The World Cup season is upon us and the superstars of the game are all set to entertain the world on the biggest stage. As always, All attention has turned to Lionel Messi and Cristiano RonaldoAnd fight between them for the ultimate prize.

But these two are not the only superstars of the game who will be in the mix this time. Players like Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe and Lamine Yamal will be players that teams will look to for that one moment of magic.

But with the pressure of the nation bearing down on them, the one thing these superstars cannot afford is to miss out on the grandest stage of them all.

We look at six superstars for whom World Cup failure is not an option and who need to keep their promise.

erling holland

If you start talking about Erling Haaland, chances are you’ll run out of adjectives. He remained a goalscoring machine for Manchester City during the 2025–26 campaign as he finished with 27 goals in the Premier League. With nine assists for the entire season, another eight were added in the Champions League.

But his real test will now be in the World Cup 2026. Norway are back in the tournament after a long wait of 28 years and they will need their talisman to make it a memorable one.

Haaland scored 21 goals in 14 World Cup qualifying games for his country and for him this tournament could cement his legacy as one of the greatest players of modern times.

kilian mbappe

This will be Mbappe’s second World Cup campaign and the first time he will captain France on the big stage. In 14 games at the World Cup, the Real Madrid forward has 12 goals to his name and will be aiming to leave Qatar 2022 in the dark.

Mbappe single-handedly changed the course of the final with a sensational hat-trick against Argentina, ultimately losing only two on penalties.

Since 2022, Mbappe has gone from strength to strength, but his last campaign with Real Madrid was marred by a lot of off-field controversy.

Despite scoring 42 goals in 44 matches for Los Blancos, he saw a petition signed calling for his exit from the club. But France has always been a safe haven for the 27-year-old.

And now, it’s time for him to step up.

Lamin Yamal

Lamine Yamal has been the golden boy of world football for some time now. At the age of 16, he announced himself on the big stage as he helped Spain win Euro 2024.

Two years later, he may still be young, but this time the expectations will be even higher. The Barcelona forward scored 24 goals and made 18 assists in a stellar campaign as the Blaugrana won the LaLiga title.

This will be their first taste of the World Cup and Spain will have a lot of the game looming over them. He is no longer a boy and will have the weight of the entire nation on him as they try to add another star to their peak.

harry kane

England and Thomas Tuchel faced a lot of slack for team selection, but the first name on the team sheet will be Harry Kane. The Three Lions would like their captain to step up and ensure the trophy comes home.

It was a record-breaking campaign for him at club level, scoring 61 goals in 51 matches for Bayern Munich. At times he even played as number 10 and always worked for better linkups with his teammates.

If England are to progress in the tournament, Kane will have to work hard in every way. He has 8 goals in the World Cup and was the Golden Boot winner in 2018.

Given the form he has been in in the World Cup, no one would bet on him winning the accolade once again.

bruno fernandes

This will be Bruno Fernandes’ third World Cup and he will be a creative force for Portugal. Expectations will be high from the 31-year-old after a record-breaking campaign with Manchester United in which he got 21 assists.

Fernandes appears to be at the peak of his powers at the moment. While Ronaldo will always be Portugal’s main man, Fernandes could be the force that creates a spark that can bring magic on the field.

The Euro 2016 champions come into the tournament as early favorites and aim to give Ronaldo the puzzle missing from his trophy cabinet.

If that is to happen, Fernandes will have to work hard and provide assists.

Vinicius Junior

It was an indifferent campaign for Vinicius Jr. with Real Madrid. Despite scoring 16 goals in 36 matches for Los Blancos in La Liga, His club campaign dominated by off-field drama. Now, they will need to step out in the colors of Brazil as they look for inspiration.

While Neymar is back for the World Cup, it remains to be seen whether he will be fully fit for the competition. This means Vinnie Jr. Will be an outlet on the left for goals and assists, something he will need to improve for the Seleção.

In 48 games, the forward has nine goals and nine assists and the World Cup could be the ideal platform for him to mount a sensational campaign on the grandest stage of them all.

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New Delhi: Virat Kohli India is likely to miss the upcoming three-match ODI series against Afghanistan due to a hamstring injury. Although the exact recovery timeline is unclear, the former India captain is expected to be unavailable for the series. It has been reliably learned that Kohli is holidaying in Europe after winning the IPL with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB).Kohli was in great form in the tournament – ​​scoring 675 runs at an average of 56.25, hitting one hundred and five fifties – and top-scored with an unbeaten 75 in the title clash against Gujarat Titans. He felt discomfort in his right hamstring while batting on 31 May and that area was extensively taped before resuming his innings.Meanwhile, uncertainty continues over Rohit Sharma’s participation. The former India captain is yet to report to the BCCI Center of Excellence (CoE) for fitness assessment and clearance, putting his availability in doubt. Rohit and Hardik Pandya were selected in the squad based on fitness clearance and while the all-rounder has checked in, the former captain is yet to reach Bengaluru.It is worth noting that the men’s senior selection committee, headed by Ajit Agarkar, had considered resting the two stalwarts for the three matches, but they were included due to a late change of heart.The selectors and team management had suggested trying Yashasvi Jaiswal at the top of the order along with Shubman Gill but Rohit managed to retain his place.

Interestingly, both the players are suffering from hamstring problem, which may leave two vacancies in the team. With Virat completely out and Rohit yet to get the nod, Jaiswal may be a late inclusion in the squad and the selectors may also consider including Ruturaj Gaikwad, Devdutt Padikkal or Tilak Verma in the middle-order.A decision is expected in the coming days as key decision-makers meet on June 6 to choose the squad for the upcoming white-ball tour of Ireland and England.

IND vs AFG ODI Series Schedule

1st ODI: June 14, 2026 – Dharamshala – 1:30 PM IST2nd ODI: June 17, 2026 – Lucknow – 1:30 PM IST3rd ODI: June 20, 2026 – Chennai – 1:30 PM IST

For years, scientists believed that only humans and a handful of vertebrates could tell the difference between short and long periods of time, a skill as fundamental as reading the dots and dashes of Morse code. But researchers at Queen Mary University of London have turned that notion upside down, proving that buffalo-tailed bumblebees can do something previously thought impossible for insects: distinguish between light flashes of different lengths and use that information to find food. These tiny creatures, with brains no bigger than a poppy seed, learned to recognize the difference between quick flashes and long pulses in exchange for a sweet treat. The discovery challenges everything we thought we knew about the intelligence of insects and suggests that complex time processing may be more common in nature than anyone previously imagined. It’s a reminder that nature often surprises us when we delve deeper.

The big secret of the tiny brain: how bumblebees learn time and discrimination

Timing is everything in the natural world. When a hummingbird visits a flower, it needs to know when the nectar can return. When a cricket calls to a potential mate, the length of its chirp has meaning. When an animal runs away from a predator, a fraction of a second can mean the difference between life and death. Yet how insects actually process these small intervals of time remains one of the great mysteries of biology. Most researchers assumed that their brains were not designed for such precision. research teamLed by Alexander Davidson, a PhD candidate, and Dr. Elisabetta Versace, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University, it was decided to test whether bumblebees could handle temporary tasks. They chose the buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, a common species found across Europe and many other parts of the world. What happened next surprised everyone involved. The bees did not fail. He did not struggle. He learned what scientists considered impossible.

Understanding Duration Resolution Test and Light Flash Experiments

The experimental setup was extremely simple. Bumblebees were housed in a specially designed wooden nest box, which was kept at a constant temperature on a normal day-night cycle. From this nest, they could access acrylic tunnels leading to an observation area and a testing chamber. Inside the testing room were three small boxes, each of which displayed bright yellow circles on a dark background in front of a monitor.The researchers controlled precisely when these circles blinked on and off. In one set of experiments, they tested whether bees could distinguish between a 5-second flash and a 1-second flash. In the second, they tested for 2.5 seconds compared to only 0.5 seconds. Each period was paired with either a tasty and beneficial sugar solution or a quinine solution that tasted bitter and unpleasant. Bees quickly learned to associate one period with sweetness and the other with something that should be avoided.Here it is noteworthy: the researchers made sure that brightness could not be the decisive factor. He designed some tests where a short flash was repeated several times adding up to the same total brightness as a longer flash. Even when this potential trick was introduced, bumblebees continued to choose correctly based on how long each flash lasted. They did not depend on cumulative light; They were actually processing time with real cognitive capacity.

Why did scientists expect insects to fail at this cognitive task?

Before this research, the scientific consensus was clear: This task should be impossible for insects. It was believed that discrimination of time on the second and sub-second scale required a brain of significant complexity. Humans can obviously do this. Vertebrates such as macaques and pigeons have shown this ability in previous studies. But insects? Their entire nervous system consists of about one million neurons, compared to 86 billion in the human brain.Scientists understand that the ability to process temporal information is important for animal activities such as foraging, mating, and defense against predators. But he believed that insects controlled time through circadian rhythms, biological clocks that control day-night cycles and seasonal patterns. They work on a scale of hours and days. How could such mechanisms possibly handle the precision required to distinguish between a half-second flash and a two-and-a-half second flash?There was also the issue of evolutionary relevance. In nature, bumblebees do not have to face flickering lights. They have no natural reason to develop this ability. Unlike some skills that obviously help with survival, this seemed like pure cognitive flourishing. If bumblebees can somehow do this, what does it say about how we have categorized intelligence in the animal kingdom?

Training Method: Sugar Rewards and Behavioral Success Rates

The training protocol followed the classical conditioning approach. To maintain consistency in the research, one bee from each colony was tested daily. Initially, bees were rewarded for choosing the correct period; Their preference was reinforced with sucrose solution. The team kept the bees in this learning phase until they reached a specific threshold: 15 correct choices out of 20 consecutive trials.That’s when the real test came. The prizes disappeared. The sugar solution was gone, and the bitter quinine remained. Will bees continue to discriminate between durations even without incentives? The answer was a resounding yes. Bees that were trained to recognize longer flashes still chose the longer flashes much more often than expected. Bees trained on smaller brightness still choose the smaller brightness. He had actually learned something, not only memorized the Chinese way, but also understood the underlying rule.The researchers tested 41 bees in 10 different colonies. They used a perfectly balanced design, meaning they trained some bees to expect a reward with a long-term incentive and others with a short-term incentive. This careful methodology ruled out the possibility that they were observing bees reacting to a preferred stimulus type.

What does this reveal about insect intelligence and neural efficiency

The implications of this work extend far beyond bumblebees. If a tiny insect’s brain can handle temporal discrimination at this level, it suggests that neural plasticity is more common than we expected. This marks the first time time-based visual discrimination has been demonstrated in insects, according to a groundbreaking study published in biology paper.The real revolution in thinking comes in efficiency. It’s not that bumblebees can do it, it’s that they can do it with an incredibly small nervous system. How do bees solve temporal problems without the vast interconnected networks of the vertebrate brain? What shortcuts does their neural architecture take? Is there something fundamentally different in the way tiny brains handle information that actually makes them more efficient than we expect?Engineers looking to create efficient artificial intelligence systems can learn from the way insect brains handle complex information with so few neurons. Bumblebee shows that you don’t need billions of neurons to solve complex problems. Sometimes, beauty comes from simplicity.

Leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi (file photo)

New Delhi: Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Thursday reacted to the suicide of a NEET aspirant and launched a fresh attack on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government over the NEET-UG paper leak mess.The senior Congress leader took to social media to mention the case of NEET aspirant Akanksha, who recently committed suicide after failing in the exam.Highlighting the struggles of the student and her family, Rahul Gandhi wrote on Twitter, “Akanksha wanted to serve the country and society by becoming a doctor. Akanksha’s father is a farmer. To fulfill his daughter’s dream of becoming a doctor, he took a loan of Rs 3 lakh on Kisan Credit Card.” And he got a job as a cook in Nagpur, so that his daughter could take coaching there. A father did everything he could.”Rahul Gandhi blamed the government for this and described it as a “corrupt” education system and linked Akanksha’s death to the NEET paper leak controversy.He said, “Then the NEET paper was leaked. The exam was cancelled. In that uncertainty, Akanksha left us forever. Akanksha’s death was not suicide – it is the result of a corrupt, broken system under Modi ji.”

Congress leader also targeted the Union Education Minister Dharmendra PradhanReiterating the opposition’s demand for accountability in the wake of the NEET paper leak.“And Dharmendra Pradhan ji? He is still in his chair. Same committee. Same transfer. Same investigation. No reform, no justice.”Rahul Gandhi further accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi of damaging India’s education system during his tenure.He said, “Modi ji, power is not permanent – ​​it comes and goes. But the extent to which you have ruined the education system in 12 years, an entire young generation of India is paying the price for it.”His comments come a month after the NEET-UG exam was canceled following the paper leak. National Testing Agency (NTA) later announced that the re-examination will be conducted on June 21.The cancellation affected lakhs of medical aspirants across the country, triggering widespread protests and demands for accountability. There have also been several reports of student suicides after NTA’s NEET failure.

Vicky Kaushal Experiencing two different emotional scenarios simultaneously, the joy of becoming a new father and the weight of public scrutiny. After facing criticism over his light-hearted joke about marriage at a wedding ceremony, the actor opened up about the responsibilities that come with fame, and also how difficult it has been being away from his newborn son. VihaanFor work.

Vicky reacts sharply on marriage related joke

In March, a clip from a wedding ceremony went viral in which Vicky Kaushal, quoting his iconic ‘Uri’ dialogue, asks a groom, “How’s the Josh?” When the crowd responded enthusiastically, he quipped, “I have noticed that bachelors always have high energy and enthusiasm. For those of us who are married, the enthusiasm is decreasing year by year.”The comment sparked a wave of criticism online. Instead of ignoring it, Vicki chose to address it publicly. Mid-Day quoted the actor as saying, “There’s no way that just because you’re a public figure, you need to be perfect. Sometimes we’re brick-and-mortar characters, and maybe that’s what I’ve learned for me is that, as much as people are giving me love, it also comes with a certain sense of responsibility.”Vicky does not shy away from acknowledging the double-edged nature of celebrity. He further added, “No actor gets fame and doesn’t get the flip side of it. I have made a conscious choice that I want to be here, and the universe is responding. Now it’s up to me how I handle it.” [the fame]. And if the criticism is constructive, you can learn from it.”

Vicky Kaushal talks about the hardest part of being a new father

Beyond the controversy, Vicky has also been very personal about fatherhood. Recalling the moment when she had to leave for shooting after Vihaan’s birth, she said, “My heart sank. It was tough.”He also reflected on the daily quests of fatherhood with disarming honesty. The actor shared, “There are so many new emotions that come up almost on a daily basis because being a parent is new to me. I understand now when other people say, ‘Yaar, baccha kitna jaldi bada ho raha hai’ (The baby is growing up so quickly). And I would think, ‘What are you talking about? Your baby is still a year old.’ Now I understand.”

More about Vicky Kaushal

Vicky Kaushal and Katrina Kaif The wedding took place in a private ceremony in December 2021. Their son Vihaan was born on November 7, 2025. On the work front, the actor will next star in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Love & War’ alongside Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor. The release date of the film has not been announced yet.

PC: YouTube (SLAC From the Sky – Extended Edition)

On a piece of California land that, at first glance, looks like a low industrial sprawl, a straight building stretches for miles without changing direction. It doesn’t rise to the sky, it doesn’t turn into architectural spectacle, and it doesn’t really behave like a place designed for people to stay. The Klystron Gallery at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a structure you understand only in fragments, usually while standing inside it and feeling the corridors ahead that refuse to be finished in any visual sense. Walking from one side to the other can take about 40 minutes at a steady pace, although even this seems oddly impossible when you’re inside its repetitive industrial rhythms.

How a 3 kilometer physics corridor was built in California without a single turn

The gallery exists because there is a need for something far more demanding than building aesthetics. Below and beside it runs a linear particle accelerator, a machine designed to push electrons on straight paths over vast distances. That necessity alone determined the form above ground. No detours, no shortcuts, no architectural deviations.Instead of a traditional building plan, engineers were effectively following a scientific directive: Keep everything aligned for about 2 miles, and don’t let the structure stray out of precision. What sits above is no decorative shell but a working infrastructure, filled with equipment that feeds energy into the accelerator below. Inside, the corridors have a kind of repetition that becomes difficult to track after a while. Panels, cables, equipment bays, safety markings, then more panels. The lighting remains consistent, making it difficult to assess progress. You can walk for several minutes without any real feeling of change in distance.

The physics behind the gallery’s 3 kilometer long linear structure

The length of the gallery is not due to architectural ambition but to physics constraints. Particle acceleration to high energy levels requires space, and lots of space. Electrons require time and distance to gain momentum in a controlled manner, and compressing that process would have limited the entire experiment. Therefore the structure was extended in a straight line until the design requirements were met. That decision locked in a footprint of about 3 kilometres, something that now reads like a completely different category of infrastructure than anything like a traditional building.Above ground, the Klystron Gallery supports this process through rows of klystrons, devices that generate powerful bursts of radiofrequency energy. They are industrial in appearance, put together and arranged in long sequences, doing a job that has no real everyday comparison outside of specific physics.

Why is its claim as the ‘tallest building’ open to interpretation?

There is still little debate over whether it should receive the title of ‘tallest building’ or not. Definitions depend on how strictly one interprets the term building. If it should be fully enclosed, continuous, and designed for occupancy, the gallery sits in an awkward middle ground. It is enclosed, but not for living or working in the usual sense.Comparisons are then made with other large scientific establishments. The LIGO observatories in the United States are longer in raw distance, but they are vacuum tunnels rather than closed structures in the traditional sense. This difference itself changes the way they are classified, depending on who is drawing the line. Even large infrastructure such as dams, terminals or defensive walls are excluded for similar reasons. They are so fragmented in purpose or form that they cannot be considered a single building, even if they exceed it in scale.

Kolkata: After a few hours Trinamool MP Abhishek Banerjee Moved the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday, seeking protection from any coercive action in the CID case of Trinamool MLA signature forgery case, after the Enforcement Directorate issued summons to him in the primary teacher recruitment irregularities case.Banerjee was asked to appear at the ED’s Kolkata zonal office on June 15.The development came shortly after the Calcutta HC allowed Banerjee to file a case challenging the CID summons and seeking protection from any coercive action in the MLA signature forgery case.Based on the FIR lodged by the CBI against alleged irregularities in the appointments of teachers, the ED started investigation into the primary teachers’ recruitment case.The same day, Kalighat police station officials removed police kiosks, barricades, scanner machines and other surveillance equipment placed outside Banerjee’s house on Shantiniketan, Harish Mukherjee Road. The security convoy and guard rail in front of Banerjee’s house were earlier removed.On the oral prayer of Banerjee’s lawyers, a vacation bench of Justice Apurba Sinha Ray allowed filing of a petition challenging the FIR in the signature forgery case and seeking interim protection from any coercive action by the CID. The case is likely to be heard on Friday.The CID summoned Banerjee following a letter submitted by Trinamool to the Assembly Secretariat on May 19, in which party MLA Shobhandeb Chattopadhyay was elected as the leader of the opposition. Signed by around 70 newly elected Trinamool MLAs, it was alleged that the signatures of the MLAs were forged. A complaint was lodged at Hare Street PS.Banerjee did not attend her summons at Bhawani Bhavan on Monday citing health reasons. He reportedly asked for a few weeks’ time after his recovery to attend the summons.CID officials personally served the summons at his Kalighat home on Saturday afternoon. In the evening, during his visit to Sonarpur to meet the family of a Trinamool worker allegedly killed in post-poll violence, he was attacked with stones and eggs.

A deep internal rift within Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has emerged, with a group of MPs expressing dissatisfaction over the ‘lack of effort’ by the party leadership to press for the release of its jailed founder and former prime minister. imran khan.Dissident members of the Provincial Assembly (MPA), many of whom were deprived of posts during the recent cabinet expansion, held an emergency meeting in Peshawar before sending a letter to PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan, news agency PTI quoted Dawn newspaper as saying.The meeting discussed the continued imprisonment of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, concerns over party workers, governance issues and the effectiveness of the ongoing campaign for his release.In the letter, the lawmakers said the handling of Khan’s release and health-related efforts was causing “concern among activists, supporters and patriotic citizens.” He argued that the campaign for his release had lost momentum and become ineffective.The letter said, “Activists feel that the release movement has deviated from its original direction and has become limited only to matters of health and treatment. The ongoing movement for the leader’s release appears to be largely limited to formal statements, restricted protest activities and symbolic measures. A new strategy should be formulated to make the movement effective, organized and result-oriented.”MPs warned that failure to address these concerns could have serious political consequences for the party.He also raised concerns about governance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, alleging “interference by irrelevant individuals in the affairs of the provincial government, deviation from competence, unfair distribution of resources and lack of proper consultation with relevant MPAs in decisions regarding powers and development resources of their constituencies”.The letter called for greater transparency, competence and consultation in government affairs, while demanding a “positive, comprehensive, effective and result-oriented strategy” for Khan’s release.An MLA told Dawn that about 20 MLAs are unhappy with not getting cabinet posts. The report also said the group boycotted a parliamentary meeting called by Chief Minister Sohail Afridi and instead traveled to Rawalpindi to protest outside Adiala jail. Copies of the letter were also sent to the party’s Central General Secretary and Central Information Secretary.

New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday conducted searches and interrogation at the residence of former Trinamool Congress MLA Shaukat Mollah killed one person in South Bamunia area of ​​Bhangar while investigating a bomb blast that took place shortly before the West Bengal Assembly elections.The investigation was transferred to the NIA following demands for a central probe into the blast. Since taking charge of the case, the agency has arrested many people including TMC leader Wahedul Islam.Officials of a special team of NIA reached Mollah’s residence to gather information and investigate possible links to the case. During the operation, Mollah’s wife and daughter were seen entering the premises.Separately, the NIA had taken over the investigation into the recovery of crude bombs in West Bengal on April 27 after probing the case from a possible terror angle.After receiving instructions from the Home Ministry, the agency registered a new FIR, number RC-25/2026/NIA/DLI.“In compliance with the order of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the NIA has registered a case related to the recovery of crude bombs in West Bengal. This case pertains to the recovery of 79 crude bombs and other material by the Kolkata Police, which were being stored at one place on April 25, causing threat to human life and property. The NIA had registered the case on April 26,” the NIA said on Monday.The original case, registered as FIR number 62/2026 on April 25 at North Kashipur police station under Bhangar division, invokes provisions of the Indian Code of Justice, 2023 and the Explosive Substances Act, 1908. The complaint was registered after the police allegedly received information about storage of crude bombs and materials intended for their manufacture.Acting on a tip-off, police recovered 79 round-shaped objects tied with jute ropes, suspected to be country-made bombs, along with other incriminating materials. Investigators said the explosives were hidden inside an abandoned house near a graveyard in Poilepara area of ​​Majerhat under North Kashipur police station in South 24 Parganas district.