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'Just not viable': Football, netball clubs concerned about a season without fans

The consensus across football and netball clubs in the west and north-west of Victoria is the season should only start if fans are allowed to attend games.




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Fee-free models could help women's football flourish in Australia

With many families getting priced out of junior football, one club in Perth is waiving fees, and it could signal a new direction for grassroots sport in Australia, writes Samantha Lewis.




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Meet the farming footballers who swapped AFL shoes for gumboots, amid COVID-19

With coronavirus putting a pause on the AFL season, Melbourne's Marty Hore and Collingwood's Flynn Appleby return to their family dairy farms.




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Missing Major League Baseball? Here's Korean baseball to the rescue

While much of the world is under lockdown, baseball returned to South Korea on a day when the country reported just three new cases of COVID-19.




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Three Teamsters Local 743 Workers in Chicago Convicted of Labor Fraud and Theft of Union Ballots in Bid to Rig Contested 2004 Elections

A former officer and two employees of Teamsters Local 743 (Local 743) were convicted today in federal court in Chicago of federal labor fraud and theft charges in connection with stealing union ballots in an effort to rig two elections in favor of an incumbent slate of officers in 2004. A federal jury returned guilty verdicts today, after deliberating since April 29, 2009, against the three defendants whose trial began on April 6, 2009.



  • OPA Press Releases

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Four Indicted for Conspiring to Support Hizballah; Six Others Charged with Related Crimes

Ten individuals were indicted today, charged with, among other things, conspiring to export weapons from Philadelphia to the Port of Latakia, Syria.



  • OPA Press Releases

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Protecting the Right to Vote and Prosecuting Ballot Fraud

In anticipation of the upcoming election, the department today provided information about its efforts, through the Civil Rights and Criminal Divisions, to ensure that all qualified voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots and have their votes counted, without incidence of discrimination, intimidation or fraud.



  • OPA Press Releases

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Justice Department Settles with Mountain Valley, Pa., Midget Football League Under the Americans with Disabilities Act

The Justice Department announced it has reached a settlement with the Mountain Valley, Pa., Midget Football League to ensure that children with disabilities are offered an equal opportunity to play youth football.



  • OPA Press Releases

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Protecting the Right to Vote and Prosecuting Ballot Fraud

In anticipation of the upcoming election, the Justice Department today provided information about its efforts, through the Civil Rights and Criminal Divisions, to ensure that all qualified voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots and have their votes counted free of discrimination, intimidation or fraud in the election process.



  • OPA Press Releases

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Former High School Football Player Pleads Guilty to Making Racially Motivated Threats to African-American Assistant Football Coach

Jonathan Caine, 20, of Nashville, Tenn., pleaded guilty today to a federal hate crime for making racially motivated threats to an African-American assistant football coach at a local high school in, the Justice Department announced.



  • OPA Press Releases

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Ex-Casino Owner, Nevada Businessman and Former National Football League Player Found Guilty in Massive Tax Fraud Scheme

A Las Vegas jury returned guilty verdicts yesterday against Alan Rodrigues, a former casino owner from Henderson, Nevada, Weston Coolidge, a former businessman from Las Vegas, and Joseph Prokop, a former National Football League punter from Upland, California, for conspiracy and fraud related to their promotion of a fraudulent tax product through the now-defunct National Audit Defense Network.



  • OPA Press Releases

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No Need for a Crystal Ball in Some Scenarios

FDA — along with NIH, CDC, and other front-line public health agencies — is caught up in the urgent COVID-19 efforts. Appropriately, enormous resources are being devoted to fighting the pandemic and more funding will come, if needed. At the same time, we are getting positive reports on the FDA’s efforts to carry out the […]




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UCLA softball is on 'really big high' with return of Rachel Garcia and Bubba Nickles

UCLA, the NCAA champion in 2019 and the No. 1 team in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, got a boost with the return of Rachel Garcia and Bubba Nickles.




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March Madness and college basketball’s racial bias problem

The NCAA basketball tournament is one of the most-viewed sporting events in the United States. In 2019, nearly 20 million viewers watched the championship game, and each tournament game (67 total) averaged about 10 million viewers. Over 17 million people completed a March Madness tournament bracket for the 68-team tournament. Among youth, basketball is one…

       




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A tale of two trade fairs: Milwaukee’s globally relevant water proposition

As we have previously discussed, the decision to prioritize a single primary cluster in a regional economic development plan is challenging. For Milwaukee, this was especially difficult in development of its global trade and investment plan because it has three legitimate clusters:  energy, power and controls; food and beverage; and water technologies. The team developing the plan was reluctant to pick a favorite.

      
 
 




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The future of impact bonds globally: Reflections from a recent Brookings event


“For a not-for-profit it’s the equivalent of venture capital,” said Sir Ronald Cohen, chairman of the Global Social Impact Investing Steering Group, about impact bonds in his keynote address at a recent event at the Brookings Institution. Impact bonds combine results-based financing and impact investing, where investors provide upfront capital for a social service and government agencies, or donors, agree to pay investors back based on the outcomes of the service. At their best, they could allow for innovation, encourage performance management and adaptability, promote learning through evaluation, and create a clear case for investing in what works. However, impact bonds thus far have had immense transaction costs and there are risks that poor execution of the impact bond mechanism could have negative consequences for beneficiaries.

It has been six years since the first impact bond was implemented in March of 2010, and the field is beginning to move from an exploratory stage to looking at systemic change, as Tracy Palandjian, CEO and co-founder of Social Finance U.S. described. The event, “The Global Potential and Limitation of Impact Bonds,” served as a point of reflection for stakeholders at this pivotal stage of the field, bringing together over 500 individuals in the room and on the webcast, including practitioners developing impact bonds around the world. While context matters, there were notable similarities in the motivations and challenges across regions.

Potential value-add

In our presentations of our research and subsequent panels, we focused on the potential value and challenges of combining results-based financing and impact investing through an impact bond. Shri Naveen Jain, mission director of the National Health Mission of Rajasthan, India, who is working to develop an impact bond for maternal and child health services across his entire state, pointed out that the value of a results-based financing contract to him was in the added transparency it provides—the government is able to see what they are paying for, keep service providers accountable, and incentivize providers to achieve better outcomes. Louise Savell, a director at Social Finance U.K., the entity that first put impact bonds on the map, explained that results-based financing contracts are often arranged such that only one portion of the contract is based on results. This, she explained prescribes a model and does not allow for flexibility; furthermore, it forces service providers to bear a significant risk. Impact bonds allow for the entirety of payments to be based on results, which gives the provider full flexibility (at least in theory), but puts the risk of service performance on the investor. The shift of risk to investors could be particularly useful for service delivery in conflict affected areas, where donors are often highly concerned about how money will be used, mentioned Francois de Borchgrave, co-founder and managing director of Kois Invest, who is working on an impact bond with the International Rescue Committee of the Red Cross. The panelists also emphasized that impact bonds are more powerful than results-based financing contracts alone because, if successful, they pay real financial returns to investors. This draws a great deal of attention from policymakers and the public, and the added scrutiny helps in making the investment case for preventive interventions highly explicit. Mayor Ben McAdams of Salt Lake County, Utah said that “data and evidence is bridging a partisan divide” in his state—when the case for investment is clear, policymakers from both sides of the aisle are willing to invest. Impact bonds do not necessarily add value by increasing the total amount of funding available for social services, because investors are repaid if outcomes are achieved. Rather, impact bonds could help increase the outcomes achieved with given funding.

Overall there was agreement that impact bonds have enormous potential to lead to more outcome-focused financing that focuses on preventive interventions and incentivizes collaboration. However two critical considerations for the use of impact bonds arose throughout the day.

Optimal impact bond size

The first consideration discussed was whether or not impact bonds can support innovation or scale. As found in our first report, impact bonds have been relatively small in scale in terms of capital and beneficiaries. The average upfront investment in impact bonds to date is $3.7 million, reaching an average of 1,900 beneficiaries. They also have not, on average, focused on particularly innovative interventions—in fact they have almost all had a relatively strong base of evidence behind them. Views on the panel differed on whether the uses of impact bonds could be expanded—if they could be used for highly innovative pilot programs or proven large scale programs. One perspective was that impact bonds could indeed provide seed capital to test new ideas for service delivery. This would require investors who are willing to test not only the innovation but also this relatively new financing mechanism. Given the high transaction costs that impact bonds entail, however, this may not be the most efficient use of resources. Impact bonds could also reach more beneficiaries per transaction (greater scale) with changes in public procurement and the creation of markets for tradeable impact bond assets. Government can play a role in facilitating larger impact bonds by creating central government outcome payment funds, providing tax breaks for investment in impact bonds, and enabling the development of investment vehicles, all of which are being implemented in the U.K. Impact bonds could also help effective social services reach scale by encouraging government to fund programs at scale after the impact bond is over or by improving data use and performance management in government-funded services broadly.

Outcome evaluation design

A second, and related, discussion happened around evaluation methodology—which may differ depending on whether the impact bond is intended to test an innovative intervention or scale an intervention already backed by significant evidence. The “gold standard” randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the only methodology that eliminates the possibility that impact could be attributed to something other than the intervention, though the majority of impact bonds thus far use evaluation methodologies that are less rigorous. The panelists explained that it is important, however, to consider the status quo—currently, less than 1 percent of U.S. federal spending on social services has been shown to be effective. The same is true in low- and middle-income countries, where there are relatively few impact evaluations given the number of interventions. At the end of the day, the government agency acting as the outcome funder must decide on the importance of attribution to trigger payment through the impact bond in view of the already available evidence of program effectiveness and weigh the criticism that might ensue in the absence of a valid counterfactual.

Challenges

Though impact bonds are a potentially useful tool in the toolbox of many financing mechanisms, there are some significant constraints to their implementation. The biggest barrier to impact bonds and other results-based contracts is the administrative hurdle of contracting for outcomes. Peter Vanderwal, innovative financing lead at the Palladium Group, and Caroline Whistler, co-president and co-founder of Third Sector Capital Partners, both stated that governments often are unable or do not know how to contract for outcomes, and there is a need to invest in their capacity to do so. Appropriation schedules are part of this challenge, governments are often not allowed to appropriate for future years. When an audience member asked how we go about changing the culture in government to one of contracting for outcomes, Mayor McAdams answered that impact bonds may have a contagious effect—contracting for outcomes will be the expectation in the future. Additionally, the transaction costs of establishing the partnership are large relative to other mechanisms, though they may be worthwhile. Jim Sorenson, of the Sorenson Impact Center, pointed out that service provider capacity and data collection systems could be barriers to the development of future impact bonds. There is also still a long way to go in developing outcome measures and in particular in calibrating those outcome measures to low- and middle-income countries.

The role of governments and research groups

The influence that impact bonds have on the provision of quality services globally depends on the quality of implementation. With a rapidly growing market, there will inevitably be “bad” impact bonds in the future. To ensure that impact bonds are used as effectively as possible, governments and the research community have a pivotal role to play in asking the right questions: Will a results-based contract help improve outcomes in this particular case? What should the outcomes be to avoid perverse incentives or potentially negative externalities? And would an impact bond structure add value? 

      
 
 




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Paying for success in education: Comparing opportunities in the United States and globally


“This is about governments using data for performance rather than compliance” was a resounding message coming out of the U.S. Department of Education’s conference on June 10 on the use of Pay for Success contracts in education. These contracts, known globally as social impact bonds, continue to be at the forefront of global conversations about results-based financing mechanisms, and have garnered significant momentum this week with passage of the Social Impact Partnerships for Pay for Results Act in the U.S. While limitations certainly exist, their potential to revolutionize the way we fund social projects is tremendous.

A social impact bond (SIB) is a set of contracts where a government agency agrees to pay for service outputs or outcomes, rather than funding defined service inputs, and an investor provides upfront risk capital to the service provider. The investor is potentially repaid principal and interest contingent on the achievement of the predetermined outputs or outcomes.

In our research on impact bonds at the Center for Universal Education, we have analyzed the use of SIBs for education in the U.S., other high-income countries, and low- and middle-income countries. Practitioners in each of these contexts are having far more similar conversations than they may realize—all are united in their emphasis on using SIBs to build data systems for performance. There is tremendous potential for lessons learned across these experiences and across the broader discussions of results-based financing mechanisms for education globally.

Current SIBs for education globally

There are currently five SIBs for education worldwide: two in the U.S. for preschool education, one in Portugal for computer science classes in primary school, and one each in Canada and Israel for higher education. In addition, a number of countries have used the SIB model to finance interventions to promote both education and employment outcomes for teens—there are 21 such SIBs in the U.K., three in the Netherlands, and one in Germany. There is also a Development Impact Bond (DIB), where a donor rather than government agency serves as the outcome funder, for girls’ education in India. The Center for Universal Education will host a webinar to present the enrollment and learning outcomes of the first year of the DIB on July 5 (register to join here).

U.S. activities to facilitate the use of SIBs for education

At the June 10 conference at the Department of Education, the secretary of education and the deputy assistant to the president for education said that they saw the greatest potential contribution of SIBs in helping to scale what works to promote education outcomes and in broadening the array of partners involved in improving the education system. Others pointed out the value of the mechanism to coordinate services based on the needs of each student, rather than a multitude of separately funded services engaging the student individually. In addition to using data to coordinate services for an individual, participants emphasized that SIBs can facilitate a shift away from using data to measure compliance, to using data to provide performance feedback loops.

The interest in data for performance rather than compliance is part of a larger shift across the U.S. education sector, represented by the replacement of the strict compliance standards in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 with the new federal education funding law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law in December of 2015. The law allows for federal outcome funding for SIBs in education for the first time, specifically for student support and academic enrichment programs. The recently passed Social Impact Partnerships for Pay for Results Act also allows for outcome funding for education outcomes. The Department of Education conference explored potential applications of SIBs across the education sector, including for early home visiting programs, programs to encourage completion of higher education programs, and career and technical education. The conference also analyzed the potential to use SIBs for programs that support specific disadvantaged populations, such as dual language learners in early education, children of incarcerated individuals, children involved in both the child protection and criminal justice systems, and Native American youth. Overall, there was a focus on areas where the U.S. is spending a great deal on remediation (such as early emergency room visits) and on particular levers to overcome persistent obstacles to student success (such as parent engagement).

To help move the sector forward, the Department of Education announced three new competitions for feasibility study funding for early learning broadly, dual language learners in early education, and technical education. The department is also facilitating connections between existing evaluation and data system development efforts and teams designing SIBs. The focus on early childhood development by the Department of Education is reflective of the national field as a whole: Programming in the early years is becoming a particularly fast-growing sector for SIBs in the U.S. with over 40 SIBs feasibility and design stages.

SIBs for education in low- and middle-income countries

There is only one DIB for education in low- and middle-income countries; however, there are a number of SIBs and DIBs for education in design and prelaunch phases. In particular, the Western Cape Province of South Africa has committed outcome funding for three SIBs across a range of health and development outcomes for children ages 0 to 5.

Though the number of impact bonds may be relatively small, a significant amount of work has been done in the last 15 years in results-based financing for education. The U.K. Department for International Development (DfID), the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Output-Based Aid, and Cordaid had together funded 24 results-based financing initiatives for education as of 2015. Of particular interest, DfID is funding results-based financing projects through a Girls Education Challenge and the World Bank launched a new trust fund for results-based financing in education in 2015. As with impact bonds in the U.S., a primary aim of results-based financing for education in low- and middle-income countries is to strengthen data and performance systems. Early childhood development programs and technical and vocational and training programs have also been identified as sub-sectors of high potential. Here are a few final takeaways for those working on results-based financing for education in low- and middle-income countries from the U.S. Department of Education conference:

  1. The differences between the No Child Left Behind Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act should be analyzed carefully to ensure other data-driven education performance management systems promote both accountability and flexibility.
  2. In building data systems through results-based financing, ensure services can be coordinated around the individual, feedback loops are available for providers, and data on early education, child welfare, parent engagement, and criminal justice involvement are also incorporated.
  3. There are potential lessons to be learned from the U.S. Department of Education’s effort to conduct more low-cost randomized control trials in education and the U.S. Census Bureau’s data integration efforts.
  4. SIBs provide an opportunity to work across agencies or levels of government in education, which could be particularly fruitful in both low- and middle-income countries and the U.S.

As the global appetite for results-based financing continues to grow and new social and development impact bonds are implemented throughout the world, we’ll have an opportunity to learn the true potential of such financing models.


Authors

      
 
 




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Institutions are under existential threat, globally

Much has been written about de-industrialization; the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States as imports from and other low-income countries rise. But “de-institutionalization” may be more disruptive in the long term. While manufacturing jobs in the U.S. might return as wages rise in low-income countries, technologies like 3-D printing advance, and trade barriers…

       




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Football star Yaya Touré joins the World Environment Day celebrations as goodwill ambassador

The soccer star arrived in an electric retro-fit Fiat Panda and attended a cooking demonstration.




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Ever heard of the powerful Balloon Council?

For almost 30 years the Council has been fighting against regulation that would limit balloons for environmental reasons.




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California teen collects 50,000 rotting golf balls from coastal waters

Alex Weber, 18, has just published a study that analyzes how these balls enter and degrade in the water.




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UnTreeHugger: Nellie's Dryer Balls

We've been seeing Nellie's dryer balls and their various knockoffs throwing around their purportedly eco-friendly clout everywhere lately, even on green shopping sites and environmental blogs we know and love. (We even tried to correct these misguided




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65 reef balls deployed to honor 65 sunken US subs

This undersea memorial will honor all the US subs and their crews lost since 1900, while creating new habitat for marine life.




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Does Peak Helium Mean We Should Stop With The Big Balloons Already?

We are often called wet blanket party poopers when it comes to holiday traditions, but maybe we are right.




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The Ballad of Lonesome George, The Galapagos' Most Famous Tortoise

Lonesome George is quite a character. He's a Pinta Island tortoise, and, as Brian noted when he visited a few years ago, he's the last of this breed. Yep, that means when he's gone, that's it -- his species will




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Cleveland Indians Score Another Green Hit With Innovative Helix Turbine, A Baseball First

A 18-foot-wide helix turbine specially designed for urban spaces has been installed on the roof of Progressive Field, ready to begin churning out energy on opening day.




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Wolf hunt up for vote on Michigan’s November ballot

Does the state of Michigan need a wolf hunt? Voters will get the chance to weigh in.




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Google to encircle the globe with internet balloons next year

The ring of giant Project Loon balloons will bring data service to people living below.




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Did Bucky Fuller really design a soccer ball?

A lot of websites are saying so, but there is no evidence that it ever happened.




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Penguin-protecting sheepdog stars in movie 'Oddball and the Penguins'

The real life romance sparked while making a merry romp of this endangered species protection success story could be the sequel!




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Party balloon store closing 45 outlets due to lack of helium. Let's hope they stay closed.

Why are we wasting such a valuable resource? Where will it come from if we don't drill for natural gas?




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Most Huggable: Football Mangroves in Florida, Bristol's Renewable Street Lights, Frank Capra's "Truth"

To carbon neutralize the Super Bowl, the NFL plants mangroves in Florida




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What Does Al Gore Have to Do With Football?

This week former Vice-President Al Gore made a stop by Atlanta last week to talk about...well, climate change. But while he was there, he took the time out to talk to one of the NFLs most green athletes, Atlanta Falcons fullback Ovie Mughelli. Still




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Could Bacteria-Filled Balloons Stop the Spread of the Sahara? Architect Magnus Larsson Thinks So

Nearly a year ago a "Great Green Wall" of trees was proposed to run across the entire southern border of the Sahara desert in an attempt to stop expanding desertification. At the TED Global conference in Oxford, England,




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Footballs To Be Made from Feral Camel Leather

Australia has a feral camel problem. The Australian Feral Camel Management Project estimates that 1 million of rogue dromedaries roam outback Australia, annually causing over $14 million AUD worth of damage to infrastructure and




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Soccket Soccer Ball Generates Power from Play

Just 30 minutes of play time can power a lamp for three hours.




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Where Wiffle Ball's a Crime There May Be No Child Left Outside

With kids across America suffering from a severe case of nature deficit disorder as technology creeps in and takes over their room for creative play it may come as a surprise that a group of kids putting together their very own field of dreams on which




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Giant offshore wind turbine will feature blades longer than two football fields

That's two and a half times longer than any existing wind turbine blade and that's not all that makes it unique.




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Texas College Converts its Football Field into a Working Farm

Paul Quinn College in Dallas converted its underused football field into a working farm.




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World Cup teams won't be using these soccer balls found washed up on beaches

The World Cup is starting: here's a football they won't be wanting.




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CES 2013: New CubeX 3D Printer Spits Out Objects the Size of Basketballs

The new machine from 3D Systems has a larger printing platform, and a whole lot of new bells and whistles for 3D printing enthusiasts.







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Powerball players eye $450M jackpot

Wednesday's lottery prize will be the largest since last February.




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Harley Willard: ‘Iceland’s a good place just to concentrate on your football’

The winger, who was part of the Guardian’s first Next Generation in 2014, talks about rebuilding his career after being released by Southampton

Harley Willard made one of those sliding-doors decisions that can turn anyone’s life around last December. He had arrived at Heathrow airport, packed and ready for the 14-hour slog back to Phnom Penh, and at that point another season at the Cambodian club Svay Rieng felt like a trade-off he could just about stomach. The football there offered few real prospects but he had enjoyed the lifestyle and, after such an uncertain year and a half since leaving Southampton, surely his happiness was the most important thing.

Related: Next Generation: after five years, how has our first full class of picks fared?

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Next Generation 2019: 60 of the best young talents in world football

Eidur Gudjohnsen’s son, the new Paul Pogba and Barça’s Ansu Fati are among our 60 most talented players in the world born in 2002. Check the progress of our 2018 picks | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014

Photographs by DZfoot, BackpagePix, Club Atlético Belgrano, EFE, EPA, Getty Images, Uwe Gruen/Hoffenheim, AMA/Getty Images, Rex/Shutterstock, Zuma Press/PA, FIFA, Tigres, Damir Krajac/CROPIX, Alamy, Daniel Reyes/Ecuafutbol, Reuters, Atromitos, Imago/PA, fotoBERNAMA, New Straits Times, José Alonso Paredes Sánchez, Agencja Gazeta, David Price/Arsenal FC/Getty, AP, Asian Football Confederation, Danubio FC and Championat Asia

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Premier League critics should recognise football cannot wait for ever | Jonathan Wilson

The objections to restart plans are understandable and the game should pay attention, but ultimately clubs need to play games to survive

With each week the plans become a little more refined and with each week any final decision is pushed back. Football may return, and this is how it may look if it does, but nobody is sure, and any proposed date can only be provisional. Which is as it should be. In an age that often favours decisiveness over the decision itself, there is something vaguely comforting about a process that accepts the wisdom of waiting.

But in the background there is a crucial, nagging voice, and what it is saying is this: if football isn’t prepared to return, at least initially, in a form very different to the one it took before the virus, it may not return for a very long time – and for many clubs that means never.

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Football quiz: trophy droughts

How much do you know about clubs with dusty trophy cabinets?

More quizzes: big goals, penalties and famous photos

In which decade did Tottenham last win a major trophy?

The 2010s

The 2000s

The 1990s

The 1980s

Leeds have not won a trophy since Howard Wilkinson guided them to the league title in 1991-92. Who was their top scorer that season?

Eric Cantona

Lee Chapman

Gordon Strachan

Gary Speed

Who was the prime minister the last time Everton won a trophy?

Margaret Thatcher

John Major

Tony Blair

James Callaghan

Manchester United won the double in the 1993–94 and 1995-96 season. Which club won the League Cup in those two seasons – and have not won a trophy since?

Middlesbrough

Leeds United

Aston Villa

Sheffield Wednesday

Sunderland have not won a major trophy since they beat Leeds in the FA Cup final in 1973. What was remarkable about that Sunderland team?

They were in the Third Division at the time

They won the game 1-0 even though they did not have a shot on target

None of their team had played international football at the time

They won all of their FA Cup ties 1-0 that season – including the final

Newcastle have not won the league in the post-war period. In which decade did they win three FA Cups?

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

Which of these London clubs has won the top flight?

West Ham

Crystal Palace

Queens Park Rangers

Fulham

Charlton Athletic

None of them

Which club won three league titles in a row in the 1920s and have never won the league since?

Ipswich Town

Sheffield Wednesday

Huddersfield Town

Wolverhampton Wanderers

Who are the only club to have won the old First Division yet never played in the Premier League?

Notts County

Bristol City

Plymouth Argyle

Preston North End

Which club won the league title 100 years ago but haven’t won it since?

West Brom

Bolton Wanderers

Birmingham City

Swansea City

1 and above.

Your trophy drought continues

2 and above.

Your trophy drought continues

3 and above.

Your trophy drought continues

4 and above.

Your trophy drought continues

5 and above.

Your trophy drought continues

6 and above.

No trophy drought for you

7 and above.

No trophy drought for you

8 and above.

No trophy drought for you

9 and above.

No trophy drought for you

0 and above.

Your trophy drought continues

10 and above.

No trophy drought for you

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Which two footballers have played the most matches together? | The Knowledge

Plus: the policing of goalkeepers, home shirts that became away tops and strike partners sharing birthdays

“Which two footballers have played the most matches together? I reckon Jason Dodd and Francis Benali for Southampton must be up there,” asks Mark Williams.

They’re not even close, Mark, but we’ll get back to that shortly. First, Geoff Airey has two long-standing midfielders at Manchester United who knock Benali and Dodd (170 appearances together) into a cocked hat.

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