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FIFA refereeing chief Pierluigi Collina has revealed it is more difficult than ever before to be a football match official due to abuse on the touchline and online – inflamed by conspiracy theories.

With issues from the grassroots to the professional game, Mr Collina is concerned the hatred aimed at referees is the “cancer that could kill football”.

The Italian, who presided over the 2002 World Cup final, is regarded as one of the best referees of all time.

“It was never easy,” he told Sky News. “So I can say that it is worse now than before.”

Mr Collina is now chairman of the referees’ committee at world football’s governing body, helping to formulate changes to the laws of the game.

“The responsibility of making a decision is something important,” he said. “The interest is very big, particularly at the top level. So it’s difficult.”

And what makes it more difficult are clubs and managers casting doubt over the integrity of referees – insinuating bias.

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Jose Mourinho, who is now managing at Fenerbahce, received a two-match ban in recent days after “derogatory and offensive statements” about refereeing in Turkey.

Asked generally about those at the top of football setting a bad example, Mr Collina replied: “Unfortunately, this happens, always. There are people looking for conspiracies and finding something dirty even when there is not.”

Online campaigns that can be waged against referees by fans, even clubs at times, make the atmosphere even more volatile and potentially dangerous.

Former Italian football referee Pierluigi Collina.
Pic: PA
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Pierluigi Collina at this year’s IFAB meeting. Pic: PA

“This probably becomes worse compared to my time when social networks were not existing,” Mr Collina said.

He added: “Different is the matter of the abuse towards referees, particularly in grassroots and youth football. This is something that we need to consider.”

Without referees committing time to youth football, there would be no matches that help to shape the next generation. But there is still abuse hurled at officials on touchlines.

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Major changes to football laws were also announced at the meeting

“I spoke of a cancer that could kill football,” Mr Collina said. “I’m still convinced that it’s not understandable that in youth matches, parents of the boys and girls who are playing football are those who are abusing the referee who is helping.

“They are making the experiences that could be important for the future. Not [only] as a footballer, because probably that 0.0001% will become a professional footballer, but they all become women and men. And that experience they learned as a young footballer may help them in their life.”

The English and Welsh FAs do report an increase in recruitment of referees – with retention now the challenge.

FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said it is not such a “dark picture” for referees, pointing to improved behaviour in English grassroots games since officials were allowed to wear body cameras.

FA chief executive Mark Bullingham at the IFAB meeting.
Pic: PA
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FA chief executive Mark Bullingham at the IFAB meeting.
Pic: PA

Those trials were extended by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which also approved the global use by competitions of a rule only allowing captains to approach referees to discuss decisions after being implemented already in the Premier League.

“We certainly have a responsibility towards the game to make sure that the referees are respected and safe,” FIFA general secretary Mattias Grafstrom said after this weekend’s meeting of football lawmakers IFAB near Belfast.

He added: “So all the initiatives that we are currently looking at, we want to support them for the educational part as well. And it needs to trickle down from the professional game to the grassroots game.”

In the professional game, even the introduction of technology has at times inflamed disputes over decision-making as calls are forensically analysed.

But Mr Collina is certain VAR is here to stay despite some grumbling among fans.

“I’m fully convinced that bringing technology into football has been an improvement,” he said. “I don’t think that anyone likes to lose a game or not qualify for an important competition due to an honest mistake committed by the referee, vanishing all the efforts made during a season for a footballer or for the coach.

“So I’m still 100% convinced that the implementation of the technology in football was something very, very positive.

“Can it be improved? Yes. We are working on it. We know there is some room for improvement. And we are very keen to improve it.

“We have already developed technologies that reduce the time needed to make a decision for an on-field review as well as for an offside decision.

“We are on this way and we think that we will get better and better in the future.”

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But will the future see artificial intelligence eventually replace referees?

“Technology is a great tool to help us to prepare and also to avoid mistakes being committed,” Mr Collina said. “So we need to use technology but not only in football, in every activity in life.

“I always say that I hope that it will be a human being able to make the final call.”

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
Louvre director offers to resign
Gallery closed as structure in ‘dire state’

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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

More on Donald Trump

In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

More on Gaza

‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

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Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

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