Streaming sticks can breathe new life into an older TV, and help you get even more out of a modern one. Amazon’sFire TV Stick 4K is one most affordable around, with a snappy interface, access to a plethora of streaming apps, and the ability to control some smart home devices from your couch. The next Prime Day event doesn’t start until Tuesday, July 8th, but the streaming gadget is already on sale for $24.99 ($24.99 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which is its lowest price of the year.
The Fire TV Stick 4K is a great device for streaming TV shows and movies from popular services like Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, and dozens of FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) channels in HD or 4K. It also supports Dolby Vision, HDR10 Plus, Dolby Atmos, DTS, and several other HDR and surround sound formats, letting you take full advantage of your TV, projector, or home theater’s capabilities. The Fire TV Stick 4K can do more than just stream audio and video, though; it’s also deeply integrated with Alexa and Amazon’s other services.
The included Alexa Voice Remote features a blue button near the top that triggers the voice assistant when pressed to answer your questions, adjust your TV’s volume and input, and control other Fire TV facets using your voice. Subscribers to Xbox Game Pass or Amazon Luna can also use the Fire TV Stick 4K to stream titles via the cloud from those services’ libraries, and play them using a compatible Bluetooth controller, including Microsoft’s official Xbox Wireless Gaming Controller. Streaming video games from the cloud requires a fast internet connection; however, due to the inherent latency, fast-paced games may not be as fun to play as they are when using a current-gen console or PC.
Even if you don’t take advantage of the additional gaming features, the Fire TV Stick 4K is a great buy, whether you’re catching up on the latest season of Severance or watching your favorite YouTube channel.
It was Jackson’s second red card in four matches as Chelsea lost 3-1.
“The FIFA Disciplinary Committee has imposed the following sanction on Chelsea’s player Nicolas Jackson who was sent off as a result of a direct red card during the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 match between his team and CR Flamengo at Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, on 20 June 2025…” FIFA said in a statement.
“2-match suspension for breach under article 14 paragraph 1 e) of the FIFA Disciplinary Code. This decision is final and binding and cannot be appealed.”
Jackson apologised for his actions on social media after the match.
“I want to say sorry. To the club, the staff, my teammates, and all the fans watching, I let you down,” Jackson wrote on Instagram.
“Another red card … and honestly, I’m so angry at myself. I work very hard every day to help the team not to put us in this kind of situation. I still don’t fully understand how it happened. But one thing is clear: it wasn’t intentional. Just a football moment that went the wrong way.
“No excuses. I take full responsibility. I’ll reflect, I’ll grow, and I’ll come back stronger for the badge and for everyone who believes in me. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”
Chelsea face ES Tunis on Wednesday morning, where defeat will see them knocked out of the tournament.
Amber Heard is enjoying life onstage.
As she prepares to star in Jeremy O. Harris’ new play Spirit of the People alongside Brandon Flynn, her first role since her legal showdown with ex-husband…
The threatened rebellion is enough to wipe out the government’s working majority in Parliament.
But speaking ahead of a meeting of Nato leaders, the prime minister said the current welfare system was “unsustainable” and could not be left unreformed.
Asked by journalists if he would consider pausing the reforms given the size of the rebellion, Sir Keir said: “I intend to press ahead”.
He added that the current welfare system “traps people” on benefits, and was set to fuel “unsustainable” rises in the cost to taxpayers.
He added that the projected increase in the number claiming Personal Independence Payments (Pips) each year was “the equivalent of the population of a city the size of Leicester”.
“So those that care about a future welfare system have to answer the question: ‘how do you reform what you’ve got, to make sure it’s sustainable for the future?”
Asked if he would be happy to rely on Conservative votes to push the reforms through Parliament, he said: “I have no idea what the Conservatives will do. I don’t think they’ve got the first idea what they’re doing.”
‘Groundswell of opinion’
The Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill – set to be voted on by MPs next Tuesday – would make it harder for disabled people with less severe conditions to claim personal independence payment (Pip).
The rebel Labour MPs have signed a so-called “reasoned” amendment that, if selected by Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle and approved in a vote, would stop the bill progressing through Parliament.
The rebels cite the the number of people the plans are expected to push into relative poverty, a lack of consultation, and an inadequate impact assessment on the consequences on the jobs market as reasons why they oppose the plans.
While the success of the amendment is not assured, over half of all Labour backbenchers have signed it, indicating the extent of the potential rebellion facing ministers.
Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, who tabled the amendment, has called on the government to “listen to this groundswell of opinion” and change course.
Dame Meg, who also chairs the Treasury Select Committee, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One the government’s communication around the bill has “not been good” and had led to confusion.
While agreeing that the welfare system needs reform, she warned there were flaws in how the plans were being rolled out, and said Labour experts were shut out of the process.
One of the main co-ordinators behind the amendment, who did not wish to be named, has told the BBC the government’s U-turn on cutting winter fuel payments had emboldened many of those who have signed the amendment.
They said MPs “all voted for winter fuel [cuts] and have taken so much grief in our constituencies, so colleagues think why should I take that on again?”.
It is understood that plans for the amendment began when Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall offered a partial olive branch to rebels by expanding the transition period for anyone losing Pip from four to 13 weeks.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stopped short of endorsing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) for re-election on Tuesday, days after President Trump threatened to back a primary challenger for the GOP lawmaker — the latest jab in the long-running feud between the two Republicans.
The lukewarm response follows days of Trump attacking Massie on social media after the Kentucky Republican voted against the party’s “big, beautiful bill” last month and said the president’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend were “not Constitutional.”
On Sunday, however, Trump escalated his rhetoric, vowing to campaign “hard” for a primary challenger to Massie, who has served in the House since 2012.
Asked on Tuesday if he will defend Massie against a primary challenger, Johnson weighed his commitments as Speaker with his understanding of Trump’s anger with the Kentucky Republican.
“That’s the hardest question I had this morning, and I’m being totally honest with you,” Johnson said. “Look, the Speaker’s job, my role with my party cap on is I’m leader of my party here, and the Speaker leads the incumbent protection program, right, that’s what we call it. I gotta make sure everybody gets re-elected. I travel the country nonstop, relentlessly, raising money to ensure that that happens.”
“But I certainly understand the president’s frustration about the colleague you named, and he and I talk about that quite a bit,” he continued. “Can’t quite understand what the rationale is but if you’re here and you’re wearing one team’s jersey and every single time you vote with the other team, people begin to question what your motive is and what your philosophy is and why you’re so consistently opposed to the platform, the agenda of your party.”
It remains unclear who will primary Massie, but the effort to find a candidate is ramping up. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 co-campaign manager, and Tony Fabrizio, a Trump pollster, launched a new super PAC that is aimed at unseating Massie.
“MAGA KY was formed for the specific purpose of firing Thomas Massie – His constituents will soon learn that he prefers the politics and policy of AOC and the radical left – over President Trump,” LaCivita told NewsNation.
Massie, for his part, has not flinched amid the increased pressure. On Monday, he said “I have the Trump antibodies,” likely referring to previous scuffles he has gotten into with Trump, and on Tuesday, after Johnson stopped short of offering support for the incumbent, Massie re-posted Trump’s May 2022 statement endorsing the Kentucky Republican.
“For those who want to know what @realDonaldTrump really thinks of me, this should clear things up…” he wrote on X with the old endorsement.
In March 2020, Massie tried to force a vote on the CARES Act COVID-19 stimulus bill, which forced members to return to Washington to avoid a delay in passing the legislation — drawing the ire of Trump. In August 2022, Trump endorsed Massie before his primary, calling the Kentucky Republican “a first-rate Defender of the Constitution.” In April 2023, Massie endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in the GOP presidential primary, sparking intense anger from Trump. In October 2024, after DeSantis had dropped out, Massie endorsed Trump.
Trump and Johnson’s frustrations with Massie are resurfacing as the Kentucky Republican voted against key party legislation, supported an effort to oust the Speaker last year and, most recently, sharply criticized the president’s strike in Iran.
Massie is co-leading a bipartisan war powers resolution with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) that would prevent the U.S. from additional intervention in Iran, an effort that Johnson has staked opposition to. Massie, however, may hold back the resolution now that Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.
Trump unloaded on Massie as recently as Tuesday morning, calling him a “Third Rate Congressman” and a “LOSER.”
Johnson, additionally, told reporters: “We never agree these days, I’m not sure where his philosophy is coming from.”
We came across a bullish thesis on Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (SIRI) on Value Investing Subreddit by nymbaseball29. In this article, we will summarize the bulls’ thesis on SIRI. Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (SIRI)’s share was trading at $22 as of 9th June. SIRI’s trailing and forward P/E were 7.28 and 7.72 respectively according to Yahoo Finance.
A group of musicians performing on stage with the audience in the background.
SiriusXM, once seen as a legacy satellite radio company struggling to modernize, is undergoing a strategic transformation into a dynamic media hub.
Despite being overlooked as a streaming competitor, SiriusXM holds strong assets: 34 million long-tenured subscribers, exclusive content deals with major personalities and organizations, extensive satellite infrastructure, and Pandora’s underutilized ad-supported funnel. Recognizing the need for evolution, the company hired Joe Inzerillo, former BAMTech CTO, to revamp its digital platform, culminating in the 2024 relaunch of the SiriusXM app. This update introduced free tiers, algorithmic personalization, and video components, signaling a broader ambition beyond traditional radio.
SiriusXM is positioning itself at the intersection of live-event promotion and real-time entertainment distribution. Instead of merely serving as a passive listening platform, it is establishing a full-cycle engagement flywheel.
A new tour or event is teased on SiriusXM, Ticketmaster converts listeners into attendees, and SiriusXM recaps the experience with exclusive audio and video coverage, reinforcing loyalty and anticipation for future events. This model monetizes fandom before, during, and after the event, differentiating SiriusXM from Spotify and Netflix, which focus on passive engagement.
The synergy between SiriusXM and Ticketmaster suggests a deeper integration may be on the horizon, offering a compelling case for its evolution as a comprehensive entertainment stack. By modernizing its product and leveraging its unique strengths, SiriusXM is redefining its relevance, potentially securing a stronger foothold in the streaming and live entertainment landscape.
Previously, we highlighted a bullish thesis on Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI) by Waterboy Investing on Substack, emphasizing its cash-generative legacy business, strong subscriber base, and predictable free cash flow growth. Even though the stock has seen a 14% depreciation, the turnaround thesis is theorized by both authors. Nymbaseball29 highlights SiriusXM’s transformation into a broader media hub, leveraging Pandora, algorithmic personalization, and live-event synergies.
A federal judge has sided with Anthropic in an AI copyright case, ruling that training — and only training — its AI models on legally purchased books without authors’ permission is fair use. It’s a first-of-its-kind ruling in favor of the AI industry, but it’s importantly limited specifically to physical books Anthropic purchased and digitized.
Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California also says in his decision that the company must face a separate trial for pirating “millions” of books from the internet. The decision also does not address whether the outputs of an AI model infringe copyrights, which is at issue in other related cases.
The lawsuit was filed by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who sued Anthropic last year over claims the company trained its family of Claude AI models on pirated material. It’s a pivotal decision that could affect how judges respond to AI copyright cases going forward.
The ruling also addresses Anthropic’s move to purchase print copies of books, rip off their bindings, cut the pages, and scan them into a centralized digital library used to train its AI models. The judge ruled that digitizing a legally purchased physical book was fair use, and that using those digital copies to train an LLM was sufficiently transformative to also be fair use.
“Authors’ complaint is no different than it would be if they complained that training schoolchildren to write well would result in an explosion of competing works,” Judge Alsup writes, adding that the Copyright Act “seeks to advance original works of authorship, not to protect authors against competition.”
Despite these wins for Anthropic, Judge Alsup writes that Anthropic’s decision to store millions of pirated book copies in the company’s central library — even if some weren’t used for training — isn’t considered fair use. “This order doubts that any accused infringer could ever meet its burden of explaining why downloading source copies from pirate sites that it could have purchased or otherwise accessed lawfully was itself reasonably necessary to any subsequent fair use,” Alsup writes (emphasis his).
Judge Alsup says the court will hold a separate trial on the pirated content used by Anthropic, which will determine the resulting damages.
Ryan O’Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He’s also the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.”
Here is what we’ve learned from the Club World Cup thus far:
The Bundesliga is a lot better than the Northern League of New Zealand. The Portuguese league is also better than New Zealand’s league, but not by as much — and it’s also worse than MLS. But MLS is worse than the Tunisian league. And the Tunisian league is worse than the Brazilian league, but that’s nothing to worry about because the Brazilian league is better than the Premier League and the Champions League. As for the Saudi Pro League, Spanish LaLiga, Italian Serie A and Mexico’s Liga MX? They’re all pretty much the same level.
If you knew nothing else about soccer and just scanned the results from the first week of matches, you could at least convince yourself of all those things: Botafogo beat Paris Saint-Germain, Flamengo beat Chelsea, Al Hilal drew with Real Madrid, Inter Miami beat FC Porto, and Inter Milan drew with Monterrey. Oh, and Bayern Munich beat a bunch of New Zealand part-timers, Auckland City, 10-0.
But those takeaways, of course, are not quite true. Were they true, we’d likely already see those shifts reflected in the betting markets. And, per ESPN BET, the five biggest favorites to make it to the final are teams from the world’s five biggest leagues: Germany, Spain, England, Italy, and France.
But I’m also not sure that we haven’t learned anything, either.
The atomized landscape of professional soccer makes it hard to really know anything about how one league compares to another. Sure, the Premier League is very likely the best league in the world because its teams make significantly more money than everyone else, but even just among those Big Five leagues in Europe, we don’t really know where, say, Atlético Madrid would finish if they played in England, or how Brentford would perform in the German Bundesliga.
Stretch beyond Western Europe and it gets even murkier. MLS? Yeah, it might be somewhere between the ninth-best and the 35th-best league, depending on how you define the terms and whom you ask. Could the titans of South America — the likes of Flamengo and River Plate in the region — hang across a full season in a Big Five league? And really, what the heck happens when you create a Frankenstein’s monster of a team — a roster half-filled with above-average European pros and half-filled with guys from the country that’s currently 58th in the FIFA rankings?
To get close to answering these questions, we simply need more games. And while there is plenty lacking from the Club World Cup — top teams, fans, television ratings, a reality-based understanding of the world from the guy in charge of FIFA — there is absolutely one thing we can all agree this tournament is providing: games. Sixty-four of them, in fact.
So, come mid-July, could the Club World Cup actually teach us something about how soccer works?
Comparing league strength vs. league translation
Even with a bad knee and an aging body, if I showed up to a random pickup soccer game in, say, Bangor, Maine, and you watched me play, you’d think I was really good at soccer. As a former mediocre Division I player, I still am better at soccer than a large majority of the American population. If you dropped, say, a League One star from England into a random Atlantic 10 game this upcoming fall, you’d think he was really good at soccer. If you dropped a solid Premier League starter into League One, you’d think he was really good at soccer.
The problem, in each of these situations, is that you have no idea exactly how good any of these people are because of the contexts in which you’re seeing them play. While each example is somewhat extreme, the same idea applies between any two leagues or competitive contexts across the world.
If you’re scouting players, it’s crucial to understand these contexts. It can help you avoid overvalued players who look great in a league that might boost performance but doesn’t translate well elsewhere.
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How did Chelsea lose to Flamengo?
Learn how Nicolas Jackson’s sending off helped Clube de Regatas do Flamengo beat Chelsea 3-1 in the FIFA Club World Cup.
The Dutch Eredivisie is the canonical example, filled with canonical individual examples. In his age 21 and 22 seasons with Dutch side AZ Alkmaar, Jozy Altidore scored 38 goals and added six assists. Then he signed for Sunderland in England and scored one goal — in two full Premier League seasons. Altidore’s speed and physicality played up in the wide-open, less-physical Dutch league, but his impact suddenly wilted when faced up against bigger and faster players in smaller spaces.
However, the reverse can also be true: There are undervalued players in unfairly maligned leagues. Back when they were also owned by Brentford’s Matthew Benham, FC Midtjylland signed lanky Finnish midfielder Tim Sparv from Greuther Furth in Germany’s second division. Sparv was 27 at the time, and Greuther Furth had finished in third place in the 2.Bundesliga. Outside of maybe a few Danish reporters, no one thought anything of it.
But this signing was quite interesting for two reasons. The first is that Midtjylland signed Sparv not because they liked watching him play, but because their in-house statistical model said they should. “It was something new and foreign to me,” Sparv told me. “I was bought because of stats and data.”
The second interesting thing is what the statistical model actually said.
Based on a cross-section of games between different leagues in various domestic and continental cups, Midtjylland felt that the German second division was severely undervalued. They also felt that Greuther Furth’s results were unluckier than their underlying performances. And on top of all that, they found that the team played worse when Sparv wasn’t on the field.
“In their eyes, the league was undervalued compared to others, so they felt like, ‘OK, we can find some gems in this league,'” Sparv said. “We were doing really well back then. I was playing and doing fine myself. They could see, ‘OK, this is someone we like,’ and also that when I was in the team, we were winning more than when I was not playing.”
Sparv went on to win three league titles in Denmark — the first three Midtjylland had ever won — and he captained the team in its 2-1 UEFA Europa League win over Manchester United in February 2016.
Another source who works in one of Europe’s Big Five leagues told me that a large part of the reason his team excels in acquiring talent is because it’s better able to translate contexts than most of its competitors. Interestingly, he added that league-to-league translation isn’t quite the same as league-to-league strength. Figuring out whether or not a player will do well if he moves from League A to League B isn’t the same thing as trying to figure out whether a team from League A or League B is more likely to win a given game.
What the Club World Cup could teach us
Both Midtjylland and my other source’s club have access to much more advanced data than is available publicly. They’re able to analyze league translations and league strength by looking at the handful of games where there’s cross-competition pollination. Perhaps by using more fine-grained datasets that include things like tracking data, they’re also able to mine some cross-continental information out of national team games — even if that’s a wildly different context to what we see in almost any major league.
Throw it all together with the right philosophical assumptions and savvy data science, and you can probably make some reasonably confident predictions as to which league is better than which, and which players might scale up to whatever league you’re playing in.
But whatever your dataset, the thing that would make all of this way easier — and the thing that helps fans understand what they’re watching — is more games between teams in these different leagues.
“The Club World Cup historically has been the only competitive competition across continents, but the sample of matches has typically been very small, only eight a season,” Aurel Nazmiu, senior data scientist at the consultancy Twenty First Group, told ESPN. “The 2025 Club World Cup is going to give us eight times more matches (64) to better understand team performance globally.”
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Nicol: Nobody respects the Club World Cup
Stevie Nicol believes fans are struggling to back the Club World Cup as attendances remain relatively low.
Twenty First Group maintains a global team-rating system that also doubles as a global league-rating system. Coming into this tournament, it rated the Brazilian Serie A as the sixth-best league in the world and Flamengo as the best non-European team. Again, it did this before the tournament, and the prediction seems pretty accurate based on what we’ve seen so far.
MLS, meanwhile, entered the event ranked as the 32nd-best league in the world. That will seem low to many fans and followers of the league, but when a rating system depends on cross-pollination, your league isn’t going to rate well when your league never really beats teams from other leagues. While we’re talking about relatively complex algorithms here, there is a “shut up and win the darn games” aspect of all of this, too.
Now, perhaps Inter Miami’s performance at the Club World Cup will boost the league’s standings in these global rating systems — or maybe LAFC‘s relatively unimpressive showing will cancel it out. But there is one problem with these games: The data might be corrupt. Put more plainly, we don’t actually know how hard any of the biggest teams are trying in any given match.
The overall winner of the Club World Cup will win a cash prize of up to around $125 million — more than the roughly $100 million on offer to the winner of the UEFA Champions League, and dwarfing the roughly $30 million for the winner of the Europa League. But money can’t buy prestige — or at least it hasn’t so far — and the Club World Cup lacks the reputation or fan enthusiasm that the UEFA Champions League has.
“There is a big question mark around how seriously teams will be taking this competition, especially European ones,” Nazmiu said. “The financial rewards on offer certainly provide incentive for teams, but given this tournament is taking place in the summer after a long European season where a number of players also participated in the Euros last summer means there’s a risk some players lack motivation.
“As the tournament progresses we’ll begin to get a better sense of this, but for now it’s worth being mindful and not overcommitting to what individual results mean for global quality. Tournament football is much noisier than league football: The best teams typically win the league given it’s over a longer period of time, whereas in knockout tournaments there’s more surprises.”
Take both of Botafogo’s matches so far. They were outshot 23 to 12 by the Seattle Sounders in their opening game. And yet they won 2-1:
And then, they beat the presumptive best team in the world — reigning UEFA Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain — in their second match despite creating barely any chances:
In modeling this out, do you reward Botafogo for a score-and-hold-on-for-dear-life victory against an MLS side? Do you actually reward the Sounders for creating better chances? Remember, we’re not trying to hand out trophies based on these models; we’re trying to use them to accurately predict the future. Now, a predictive stat like expected goals (xG) becomes a little less relevant as goalkeeper and finishing skill starts to diverge the further you go down the competitive ladder, but this wasn’t a dominant victory like the scoreline suggests, either.
The vague state of play at this tournament, though, brings us to a more interesting juncture: This has to be a combination of art and science. Deciding how much these games should matter in modeling our understanding of the global landscape of the sport is not dissimilar to watching these games and trying to figure out how impressive any given individual performance actually is.
“Competitive matches between clubs from different confederations will create rare, high-value reference points that can calibrate both team and player strength across markets,” Nazmiu said. “For example, if a midfielder from Asia outperforms their opposite number from a European team over 90 minutes, that’s not definitive, but it becomes a meaningful data point when contextualized with performance trends from league and international play.”
The same process applies to the teams as a whole: When Al Hilal tie a game with Real Madrid or Flamengo beat Chelsea, we shouldn’t make sweeping conclusions about anything. The Saudi Pro League hasn’t arrived, and Flamengo wouldn’t necessarily qualify for the UEFA Champions League if they played in England. But at the same time, it would be just as silly to do the opposite: Ignore the results and act like they can’t tell us anything, either.
We’ll have to see how the results shake out as the Club World Cup stretches on and the biggest teams start to field stronger lineups and get serious about winning, but the first week of the tournament has at least opened up a possibility that not many people were really considering before the tournament began. That the gap between Europe and the rest of the world might not be quite as big as we previously thought.
“Brooklyn and Nicola were under the impression they were being gifted their first dance by Marc Anthony,” a source told E! News in May. Instead, the singer announced, “‘Please welcome to the stage the most beautiful woman in the room—Victoria Beckham.’ Brooklyn wasn’t quite sure what to do and was put in an awkward situation.”
Moreover, the source continued, “Nicola left the room crying. She eventually came back and was able to collect herself to celebrate the rest of her wedding.”
The incident wasn’t so disastrous on the groom’s side of the family as to prevent Davidfrom being a best man at Marc’s wedding in January 2023, when he married fourth wife Nadia Ferreira. But it’s understandable if the bride had a harder time getting over it.
Brooklyn and Nicola “have made good faith efforts over the years” to have a relationship with his family, the source said, but at this time things aren’t good.
Probably apropos of nothing, though possibly not, Brooklyn called Nicola his “whole world” in a May 24 Instagram post, writing, “I always choose you baby x you’re the most amazing person I know xx me and you forever baby.”
Zak Crawley is caught for 65 as India finally break England’s opening partnership, leaving the home side 188-1, chasing 371 for victory in the opening Test at Headingley.
