WREXHAM, Wales (AP) — Wrexham's latest bid to reach the lucrative Premier League will start with a Welsh derby against Cardiff in the Championship.
The match will take place at Cardiff City Stadium on Aug. 17 and wraps up the first round of fixtures in England's second-tier league.
The Championship published its season's schedule on Thursday, with play starting a week before the Premier League begins.
Wrexham finished in seventh place — one position outside the playoff spots — in its first season in the second division since the 1980s, following an unprecedented three straight promotions under Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac. It was the highest ever finish in Wrexham's 162-year history.
It will be the first league match between Wrexham, which is located in north Wales, and Cardiff, which is in the south of the country, since 2002. Cardiff earned promotion at the end of last season.
Wrexham then has two home matches, against Watford and Birmingham.
Manchester United and Liverpool are among Wrexham's preseason opponents before the Championship campaign kicks off.
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FILE - Ryan Reynolds arrives at an FYC event for "Welcome to Wrexham" on April 28, 2026, at Chloe's at Golden Road Brewing in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
PARIS (AP) — A court in Paris ruled on Thursday that energy giant TotalEnergies must account for its consumers’ greenhouse gas emissions, giving the French company six months to adjust a legally mandated risk assessment.
The decision fell short of requests from the climate organizations who brought the lawsuit to force the company to reduce its oil and gas production.
The court scheduled a new hearing for January 2027 to consider TotalEnergies’ new assessment under a 2017 law that requires companies to prevent human rights abuses and environmental risks. It is the first time that the so-called corporate duty of vigilance law is being applied to climate change.
The law is not intended to make companies “responsible for the risks linked to climate change, which result from all human activity on the planet since the Industrial Revolution” the court said in a statement, but rather requests them to act “according to their own situation.”
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A day after France hit record high temperatures, a court in Paris is set to rule Thursday on a landmark climate change case that could see energy giant TotalEnergies forced to reduce its oil and gas production.
The lawsuit, brought by a group of NGOs and the city of Paris, argues the French corporation is violating a 2017 law that requires companies to prevent human rights abuses and environmental risks. It is the first time that the so-called corporate duty of vigilance law is being applied to climate change.
Environmental groups Notre Affaire à Tous, Sherpa, ZEA, France Nature Environnement launched the proceedings in 2020.
They claim that TotalEnergies is one of the largest historical emitters of greenhouse gas and have asked the court to require the company to reduce oil production by 37 percent and gas production by 25 percent by 2030. The lawsuit also asks for a halt to all new fossil fuel projects.
The decision comes as Europe is in the midst of a brutal heatwave. Punishing temperatures extended to the United Kingdom and Spain, where weather agencies issued red alerts — like France — about the risks of extreme heat for tens of millions of people.
The iconic Eiffel Tower and the Louvre museum have been forced to restrict visiting hours and school and transportation schedules have been interrupted across the continent.
Human-caused climate change is tied to increasingly extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years are likely to shatter more heat records.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization’s Europe office said this month.
The decision will be the latest in a series of rulings in climate change cases. Last year, the United Nations’ top court, the International Court of Justice, said countries could be in violation of international law if they fail to take measures to protect the planet from climate change. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change.
In 2019, the Netherlands’ Supreme court handed down the first major legal win for climate activists when judges ruled that protection from the potentially devastating effects of climate change was a human right and that the government has a duty to protect its citizens.
A person cools off at Trocadero fountain near the Eiffel Tower during a heat wave in Paris, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
