Happy weekend!
RONALDO QUITS PORTUGAL AFTER SITTING ON A BENCH FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 18 YEARS
Cristiano Ronaldo retired from international football on Thursday at 41, closing out 23 years, 234 caps and 146 goals for Portugal. The trigger was a bench. New manager Jorge Jesus left him an unused sub for the full 90 minutes of a 2-1 win at Norway on Sept. 27, the first time in 18 years Ronaldo sat out a competitive international. Gonçalo Ramos started in his place and scored the winner in the 54th minute. Jesus had agreed beforehand to bring him on for the last half hour and then didn't, explaining afterward that the game dictated other things. Ronaldo skipped the walk over to the traveling fans in Oslo and went straight down the tunnel, then left camp on Oct. 1 ahead of the Denmark match and flew home. The federation handed him a 30-day suspension and a fine of 255 euros. Forbes has him as the first athlete to clear $2 billion in career earnings, so that one really taught him something. The detail that makes it: Jesus coached Ronaldo at Al Nassr and got there partly because Ronaldo wanted him. "Without his invitation, I certainly wouldn't be there," Jesus said at the time. Ronaldo announced the retirement in a five-minute video about handing back the No. 7 shirt, one day before Jesus named his squad for Denmark and Wales. Jesus went with "This is all his decision" and "I asked him to stay." He keeps playing for Al-Nassr, 15 goals short of 1,000.
Sources (3)
- espn.com - Cristiano Ronaldo retires from international duty after Portugal boss fallout
- skysports.com - Cristiano Ronaldo retires from international football after glittering Portugal career that spanned 23 years
- sports.yahoo.com - Cristiano Ronaldo announces retirement from the Portugal national team after friction with his coach
27 EUROPEAN FLIGHTS GOT BOMB THREATS AND THE TOTAL NUMBER OF BOMBS WAS ZERO
Somebody with an email account and an empty Thursday decided to threaten European aviation, and the whole continent had to take it seriously. Reuters counted at least 27 flights hit, from Ireland to Bulgaria. Italian fighter jets escorted a Finnair plane from Helsinki into Rome. French jets walked an Aer Lingus Dublin to Rome flight into the Evreux air base in Normandy. Bulgaria's air force went up for three Ryanair flights headed to Sofia. Searches turned up no explosives, because there weren't any. The details get stupider. Spain's Guardia Civil said three emailed threats arrived in under 20 minutes. Czech police said four planes bound for Prague were targeted, rated the credibility low, and searched them anyway, because that is the job. Finnair had 144 passengers and seven crew on the Rome flight and 177 passengers and six crew on the Vienna one, all sitting there for a guy who typed. This was the second round in three days. Tuesday hit at least seven flights and a cruise ship. The EU's transport commissioner says it's too early to say whether the waves are linked, which is Brussels for "we have no idea yet." No government has blamed anyone, though European officials have spent a long time accusing Russia of cheap, deniable sabotage that stops just short of getting shot at.
Too Close!
Familiar object. Unfamiliar view.
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POLICE HELICOPTER DRAWS A GIANT DICK OVER HAMPSHIRE
A National Police Air Service helicopter went up over Hampshire on Monday night to help Thames Valley Police find a car that had failed to stop. Somewhere in that search it also produced, on public flight trackers, a shape resembling genitalia above Blackbushe Airport. Gordon Bird, 53, of Ancells Farm in Fleet, said the helicopter woke his two-year-old daughter at about 11pm as it circled overhead. He hadn't gone to bed and still had his computer on, so he looked it up, and he was "shocked" by the shape the route left behind. By his account the buzzing over the estate lasted 15 to 20 minutes, the drawing itself took about half an hour, and the full flight ran an hour. Then it circled over Ancells Farm and went home to base at Redhill. NPAS says none of it was on purpose. The crew was "orbiting the locations they were directed to" during the search, and police helicopters "do not follow defined or predetermined flight plans" because conditions on the ground keep changing. In an email to Bird, the service said it was "unfortunate that the flight path shown on public tracking apps resembles a particular shape", which is a lot of words spent avoiding one short one. For scale, Finnish Air Force cadets were disciplined in the spring for using flight patterns to draw genitalia deliberately. Bird's verdict: "I'm not angry, I am upset at the waste of resources." The one man in Britain who looked at a sky dick and thought about the budget.
RASHEE RICE'S SUPER BOWL RING IS NOW COLLATERAL
Rashee Rice won a Super Bowl as a rookie and the ring from it is now working for his attorney. The Chiefs receiver filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy Nov. 4 in the Northern District of Texas, claiming more than $3.45 million in debt against $677,054 in assets. The filing reads like an inventory of a 26-year-old's apartment. A 2023 Mercedes at $53,800. Five thousand dollars in NFL jerseys and hats. $13,640 spread across three checking accounts, which is less than a tenth of what he says the ring is worth. The Super Bowl LVIII ring, self-valued at $160,000, is listed as collateral with Thomas McMurray, his lawyer in the pending civil cases. He rents, and he owns no real estate. Most of the money traces to the March 2024 crash on Central Expressway in Dallas involving a Lamborghini he had rented. He pleaded guilty in July 2025 to two third-degree felonies, got five years probation and 30 days in jail, and his largest creditor is still owed $979,837 from a 2025 settlement. He's disputing roughly $700,000 more from crash victims and $200,000 from an ex-girlfriend's assault suit awaiting trial. He also chose Chapter 7, which liquidates property, over Chapter 13, which would have built a repayment plan out of his paychecks. He is playing out the final year of his rookie deal at a $1,560,711 base salary.
NEW YORK TIMES WANTS TO PAY $330 MILLION FOR LETTERBOXD
The New York Times Company is in exclusive talks to buy Letterboxd for about $330 million, the going rate for a website where people give Paddington 2 five stars and Citizen Kane three and a half to seem interesting. The Times already owns Wordle, Wirecutter and The Athletic. The paper of record is slowly becoming a bundle of apps with a newsroom stapled to the side. The price is more than 20 times Letterboxd's projected 2026 earnings of roughly $15 million. Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow started it in New Zealand back in 2011 as a movie diary, and it has gone from under 2 million users in 2020 to about 30 million now. Tiny, the Canadian company holding the controlling stake, bought in during 2023 when the whole thing was valued at $50 to $60 million. Good return on a product whose core feature is letting strangers read your opinions. A24 and Sony were both circling. A24 walked once the price kept climbing, so the studio with the most Letterboxd-poisoned fanbase in America got outbid by the crossword people. Buchanan and von Randow are expected to stay on and report to a Times executive, and the Times plans to run its ad technology through Letterboxd's systems. Nothing is signed, and the Times itself says the talks could still fall apart.
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