England's players were racially abused during their second Test victory over Argentina in San Juan on 12 July. Team officials lodged a complaint to governing body World Rugby over the incident that occurred when the visitors' replacements were warming up in the first half. "While it is clear that an incident took place, we regret that the individuals responsible could not be identified," said World Rugby, adding their investigation included witness statements and video analysis. "Intense efforts were made to identify the small group of five or seven individuals responsible within a crowd of over 20,000 spectators," said Gabriel Travaglini, president of the Union Argentina de Rugby (UAR). "Unfortunately, despite an exhaustive search, it was not possible to identify the perpetrators. "We strongly condemn all acts of racism and stand in solidarity with the England rugby players who felt aggrieved." He added that the UAR would work with World Rugby to educate fans. There have been several recent high-profile cases of discriminatory behaviour in Argentine sport. In 2020, Pablo Matera and Guido Petti, both of whom played in the match in San Juan, were suspended from the team after racist remarks they had made on social media several years earlier were unearthed. In 2024, Chelsea footballer Enzo Fernandez apologised to team-mates after being filmed joining in with a chant that questioned the heritage of France's black and mixed race players. "Rugby completely condemns discriminatory behaviour of any kind," said World Rugby chairman Brett Robinson. "We offer our full support to the players involved and want them to know that rugby stands with them in opposing racism.

Anonymity of both natural and legal persons in court rulings is a critical aspect of privacy protection in the European Union and Switzerland. With the advent of LLMs, concerns about large-scale re-identification of anonymized persons are growing. In accordance with the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, we explore the potential of LLMs to re-identify individuals in court rulings by constructing a proof-of-concept using actual legal data from the Swiss federal supreme court. Following the initial experiment, we constructed an anonymized Wikipedia dataset as a more rigorous testing ground to further investigate the findings. With the introduction and application of the new task of re-identifying people in texts, we also introduce new metrics to measure performance. We systematically analyze the factors that influence successful re-identifications, identifying model size, input length, and instruction tuning among the most critical determinants. Despite high re-identification rates on Wikipedia, even the best LLMs struggled with court decisions. The complexity is attributed to the lack of test datasets, the necessity for substantial training resources, and data sparsity in the information used for re-identification. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that re-identification using LLMs may not be feasible for now, but as the proof-of-concept on Wikipedia showed, it might become possible in the future. We hope that our system can help enhance the confidence in the security of anonymized decisions, thus leading to the courts being more confident to publish decisions.

A highly concerning new study lays bare the danger of repeated head impacts for rugby players. After performing scans of 44 elite adult rugby players, experts found 23 per cent had abnormalities in brain structure, specifically in white matter and blood vessels of the brain. White matter mainly comprises the neural pathways, the long extensions of the nerve cells, and is crucial to our cognitive ability. The study also found 50 per cent of the rugby players had an unexpected reduction in brain volume. Non-profit the Drake Foundation, which backed the study, is now calling for immediate changes in rugby protocols to ensure long-term welfare of elite players.

Performance indicators that contributed to success at the group stage and play-off stages of the 2019 Rugby World Cup were analysed using publicly available data obtained from the official tournament website using both a non-parametric statistical technique, Wilcoxon's signed rank test, and a decision rules technique from machine learning called RIPPER. Our statistical results found that ball carry effectiveness (percentage of ball carries that penetrated the opposition gain-line) and total metres gained (kick metres plus carry metres) were found to contribute to success at both stages of the tournament and that indicators that contributed to success during the group stages (dominating possession, making more ball carries, making more passes, winning more rucks, and making less tackles) did not contribute to success at the play-off stage. Our results using RIPPER found that low ball carries and a low lineout success percentage jointly contributed to losing at the group stage, while winning a low number of rucks and carrying over the gain-line a sufficient number of times contributed to winning at the play-off stage of the tournament. The results emphasise the need for teams to adapt their playing strategies from the group stage to the play-off stage at tournament in order to be successful.

A facial recognition system developed by NEC Corp. has been adopted for checking the entry of reporters at Tokyo Stadium and International Stadium Yokohama during the Rugby World Cup that Japan will host next year. Using identification cards for media organizations and face images of reporters registered beforehand, the system will complete authentication instantly, the Tokyo-based company said Monday. The system will allow smoother entry than with visual checks, NEC said. Reporters from all over the world are expected to visit Tokyo Stadium in Chofu, western Tokyo, the venue for the opening game, and International Stadium Yokohama, where the final will take place. This will be the first use of a face recognition system at a Rugby World Cup.

England's Mike Brown said he is "not a robot" after he was involved in a verbal altercation with a fan following Saturday's defeat by South Africa. Full-back Brown and prop Joe Marler exchanged words with a supporter after the second Test in Bloemfontein. Brown, 32, told BBC Sport that when an England fan is "screaming obscenities and saying you're not trying, you are going to have a reaction". "I just told him to shut up basically," added the Harlequins player. "You can call me whatever in terms of how I've played, that's fine. But don't turn around and say I'm not trying when I'm coming off with bumps and bruises and aching and I've given everything I can for England."

A British artificial intelligence firm is looking to revolutionise the world of sports transfers by designing software that picks out bargain rugby players. ASI Data Science has signed a deal with London Irish, the rugby union club, to help it find undiscovered gems by using cutting edge data analysis techniques. While rugby scouting typically requires looking through hours of footage to assess a player's ability, the software allows a club to enter the name of a star player and will assess match statistics to find players with similar styles. It looks through around 100 different parameters taken from Opta, the sports data company, which covers every professional player on the planet, to find players similar to the star that a club would buy if money were no object. The machine learning software clusters different types of players together, making it easier for scouts and analysts to find players and removing the biases that many believe cloud judgements when signing players.

LOS ANGELES – The flags outside the Electronic Entertainment Expo are flying at half-staff in honor of the victims of the attack on a Florida gay nightclub that left 49 dead. But it will seemingly be business as usual inside the video game industry's annual trade show this week. E3 kicked off Sunday and Monday with flashy presentations featuring footage of upcoming games -- many of which depict unrelenting gun violence -- from Electronic Arts, Bethesda Softworks, Microsoft and Ubisoft. EA, which has a studio in Orlando, did not directly address the shooting Sunday afternoon while hyping games such as the World War I-set military shooter "Battlefield 1? and the robot-filled sci-fi shoot-'em-up "Titanfall 2." Chris Plante and T.C. Sottek of the technology site The Verge wrote after EA's presentation that "witnessing a sales pitch for the fun in gun violence felt strange, to say the least." The developers on stage at Bethesda's presentation Sunday evening sported rainbow ribbons in support of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community as they showed off games like the arena-based shooter "Quake Champions" and the stylish assassin tale "Dishonored 2." Microsoft began their Monday morning presentation with a moment of silence led by Xbox chief Phil Spencer before actress Laura Baily demonstrated a bullet-riddled level from sci-fi shooter "Gears of War 4." Later, the PC Gaming Show asked attendees to donate blood. After an opening dance number to promote "Just Dance 2017?