A male passenger groped a mother and her underage daughter while aboard an international flight last summer after being overserved alcohol by Delta Air Lines, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week in New York.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. Eastern District Court of New York, alleges that Delta flight attendants continued to serve alcohol to an intoxicated passenger even after the mother and her 16-year-old daughter repeatedly told them that the man was making them feel “unsafe” and inappropriately touching them.

The unnamed plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that throughout the duration of the nearly nine-hour flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to Athens, Greece, the man made obscene gestures, sexually assaulted, and yelled at the 16-year-old girl seated next to him on the flight. Delta flight attendants served the man “approximately ten vodka on ice drinks” among other alcoholic beverages, during the course of the flight according to the lawsuit.

The mother, who was sitting on the other seat next to her daughter, said she repeatedly “begged” flight attendants to stop serving the man alcohol.

Delta flight attendants served the man “approximately ten vodka on ice drinks” – among other alcoholic beverages –during the course of the flight, according to the lawsuit.

The mother and daughter both allege in the complaint that flight attendants dismissed their claims and downplayed their concerns about the man.

At one point on the flight the lawsuit alleges that the young girl began having a “panic attack” after becoming “terrified that no one was helping her or her mother find safety and that they were stuck on this aircraft, in a small row alone with the intoxicated Delta passenger.”

Eventually another passenger on the flight who saw the young girl crying and afraid offered to switch seats with her for the rest of the flight, according to the lawsuit.

When the flight landed in Greece, the man was allowed to leave the aircraft with no police intervention despite the mother’s request that authorities arrest him in Athens, the lawsuit said.

At least 11 “complete bodies” and dozens of body parts, including human heads, were recovered on Wednesday from a major prison in Ecuador, after days of deadly prison clashes.

The remains were collected at the Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where violence first erupted on Saturday.

Thirty-one people are dead, according to a tweet from the Attorney General’s Office on Tuesday. However, the National Forensic Service of Ecuador has cautioned that the official death toll remains to be fully determined, as many body parts must still be identified.

Ecuador’s prison system has long been the main theater of violence in the country, with hundreds of inmates killed in recent years as members of competing criminal organizations square off.

Security forces have often struggled to confront the gangs inside overcrowded prisons, where inmates often take control of branches of the penitentiaries and run criminal networks from behind bars, according to Ecuadorian authorities.

On Tuesday, Ecuador’s prison service announced that it had successfully executed an operation to extract prison guards taken hostage by inmates, freeing at least 106 guards across five different prisons.

“Our action continues…” the prison authority added on Twitter.

Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso has also signed a decree declaring a state of emergency across the country’s entire penitentiary system for the next 60 days.

Over the past two years, Lasso has named five different directors of the prison service, but none have proven able to reduce the violence.

Russia may be forced to use a nuclear weapon if Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeds, senior Russian official Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday – the latest in a series of nuclear threats made during Moscow’s invasion by the key ally of President Vladimir Putin.

“Just imagine that the offensive… in tandem with NATO, succeeded and ended up with part of our land being taken away. Then we would have to use nuclear weapons by virtue of the stipulations of the Russian Presidential Decree,” said Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, in a Telegram post.

“There simply wouldn’t be any other solution,” the former Russian president added. “Our enemies should pray to our fighters that they do not allow the world to go up in nuclear flames.”

Medvedev, who served as president of Russia from 2008 to 2012, has struck a bellicose tone throughout Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, repeatedly raising the specter of nuclear conflict.

Last April, he warned of Russian nuclear expansion should Sweden and Finland join NATO. Helsinki joined the defense alliance later that month, while Stockholm’s path to NATO membership was cleared earlier this month after Turkey dropped its objections.

In September, Medvedev said strategic nuclear weapons could be used to defend territories incorporated into Russia from Ukraine.

And in January, as NATO member states debated new weapons shipments to Ukraine, Medvedev said defeat for Russia in the war could lead to nuclear conflict.

“The loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram in January. “Nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts on which their fate depends.

“This should be obvious to anyone. Even to a Western politician who has retained at least some trace of intelligence.”

Medvedev’s remarks Sunday again raise the possibility that Russia could potentially lose the war following nearly 18 months of attrition – a rare admission from a senior Russian official.

They also came just hours after Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Kyiv of attacking Moscow with drones. Three drones were intercepted Sunday, but a business and shopping development in the west of the Russian capital was hit, the ministry said.

Nuclear rhetoric

The United States has previously warned Russia against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, both through private direct communications, as well as public channels, including at last year’s UN General Assembly.

Last month, Putin said Russia had moved a first batch of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, claiming they were placed there for “deterrence.”

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin said the rest of the tactical nuclear weapons Russia intends to move to Belarus would be transferred “by the end of the summer or by the end of the year.”

The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said it had “no reason to doubt” Putin’s claim that nuclear weapons were in Belarus.

But US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at the time that the US has “not seen any reason to adjust our own nuclear posture nor any indication Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.”

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said last month that in the face of aggression, he would show “no hesitation” in using the Russian tactical nuclear weapons stationed on Belarusian soil.

But the senior DIA officials said they do not believe Lukashenko would have any control over the arsenal. It would most likely be entirely controlled by Russia, the officials said.

Russia has about 4,477 deployed and reserve nuclear warheads, including around 1,900 tactical nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

A Brussels court on Tuesday found six out of ten suspects guilty of “terrorist murder” in the 2016 Brussels attacks, according to Belgian public broadcaster RTBF.

Mohamed Abrini, Oussama Atar, Osama Krayem, Salah Abdeslam, Ali El Haddad Asufi and Bilal El Makhoukhi were all found guilty of terrorist murder, according to RTBF.

The Brussels court established a terrorist motive behind the attacks, ruling that the group’s intention was to intimidate the Belgian population and kill as many people as possible, RTBF reported.

The six men, alongside Hervé Bayingana Muhirwa and Sofien Ayari, were also found guilty of participating in the activities of a terrorist organization, according to RTBF.

The trial began last year to determine whether 10 men played a part in the suicide bombings on March 22, 2016 that killed dozens of people and injured over 300. The court found that four further people should be added to the list of people killed in the attacks, bringing the death toll up to 36 people, according to RTBF.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, which saw suicide bombers detonate several explosions in Brussels airport and a metro station in the city.

In 2022, Abdeslam was also found guilty of carrying out a series of deadly gun and bomb attacks in Paris in 2015. Abdeslam, who is believed to be only surviving member of the group that carried out the French attacks, was given a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole by a French court.

Meanwhile, Oussama Atar who was absent from the Brussels trial, is presumed to have been killed in Syria, according to RTBF.

Brothers Smail Farisi and Ibrahim Farisi were both acquitted of the charge of participation in activities of a terrorist group, according to RTBF. The two brothers were consequently not guilty of all charges filed against them.

Tuesday’s ruling marks the end of Belgium’s largest ever trial which included evidence from over 370 witnesses and experts, according to Reuters.

When the attacks took place in 2016, Belgium had been a focus for counterterrorism officials because of the large number of Belgian foreign fighters who have traveled to join ISIS and other terror groups in Syria and Iraq – more per capita than any other European Union country.

Four Australian army aircrew members who were aboard a helicopter that crashed into the sea on Friday have now been declared dead, according to Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles on Monday.

Efforts to rescue Captain Danniel Lyon, Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent, Warrant Officer Class Two Joseph Laycock and Corporal Alexander Naggs have now turned to an effort to recover their bodies.

“The loss of these four men is as significant and meaningful as the loss of anyone who has worn our nations uniform. If it is, as we imagine it to be, they died on Friday night making a difference,” Marles said.

The crew was forced to “ditch” the MRH-90 Taipan helicopter into the sea near Hamilton Island off the east coast of Australia late Friday, during an exercise that was part of joint drills with the United States.

Significant wreckage of the MRH-90 helicopter has now been located, Marles said, indicating the men likely died in the “catastrophic” incident late Friday.

Marles said the “determined recovery effort involving hundreds of defense force personnel” is underway, saying there will be a “full investigation” to understand exactly what happened.

The aircraft “impacted waters” near the Lindeman Island, off the coast of the state of Queensland. A search operation involving both search and rescue aircraft and sea vessels is under way, according to the Australian Defense Ministry.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said “it has been a very difficult weekend for our nation” as he motioned the Australian parliament on Monday to mourn the servicemen who died.

“They were soldiers, and they were sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, friends, and today our deepest sympathies are with the people who love them, and the people that they love,” Albanese said.

He said this “terrible incident has provided a stark reminder that there are no safe or easy days for those who serve in our country’s name.”

The mission was a part of large-scale military drills involving the United States, known as Talisman Sabre. The drills are held every other year, alternating between the two countries, and also often involve other allied forces.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who were both in Australia, spoke of those who went missing in the crash.

“We are thinking of the families, their friends, comrades,” Blinken said. “For everything they’ve been doing to the freedom that we share, and that is what unites us more than anything else and we are stepping up with assistance,” he added.

Austin said it’s “always tough” to encounter accidents in training. “But the reason that we trained to such high standards is so that we can be successful and we can protect lives when we are called to answer any kind of crisis,” he said.

The exercises have been paused to allow all participants “regardless of their nation, to reach out and let their families know what is going on,” Talisman Sabre Exercise Director Brigadier Damien Hill said at the Brisbane press conference.

Friday’s crash is the second time this year the Australian Army has been forced to ditch an MRH-90 Taipan into the sea. Two injuries resulted from the previous incident in March, which was put down to engine failure.

In 2019 the Australian government announced it would retire its entire fleet of Airbus-manufactured Taipans years ahead of schedule, describing the Taipans as a “project of concern for the last decade.”

Although Nigeria has vast energy reserves, more than 92 million people in the country live without access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. Those who are connected to the electricity grid have to contend with frequent power cuts, which cost the country $28 billion a year – almost 2% of its GDP.

As a result, many Nigerians rely on petrol and diesel to fuel the generators that power their homes and businesses.

But generators are noisy, expensive, and pollute the air. Fuel shortages were a key issue in Nigeria’s recent presidential election and have made it increasingly difficult to run generators.

Entrepreneur Olugbenga Olubanjo is offering an alternative. His company Reeddi rents out small, lightweight solar-powered batteries called “Reeddi Capsules” that can power devices including TVs, laptops and refrigerators.

Reeddi was one of the finalists for Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, which recognizes ambitious efforts to fix environmental problems. In a podcast, the Prince of Wales said that “the capsule will have a huge influence on communities where energy poverty is a big deal.”

“I felt obliged to do something”

Olubanjo grew up in Nigeria and says that during his time studying engineering at the University of Ibadan, he often had to work on his assignments while contending with power cuts. As a postgraduate, he studied at the University of Toronto, in Canada. “For the first time in my life, I had access to electricity, and I saw my own productivity quadruple,” Olubanjo said.

Often, when calling family and friends back home, their power would go off, highlighting the energy inequality. “As I had a deep understanding of the community, I felt obliged to do something,” he said.

Reeddi Capsules can be bought along with a solar panel for 199,000 Nigerian Naira (around $430) or rented from “mom-and-pop shops” for 24 hours for around 50 cents, charged using solar panels operated by Reeddi. Olubanjo says one battery can power a TV for around five hours, or a 15-watt fan for 15 hours.

That makes it considerably more expensive than using mains electricity, but it’s often cheaper than running a generator.

Joel Jewell, a trader in Ogun State, says he uses the capsule most days to charge his laptop and phone. Without it, he is forced to rely on his generator during the regular power cuts. “We sometimes don’t (even) get two hours of power supply,” he said. “And Reeddi coming is a kind of an answer to prayer.”

Currently, the batteries are only available in Nigeria, where Olubanjo says they are used by more than 1,600 people, mainly in Lagos and Ogun State. But across the continent, more than 600 million people lack access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.

Olubanjo says organizations in countries including Uganda, Ghana and South Africa have expressed an interest in the Reeddi Capsule. “We’re going to try our best to optimize what we have in Nigeria before we scale it to that broader part of Africa,” he said.

Reeddi is not the only company offering battery packs as an alternative to generators. UK-based Mobile Power rents out batteries in countries including Nigeria, Zambia and Ghana.

Anita Otubu, a senior director of Sustainable Energy for All – a UN-affiliated organization that works to improve access to energy – says “companies like Reeddi are key contributors to reducing Nigeria’s access deficit.”

But she adds that if Reeddi is to scale up its business, it will need to make the battery rentals cheaper “or increase the capacity of each system, to enable Nigerians to have value for money when they purchase such systems.”

For Olubanjo, the company’s biggest challenge is keeping up with demand, with each batch of batteries taking three to four months to produce. But he is confident Reeddi can have a wider impact.

“The goal is to make the future (brighter) for a lot of Nigerians and Africans,” he said.

Sweden’s Sarah Sjöström surpassed another of Michael Phelps’ records at the World Aquatic Championships, setting a new record for the most individual swimming world podium finishes.

The 29-year-old cruised to victory in the 50-meter freestyle to win her 21st individual medal at the world championships, setting a blistering time of 23.62, just 0.01 seconds slower than the world record she set in the semifinals.

On Saturday, the same day as setting the world record in the 50-meter freestyle, Sjöström had also won her fifth consecutive world title in the 50-meter butterfly, becoming the fourth ever swimmer to win a world title in the same event five times.

“I’m super happy with that. It was very busy yesterday, with the world record and the gold medal,” she said, according to Reuters.

Sjöström has won a medal at every world championships, except one, since her debut at the event in 2009 as a 15-year-old, according to the Olympics’ official website.

Several of Phelps’ records have fallen at these world championships in Fukoka, Japan.

On Saturday, American swimmer Katie Ledecky surpassed Phelps for the most career individual world swimming titles after winning her 16th gold, while last week France’s Leon Marchand obliterated Phelps’ last remaining world record time.

Meanwhile, Lithuania’s Ruta Meilutyte set her second world record in two days in the women’s 50-meter breaststroke, taking the gold medal with a time of 29.16 seconds.

The Netherlands’ Demi Vollering sealed her first ever Tour de France Femmes title on Sunday shaking her head in disbelief as she crossed the finish line.

She took overall victory by three minutes and three seconds ahead of her SD Worx teammate Lotte Kopecky,

“I still can’t believe it. Hard work, but it’s not just working hard, it’s believing in it. It’s so much,” Vollering said afterward, according to CyclingNews.

“In the end, you have a dream and you work really hard for it, but you keep yourself a bit calm. You need to find a good balance in your life, and how you can do it, find a relaxed way to do all this. I think this year I feel really stable, good in what I’m doing. I feel like everything comes together, it’s just an amazing season for me.”

Another teammate, Switzerland’s Marlen Reusser, won the final day’s time trial stage while Vollering finished second, completing a dazzling race for SD Worx who won the yellow jersey, green jersey, team classification and four of the race’s eight stages.

However, it was not an entirely straightforward race for women’s cycling most dominant team.

Much was made of a 20-second penalty that Vollering received on Stage 4 for drafting behind her team car while returning to the peloton after a puncture.

But in the end, none of that mattered. Vollering simply rode away from her competitors and effectively secured the yellow jersey on Stage 7, climbing up the fearsome Col du Tourmalet with only the camera and police motorbikes for company, their headlights blazing through the fog.

She won that stage, the most difficult and mountainous in the race, by almost two minutes, consigning her compatriot, longtime rival and last year’s champion Annemiek van Vleuten to defeat.

Van Vleuten, who has already announced that she will retire at the end of the year, finished in fourth in the general classification while Poland’s Kasia Niewiadoma rounded out the overall podium in third.

The world turns upside down during Sam Kerr’s trademark goalscoring celebration. She wheels away from the goal, cartwheels across the pitch and completes it with a backflip, soaking in the rapturous applause of the crowd.

And when a photo of a backflipping Kerr was projected onto the famous sails of the Sydney Opera House to mark successful Australia’s bid for this year’s Women’s World Cup, it confirmed that women’s soccer Down Under has been turned upside down too.

Twenty years previously, the Matildas were so underfunded that they posed for and sold a nude calendar to raise money to help the team prepare for a home Olympics in Sydney.

It was a Disney documentary that detailed their build-up up to this year’s tournament, offering glimpses into the players’ lives outside football: Ellie Carpenter’s rehabilitation after she suffered an ACL injury, the sacrifices Kerr makes being in a long-distance relationship with her partner, as well as Katrina Gorry’s return to the field while juggling motherhood.

As one of the co-hosts, this year’s Women’s World Cup was supposed to be the culmination of all this change; a celebration of Australia’s most beloved team. But it hasn’t quite worked out like that.

Captain, talisman and star striker Kerr suffered a calf injury before the team’s first game, ruling her out for the first two group matches. A shaky 1-0 win against Ireland kicked off the Matildas’ tournament before disaster struck once more and they succumbed to a shock 3-2 defeat against Nigeria.

Now the Matildas teeter on the edge of a premature group stage exit at their own World Cup, requiring a win against Canada on Monday – on paper their toughest opponent in the group – to progress to the knockout stages.

“If it’s not a win, then it’s a disaster really for a host nation that’s had so much put into it and with so much expectation,” Reid says.

‘A love of the game’

The Matildas were not always so well-known in Australia and played without the pressure that now circles around the upcoming game against Canada.

Sonia Gegenhuber, who won 75 caps for the Matildas from 1989-99, remembers working various casual jobs to financially support her playing career.

Since then, the Matildas’ profile has grown exponentially in Australia, partly because of a move to the more difficult Asian Federation, the 2000 Sydney Olympics – which led to more funding – and the rise of social media, allowing the team to “engage directly with fans and build that audience themselves,” Crawford says.

The infamous nude calendar was instrumental in the Matildas’ rise too. “Everybody wanted to get a copy of the calendar,” Reid says. “The Matildas brand, which was one of the purposes of doing the calendar, was out there.”

Most importantly, the Matildas are now relatively well-funded after going on strike over equal pay following the 2015 Women’s World Cup, in which they became the first Australian team to win a World Cup knockout match when they defeated Brazil 1-0 in the last 16, and agreeing a historic pay deal in 2019 which sees them take an equal share of all commercial revenues.

That 2015 run marked the Matildas’ best World Cup performance to date, after appearing in every edition since 1995.

But it has been a rocky few years for the Matildas.

After losing in the round of 16 at the 2019 World Cup, Tony Gustavsson – who won two World Cups with the US Women’s National Team (USWNT) as its primary assistant coach – was appointed in January 2021 to make the necessary changes and harness the talent of Australia’s “Golden Generation,” as this team is often dubbed.

Gustavsson’s self-proclaimed strategy of exposing the Matildas to the world’s best teams on a regular basis had seen them slip down the world rankings, from seventh in December 2020 to their most recent low of 13th in October 2022.

Flashes of the team’s unpredictable brilliance have appeared, disappeared and reappeared; its spirit embodied by its motto “Never Say Die.” A series of disappointing defeats in 2021 was followed by a fourth place at the Tokyo Olympics, after a thrilling bronze medal match in which the Matildas almost toppled reigning world champion the USWNT.

A shock defeat to South Korea in the quarterfinals of the Women’s Asian Cup – a tournament the Matildas were widely expected to win – followed before an understrength squad suffered a 7-0 defeat against Spain – the team’s heaviest loss in 25 years.

Recently, however, the Matildas have offered glimpses of their status as an emerging force on the world stage. Even with a squad decimated by injury, they defeated England 2-0 on home soil in April, ending the Lionesses’ 30-match unbeaten run and capping a year in which they have also defeated Sweden and Spain, two teams ranked above them.

Such heights seemed an age away following the potentially catastrophic loss to Nigeria as the players wandered around the pitch afterwards, shaking their opponents hands as if in a bad dream, their eyes blank and stunned.

“I think there’s an expectation, even if it’s a subconscious one, that as the host nation you’re going to have a fairytale finish,” Crawford said. “So it’s been a bit tricky to first have the talismanic Sam Kerr injured and to struggle to make it out of the group. This is not how we pictured our tournament at all.”

Almost as soon as the match had finished, attention turned to how the Matildas could turn their fortunes around before facing Canada.

“I think that might be one of the most important questions for me as a leader right now,” Gustavsson told reporters after the match.

“Physical recovery is one thing, but the mental recovery as well to bounce back [is important]. But the one thing we know with this team, and we saw it the last 10 to 12 minutes of this game, is that never say die attitude when we’re up against the wall.”

Kerr will “be available” for the decisive match against Canada in a boost for the Matildas, though she told reporters on Saturday that “how we decide to use that is not to be given to the opposition.”

‘An amazing atmosphere’

Australia is not traditionally a soccer-loving country. Rugby league, Aussie Rules and cricket hold sway Down Under. But sport, any kind of sport, is deeply ingrained into Australian culture, woven into its very soul like a crest on a jersey, and the public has embraced the rise of the Matildas, voting them the country’s most beloved national team in 2019.

FIFA moved the Matildas’ opening game against Ireland to Stadium Australia in Sydney, with its capacity of 83,000, such has been the demand for tickets. The assembled 75,784 fans represented a record crowd for a women’s soccer match in the country and the highest attendance at a Women’s World Cup for 24 years, according to FIFA.

More than 1.5million tickets have been sold so far for the 64 matches, FIFA said last week.

Card says it fell to fan groups to “make do and actually do a lot of the work” at previous tournaments to conjure up the party spirit that defines World Cups.

But for the first time, there will be official fan zones in all the host cities this year, which Card hopes will emulate the atmosphere that gripped Australia last year when its men’s team reached the last 16 of Qatar 2022.

Even the Sydney Harbour Bridge played host to festivities earlier this month.

“They’ve chosen really good locations,” Simon Reus, another member of MatildasActive, added. “The majority of the fan fests are right in the heart of the city so it’s going to create an even more amazing atmosphere because travelling fans from our experience tend to stay in the center of cities.”

Even games without Australia on the field have drawn huge crowds – almost 50,000 fans watched France stun Brazil 2-1 with a late winner on Saturday.

Sports stores in Australia are “packed with (Matildas) merchandise,” Crawford said, “and things like the Haiti scarves were selling out at the game.

“It’s definitely transcended the traditional women’s community and so that’s really exciting.”

Australia has played its part in making this the biggest Women’s World Cup in history. It remains to be seen whether the rest of the tournament will carry on without the host nation’s beloved team.

Crunch time at the 2023 Women’s World Cup is well and truly upon us.

The outcome of Group B and C will be decided on Monday. Two of the tournament’s most impressive sides – Japan and Spain – will vie against each other for top spot knowing they are both into the next round. In Group C’s other game, Costa Rica and Zambia play looking for their first points and goals.

And then later in the day, Group B’s qualification comes down to the wire, with Australia needing to beat Canada to progress and Nigeria needing at least a draw to reach the last 16.

How to watch

In the US, games will be aired on FOX Sports, while Telemundo will provide Spanish-language coverage.

Seven Network and Optus Sport are broadcasting matches in Australia and the BBC and ITV have the rights in the United Kingdom.

A full breakdown of media rights holders in each country is available on the FIFA website.

Costa Rica vs. Zambia and Japan vs. Spain start at 3 a.m. ET (8 a.m. BST), while Canada vs. Australia and the Republic of Ireland vs. Nigeria both kick off at 6 a.m. ET (11 a.m. BST).

Group B

Monday’s standout game comes from Melbourne as Australia play Olympic champion Canada.

Canada, after a win and a draw in its opening two games, sits level atop Group B with Nigeria, while Australia lies just a point behind after a disappointing loss in its last game against the Super Falcons.

Canada knows that a draw or victory will see it progress to the round of 16, while if Australia win, it will qualify for the next stage, regardless of the result in the other group game between the Republic of Ireland and Nigeria.

Australia could be bolstered by the return of captain and star player Sam Kerr who missed the Matildas’ opening two games of the tournament because of injury.

Kerr declared herself fit for Monday’s crunch tie but remained coy over how head coach Tony Gustavsson might choose to use her, off the bench or from the start.

For Canada, avoiding defeat will be the aim of the game. Canada’s own star striker, Christine Sinclair, is still attempting to etch her name into the history books.

A goal for the 40-year-old at this year’s tournament would see her become the first player, either male or female, to score at six World Cups.

In Brisbane, Group B leader Nigeria will be playing the Republic of Ireland.

Nigeria knows a draw will see it through to the knockout stage. Debutant Ireland has already been eliminated.

Group C

There are far fewer permutations heading into the final round of fixtures in Group C.

In Wellington, Spain and Japan will face off having both won its two group games so far, impressing many with their performances.

Spain – having already achieved its best tally in the group stage of a World Cup – knows a draw or win will see it top the group for the first time in its history.

Japan, on the other hand, is behind the Spanish on goal difference, so if it wants to face the runner-up in Group A rather than the first-placed team, it has to beat Spain.

That won’t be an easy task, with Spain the top scorers at the competition so far.

Group C’s other game will see two winless teams, Costa Rica and Zambia, go head-to-head in what will be a first senior competitive meeting between the two nations.

Although a dead rubber in terms of qualification, they have plenty of pride to play for with a first-ever World Cup win a possibility for both.