PORTLAND, Maine — Australian scientists tested the strength of bite-resistant wetsuits by allowing sharks to chomp the materials at sea and found that the suits can help keep swimmers safe.
Fatal shark bites are vanishingly rare, with less than 50 unprovoked shark bites on humans worldwide in 2024, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. But increased sightings of large sharks in some parts of the world have swimmers, surfers and divers looking for new ways to stay safe.
Scientists with Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, tested four bite-resistant materials and found they all reduced the amount of damage from shark bites. They performed the work by dragging samples of the materials behind boats and allowing white and tiger sharks to bite the samples.
The bites from such large sharks can still cause internal and crushing injuries, but the materials showed effectiveness beyond a standard neoprene wetsuit, the scientists said. The research found that the bite-resistant materials “can reduce injuries sustained from shark encounters,” said Flinders professor Charlie Huveneers, a member of the Southern Shark Ecology Group at Flinders and a study co-author.
“Bite-resistant material do not prevent shark bites, but can reduce injuries from shark bites and can be worn by surfers and divers,” Huveneers said.
There were small differences between the four tested materials, but they all “reduced the amount of substantial and critical damage, which would typically be associated with severe hemorrhaging and tissue or limb loss,” said Tom Clarke, a researcher with the science and engineering college at Flinders and a study co-author.
Chainmail suits to resist shark bites have existed for decades, but lack in flexibility for aquatic activities like surfing and diving, the scientists said in research published in the journal Wildlife Research on Thursday. Newer wetsuits can be designed to provide flexibility as well as protection.
The scientists tested the efficacy of wetsuit materials Aqua Armour, Shark Stop, ActionTX-S and Brewster. The scientists said in their paper that they found that all of the materials “offer an improved level of protection that can reduce severe wounds and blood loss, and should be considered as part of the toolbox and measures available to reduce shark-bite risk and resulting injuries.”
The promise of effective shark resistant wetsuits is encouraging for people who spend a lot of time in areas where there are large sharks, said Nick Whitney, a senior scientist and chair of the Fisheries Science and Emerging Technologies Program at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life in Boston. That includes surfers and spearfishers, he said.
Whitney, who was not involved in the study, said it’s also encouraging that the materials are unlikely to make a person “feel invincible” and engage in risky behaviors around sharks.
“I also like it because it’s not relying on any impact on the shark’s behavior,” Whitney said. “It’s basically very, very simple. In the extremely rare event that you get bitten by a shark, this material will hopefully make you bleed less than you would if you were not wearing this.”
The researchers said the suits do not eliminate all risks from sharks, and precautions still need to be taken around the animals.
They are hopeful their research will help the public “make appropriate decisions about the suitability of using these products,” Huveneers said.
Sept. 1 (UPI) — A shark bit a boy’s leg while he was snorkeling in the Atlantic Ocean near Key Largo on Monday afternoon, prompting first responders to airlift him to a Miami hospital.
The Monroe County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office said the shark bit the 8-year-old at 3:24 p.m. EDT, and Trauma Star airlifted him to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center in Miami, CBS News and WFOR reported.
Audio from first responders confirmed the boy suffered a shark bite to one of his legs.
The boy was snorkeling near Ocean Reef and off of Horseshoe Reef when the shark bit him above the knee on one leg, according to WPLG.
The boy’s condition is unknown, and the local officials said they notified the U.S. Coast Guard and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission about the shark attack.
The shark attack is the first reported in Monroe County since a shark bit a spearfisher a year ago in July near Key West.
Monroe County encompasses all of the Florida Keys and the southwestern portion of Everglades National Park.
A large variety of sharks inhabit the waters off of Monroe County, including Great Whites, Bull sharks, Hammerheads and Tiger sharks.
Maiduguri, Nigeria – Sometimes, it feels to Zara Ali as though her daughter was born already sick in the womb.
On a recent weekday, the 30-year-old mother clutched the ill toddler in her lap as she sat outside a government hospital in Maiduguri, the capital of northeast Nigeria’s Borno State. The two had just finished yet another doctor’s appointment in hopes of curing the child.
Although cranky as any other sick two-year-old, it is Amina’s hair – brownish and seemingly bald in several spots – that’s a visible sign of the malnourishment doctors had previously diagnosed. Yet, despite months of treatment with a protein-heavy, ready-to-eat paste, Ali says progress has been slow, and her daughter might require more hospital visits.
“She gets sick, gets a little better, and then falls ill again,” she said, frustrated. Already, Ali and her family have had to move homes several times because of the Boko Haram conflict. They were displaced from Damboa town, about 89km (55 miles) away, and now live in Maiduguri as displaced persons.
Adding to her woes is the reduced access to care in recent months as several aid clinics she visits for free treatment have begun to scale back operations, or in some cases, completely shut their services. “Honestly, their interventions were really helpful, and we need them to come back and help our children,” Ali said.
Amina is only one of some five million children across northeast and northwest Nigeria suffering from malnourishment in what experts have called the region’s most severe food crisis in years. The troubled northeast region has, for a decade and a half, been in the throes of a conflict waged by the armed group Boko Haram, and prolonged insecurity has disrupted food supplies. In the northwest, bandit groups are causing similar upheavals, resulting in a hunger crisis that state governments are struggling to contain.
Compounding the problem this year are the massive, brutal funding cuts roiling aid organisations, which have often stepped in to help by providing food assistance to the 2.3 million displaced northeast Nigerians. Many of those organisations were dependent on funds from the United States, which, since February, has reduced contributions to aid programmes globally by about 75 percent.
The World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations food aid agency and the world’s largest provider of food assistance, was forced to shut down more than half of all its nutrition clinics across the northeast in August, Emmanuel Bigenimana, who leads northeast Nigeria operations, told Al Jazeera from the agency’s site in Maiduguri. Some 300,000 children are cut off from needed nutrition supplements, he said.
Already, in July, WFP doled out its last reserves of grains for displaced adults and families, Bigenimana added, standing by a row of half-empty tent warehouses. A few men removed grain sacks from the tents and loaded them onto trucks bound for neighbouring Chad, a country also caught in complex crises. For Nigeria, he said, which is in the lean season before harvest, there was no more food.
Men load a WFP food truck in Maiduguri, Nigeria [Sani Adamu/Al Jazeera]
Insecurity fuels food crisis
Northeast Nigeria should be a food basket for the country, due to its fertile, savannah vegetation suitable for cultivating nuts and grains. However, since the Boko Haram conflict broke out, the food supply has dwindled. Climate shocks in the increasingly arid region have added to the problems.
Boko Haram aims to control the territory and has been active since 2011. The group’s operations are mainly in Borno, neighbouring states in the northeast, and across the border in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. It gained global notoriety in 2014 for the kidnapping of female students in Chibok. Internal fractures and Nigeria’s military response have reduced the group’s capacity in recent years, but it still controls some territory, and a breakaway faction is affiliated with ISIL (ISIS). More than 35,000 people have been killed in attacks by the group, and more than 2 million are displaced.
Before the insecurity, families in the region, particularly outside the urban metropolis of Maiduguri, survived on subsistence farming, tilling plots of land, and selling surplus harvest. These days, that is hardly an option. The military has hunkered down in garrisoned towns since 2019 to avoid troop losses. It is hard to find cultivating space amid the trenches and security barriers constructed in such places, security analyst KabirAdamu of intelligence firm Beacon Consulting, told Al Jazeera. Those who venture outside the towns risk being targeted by armed fighters.
In rural areas not under army control, Boko Haram operates as a sort of government, exploiting villagers to generate money.
“The armed actors collect taxes from them to use land for farming,” Adamu said, adding that for rural farmers, those taxes often prove heavy on the pockets. In more unlucky scenarios, farmers have been killed if they were believed to be military informants. In January, 40 farmers were executed in the town of Baga. Fishermen have similarly been targeted.
The vicious cycle has repeated itself for years, and the compounding effect is the current food crisis, experts say.
Just 45 minutes from Maiduguri, in Konduga town, farmer Mustapha Modu, 55, tilled the earth in anticipation of rainfall on a cool weekday. He had just returned from a short journey to Maiduguri, braving the risky highways to buy seedlings in hopes of a good season.
Even as Modu planted, he worried that harvest might be impossible. There are widespread fears that Boko Haram fighters often lie in wait and then pounce on farmers to seize harvests. At one time, he said, his family of three wives and 17 children depended on handouts, but those hardly reached Konduga any more, so he had to do something.
“It’s been a long time since we saw them in our village,” Modu said of food aid distributors. “That’s why I managed to go and get some seedlings, even though the insurgents are still on our neck.”
Modu Muhammad, a farmer, works on a farm in Konduga, outside Maiduguri [Sani Adamu/Al Jazeera]
Aid cuts risk more ‘violence’
The UN and its agencies were the focus of aid cuts from Washington in April, leading to the WFP receiving zero aid from the US this year, Bigenimana said. Like the US, other donors such as the European Union and the United Kingdom have also cut back on aid, instead diverting money to security as tensions remain high over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The agency catered to some 1.3 million displaced people and others in hard-to-reach areas, fringe locations accessible only by helicopter. For children, the agency ran several nutrition clinics and supported government hospitals with ready-to-use food, a protein mixture made mostly of groundnut, which can rapidly stabilise a malnourished child.
Funding cuts caused the WFP to begin rationing supplies in recent months. In July, resources in Nigeria were completely emptied. At least $130m is required for the agency to speedily get back on track with its operations here, Bigenimana said. Extended lack of support, he said, could push more people into danger.
“People are attempting to go and get firewood to sell outside the secure points,” the official said. “Even when we delay distribution on normal days, people protest. So we are expecting that, and it could get violent.”
Multiple other NGOs across the region were also hit by the Trump aid cuts. They not only provided food aid or nutrition treatment, but also medical services, and crucial vaccines children need in the first years of life to guard against infectious diseases like measles.
Analysts like Adamu, however, criticise aid groups for what he said is their failure to create a system where people don’t rely on food aid. In Borno, the state government has, since 2021, gradually shut down camps for internally displaced people and resettled some in their communities. The aim, the government argues, is to reduce dependency and restore dignity. However, the move faces widespread backlash as aid agencies and rights organisations point out that some areas are still unsafe, and that displaced people simply move to other camps.
“They should have supported the government on security reforms for the state,” Adamu argued. That, he said, would have been a more sustainable way of empowering people and would have eased the food crisis.
Mourners attend the funeral of 43 farm workers in Zabarmari, about 20km from Maiduguri, after they were killed by Boko Haram fighters in rice fields near the village of Koshobe in November 2020 [File: Audu Marte/AFP]
Rain time, sick time
For now, the food crisis looks set to continue, and children in particular appear to be bearing the brunt, especially as heavy rains arrive.
Muhammad Bashir Abdullahi, an officer with medical aid group Doctors without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera that more malnourished children are being admitted to the organisation’s nutrition facility in Maiduguri since early August. It is possible, he said, that the shuttered services in other organisations were contributing to the higher numbers.
“We used to admit 200 children weekly, but last week we admitted up to 400 children,” Abdullahi said. MSF, which is not dependent on US aid, has recorded more than 6,000 malnourished children in its Maiduguri nutrition centre since January. Typically, children receive the protein paste, or in acute cases, a special milk solution. Abdullahi said more children are likely to be admitted in the coming weeks.
Back at the government hospital where Ali was seeking treatment for her daughter, another woman stopped outside the clinic with her children, twin baby boys.
One of them was sick, the mother, 33-year-old Fatima Muhammad, complained, and is suffering from a swollen head. This is the third hospital she was visiting, as two other facilities managed by NGOs were overwhelmed. Unfortunately, her son had not been accepting the protein paste, a sign that medical experts say signals acute malnutrition.
“His brother is sitting and crawling already, but he still cannot sit,” Muhammad said, her face squeezed in a frown. She blamed herself for not eating enough during her pregnancy, although she hardly had a choice. “I think that’s what affected them. I just need help for my son, nothing more.”
Top United States diplomatic negotiator Steve Witkoff visited Moscow on Wednesday in a last-ditch push to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine before an August 8 deadline set by President Donald Trump.
Trump, who during his re-election campaign had promised he would be able to end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours if he came to power, has so far failed to mediate a truce despite months of hectic diplomacy, direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv, and phone calls with Putin.
Increasingly frustrated by Putin’s unwillingness to agree to a pause in fighting without imposing conditions unacceptable to Ukraine or the West, Trump has threatened a new wave of economic measures punishing Russia if it does not accept a ceasefire.
Since Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the US and its allies, including the United Kingdom and the European Union, have imposed more than 21,000 sanctions on Russia’s economy.
The new tariffs Trump has threatened are unlike any of those earlier sanctions, however. They target Russia by hitting out against its trading partners, in the hope that they will stop buying from or selling to Moscow.
But these secondary tariffs also carry risks for the US and its allies.
What are the secondary tariffs Trump is threatening?
In mid-July, as peace talks stalled despite Trump’s efforts, the US president threatened Russia with 100 percent secondary tariffs if it did not work towards a ceasefire. He gave the Kremlin a 50-day deadline to cooperate.
After Moscow suggested that it wouldn’t bow to US pressure, Trump moved up the deadline, which now expires on August 8. It is unclear if Trump’s openness to talks with Putin and Zelenskyy following Witkoff’s Moscow visit has changed that deadline.
On Wednesday, Trump doubled the tariff rate on Indian imports from 25 percent – which he had announced in late July – to 50 percent, as punishment for New Delhi’s refusal to stop buying Russian oil. That makes India the country facing the highest US tariffs at present – along with Brazil.
If Trump’s secondary tariffs go into effect, goods that the US imports from countries still trading with Russia would face duties of 100 percent on top of the tariffs Trump has already imposed on those nations.
That would at least double the price of those products, making them less competitive in the US market.
The idea behind these tariffs is to persuade Russia’s trading partners to stop buying and selling with the country, isolating its economy and depriving it of revenue it earns from exports, especially from energy.
Despite the sanctions it already faces, Russia has consistently earned more than 500 million euros ($580m) a day from energy exports since 2022. That will be disrupted if countries stop buying all oil and gas from Russia.
Which countries could Trump’s secondary tariffs hit?
The countries most affected by such secondary tariffs would be:
China: Russia’s most important ally, China is by far the largest consumer of its northern neighbour’s exports. In 2023, China bought almost a third of all Russian exports. It also bought almost half of Russia’s oil exports.
India: An old friend, India has been buying up large volumes of Russian crude since 2022, including almost 40 percent of Russia’s total oil exports in 2023. That year, 17 percent of Russia’s overall exports went to India. Trump had already imposed a 25 percent tariff on Indian goods. On Wednesday, he doubled that rate as punishment for India’s continued oil purchases from Russia.
Turkiye: The third-largest buyer of Russian energy, 8 percent of Russia’s exports in 2023 went to Turkiye. It is a NATO ally of the US.
Turkiye isn’t the only ally that could be hit if Trump truly targets all those who trade with Russia.
Could US allies be hit?
Pushing back against Western threats over its ties with Russia, India has pointed to the EU’s own trade with Moscow. And while that trade has plummeted since 2022, it is still substantial.
According to the EU, its total trade with Russia was worth 67.5 billion euros ($77.9bn) in 2024. India’s total trade with Russia in 2024-25, by contrast, was worth $68.7bn.
The bloc still relies heavily on Russia for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies. In fact, its import of Russian LNG has been rising: In 2024, EU imports of Russian LNG were 9 percent higher than the year before.
Europe has already been hit with a 15 percent tariff from Trump. Will Trump punish his closest supporters to pressure Russia to end the war?
Could the US face risks, too?
It is not just allies – secondary tariffs on those who trade with Russia carry risks for the US itself, too.
Trump’s team is currently working on a trade deal with China, and those talks have led to a pause in a tariff war between the world’s two largest economies.
That detente would break down if Trump imposes 100 percent tariffs on Chinese goods simply because Beijing also trades with Russia.
China, Europe and India are all major suppliers of goods to the US: If the cost of those products – from clothes to lamps to iPhones – doubles, American consumers will feel the pinch.
The US also buys chemicals, including uranium hexafluoride – used in uranium enrichment – from Russia.
Will India and China stop buying Russian energy?
That looks unlikely. China continues to buy oil from Iran, despite US sanctions – and Russia is arguably its closest strategic partner.
India has also shown no sign of loosening its ties with Russia. Witkoff isn’t the only foreign envoy visiting Moscow at the moment. India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, is also in the Russian capital. India’s foreign minister, S Jaishankar, is expected to visit Russia later this month, and India has announced that it intends to host Putin later this year.
On Wednesday, India described Trump’s 50 percent tariff as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”, adding that its purchase of Russian oil was rooted in its desire for energy security for its 1.4 billion people.
Emma Hickey and her partner Stephen Brougham took their two kids to Costa Adeje, Tenerife, Spain when the 42-year-old mum fell badly ill, prompting a trip to hospital
Hannah Robinson and Milo Boyd Digital Travel Reporter
14:50, 30 Jun 2025Updated 17:01, 30 Jun 2025
Emma Hickey was on family with her kids when disaster struck
A mum is fighting for her life after plummeting down hotel stairs and hitting her head.
Emma Hickey and her partner Stephen Brougham took their two kids to Costa Adeje, Tenerife, Spain, on June 13 for a sun-soaked 12-day getaway. Just 10 days into the trip, the mum-of-two woke up with a ‘really bad case’ of mosquito bites, so went to hospital and was prescribed injections
Despite feeling unwell for the next few days, the 42-year-old carer ‘soldiered through the holiday‘ for the sake of her kids. But as they walked down the hotel staircase on their way to a pharmacy on June 23, Emma complained of feeling dizzy before suddenly collapsing and falling head-first onto a concrete step.
Stephen, 44, says it was ‘horrific’ to watch his partner convulsing on the concrete steps after passing out. She was immediately rushed to hospital. A hospital CT scan revealed the mum-of-two had a brain bleed and neck fractures, so she was put in an induced coma.
Emma was badly bitten by the mosquitos (Image: Kennedy News and Media)
A friend of the family has set up a GoFundMe page to support plasterer Stephen and his two kids, while they are stranded in Tenerife waiting for Emma to recover. The dad-of-two says it could be ‘a very long time’ until his partner is well enough to fly home and he is unsure if the travel insurance will cover the soaring medical costs.
Stephen, from Dublin, Ireland, said: “We came away for a lovely family holiday and it’s been a living nightmare. She woke up with a really bad case of mosquito bites so we went to the local doctor and the doctors didn’t know what it was so they sent her to hospital
“The doctor there said they’d never seen a case of this mosquito bite in Spain before. She got a prescription and sent her away. For the next few days she wasn’t feeling well but was soldiering through the holiday for the sake of the kids trying to do what she could but she wasn’t herself.
Stephen said that his wife went for a nap on the 23rd, leaving him to take the kids out to lunch.
“She was up having a good sleep and she looked and seemed a lot better. She said she wouldn’t go to the hospital but would walk out to a pharmacy and see what they thought,” he continued.
“We walked out the back entrance of the hotel as there’s a shop and a pharmacy there. Street level is probably about four or five storeys up. She was feeling a bit dizzy and she collapsed and fell from the second last step of the upper staircase down below onto the other set of stairs head-first without raising her arm to protect herself.
Emma is now recovering in hospital(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
“She passed out on the steps and started convulsing, she was in a terrible state. It’s been horrific because I actually witnessed the fall and how bad the fall was. That’s a mental scar that I’ll never forget. Words can’t describe how bad it is.”
Stephen called an ambulance, which rushed his partner to hospital. A CT scan showed she had suffered a brain bleed and needed an operation. Doctors discovered some fractures in her neck. She was then put in an induced coma and will remain in intensive care until she wakes up.
Stephen said: “They did an operation and there were blood clots on the brain that had been putting some pressure on the brain. They’re not saying what impact the pressure on the brain of the blood clot will have after she comes round. “There could be secondary issues there so in the meantime she’s just been on the machine. She hasn’t felt well all week so we can only presume that the mosquito bites, the medication, the heat and the fact she tried to soldier through the holiday just for the sake of the kids [caused it].
Emma suffered a brain bleed after the fall(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
Emma has mosquito bites all over her body(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
“They were draining the life out of her and they’re all over her body, dozens and dozens. They looked uncomfortable and you could see that they were sore. They turned into bruises. I can only connect the two.”
Stephen, who is self-employed, and is searching for alternative accommodation for him and children Sophie Hickey, 13, and Bobby Hickey, 7, while they wait for Emma to recover. He is hoping the travel insurance will help the rising medical costs after reviewing her medical records.
“We know that hospital is $1,400 (£1,022) a day so we’re going to have a significant medical bill. The hotel we’re staying in at the moment is an expensive hotel. Then just feeding the kids and keeping them occupied. I’m not working now because I’m over here,” he said.
He’s now encouraging others to ensure they get travel insurance and to be aware of the dangers of insects abroad.
Nike has said it will cut its reliance on production in China for the United States market to mitigate the impact from US tariffs on imports, and forecast a smaller-than-expected drop in first-quarter revenue.
The sportswear giant’s shares zoomed 15 percent at the opening bell on Friday morning after it announced the change in conjunction with its earnings report released on Thursday.
US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports from key trading partners could add about $1bn to Nike’s costs, company executives said on a post-earnings call after the sportswear giant topped estimates for fourth-quarter results.
China, subject to the biggest tariff increases imposed by Trump, accounts for about 16 percent of the shoes Nike imports into the US, Chief Financial Officer Matthew Friend said. However, the company aims to cut the figure to a “high single-digit percentage range” by the end of May 2026 as it reallocates Chinese production to other countries.
“We will optimise our sourcing mix and allocate production differently across countries to mitigate the new cost headwind into the United States,” he said on a call with investors.
Consumer goods are one of the most affected areas by the tariff dispute between the world’s two largest economies, but Nike’s executives said they were focused on cutting the financial pain. Nike will “evaluate” corporate cost reductions to deal with the tariff impact, Friend said. The company has already announced price increases for some products in the US.
“The tariff impact is significant. However, I expect others in the sportswear industry will also raise prices, so Nike may not lose much share in the US,” David Swartz, analyst at Morningstar Research, told the Reuters news agency.
CEO Elliott Hill’s strategy to focus product innovation and marketing around sports is beginning to show some fruit, with the running category returning to growth in the fourth quarter after several quarters of weakness.
Having lost share in the fast-growing running market, Nike has invested heavily in running shoes such as Pegasus and Vomero, while scaling back production of sneakers such as the Air Force 1.
“Running has performed especially strongly for Nike,” said Citi analyst Monique Pollard, adding that new running shoes and sportswear products are expected to offset the declines in Nike’s classic sneaker franchises at wholesale partner stores.
Marketing spending was up 15 percent year on year in the quarter.
On Thursday, Nike hosted an event in which its sponsored athlete Faith Kipyegon attempted to run a mile in under four minutes. Paced by other star athletes in the glitzy event that was livestreamed from a Paris stadium, Kipyegon fell short of the goal but set a new unofficial record.
Nike forecast first-quarter revenue to fall in the mid-single digits, slightly better than analysts’ expectations of a 7.3 percent drop, according to data compiled by LSEG. Its fourth-quarter sales fell 12 percent to $11.10bn, but still beat estimates of a 14.9 percent drop to $10.72bn.
China continued to be a pain point, with executives saying a turnaround in the country will take time as Nike contends with tougher economic conditions and competition.
Looming trade deal as prices rise
Nike’s woes come as a trade deal with China could be on the horizon. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett said on Friday that the administration could have a deal with Beijing by Labor Day, which is on September 1.
Under the deal, the US will likely impose 55 percent tariffs across the board on Chinese goods, down from 145 percent, still a significant burden on businesses.
According to a survey from Allianz Global Trade last month, 38 percent of businesses say they will need to raise prices for consumers, with Nike being the latest.
In April, competitor Adidas said it would need to eventually raise prices for US consumers.
“Cost increases due to higher tariffs will eventually cause price increases,” CEO Bjorn Gulden said at the time.
Walmart said last month that its customers will see higher price tags in its stores as the nation’s biggest big box retailer prepares for back to school shopping season.
Target, which had a bad first quarter driven by boycotts and the looming threat of tariffs, also has been hit as the big box retailer gets 30 percent of its goods from China.
A British man has died after being bitten by a rabies-infected dog whilst visiting Morocco. The UK Health Security Agency has warned holidaymakers what to do if they have been bitten by an animal in an affected country
PUNTERS were quite rightly stunned and social media went into meltdown after a shock unseat on a horse who drifted like a barge at Wexford on Wednesday.
Philip Byrnes flopped off Redwood Queen – trained by the jockey’s old man Charles – in the opening 2m1f claiming hurdle.
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Redwood Queen looked to have 1-3 market leader Beacon Edge beaten as they approached the lastCredit: Racing TV
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Redwood Queen landed on all fours having seemingly jumped the hurdle well – only for jockey Philip Byrnes to be unseatedCredit: Racing TV
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An investigation has been launched into the incident, which came at the final flight after the horse had drifted markedly in the bettingCredit: Racing TV
Although on itself merely an extreme example of desperate riding, what angered many about this was that Redwood Queen had drifted in the betting from 7-2 to 13-2.
She clearly had the race in the bag when the jockey disappeared out the ‘side door’.
Byrnes runners, more than most other stables, appear to do best when the money is down.
My Saturday NAP
A Listed winner on comeback from ages off having previously run well in the 2000 Guineas when well fancied – everything, including the strong pace, points to a big run here. Back my tip simply by clicking the odds above.
To an outsider, the County Limerick handler runs what the majority would call a ‘gambling outfit’, for all that racing fans would have no proof of any financial transactions.
So when a Byrnes runner drifts like a barge, is clear at the last and then the jockey falls off, naturally many will cry foul play.
Only time will tell if that was the case – as the IHRB launch their full investigation.
But the chances are the case will eventually be dropped.
Only money trails could really prove guilt, and with so much punting action now on the Black Market, if anyone was trying to do something untoward they would have to be very thick indeed to leave any trace.
I did ask one top class jumps rider what they thought of the fall, and their response was interesting.
“Terrible bit of riding really,” they said.
“The horse came out of his hands and he was unbalanced but who knows whether that was enough to fall off?”
They added: “Personally I don’t think he’s that good a stunt rider. I think if they wanted to throw themselves off it would have looked more obvious.
“It’s really hard to throw yourself off a horse. I just don’t think he’s that good.”
Social media is always fascinating on these occasions. People like me – journalists and presenters on TV – tend to come in for a barrage of abuse.
The general gist is that we ‘don’t tell it as it is’.
As well as that, we should ‘have an opinion’ and we won’t talk out against the ‘racing family’.
What those on social media are actually saying is that if we don’t agree with what they suggest we are on the so-called ‘gravy train’.
In this case, what those on social media wanted me to say was a jockey had deliberately fallen off a horse who had taken a walk in the betting because connections did not want it to win.
They would also like me to add the whole game is corrupt.
To say the above is fine for most, although technically there would always be a chance of action being taken against them if the authorities found there was no case to answer.
But if a TV presenter was to say such things – or someone in writing – they would be in court or before lawyers before you could count to ten.
I know this as a fact.
In my early days of broadcasting I was laid off for a month for two instances which I stand by to today, but which could not be proven.
Did one of those mouthing off on social media offer to help pay my bills because I had publicly stood up for the punters? No they did not.
Being a keyboard warrior is, naturally, a very different world to broadcasting or writing in a newspaper.
Social media has given the people an opening to express themselves like they have never had before.
But just because the rules of the land appear to matter little online, everyone should remember that for broadcasters and journalists it’s a different world.
The Wexford incident looked awful. But was it deliberate? I have absolutely no idea.
And at this stage none of you reading this have any concrete proof either. Such is life.
It’s the calm before the Derby and Royal Ascot this weekend, but one race I’m excited to watch is Saturday’s Group 3 Betfred John Of Gaunt Stakes at Haydock and live on ITV.
Old favourites Audience and Kinross are in the line-up, but it’s Alyanaabi who interests me.
He was once fancied for last year’s 2000 Guineas, and eventually finished fifth behind Notable Speech.
He carried on at about a mile for Owen Burrows, but his stamina has always been open to question and he returned over course and distance when scoring on May 10.
I was impressed then and everything looks right here for another bold run with a strong pace assured. Come on, Alyanaabi!
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Remember to gamble responsibly
A responsible gambler is someone who:
Establishes time and monetary limits before playing
Only gambles with money they can afford to lose
Never chases their losses
Doesn’t gamble if they’re upset, angry or depressed
![Modu Muhammad, a farmer, works on a piece of farm in Konduga, outside Maiduguri [Sani Adamu/Al Jazeera]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/WhatsApp-Image-2025-08-08-at-09.47.28-2-1755107230.jpeg)
