6 Big News Stories Overnight - Thursday, July 2, 2026

U.S. Soccer Wins

U.S. Soccer reports:

The U.S. Men’s National Team is marching on to the Round of 16 in FIFA World Cup 2026 following a resounding 2-0 shutout victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina in a Round of 32 match at San Francisco Bay Area Stadium that was bathed in red, white and blue. A goal at the very end of the first half from striker Folarin Balogun and a magnificent free-kick moment from midfielder Malik Tillman led the U.S. to its first win in the FIFA World Cup knockout stage since 2002 and delivered Mauricio Pochettino his third victory at a FIFA World Cup, the most all-time for a USMNT manager.

The USMNT overcame adversity when its first goal scorer on the day, Balogun, was shown a red card in the 64th minute, leading the U.S. to face its biggest test of the tournament yet – playing with 10 men for around 36 minutes of regulation and extra time. Not only did the U.S. show a determined and mature response while playing a man down – the USA rose to the occasion to double its lead and keep its European opponent scoreless for the USA’s second clean sheet in four tournament matches.

The hard-earned, collective result was the USMNT’s second win in program history in the knockout stage of the FIFA World Cup. Most importantly, the USA’s journey in FIFA World Cup 2026 on home soil continues. The U.S. now advances to the Round of 16 to face Belgium on July 6 in Seattle.

The U.S. earned its place tonight in the tournament’s first-ever Round of 32 following a successful group stage in which the U.S. scored the most goals (eight) and collected the most points (six) it ever has in the FIFA World Cup group stage. Wins over Paraguay on June 12 in Los Angeles Stadium and Australia on June 19 paved the way for a first-place finish in Group D with one game to spare, the third time in history the USMNT has won its group.

Maltese businessman paid hitmen €150,000 to kill Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, jury hears

The Guardian reports:

One of Malta’s wealthiest businessmen plotted to kill the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, paying €150,000 (£130,000) for three hitmen to carry out the murder, a jury has heard.

Yorgen Fenech, the 44-year-old heir to a property empire that includes the Hilton Malta hotel and casino, is on trial for the 2017 murder.

Caruana Galizia died after a bomb planted in her car was detonated. A magazine publisher, newspaper columnist and blogger, she was one of the most recognised media figures in the country. Her reporting on leading government and business figures had made her a target of repeated attacks by politicians and their supporters, and her violent death caused outrage across Europe.

Fenech was arrested seven years ago. After numerous delays and his release on bail in February after the time during which he could legally be held expired, his trial began on Wednesday morning at the courts of justice in Malta’s capital, Valletta.

PHOTO: Jeff Kingma, Unsplash

Pub-goers triumph over Labour-run council which threatened to ban riverside drinking

The Telegraph reports:

Pub-goers have triumphed over a Labour-run council which threatened to ban them from drinking along the riverside of a west London suburb.

Three pubs in Chiswick were advised to remove all seating on the river path outside their venues by Hounslow council pending an investigation.

But after an outcry from locals and regulars, the council has made an agreement with the pubs allowing for the chairs to be returned. 

The Bull’s Head, The City Barge and The Bell & Crown in Strand-on-the-Green had been told by Hounslow council licensing officers that they must remove the street furniture by Monday.

Crypto Brought Trump a Huge Windfall, Even as Many Investors Lost Big

The New York Times reports:

A large chunk of the $2 billion haul President Trump took in last year came as hundreds of thousands of his fans and other investors bet on a speculative cryptocurrency called $TRUMP, hoping its value would soar with his return to the White House.

But while Mr. Trump amassed an eye-popping $636 million from the cryptocurrency, known as a memecoin, many of his followers who heeded his call to purchase the coin came out losers.

That outcome, documented by an independent analysis of trades and fees paid out from $TRUMP token sales, is drawing renewed attention this week, as Mr. Trump for the first time has detailed the extraordinary $1.4 billion in revenue he secured just from the cryptocurrency industry since he returned to the White House.

The president’s 927-page financial disclosure showed how Mr. Trump and his family reaped huge financial rewards in 2025 through his money-losing Trump Media venture and a separate cryptocurrency firm called World Liberty Financial, even as routine investors suffered vast losses.

PHOTO: White House

National Test Scores Are Dropping. This State Is Fighting Back.

The WSJ reports:

On a weekday morning this summer, Amy Cox instructed a small group of third-graders to rub their palms together, then clap out syllables for the words “apple,” “turtle” and “table.”

The children had encountered the “-le” syllable the past school year, but were repeating the lesson to make sure they grasped it. They were preparing to read a story that featured similar words.

“You’re going to hear that syllable make an ‘uhl’ sound,” Cox explained. “Get your hands warmed up—we’re going to clap the syllables, ready?” The class then chanted the next word on the screen in front of them: “Peo-ple!”

American children by many measures are worse at reading and math than they were a decade ago. The most recent eighth-grade reading scores on a key national assessment hit their lowest point since 1990; grade four scored at pre-2003 levels. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the declines, and while there have been some signs of recovery, many students still haven’t bounced back.

As schools across the nation search for remedies, one of the most closely watched efforts is playing out in Tennessee. The state’s schools—once among the U.S.’s worst-performing—have made gains with intensive tutoring, mandatory summer school for struggling pupils and a back-to-basics approach that emphasizes phonics.

From 2022 to 2025, Tennessee ranked second out of 38 states in math improvement and fourth out of 35 states in reading gains, according to the Education Scorecard, an analysis of national test scores by Harvard and Stanford universities. The state’s most recent scores on a key national test placed it 17th out of 50 states and Washington, D.C., and first in the South, up from near the bottom in 2009, according to a ranking by the University of Oklahoma.

PHOTO: GoLocal

Meta Looks to Expand

Bloomberg reports:

Meta Platforms is developing plans for a cloud infrastructure business that will sell access to AI computing power and models, setting up a new vector of competition with industry leaders like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Meta, which has been rushing to secure expensive data centers and other infrastructure to fuel its own artificial-intelligence ambitions, is said to be forming a business to generate revenue from excess computing power sold to outside customers.

Potential plans include selling access to various AI models that are hosted on Meta’s existing AI infrastructure—an approach similar to AWS’s Bedrock offering—and selling access to “raw” computing capacity, akin to other so-called neocloud businesses like CoreWeave. 

Development of these new business lines is part of Meta Compute, an internal initiative to build and manage the company’s AI infrastructure efforts.