 26-year-old assistant to progressive candidate Nongyao Nawarat, a retired professor of sociology at Chiang Mai University, said the “unfair selection system” was designed to prevent young people from participating.
She said the approach showed the establishment was scared of younger voters and their demands for reform, and would do whatever it took to block real change. Before the election, progressive activists and candidates activated their grassroots networks, encouraging as many people sympathetic to the movement as possible to register as candidates.
“Of course, conservatives do similar things,” June said. “And they still [have] the advantage of spending more money. But I still believe in the power of the people on our side.”
Because of the way the process is structured, it is impossible to counter conservative organising without encouraging contacts to register with the intention of voting for somebody else. But Chamjirachaikul said the progressive strategy was to be “open and transparent”.
“We have a public event and ask any candidate to come to this event, the press are allowed to be there, and they will introduce themselves in the open,” he said. “You have to say what you stand for – new constitution, amending lese-majeste, democratic principles, are you against another coup?”
The previous Senate, seen here during an April vote on same-sex marriage, was appointed by the military [Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP]
Chamjirachaikul stressed candidates needed to sign up, even if they did not expect or even want to win a seat, in order to vote.
“We don’t pay anyone, we don’t even have the money to pay anyone. But if you’re over 40, have the money, have the time and want to contribute to democracy, you can register and vote for somebody who shares the same vision of democracy for Thailand as you,” he said.
He said the eventual senate will lack representation and accountability, which will further tarnish the body’s reputation, already “tainted” by years of acting as a proxy for the military.
“When you don’t have clear representation you don’t have clear accountability, unlike MPs who would have to be confronted by their own constituencies, but who are these new senators’ constituencies? There’s no one,” Chamjirachaikul said.
However, even with the selection issues, Thitinan said the next senate would “still be more representative of the Thai people compared to the expired 250-member senate which was chosen by the military”.
This is in line with other modest reforms since last year’s election, which saw the moderate pro-democracy Pheu Thai Party form a coalition government with conservative and military-backed parties.
But Chamjirachaikul said it was worth asking why Thailand needed a Senate at all. “We as Thais should be able to debate and discuss on this openly,” he said. “We’ve seen enough of the Senate.”
June said regardless of what the establishment did to hold back the tide, youth activists would continue fighting for change.
“We are the new generation. We will do whatever it takes to change this country for the better. It may not happen in a single session or in a single night. But it will gradually change.”
The United States surgeon general has called on Congress to require social media platforms to carry warning labels on their effects on young people’s lives, similar to those now mandatory on cigarette boxes.
In a Monday opinion piece in The New York Times, Dr Vivek Murthy said that social media is a contributing factor in the mental health crisis among young people.
“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe,” Murthy said. “Evidence from tobacco studies show that warning labels can increase awareness and change behavior.”
Murthy, who acts as the top government spokesperson on public health and is known as the nation’s doctor, said that the use of just a warning label would not make social media safe for young people, but would be a part of the steps needed.
Social media use is prevalent among young people, with up to 95 percent of those aged 13 to 17 saying that they use a social media platform, and more than a third saying that they use social media “almost constantly,” according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center.
“Social media today is like tobacco decades ago: It’s a product whose business model depends on addicting kids. And as with cigarettes, a surgeon general’s warning label is a critical step toward mitigating the threat to children,” Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, an organisation dedicated to ending marketing to children, said in a statement.
Getting the labels on social media platforms would take congressional action – and it is not clear how quickly that might happen, even with apparent bipartisan unity around child safety online. Lawmakers have held multiple congressional hearings on child online safety and legislation is in the works. Still, the last federal law aimed at protecting children online was enacted in 1998, six years before Facebook’s founding.
“I am hoping that would be combined with a lot of other work that Congress has been trying to do to improve the safety and design and privacy of social media products,” said Dr Jenny Radesky, a developmental behavioural paediatrician at the University of Michigan and leader at the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Those two things would have to go hand in hand, because there’s so much that Congress can do to follow the steps of the United Kingdom and the European Union in passing laws that take into account what kids need when they’re interacting with digital products.”
Industry pushback
Even with Congressional approval, warning labels would likely be challenged in the courts by tech companies.
“Putting a warning label on online speech isn’t just scientifically unsound, it’s at odds with the constitutional right to free speech,” said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the tech industry policy group Chamber of Progress. “It’s surprising to see the US surgeon general attacking social media when teens themselves say it provides an important outlet for social connection.”
Last year, Murthy warned that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that social media is safe for children and teens. He said at the time that policymakers needed to address the harms of social media the same way they regulate things like car seats, baby formula, medication and other products children use.
To comply with federal regulation, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms but children have been shown to easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent.
Other measures social platforms have taken to address concerns about children’s mental health can also be easily circumvented. For instance, TikTok introduced a default 60-minute time limit for users under 18. But once the limit is reached, minors can simply enter a passcode to keep watching.
Murthy believes the impact of social media on young people should be a more pressing concern.
“Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food? These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability,” he wrote.
In January the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee as parents worry that they’re not doing enough to protect young people. The executives touted existing safety tools on their platforms and the work they’ve done with nonprofits and law enforcement to protect minors.
Murthy said on Monday that Congress needs to implement legislation that will protect young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content.
“The measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use,” Murthy wrote.
Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal supported Murthy’s message Monday.
“We are pleased that the Surgeon General — America’s top doctor — continues to bring attention to the harmful impact that social media has on our children,” the senators said in a prepared statement.
Israeli forces battled with Palestinian groups in Rafah and elsewhere in southern Gaza despite the Israeli military’s announcement on Sunday of tactical pauses in operations to allow humanitarian aid to enter, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticised plans announced by the military to hold daily pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into the besieged Palestinian enclave that has been under relentless Israeli bombardment for more than eight months.
Lazzarini, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the main organisation delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, said that there had been no pause in the fighting.
“There has been information that such a decision has been taken, but the political level says none of this decision has been taken,” Lazzarini told a press conference on Monday.
“So for the time being, I can tell you that hostilities continue in Rafah and in the south of Gaza. And that operationally, nothing has changed yet.”
The Israeli military said on Monday that its forces were continuing operations in the Rafah area, which included ground fighting.
Residents said Israeli forces were advancing deeper into the central and western areas of Rafah. Hamas forces were fighting from close range inside the Shaboura camp in the heart of Rafah, according to the group’s armed wing and residents, who reported hearing sounds of non-stop explosions and gunfire.
The Israeli military had announced at the weekend the daily pauses from 05:00 GMT until 16:00 GMT in the area from the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, to the Salah al-Din Road and then northwards.
It later clarified that operations would continue in Rafah, the main focus of its ongoing assault in southern Gaza.
International humanitarian officials have repeatedly said that Israeli inspections, ongoing fighting, and looting by desperate residents have impeded aid deliveries. Israeli ground troops have been operating in the southern city of Rafah since early May. They have since sealed shut the vital Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
Before the Rafah ground operation, there was already an inadequate flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the number of trucks entering the Gaza Strip’s south stood in the hundreds – not nearly enough to sustain the daily needs of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million.
‘Hell on earth’
“As we have reiterated, humanitarian operations in Gaza must be fully facilitated, and all impediments must be lifted,” UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told The Associated Press on Monday. “We need to be able to deliver aid safely throughout Gaza.”
With the Israeli assault on Gaza in its ninth month, Haq said, displaced Palestinians in the territory urgently need food, water, sanitation, shelter and healthcare, “with many living near piles of solid waste, heightening health risks”.
He said Israel needs to ensure that the movement of aid convoys and staff members through checkpoints is expedited, that all roads are operational, and that fuel – which is in critically short supply – enters Gaza regularly.
Meanwhile, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the impoverished and blockaded Gaza Strip has been turned into “hell on earth” as famine looms.
He said humanitarian aid is obstructed and politicised while hunger and disease spread, “and humanitarian workers, health care workers, and journalists have all endured unacceptable losses”.
Echoing his remarks, Gaza’s Government Media Office accused Israel and the United States of “purposefully” worsening famine-like conditions in Gaza by “withholding humanitarian aid as a tool for political pressure”.
In a statement on Monday, the media office accused Israel and the US administration of “deliberately aggravating the humanitarian situation” in Gaza to achieve political goals.
Separately on Monday, Norway said that it was increasing its funding to UNRWA by 100 million kroner ($9.3m).
UNRWA was plunged into a crisis in January, when Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.
The allegations prompted several countries, including top donor the US, to suspend funding to the agency, though many have since resumed payments.
“UNRWA is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza,” Norway’s Minister for International Development Anne Beathe Tvinnereim said in a statement.
“The war, accusations made by Israel, continuous attacks on the organisation and funds withheld by major donors have put UNRWA in an extremely difficult financial situation,” she said.
An independent review of UNRWA, led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” but said Israel had yet to provide evidence for its main allegations.
A senior United States diplomat has met Israeli leaders and will later visit Lebanon as part of a push by Washington to defuse tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
US envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Israel on Monday and held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Gallant’s office said the minister “provided a situation assessment of developments on Israel’s northern border, emphasizing the daily attacks conducted by Hezbollah against Israel’s northern communities and detailing the [Israeli military’s] efforts to thwart Hezbollah terrorists and infrastructure”.
“Minister Gallant and Mr Hochstein discussed the security situation at length and its impact on the region,” it added.
Hochstein’s visit comes amid growing fears of an all-out war between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah that could potentially lead to an even wider regional conflict.
Hezbollah had stepped up attacks against Israel in the past week after the killing of one of its top commanders in an Israeli air raid on southern Lebanon.
But the Iran-aligned group, which has been targeting Israeli military positions nearly daily since the war in Gaza broke out, has not announced a new attack against Israel since Saturday evening.
It is not clear whether the lull, which coincided with the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, is linked to Hochstein’s visit to the region.
On Monday, the Israeli military said it killed a Hezbollah member in a drone strike, describing him as a “central operative” in the group’s rockets division.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Hochstein is holding indirect talks with Hezbollah, which is designated as a “terrorist” organisation by Washington, through Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a close ally of the group.
The sides are discussing a “preliminary agreement” to end the hostilities, according to the newspaper.
Later on Monday, the administration of President Joe Biden stressed that it does not want to see escalation at the Lebanon-Israel border and suggested that the US is advancing a proposal to avert a large-scale conflict.
“There is a diplomatic framework that we believe is reachable that would resolve this conflict without a full-on war,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Hochstein’s official title is special presidential coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security. But after he helped broker a deal in 2022 to resolve a maritime border dispute between Lebanon and Israel over oilfields in the Mediterranean Sea, he became a de facto US envoy for the two countries.
He has visited the region frequently in past months.
The US has said it wants a diplomatic resolution to the crisis at the Lebanon-Israel border. Hezbollah has said it will not halt its attacks until the war on Gaza ends.
The Lebanese organisation started attacking military bases in northern Israel the day after the outbreak of the war on Gaza on October 7 in what it says is a “support front” to back Palestinian armed groups.
Israel responded by bombing villages across southern Lebanon and targeting Hezbollah positions. Despite the frequent violence, the confrontations have largely been limited to the border area.
Israeli officials have promised to push Hezbollah back from their country’s northern borders. “We want this to be resolved either diplomatically or militarily,” Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said on Monday.
“The current state of affairs is not a sustainable reality – 5,000 rockets raining down on our north, making the north uninhabitable.”
The violence has displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border, piling pressure on Netanyahu’s government, which is struggling to deter Hezbollah and achieve its war aims in Gaza.
Netanyahu dissolved his war cabinet on Monday, eight days after his political rival Benny Gantz quit the emergency government that was formed to oversee the war in Gaza.
Some Israeli officials have been calling for a more forceful response to Hezbollah’s attacks.
For its part, the US has been pushing for a truce in Gaza that it said would pave the way to restoring calm between Hezbollah and Israel.
“Our assessment of the situation continues to be that the best way to get a diplomatic resolution in the north – which we think all sides ultimately prefer – is to reach a ceasefire in Gaza,” Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said.
Last week, Gallant rejected a French proposal for Israel, France and the US to form a working group to help avoid war at the Lebanese border.
“As we fight a just war, defending our people, France has adopted hostile policies against Israel,” Gallant said in a statement. “In doing so, France ignores the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli children, women and men. Israel will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France.”
Euro appearances: 18 Euro titles: 1 Best finish: Winners (2016) Euros record: W19 D10 L10 Goals scored: 56 Biggest win: 3-0 (most recent vs Hungary in Euro 2020) Player to watch: Bruno Fernandes World ranking: 6th Team nickname: Os Navegadores (The Navigators) Group fixtures:
June 18: Portugal vs Czech Republic (Leipzig Stadium, Leipzig, 9pm local/19:00 GMT)
June 22: Turkey vs Portugal (BVB Stadion, Dortmund, 6pm local/16:00 GMT)
June 26: Georgia vs Portugal (Arena AufSchalke, Gelsenkirchen, 9pm local/19:00 GMT)
It only took six short years for the Euro 2016 champions Portugal to hit rock bottom at the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
The devastating defeat to Morocco in the World Cup quarterfinal left them with the unenviable record of just one win in the knockout stages of a major competition since that spectacular Euro 2016 triumph.
In the aftermath of their World Cup exit, coach Fernando Santos called time on his stint with the national team.
As the tears streamed down Cristiano Ronaldo’s face as he walked down the player’s tunnel in Qatar, you felt as though he would follow suit.
Portugal’s darkest moment. A benched Cristiano Ronaldo and coach Fernando Santos look dejected after the match as Portugal are eliminated from the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 by Morocco [Paul Childs/Reuters]
Santos’s final act as Portugal manager – even before his side fell to Morocco at the quarterfinal stage – had seen him drop Ronaldo from the starting lineup for each of Portugal’s knockout matches at the Qatar World Cup. That his replacement, Goncalo Ramo, went on to score a hat-trick against Switzerland in the round of 16 felt like the final nail in the coffin of the superstar’s long and illustrious international career.
But it hasn’t proved to be the final act with the now 39-year-old Ronaldo set to play in a record sixth European football championship at Euro 2024 in Germany.
One of the first things Roberto Martinez is reported to have done after taking over as Portugal manager was to meet every member of the 26-man side that had been picked for the World Cup in Qatar. All of them, Ronaldo included, expressed their desire to continue with the national team.
Of those 26 players, 21 have been named in Martinez’s squad for Germany. Among them is 41-year-old defender Pepe, who’s been picked more for his importance off the pitch than on it.
“Pepe’s role in the locker room is important, the way he represents the national team shirt,” Martinez said. “When he is fit, he is a very important player. We have a very interesting dressing room because we have players from different generations.
We have a good mix of experience and youngsters. It’s a list of 26 players that will give a good response.”
Manager Roberto Martinez was brought in to instill a winning mentality in the Portugal players after the disappointment of losing at the quarterfinal stage of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 [Pedro Nunes/Reuters]
A new beginning
While the personnel change has been minimal, the energy emanating from the team is hugely different to what it was in Qatar.
A strong qualification campaign has played a role in this – albeit against weak opposition.
Portugal went unbeaten across their 10 Euro 2024 qualifiers, scoring the most goals, 36, of any team and conceding the fewest, two.
Martinez isn’t lacking for firepower in a front line that includes players of the pedigree of Bernardo Silva, Diogo Jota, Goncalo Ramos, Joao Felix and Rafael Leao. But crucially, he has opted to remain with Portugal’s most famous player, Ronaldo, as the talisman of the attack.
Since Martinez took over in January 2023, Ronaldo has started 10 games out of a possible 12 matches, only missing the other two fixtures due to suspension and load management protocols.
The former Real Madrid superstar’s impressive 10 goals in Euro 2024 qualification put him second on the goalscoring charts behind only Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku.
Ronaldo will remain the focus of Portugal’s forward line at Euro 2024, despite being 39 years old [Borut Zivulovic/Reuters]
Questions remain
When assessing Portugal’s chances at Euro 2024, the only caveat is that the highest-ranked team in Portugal’s qualification group was Slovakia at world number 48, making any prospective form evaluation against the top contenders a difficult exercise.
At the Euro 2024 group stage, they will face a much sterner test with matches against the Czech Republic, ranked 36, Poland, ranked 28, and Turkey, ranked 40.
After a year in Saudi Arabia with Al Nassr, all eyes will be transfixed on Ronaldo and how well he will fare against top-ranked opposition upon his return to Europe’s premier nations competition.
Martinez’s debut tournament with Portugal at Euro 2024 is of equal intrigue.
During his time as Belgium boss, Martinez guided the team to a third-place finish at the 2018 World Cup – the highest in their history.
In Euro 2020, Belgium coincidentally knocked out Portugal in the round of 16 but suffered a quarterfinal exit at the hands of eventual winners Italy. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was the lowest point of Martinez’s reign, with the Belgians crashing out at the group stage.
The jury is still out on Martinez’s Belgium tenure and whether or not he underachieved with them. But the one thing he did successfully do with the national side was instill a winning mentality; the Spaniard helped transform Belgium’s reputation from plucky underdogs to serious contenders.
Martinez now finds himself facing a similar task with his current team at Euro 2024.
Many commentators believe the time has come for Portugal to shed the “dark horse” tag they have saddled themselves with in major tournaments. This established – and talent-stacked – squad enters Euro 2024 with the players to win it all but still faces questions about whether they possess the necessary self-belief that was characteristic of the victorious Euro 2016 Portugal side.
⚽ Portugal’s final squad for Euro 2024 ⚽
Captain: Cristiano Ronaldo
Goalkeepers: Diogo Costa (Porto), Jose Sa (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Rui Patricio (AS Roma)
Defenders: Antonio Silva (Benfica), Danilo Pereira (Paris St Germain), Diogo Dalot (Manchester United), Goncalo Inacio (Sporting Lisbon), Joao Cancelo (Barcelona), Nelson Semedo (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Nuno Mendes (Paris Saint-Germain), Pepe (Porto), Ruben Dias (Manchester City)
Midfielders: Bruno Fernandes (Manchester United), Joao Neves (Benfica), Joao Palhinha (Fulham), Otavio Monteiro (Al Nassr), Ruben Neves (Al-Hilal), Vitinha (Paris Saint-Germain)
Forwards: Bernardo Silva (Manchester City), Cristiano Ronaldo (Al Nassr), Diogo Jota (Liverpool), Francisco Conceicao (Porto), Goncalo Ramos (Paris Saint-Germain), Joao Felix (Barcelona), Pedro Neto (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Rafael Leao (AC Milan).
Ivan Schranz’s goal in the seventh minute was enough to allow Slovakia to pull off the shock of the tournament so far.
Slovakia caused the first major upset at the European Football Championship 2024 as Ivan Schranz fired the underdogs to a 1-0 win against Belgium.
Francesco Calzona’s side are 45 spots below third-placed Belgium in FIFA’s world rankings.
But they made a mockery of the supposed quality gap between the teams with a courageous performance in Frankfurt, Germany on Monday.
Calzona, who also served as Napoli’s interim boss in the second half of last season, had admitted he would be “delighted” with a draw.
The Italian got more than he could have dreamed of as Schranz left Belgium reeling in the seventh minute after ending his nine-game international goal drought.
Slovakia’s Ivan Schranz scores what turned out to be the game winner in just the seventh minute against Belgium in Euro 2024 [Lee Smith/Reuters]
Key striker Romelu Lukaku missed a host of chances for Belgium and had a late equaliser controversially disallowed by VAR in the 86th minute after a handball by teammate Lois Openda in the build-up.
Slovakia’s unexpected victory blew Group E wide open, just hours after Romania beat Ukraine 3-0 in Monday’s other match in that pool.
It was a bitter loss for Belgium, who are in danger of once again failing to fulfil their potential at a major tournament.
Belgium’s golden generation has lost much of its lustre since they crashed out of the 2022 World Cup in the group stage.
The Red Devils fell at the quarterfinals in the last two editions of the European Championship, making a third-place finish at the 2018 World Cup the high-water mark of a talented but underachieving team once hailed as a potential dynasty.
UN agencies say 64 people are missing after shipwrecks off the coast of southern Italy.
At least 11 people have died and 64 others are missing after two shipwrecks off southern Italy, according to a German charity, the Italian coast guard and United Nations agencies.
The German aid group RESQSHIP, which operates the Nadir rescue ship, said it picked up 51 people from a sinking wooden boat, including two who were unconscious, and found 10 bodies trapped in the lower deck of the vessel.
“Our thoughts are with their families. We are angry and sad,” the group posted on X on Monday.
RESQSHIP said the survivors were handed over to the Italian coast guard and taken ashore on Monday morning, while the Nadir was making its way to the island of Lampedusa, towing the wooden boat with the bodies of the deceased.
🔴(2/2) The unconscious are currently receiving medical attention and await a critically needed emergency evacuation. The 10 dead are in the flooded lower deck of the boat.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a joint statement that the refugees and migrants intercepted by the German charity came from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The second shipwreck took place about 200km (125 miles) east of the Italian region of Calabria, as a boat that had set off from Turkey eight days earlier caught fire and overturned, the UN agencies said.
They said 64 people were missing at sea, while 11 were rescued and taken ashore to the Calabrian town of Roccella Ionica by the Italian coast guard, along with the body of a woman.
The coast guard earlier said it was looking for an unspecified number of missing people, with the help of the European Union border agency Frontex.
The vessel, a sailing boat found partially sunk, was first spotted by a French boat in international waters where Italian and Greek search-and-rescue zones overlap, the coast guard said.
The UN agencies said the refugees and migrants involved in the second shipwreck came from Iran, Syria and Iraq.
According to a March report by IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, more than 27,000 people have died in the Mediterranean Sea over the last decade, whilst trying to reach southern Europe from northern Africa.
While most of the deaths in the central Mediterranean were documented off the coast of Libya, the IOM has also recorded an “increase in departures and, correspondingly, shipwrecks” off the coast of Tunisia. At least 729 people died off the Tunisian coast in 2023, compared to 462 the previous year.
When the IOM’s project began in 2014, European sentiment was more sympathetic to the plight of refugees, and the Italian government had launched “Mare Nostrum,” a major search-and-rescue mission that saved thousands of lives.
But with anti-immigration political parties steadily gaining influence across Europe, governments have attempted to curb migration flows to their countries by pledging funds to countries across the Mediterranean such as Tunisia and Egypt.
The UN and other NGOs have again called on EU governments to step up Mediterranean search-and-rescue efforts and expand legal and safe migration channels, so that migrants “are not forced to risk their lives at sea”.
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