This weekend’s sporting focus is on France where the Women’s Football World Cup got underway on Friday. Six groups of four teams will compete for the sixteen places in the knockout phase on the road to the final on 7 July in Lyon. Nearly one million tickets have already been sold, with FIFA believing that the TV viewing figures for this year will easily surpass the 750 million people who watched the event four years ago. The most successful team in history, and the current reigning champions and favourites, the USA, are looking to add to their three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals. However, they aren’t the only players looking to break records in the tournament. Step forward Canada's captain, Christine Sinclair, who is only four goals away from becoming the all-time top goalscorer – male or female – in international football. Sinclair, with 282 appearances, has more caps than the entire Jamaican squad, who themselves are back playing international football again thanks to the funding of Cedella Marley, the daughter of the legendary musician. England, who finished third in 2015, will be hoping to avoid an early slip-up when they start their campaign against World Cup debutants, Scotland, at 5pm this evening.

This week saw Knight Frank host their first-ever Healthcare Development Seminar and with it the release of their 2019 UK Healthcare Development Opportunities report. The UK care home market is currently 100,000 beds short and is set to experience record levels of demand over the next decade. Over the last year 133 new care homes and 6,502 beds were delivered to the UK market. However, over the same time period, 219 existing care homes and 6,459 beds were either de-registered or closed. The result – a net loss of 86 homes and only a very marginal increase of 43 beds! Two thirds of the homes that were closed were for failing care standards, with the other third shutting due to financial difficulties. Perhaps unsurprisingly new developments have been focused in areas with the largest levels of self-funded (private-pay) residents, namely the South East of England. However, in a market where demand so clearly exceeds supply, there are always likely to be good buying opportunities, not least refurbishment and redevelopment plays, bringing de-registered care homes back up to modern standards.

With summer now upon us, listening out for the cheerful chimes of an ice cream van is one of The Weekly's favourite pastimes. However, the owner of one ice cream truck company has found himself coming under heat from New York officials this week. 'Operation Meltdown' as it’s comically known, saw New York City investigators seize forty-six ice cream vans this week after their owner was accused of evading more than $4.55m (£3.55m) in parking fines over the last decade. Between 2009 and 2017 the vans accrued 22,000 tickets, but owner, Dimitrios Tsirkos, avoided paying the fines by dissolving the business and re-registering the vehicles under the names of newly formed ‘”shell” companies. Mr Tsikos has been accused of being involved in the unsavoury side of the ice cream business on more than one occasion, becoming entangled in a long dispute with a fellow ice cream operator over the use of nearly identical logos. A court ruled that both parties had been engaged in what was described as a ‘mafia turf war’, with drivers using intimidation to secure the most lucrative spots in town. The Weekly hopes that the UK's ice cream van drivers adopt less of a gang mentally should we manage to see the sun again this week!