FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — There are a lot of connections and familiarity on the field for the World Cup quarterfinal match between France and Morocco.
France beat Morocco in the semifinals at the 2022 tournament in Qatar when the Atlas Lions became the first African team to make it that far. France is looking to remain on track to become only the third nation to play in the final of three consecutive World Cups.
But it's much more than that.
As much Morocco wants to pull an upset over the favored Les Bleus on Thursday, the team has plenty of ties to the opposing country.
Six Moroccan players — Ayyoub Bouaddi (Senlis), Issa Diop (Toulouse), Neil El Aynaoui (Nancy), Redouane Halhal (Montpellier), Samir El Mourabet (Strausbourg) and Gessime Yassine (Salon-de-Provence) — were born on French soil.
In addition, out of the 26 players on Morocco’s squad for the World Cup, 19 were born outside that country.
Morocco coach Mohamed Ouahbi said it's helped broaden the country's World Cup support.
“We have a huge fan base internationally speaking, and we’re really proud of this. There are Moroccan fans around the entire world, whether European or the diaspora or the international Moroccans, they are behind us," he said. "They are supporting us. We feel the energy, the positive dynamic they created for us. … In the difficult moments, we should think about those people, that we're not alone. We’re fighting for an entire nation, a country, and that has helped us get more.”
The links also extend to club play, with France captain Kylian Mbappé and midfielder Aurélien Tchouaméni both playing for Real Madrid alongside Morocco midfielder Brahim Diaz.
Diaz, who has already played a big part in getting Morocco this far with a team-high four assists, said it's added even more dimension to a matchup that also carries much weight.
"They are my teammates on Real Madrid. They are brilliant players. Are brilliant persons," Diaz said. "But (today) we are rivals. We both want to win and this is the most important interest — my team.”
See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here
France's Kylian Mbappe (10) runs out for warmups prior to the World Cup quarterfinal soccer match between France and Morocco in Foxborough, Mass., near Boston, Thursday, July 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
Morocco's Ayoub Amaimouni (21), Neil El Aynaoui (24), Achraf Hakimi (2), Brahim Diaz (10) and Gessime Yassine (16) celebrate after the World Cup round of 16 soccer match between Canada and Morocco in Houston, Saturday, July 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Karen Warren)
France's Kylian Mbappe warms up before the World Cup quarterfinal soccer match between France and Morocco in Foxborough, Mass., near Boston, Thursday, July 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
The U.S. launched new airstrikes against Iran early Thursday, hours after President Donald Trump said recent Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz signaled the end of the ceasefire and threatened to escalate the conflict if they didn’t stop.
Iran responded by targeting U.S.-allied Kuwait and Qatar and accused the U.S. of striking near its sole nuclear power plant.
Back-and-forth attacks, including on Wednesday, have repeatedly threatened the ceasefire, but Thursday’s appeared bigger all around. And Trump’s mixed messaging — approving back-to-back military strikes while insisting they don’t mean a return to full-scale war — is fueling uncertainty about what comes next.
Here's the latest:
A South Florida airport has officially changed its name to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport.
Signs for the Palm Beach International Airport have been removed, while new signs were unveiled Thursday.
“Trump Force One,” a Boeing 757 owned by The Trump Organization, was the first plane to arrive at the airport under its new name, shortly after 5 a.m. The president’s son, Eric Trump, was one of the passengers.
The Trump family regularly uses the West Palm Beach airport when they visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in nearby Palm Beach. A stretch of road from the airport to Trump’s estate was renamed Donald J. Trump Boulevard earlier this year.
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After weeks of stagnation, an American official said Thursday that the U.S.-brokered framework agreement soon will shift to technical discussions in Rome.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic details, said “pilot zones” that both sides had agreed to will launch in the coming days while additional zones are mapped out and planned.
The zones will be where the Israeli military is to turn over control to the Lebanese army after clearing the areas of any Hezbollah presence. U.S. Central Command is coordinating with Israel and Lebanon on the zones, the official said.
The dates of the meetings and the location of the zones were not yet clear. A State Department spokesperson said they were not previewing those details yet.
Abbas Araghchi said on his Telegram channel on Thursday that he spoke with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Oman. He also spoke with Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, who has been one of the main mediators in the war.
Araghchi repeated Iran’s assertion that the U.S. has violated the interim peace deal reached last month. The U.S. says Iran violated the deal by firing on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The diplomatic outreach suggested efforts may be underway to reduce tensions.
Crews have draped tarps over the towering stone columns on the north side of the White House, where work is underway to scrape away decades of paint.
The new tarps on the building’s façade are partially see-through. They feature images of columns designed to cover the actual ornate stone columns beneath.
Scaffolding went up several days ago for work on the columns. It is the latest in dozens of projects Trump has led to remake the White House to his own tastes – including a massive ballroom and helipad on the South Lawn.
The White House hasn’t provided details on what is being done to the columns or how much it will cost. But Trump said on Monday: “We’ve taken about 150 years of paint off of the columns” and added that, “If you don’t strip the paint off, it gets worse and worse and worse.”
Bridget Diakun, senior risk and compliance analyst for maritime data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence, said in a news briefing that ships were still passing through the strait as of Wednesday, but Lloyd’s is still reviewing the numbers since some passages are “dark,” when ships stop broadcasting signals that show their location.
“The situation does remain really volatile,” she said.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence said preliminary data shows there were at least 576 transits in June, up from 233 in May, but down from 3,131 in June 2025.
Non-Iranian traffic in June included 264 outbound vessels and 137 inbound ships.
Outbound ships included bulkers, crude oil tankers and product tankers. Inbound ships included crude oil tankers, product tankers, bulk carriers and gas carriers.
In June, there was an even split between “dark” transits and online transits that broadcast their locations.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the agreement on the long-range cruise missiles, which are used to strike targets deep inside enemy territory, was reached this week on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey’s capital, Ankara.
“This will close an important strategic gap in our defense, and at the same time, we will work to develop our own European systems and station them in Europe,” Merz told parliament after returning from the two-day summit.
The deal struck with the Trump administration amounts to broader export of American know-how to some of its major allies in Europe, whose security posture has been upended by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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The former Olympic canoe racer pleaded not guilty Thursday to deliberately damaging the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a politically charged case that his defense attorneys and other Trump administration critics have derided as an abuse of prosecutorial power.
David Hearn, who competed in three Summer Olympics, entered the plea during his initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court. Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Maryland, was indicted last Thursday on a single felony count of property destruction.
Trump ordered a multimillion-dollar renovation of the Reflecting Pool ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary this month, but the project has been plagued with problems. Workers have used chemicals to curtail an algae bloom. Trump has said the pool likely would need to be drained again for liner repairs after chunks of blue coating were seen floating at the surface.
Trump has claimed without substantiation that vandals dumped fertilizer into the pool and slashed the coating with a box cutter.
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During Wednesday’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump said the U.S. will meet a longstanding request from Ukraine and give it a license to make the Patriot air defense systems. He also praised Zelenskyy for doing “an amazing job” — a sharp change in tone from past criticisms of the Ukrainian leader.
But setting up domestic production of the mobile, surface-to-air systems will take many months, said Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister.
A production license would typically come with technical process documentation, training for specialists, supplier contacts and foreign consultants to help launch manufacturing, Beskrestnov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
The main obstacle would be time, rather than Ukraine’s technical or organizational capacity, he added.
The southern African kingdom of Eswatini has accepted a fourth group of people deported from the United States under a bilateral agreement to host third-country nationals, with 11 people arriving this week, the government said Thursday.
Acting government spokesperson Thabile Mdluli said the group, predominantly from African countries, would remain in the kingdom temporarily while their rights were protected.
“The government reaffirms that, during their temporary stay in the Kingdom, the fundamental rights of the third-country nationals will be respected and protected in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of Eswatini and the Kingdom’s international obligations,” Mdluli said in a statement.
Under a series of often-secret agreements that are part of a broad U.S. crackdown on immigration, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say.
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Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.1% before the opening bell Thursday, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.1%. Nasdaq futures were up 0.5%.
Oil prices inched up again Thursday, with Brent crude, the international standard, rising 64 cents to to $78.66 per barrel. It briefly topped $80 on Wednesday. Before the Iran war began, Brent oil was trading at around $72 a barrel. Earlier optimism over an interim peace deal recently brought it back to prewar levels.
Benchmark U.S. crude rose 54 cents to $74.06 a barrel.
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President Donald Trump says he believes the ceasefire with Iran is over. He says he’s not sure he wants a deal anymore and says the U.S. should “finish the job.” But he also insists continued attacks don’t mean a return to war or long-term action.
The confusion and uncertainty in Trump’s mixed messaging and his approval of back-to-back military strikes leave major questions about what comes next in the conflict, just weeks after difficult diplomacy to reach even an initial deal between the longtime adversaries.
The whipsawing rhetoric could be a strategy to increase the pressure on Tehran to stop attacking ships transporting oil and natural gas in the Strait of Hormuz and bend to U.S. demands on its nuclear program — something Trump has tried before.
Whether it’s a negotiation tactic or a signal of an escalation in fighting, mediators are scrambling to save the interim deal and the actions risk further inflaming tensions.
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President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in flight on Air Force One after landing at U.S. Air Force Base at RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, Eastern England, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump waves as he arrives on Air Force One, Thursday, July 9, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One, Thursday, July 9, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
