Just Stop Oil activists disrupted two matches at Wimbledon on Wednesday after running onto Court 18 and sprinkling orange confetti and jigsaw puzzle pieces on the playing surface.

In the first incident, security was able to quickly usher one activist away while another, wearing a Just Stop Oil T-shirt, sat crossed legged on the court before finally being taken off.

Many in the crowd booed the activists as players Grigor Dimitrov and Sho Shimabukuro were forced to take their seats while ground staff cleared up the confetti.

“Following an incident on Court 18, two individuals have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass and criminal damage and these individuals have now been removed from the Grounds,” Wimbledon tweeted after the incident.

Shortly after the activists ran onto the court, a rain delay caused the match to be temporarily suspended for a short while but play shortly resumed.

However, during the next match between Katie Boulter and Daria Saville on the same court, another activist staged a similar protest, running onto the court and littering it with orange confetti and puzzle pieces.

Wimbledon again tweeted an update: “Following a further incident on Court 18, one individual has been arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass and criminal damage.”

The London Metropolitan police confirmed that two men and a woman are now in custody.

Wimbledon is the latest sporting event to be targeted by the group. Last week, activists disrupted the first day of the second Ashes Test after spilling orange powder onto the outfield at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

Protesters also interrupted the World Snooker Championships by climbing onto the table and throwing a bag of orange powder paint over the playing surface.

In a statement after the first protest, Just Stop Oil said the two activists at Wimbledon were “demanding that the UK government halts all new licences and consents for oil, gas and coal.”

In a statement published by Just Stop Oil, one of the protesters said: “Forget strawberries and cream, scientists are warning of impending food shortages, mass displacement and war.

“We are facing new pandemics, economic inflation and increasingly authoritarian governments who will attempt to crush civil unrest. This is a crisis and it needs a crisis response.

“I want a safe future, not just for my grandchildren but for all children around the world and the generations to come.”

English football club Forest Green Rovers named Hannah Dingley as its interim head coach Tuesday, making her the first female head coach in English professional football.

Dingley replaces outgoing coach Duncan Ferguson, who was appointed Forest Green manager in January, but was unable to stop the team from being relegated to League 2, the lowest tier of professional English football.

Dingley’s position as head coach is a temporary one as the club looks to find a full-time solution.

“I’m really excited for this next step of my career,” Dingley said in a statement Tuesday.

“Pre-season has just begun and the full season kicks off very soon. It’s an exciting time in football. I am grateful for the opportunity to step up and lead such a progressive and forward-thinking club.”

Dingley joined Forest Green four years ago and remains the only woman in charge of a men’s English Football League Academy, according to a statement from the club.

“Hannah was the natural choice for us to be first team interim Head Coach – she’s done a fantastic job leading our Academy and is well aligned with the values of the club,” Forest Green chairman Dale Vince said Tuesday.

“It’s perhaps telling for the men’s game that in making this appointment on merit, we’ll break new ground – and Hannah will be the first female Head Coach in English (men’s) football.”

Dingley will lead Forest Green onto the pitch Wednesday for its friendly match at Melksham Town.

Under Vince’s ownership, Forest Green has become well known for attempting to make a difference off the pitch.

In 2017, Forest Green became the world’s first vegan club, according to the Vegan Society. Some of its players even switched to a plant-based diet, and it puts sustainability at the heart of everything it does.

FIFA also named Forest Green the “greenest club in the world” in 2017 and it continues to find innovative ways to lower its carbon footprint – such as organic pitches and electric team coaches.

It squats on the Las Vegas skyline like an enormous spaceship, black and mysterious – until night falls, when it will glow like the Earth from space.

The MSG Sphere won’t open to the public for almost three more months, when U2 christens the entertainment venue with a series of concerts. But anticipation is growing.

Cue the superlatives. At 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide, it’s being billed as the world’s largest spherical structure. Its bowl-shaped theater reportedly contains the world’s highest-resolution wraparound LED screen. And its exterior is fitted with 1.2 million hockey puck-sized LEDs that can be programmed to flash dynamic imagery on a massive scale – again, reportedly the world’s largest. It was fully illuminated for the first time Tuesday night to celebrate the Fourth of July.

It’s not easy to move the needle in a city that boasts the Bellagio’s dancing fountains, a half-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, the second-tallest observation tower in the Western Hemisphere and a beam of light that can be seen for hundreds of miles.

But Sphere is inspiring rapturous reactions from those who have seen it.

“There’s nothing like it. It’s light years ahead of everything that’s out there,” says U2’s The Edge while touring the venue in a recent Apple Music video.

“It’s absolutely stunning to look up and see what’s in front of you,” says Rich Claffey, Sphere’s chief operations officer. “I’ve been in the entertainment business for almost 40 years. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’m not exaggerating. It is off the charts.”

The Sphere’s exterior will be illuminated every day and night with animations and other imagery, sometimes tied to the season. For example, it could transform into a giant pumpkin at Halloween and a snow globe at Christmas.

Some people are already joking on Twitter that its enormous, swirling visuals will cause traffic accidents.

The venue will host music, film events and some sports

Sphere was designed by Populous, the global architecture firm behind many of the world’s top sports arenas. Construction costs, inflated by the pandemic, have climbed to $2.3 billion – more than Sphere’s glitziest Vegas neighbors, including the Bellagio and Allegiant Stadium.

The globe seats almost 18,000 people, sits one long block east of the fabled Las Vegas Strip and will be connected by a pedestrian walkway to the Venetian resort complex.

It’s scheduled to open September 29 with “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere,” a series of 25 concerts built around the Irish band’s landmark 1991 album “Achtung Baby” and running through mid-December. Ticket prices start at $140.

The venue also will host exclusive screenings of “Postcard From Earth,” a film by Darren Aronofsky that promises to take full advantage of Sphere’s vast screen by offering viewers an eye-popping tour of the planet.

“Most music venues are sports venues. They’re built for sports – they’re not built for music. They’re not built for art,” says U2’s Bono in the Apple Music interview.

“This building was built for immersive experiences in cinema and performance … you can’t come here and see an ice hockey game.”

In November the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix’s street circuit will pass through the Sphere property, and the arena eventually hopes to host boxing, mixed martial arts and other events as well.

But Sphere’s main draw may be as a venue for live music – especially the marquee residencies for which Vegas is known.

The acts onstage will be dwarfed by the towering 16K LED screen, which wraps over and around much of the audience and can augment the concert experience with trippy animations or close-ups of the performers.

“The screen goes from ground (level) to 250 feet high, all the way around…” says Claffey, the Sphere operations officer. “It keeps you fully immersed when you’re sitting in that bowl. I used to love IMAX in New York City, but this will blow that away.”

Sphere’s producers promise next-level audio as well. Claffey says that more than 160,000 speakers spread around the bowl will deliver the same pristine sound to every seat, whether someone is in the top row or down on the floor.

The venue also is equipped with haptic seats that can vibrate to match whatever is happening onscreen – an earthquake, for example – and 4D machines that can create wind, temperature and even scent effects.

“The way I describe it to my friends and family is, it’s the entertainment venue of the future,” Claffey says.

If it all sounds a little over the top, well – this is Vegas.

It remains to be seen whether Sphere can deliver on its extravagant promises. But if it works, the live-music experience may never be quite the same.

Cell phones, tablets and smartwatches will be largely banned from classrooms in the Netherlands from January 1, 2024, the Dutch government said on Tuesday, in a bid to limit distractions during lessons.

Devices will only be allowed if they are specifically needed, for instance during lessons on digital skills, for medical reasons or for people with disabilities.

“Even though mobile phones are intertwined with our lives, they do not belong in the classroom,” education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said in a statement.

“Students need to be able to concentrate and need to be given the opportunity to study well. Mobile phones are a disturbance, scientific research shows. We need to protect students against this.”

The ban is the result of an agreement between the ministry, schools and related organizations.

Schools can find their own way to organize the ban, Dijkgraaf said, but legal rules will follow if this does not yield enough results by the summer of 2024.

South Korea is getting older – and its care facilities are changing to match.

The number of child care facilities in the country has shrunk by almost a quarter in just a few years, reflecting authorities’ unsuccessful campaign to encourage couples to have more babies.

In 2017, there were more than 40,000 child care facilities, according to new government figures released Friday – by the end of last year, that number had fallen to roughly 30,900.

Meanwhile, as the population rapidly ages, the number of elderly facilities has boomed from 76,000 in 2017 to 89,643 in 2022, according to the country’s health and welfare ministry.

Elderly facilities include senior care homes, specialized hospitals, and welfare agencies that help the elderly navigate social services or protections. Meanwhile, the child care facilities listed include public services as well as private and corporate ones.

The shift illustrates a years-long problem South Korea has thus far failed to reverse. It has both one of the world’s fastest aging populations and the world’s lowest birth rate, which has been falling continuously since 2015 despite authorities offering financial incentives and housing subsidies for couples with more babies.

Experts attribute this low birth rate to various factors, including demanding work cultures, stagnating wages, rising costs of living, the financial burden of raising children, changing attitudes toward marriage and gender equality, and rising disillusionment among younger generations.

By the late 2000s, the government had begun warning that policy measures were needed to encourage families to grow. Last September, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol admitted that more than $200 billion has been spent trying to boost the population over the past 16 years.

But so far nothing has worked – and the effects have been increasingly visible in the social fabric and day-to-day life.

Many elementary, middle and high schools are closing around the country due to a lack of school-age children, according to Korean news agency Yonhap, citing the education ministry. Figures from the country’s official statistics body show the overall number of middle and high schools have remained stagnant for years, only rising by a few dozen since 2015.

In Daejeon, south of Seoul, one such abandoned school has become a popular spot for photographers and urban explorers; images show eerily empty hallways and a school yard overgrown by wild grass.

Similar crises have been seen in other East Asian countries with falling birth rates. One village in Japan went 25 years without recording a single birth. The arrival of a baby in 2016 was heralded as a miracle, with elderly well-wishers hobbling to the infant’s house to hold him.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s expanding elderly population has meant an explosion in demand for senior services, placing strain on a system scrambling to keep up.

South Korea has the highest elderly poverty rate among the OECD nations (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), with more than 40% of people over 65 years old facing “relative poverty,” defined by the OECD as having income lower than 50% of median household disposable income.

“In Korea, the pension system is still maturing, and current generations still have very low pensions,” the OECD wrote in a 2021 report.

Experts point to other factors such as global economic trends, the breakdown of old social structures that saw children looking after their parents, and insufficient government support for those struggling financially.

That means a number of homeless elderly people – part of a generation that helped rebuild the country after the Korean War – having to seek assistance from shelters and soup kitchens.

The rapid rise in elderly facilities in recent years may help alleviate some of these problems. But longer-term concerns remain about the future of Korea’s economy, as the number of young workers – who are crucial in propping up the health care and pension systems – slowly dwindle.

Scotland has concluded a day of festivities celebrating British monarch King Charles III’s recent coronation.

The highlight of Wednesday’s proceedings in the capital, Edinburgh, was a service of national thanksgiving during which the King was presented with the Scottish crown jewels.

Known as the “Honours of Scotland,” these regalia are Britain’s oldest crown jewels, with some parts dating back to around the early 16th century. The sword, however, is a recent commission. “The Elizabeth Sword” – named after the late Queen Elizabeth II – will be the new sword of state, replacing a sword given to James IV by Pope Julius II in 1507, due to its fragility, according to the Scottish government.

The service was preceded by a “people’s procession” and a royal procession to the cathedral, and rounded off with a gun salute. A Royal Air Force flypast also featured, coloring the skies with the trails of red, white and blue.

The people’s procession, which featured 100 individuals representing Scottish life, was escorted by the Royal Regiment of Scotland, its Shetland pony mascot Corporal Cruachan IV, Police Scotland, and music by cadet musicians from the Combined Cadet Force Pipes and Drums and the Cadet Military Band. Not everyone was celebrating, however. Shouts of “Not my King” could be heard from nearby protestors.

Charles arrived at the cathedral in the royal procession in the state Bentley, accompanied by Queen Camilla. He was wearing the Royal Navy full ceremonial tailcoat as Admiral of the Fleet, and adorned with the Order of the Garter sash and Order of the Thistle star. Over the uniform, he wore the mantle of the Order of the Thistle, the collar of the order and a hat with a plume of the order.

Camilla wore a long white dress by British designer Bruce Oldfield. Oldfield, with whom she has a longstanding relationship, also designed the coronation outfit she wore in May. Her outfit was similarly embellished with the Thistle robe and hat, including the star and collar. This was the first time Camilla had worn the Thistle garb since being appointed to the order on June 16.

Prince William and Catherine, known in Scotland as the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay, arrived at the cathedral in the royal Rolls-Royce.

The crown jewels made their own separate journey to St. Giles’ from Edinburgh Castle for the service, accompanied by the King’s Body Guard for Scotland, the Royal Company of Archers, and an honor guard of armed forces personnel. More than 800 members of the armed forces are said to have been directly involved in Wednesday’s events.

The royal party’s arrival at St. Giles’ was marked by three pipers from Charles’ former school, Gordonstoun.

Between the prayers, hymns and the presentation of the Honours, five songs commissioned by Charles specifically for the service were performed, including one in Gaelic.

A 21-gun salute from the 12th Regiment Royal Artillery sounded at the end of the service before the royal procession returned to the Palace of Holyroodhouse to watch the flypast.

The celebrations came amid Charles’ first annual Holyrood Week – or Royal Week – during which the monarch travels across Scotland to celebrate its culture, achievement and community.

Shohei Ohtani, one of baseball’s biggest stars, says that he is dealing with a middle finger blister and is unlikely to pitch in the MLB’s All-Star Game.

Ohtani, who had been voted as a two-way All-Star due to his pitching and batting proficiency, left Tuesday’s Los Angeles Angels game against the San Diego Padres in the sixth inning after giving up consecutive home runs to Xander Bogaerts and Jake Cronenworth.

Afterwards, Ohtani told reporters through an interpreter that he is not likely to pitch at the ‘Midsummer Classic’ in Seattle on July 11 with the blister but hopes to be able to do so in the Angels’ first game back against the Houston Astros on July 15. He said he will continue to bat.

The Japanese two-way star’s blister came days after he said he was suffering from a cracked nail on his right middle finger.

The 29-year-old was given a day of extra rest and he used an acrylic nail to try to solve the issue, but it proceeded to deteriorate as Tuesday’s game went on.

“I think it’s basically the same thing as last time,” Ohtani said. “It wasn’t fully healed. It just kind of got worse as the game went on.”

He pitched with less velocity against the Padres and it showed in the results. By the time he left the game, Ohtani had allowed five runs and seven hits, whilst also striking out five and walking four. The back-to-back homers allowed were a first for Ohtani in his MLB career.

Ohtani had been coming off American League Player of the Month honors in June; pitching with a 3.26 earned runs average with 37 strikeouts and while batting, has hit 15 home runs including 29 runs batted in.

It capped off an unfortunate evening for the Angels who, as well as eventually losing 8-5 to San Diego, lost superstar center fielder Mike Trout with a fractured bone in his left wrist.

Trout, a three-time American League MVP, suffered the left hamate fracture when he fouled a ball in the eight inning. He is expected to be out for about four to eight weeks.

“I kind of knew it wasn’t good,” Trout told reporters afterwards. “It’s just a freak thing. I had a lot of guys reach out who had the surgery or the injury before. Some guys came back in four weeks. Some guys took longer. We’ll see how it goes.”

Former world No. 1 and three-time grand slam champion Ashleigh Barty has welcomed her first child with her husband, Garry Kissick.

The pair announced the arrival of their son, Hayden, in a joint Instagram post Tuesday captioned “Our beautiful boy.”

“Welcome to the world, Hayden!” they wrote.

Last year, Barty stunned the tennis world by announcing she was retiring from the sport at age 25 while she was the world No. 1. Her retirement announcement came after she had won three grand slam titles in as many years – the 2019 French Open, Wimbledon in 2021 and the 2022 Australian Open.

“I know how much work it takes to bring the best out of yourself. I’ve said it to my team multiple times, it’s just I don’t have that in me anymore,” said Barty in March 2022 when she retired.

“I don’t have the physical drive, the emotional want, and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top of the level anymore, and I just know that I am spent. I just know physically, I have nothing more to give. That, for me, is success,” she said.

She added that she had been thinking about retirement for “a long time,” and the decision was cemented after winning Wimbledon and the Australian Open.

Those victories were “my perfect way to celebrate what an amazing journey my tennis career has been,” she said.

In total, she has won 15 singles titles and 12 doubles titles on the WTA Tour, and was the first Australian to win the Australian Open singles title since 1978.

But Barty’s prodigious talents are not just limited to the tennis court – she also played cricket professionally for the Brisbane Heat in the Women’s Big Bash League, and is a keen golfer.

In 2020, Barty won the women’s championship at the Brookwater Golf Club near Brisbane and 15-time major winner Tiger Woods once reportedly described her as having a “great swing.”

The MLS has a new attendance record after 82,110 fans turned up to watch the Los Angeles derby between LA Galaxy and LAFC.

Dubbed “El Tráfico” – a nod to the famous El Clásico rivalry between Spanish soccer clubs Barcelona and Real Madrid and the fact that the two LA teams are separated by just 11 miles of congested highway – the match has become one of the MLS’ fiercest rivalries.

The derby game smashed the previous MLS record which had been set in 2022. Charlotte FC’s first ever game saw 74,479 spectators flock to the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte to witness their team face the Galaxy.

Fans at the Rose Bowl on Tuesday were treated to a tight game as LA Galaxy took a 2-1 victory thanks to a winner from former Barcelona player Riqui Puig.

Tyler Boyd opened the scoring for the Galaxy in the first half with a sensational curling effort past LAFC goalkeeper John McCarthy.

The visitors came back into the game early in the second half thanks to Ilie Sánchez’s headed equalizer. However, parity didn’t last long, and the Galaxy quickly regained the upper hand.

Roles were reversed for the winner as Puig, who assisted Boyd’s opener, raced onto a cross from the scorer of the first goal and slid a finish home past McCarthy.

“I love pressure, I love playing these games, I love playing derbies against big teams. And I’m honestly very happy,” Puig said post-match, per the MLS.

“I think every player plays soccer to play these games, these stadiums, to have 82,000 people watching you.

“I don’t play for money, I play for these experiences,” the 23-year-old added.

LAFC are currently third in the Western Conference, three points behind leaders St. Louis City SC, whereas LA Galaxy are in 13th as they look to hunt down the playoff spots.

If South Korean Park Eun-seon’s soccer journey has been a long and winding one, with plenty of ups and down, her inclusion in her country’s 2023 Women’s World Cup squad offers a moment of redemption.

The 36-year-old striker – nicknamed “Park-latan,” a nod to Swedish soccer great Zlatan Ibrahimović – has had a turbulent career; from joining the senior squad for the 2003 Women’s World Cup aged 17 to considering quitting the game altogether due to controversy regarding her gender.

Park has always enjoyed sports, but the thought of playing soccer seriously only arose when her school’s physical education teacher spotted her potential and suggested she give it a go.

When she decided to pursue the game more seriously, Park transferred to Changdeok Girls’ Middle School, which had a girl’s soccer team – the team disbanded in 2012, according to the Seoul Football Association.

About three years later, Park became the youngest South Korean woman, at the age of 17, to join the senior squad ahead of the 2003 Women’s World Cup in the US.

“Back then, I think I was more excited about being selected for the national team than feeling any pressure,” Park recalled.

Despite the excitement, the team’s first ever World Cup run ended early as it lost to soccer powerhouses Brazil, France and Norway in the group stage.

But high schooler Park was happy to have lived the special experience.

“When I first went to play in the World Cup, just the fact that I could play with world-class players made me really happy,” she added.

Thoughts of quitting the game

Young and talented, Park’s career was in the ascendancy. She was called again to join the senior team for the 2004 Olympic qualifiers and even the Under-19 squad for various international competitions.

According to Jeon, Park has the ability to use her power and height to great effect.

Measuring 182cm (about six feet), Park was the tallest of her teammates at both her club – Seoul City Amazones – and the national team.

In 2013, Park scored a total of 19 goals in the South Korean women’s league – WK League – to become the top scorer of the season.

It helped her team finish second in the table, where it advanced to the playoffs before losing in the final.

Then – when the future seemed ever brighter – everything changed. The coaches of six rival teams questioned the striker’s gender, threatening to boycott the league if she did not undergo gender testing.

Their claims stirred huge controversy in the country and the National Human Rights Commission issued a statement, labeling the act of requiring a gender verification test “sexual harassment.”

The Seoul Sport Council also said the claims were “a serious violation of human rights” and requested the coaches to “take responsible actions” and formally apologize.

At the time, Park took to social media to tell her side of the story.

She wrote in a now deleted Facebook post that she had previously taken gender verification tests to play at the World Cup and the Olympics, which made her “upset and feel ashamed” at a young age.

“It hurts that it’s a similar situation to when many coaches were nice to take me [to their teams] but then changed abruptly,” Park wrote, referring to when she was suspended from playing in three competitions held by the Korea Women’s Football Federation for joining the Seoul City Amazones straight out of high school in 2005, violating the federation’s policy.

The federation formerly required that high school graduates play two years of college soccer before joining semi-professional teams in the WK League, according to local media reports.

The six rival coaches insisted that the comments regarding gender testing were “a joke,” and the controversy eventually fizzled out, but while everyone else involved gradually went about their business, the events left Park scarred.

“I wasn’t angry, but a bit puzzled. I wondered why I had to go through all that. I frequently thought about even quitting soccer, but felt that doing so would be like admitting the claims.”

Park took some time off the pitch to sort through her emotions, but never gave up on the sport. She transferred to Russian club Rossiyanska in 2014 and then returned to the WK League in 2015.

“To see her continue soccer and overcome the tough times – that came back to me as passion. It really meant a lot,” Jeon said.

“Maybe I was that good?” Park said, adding that she can now laugh about it and move on.

A possible ‘Last Dance’

In 2015, Park was called up to join the national team for that year’s Women’s World Cup in Canada, where the team lost 3-0 to France in the last 16.

That was the last time Park wore the Red Devils’ jersey, until the team’s current head coach, Colin Bell, called her up to the squad about a year before the upcoming Women’s World Cup.

“I played in various competitions and made a lot of trouble along the way, but the current head coach called me to the national team for the first time in seven years, so now I’m preparing well,” Park said as she expressed her gratitude to Bell for giving her an opportunity.

Despite concerns over her age, being the second oldest player after 38-year-old goalkeeper Kim Jung-mi, Park shone on the pitch when she netted goals in two consecutive friendlies against Zambia in April.

Bell said he had asked Park to give the team a good 15 to 20 minutes per match when he called her to the national team last year.

“Since then, she has shown herself working hard and getting strong,” said Bell after the two friendlies, according to the Korea Football Federation.

“Personally, I want to keep her like a flower in a greenhouse until the World Cup,” Bell said in April, hinting at a possible World Cup call-up for the 36-year-old striker this summer that has now been confirmed.

As she awaited South Korea’s final squad announcement, Park added: “I honestly don’t think it’s easy to play in the World Cup three times as a member of the national team, so personally it’d be very meaningful.

“It’s an opportunity that will never come again, so I want to get a goal that I can brag about later. ‘I scored a goal in the World Cup!’ I want this to be an opportunity where I can make this come true,” she said of her World Cup hopes.

South Korea is due to face Columbia in its first Group H match at the 2023 Women’s World Cup on July 25 and “Park-latan’s” dream may well come true on the biggest stage of them all.

Park will also be joined by South Korean teammate Casey Phair in Australia and New Zealand. The 16-year-old was born in the US and, according to Reuters, is the first player of mixed heritage to be selected for a Korean World Cup squad.