The first-ever co-hosted Women’s World Cup is set to kick off in Australia and New Zealand on Thursday.
It’s the first to feature 32 teams and includes England’s Lionesses and the defending champions, the USA, who are looking to become the first team in the competition’s history to win the tournament three times in a row.
From fixtures to players and their teams – here’s everything you need to know about the tournament.
The tournament begins on Thursday with the final taking place on 20 August 20 in Sydney at the Accor Stadium. There are nine host cities, five in Australia and four in New Zealand.
The 32 teams were divided into four pots based on the FIFA Women’s World Rankings as of 13 October.
Pot One contained both co-hosts Australia and New Zealand along with the six highest-ranked teams, including England and defending champions USA, while the Republic of Ireland were in Pot Three.
With the exception of UEFA, teams from the same confederation could not be drawn in the same group.
Lionesses matches and group stage games
The group stage will run over a two-week period and begins on 20 July with Group A match of New Zealand vs Norway at 8am and then a Group B match Australia vs Republic of Ireland at 11am.
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The Lionesses will kick off their first match on Saturday, here’s a full list of their games in the group stage:
• 22 July – England vs Haiti at 10.30am • 28 July – England vs Denmark at 9.30am • 1 August – England vs China at 12pm
The Republic of Ireland will also play in matches on: 26 July against Canada at 1pm and Nigeria on 31 July at 11am. Meanwhile the USA will play their first match on 22 July against Vietnam.
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Lionesses prepare for World Cup
Teams to watch
The United States are undoubtedly one of the teams to watch in this tournament as reigning back-to-back champions.
England also go into the tournament as one of the favourites and expectations are high with last summer’s European Championships triumph on home soil representing the nation’s first major tournament victory since the 1966 World Cup.
Other teams who have won previously include: Germany (2003, 2007), Japan (2011), and Norway (1995). Germany also reached the final of the 2022 Euros last year.
Zambia and the Philippines are among the countries making their debut at the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
Image: England’s Lionesses won the Women’s Euro 2022 last year after beating Germany
Lionesses line-up
Lionesses manager Sarina Wiegman is taking 23 players to the World Cup including Lucy Bronze, Lauren James and Mary Earps who have headed to Australia and New Zealand.
Beth Mead, who won the Golden Boot in last year’s Euro 2022 triumph, has been recovering from an ACL injury sustained in November and will miss out.
Captain Leah Williamson and midfielder Fran Kirby, who are injured, are also among those who will not be going to the tournament.
After the group stage will be the round of 16 followed by the quarter-finals, which will be held in Wellington, Auckland, Brisbane and Sydney, are scheduled for 11 August and 12 August.
The first semi-final will then be played on 15 August in Auckland, with the other semi-final taking place on 16 August at the Accor Stadium in Sydney, which will then host the final on 20 August.
A third-place play-off will be played the day before the final on 19 August in Brisbane.
At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza, health staff have said.
A dozen people were killed near the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, along with eight more living in apartments, according to staff at Shifa hospital, where the bodies were brought.
Six others were killed in southern Gaza when a strike hit their tent in Muwasi, according to the hospital.
Image: Palestinians gather at the site of a tent camp that was hit by an Israeli strike. Pic: Reuters
The strikes, which began late on Friday and continued into Saturday morning, came as US President Donald Trump said there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week.
“We’re working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
Image: The site of a strike on Gaza City on Friday. Pic: Reuters/Mahmoud Issa
Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, will arrive in Washington next week for talks on Gaza’s ceasefire, Iran and other subjects, an official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
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Doctors on the frontline
The war in Gaza was sparked after Hamas launched its attack on Israel in October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 people.
Some 50 hostages remain in Gaza, with fewer than half of them still believed to be alive.
More than 56,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The UN has also warned that people in Gaza are “starving”, with Israel allowing a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May after blocking all food for more than two months.
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‘Gaza disinformation campaign is deliberate’
Palestinians have been shot at and killed while on their way to get food at aid sites, according to Gaza’s health officials and witnesses.
Israel’s military said it was investigating incidents in which civilians had been harmed while approaching the sites.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Tehran to mourn top military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Iran’s 12-day war with Israel.
Iran’s state-run Press TV said the event – dubbed the “funeral procession of the Martyrs of Power” – was held for a total of 60 people, including four women and four children.
It said at least 16 scientists and 10 senior commanders were among the dead, including the head of the Revolutionary Guard General Hossein Salami and the head of the guard’s ballistic missile programme, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
Their coffins were driven on trucks into the Iranian capital’s Azadi Square adorned with their pictures as well as rose petals and flowers, as crowds waved Iranian flags.
Image: Mourners at the funeral procession in Tehran. Pic: Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters
Mourners dressed in black, while chants of “death to America” and “death to Israel” could be heard.
Attending the funeral were Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior figures, including Ali Shamkhani who was seriously wounded during the conflict and is an adviser to Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
There was no immediate sign of the supreme leader in the state broadcast of the funeral.
Image: A woman holds a picture of Iran’s supreme leader. Pic: Reuters
Israel, the only Middle Eastern country widely believed to have nuclear weapons, said its war against Iran aimed to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons.
The US launched strikes on three nuclear enrichment sites in Iran, which Donald Trump said left them “obilterated”.
The Iranian government denies having a nuclear weapons programme and the UN nuclear watchdog, which carries out inspections in Iran, has said it has “no credible indication” of an active, coordinated weapons programme in the country.
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New details on US attacks on Iran
Over the almost two weeks of fighting, Israel claimed it killed around 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, before a ceasefire went into effect on Tuesday.
By a majority of 6-3, the highest court in the land has ruled that federal judges have been overreaching in their authority by blocking or freezing the executive orders issued by the president.
Over the last few months, a series of presidential actions by Trump have been blocked by injunctions issued by federal district judges.
The federal judges, branded “radical leftist lunatics” by the president, have ruled on numerous individual cases, most involving immigration.
They have then applied their rulings as nationwide injunctions – thus blocking the Trump administration’s policies.
Image: Donald Trump addresses a White House news conference. Pic: AP
“It was a grave threat to democracy frankly,” the president said at a hastily arranged news conference in the White House briefing room.
“Instead of merely ruling on the immediate case before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation,” he said.
In simple terms, this ruling – from a Supreme Court weighted towards conservative judges – frees up the president to push on with his agenda, less opposed by the courts.
“This is such a big day,” the president said.
“It gives power back to people that should have it, including Congress, including the presidency, and it only takes bad power away from judges. It takes bad power, sick power and unfair power.
“And it’s really going to be… a very monumental decision.”
Image: The Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. File pic: AP
The country’s most senior member of the Democratic Party was to the point with his reaction to the ruling.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called it “an unprecedented and terrifying step toward authoritarianism, a grave danger to our democracy, and a predictable move from this extremist MAGA court”.
In a statement, Schumer wrote: “By weakening the power of district courts to check the presidency, the court is not defending the constitution – it’s defacing it.
“This ruling hands Donald Trump yet another green light in his crusade to unravel the foundations of American democracy.”
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Trump’s ‘giant’ Supreme Court win
Federal power in the US is, constitutionally, split equally between the three branches of government – the executive branch (the presidency), the legislative branch (Congress) and the judiciary (the Supreme Court and other federal courts).
They are designed to ensure a separation of power and to ensure that no single branch becomes too powerful.
This ruling was prompted by a case brought over an executive order issued by President Trump on his inauguration day to end birthright citizenship – that constitutional right to be an American citizen if born here.
A federal judge froze the decision, ruling it to be in defiance of the 14th amendment of the constitution.
The Supreme Court has deferred its judgment on this particular case, instead ruling more broadly on the powers of the federal judges.
The court was divided along ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority and liberals in dissent.
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In her dissent, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: “As I understand the concern, in this clash over the respective powers of two coordinate branches of government, the majority sees a power grab – but not by a presumably lawless executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the constitution.
“Instead, to the majority, the power-hungry actors are… (wait for it)… the district courts.”
Another liberal Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, described the majority ruling by her fellow justices as: “Nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the constitution.”
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed during his first term, shifting the balance of left-right power in the court, led this particular ruling.
Writing for the majority, she said: “When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”
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The focus now for those who deplore this decision will be to apply ‘class action’ – to file lawsuits on behalf of a large group of people rather than applying a single case to the whole nation.
There is no question though that the president and his team will feel significantly emboldened to push through their policy agenda with fewer blocks and barriers.