-TSS-

There must be tens of millions of people all across the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who could claim some Irish ancestry but how many actual current Irish citizens are there living outside Ireland? I'm sure plenty of those too but not exactly more than living in Ireland.

In this context the term net-migration is uded and while it is not false information it is still misleading and used as a purpose to show that immigration is not such a problem. Immigration-emigration=Net migration.' I don't know the actual migration figures of your country but as Canada is quite a wanted immigration-destiny I would estimate that the annual immigration is about 1% of your population which would be around 350000. How many people emigrate from Canada? 100-200k every year? The problem with presenting the issue this way is that probably 95% of immigration to canada is by foreigners and only 5% by Canadians who lived abroad but now return to Canada when as of the emigrants 80% or so must be Canadians moving abroad, to the USA mostly but also to Europe, and only about 20% foreigners who leave Canada.

I have heard that Canada is an extremely hard country to get into if you are an actual immigrant. The points system; You must show that you have enough money on you, you must show that you have skills which there is a lack of in Canada or you at least must have already close relatives living in Canada already. However, none of the above has any significance if you are a refugee who just happens to float across a wide ocean into Canada.

Serbs must be relieved; Croatia lost and Djokovic won Wimbledon. Had the Croats won the Serbs would have been reminded about it for the next zillion years.

What a load of blaablaablaa that summit was! And I had to change my daily routines just to avoid getting stuck somewhere because of all the security arrangements! Putin and Trump: Next time you meet go somewhere else, please!

Clinton and Yeltsin also met in Helsinki 21 years ago. That is a suitable interval for the two countries' leaders to meet here. More often than that would be really inconvenient.

Trump today here in Finland to meet Putin. Also the expected Soros-funded protesters have crawled out.

That heavy rain totally ruined the celebrations for the French. Many of them looked like "can we please just get into the locker-room?"

Even Finland is a bigger country than Croatia but Finland will never even qualify for the World Cup when as Croatia are in the final.

If Yugoslavia were still a single team they would be really good on paper but they would need Tito as their manager to stop the players from killing each other.

Never gonna happen!

I'm glad that North-America got the 2026 tournament but I still think the new tournament-format with expansion to 48 teams ruins the competition. Doubtlessly most of the crucial knock-out matches will be played in the USA and Mexico so therefore Canada can claim to host most of the earlier matches.

People have the idea that if you get rid of Putin and his regime then there would be some nice and democratic regime taking over. Unfortunately, if Putin goes he may be replaced by someone who would make us miss Putin.

Theresa May is definitely not Maggie; She is weak and predictable in the negotiations. No wonder Boris Johnson resigned.

James: I would like to ask you as you are American about the Vietnam-war how did the soldiers serving in the war end up there? Namely, Sweden whose socialist government critisized the USA for the Vietnam-war offered asylum to those American war-deserters to managed to get to Sweden. It was only Clinton who pardoned the war-deserters. Prior to that, had they travelled to the USA they would have been arested. Wasn't there some sort of a lottery-system or something like that to decide who went to Vietnam? Powerful families bought themselves out of the war as the stories about GWB or Clinton how they dodged the draft.

Oh dear! I can only imagine how much property will be smashed up all across England by disappointed fans.

If England wins the tournament we'll hear about it for next 52 years. However, seems that there is no fear of that happening as the French seem to be above everyone else. Rather France than Brazil for me anyday. When Brazil gets knocked out any tournament is saved.

Europe will take a 12-9 lead over titles after this WC. Unlikely that Europe will ever be caught again. Brazil still remains the most successful single country and may continue to be in the future as well.

When are they going to replay the Colombia-game? You know, Colombians have signed a petition to FIFA that the game must be replayed because they lost and that is not acceptable.

All-European semi-finals now once again. It means that most probably Europe will never be overtaken in terms of titles as it was prior to this year 11-9 but will now change to 12-9.

No doubt tomorrow everyone in Finland will be cheering for England, not because of England, but because they are against Sweden. Every time when Sweden gets knocked out of the world cup there is joy in Finland and then the Swedes ask how did the Finss do at the world cup. That's a good question. Sweden has qualified many times and done also well. Finland has never qualified and never will either. Even Canada has qualified once and they will certainly qualify again in eight years time as co-hosts.

Yes, Putin's team must go out against Croatia. And hopefully the Swedes go out too against the Swiss. There is nothing more irritating than the Swedes gloating their sporting success, be it hockey or soccer.

A big team will win it at the end and the only big teams left are Brazil and France. However, they are up against each other already in the semis and the winner will meet Croatia/Sweden/Colombia or perhaps even Russia.

Spaniards just don't have the feeling of champions about them like they did all the way in 2008-12. However, who would have bet any money on Italy winning the world cup after the group stages in 1982?

Even canada has appeared once in the world cup final tournament. That was 32 years ago in 1986. They did not proceed from their group. Must have passed largely unnoticed in Canada at the time as even if soccer is gaining popularity these days even in North-America that was certainly not the case in the 80's.