Saudi FM discusses Gaza situation with counterparts from Jordan, Egypt and Morocco
Updated 28 October 2023
Arab News
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan discussed the situation in Gaza with his counterparts from Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco during separate phone calls on Saturday.
In the call with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Prince Faisal discussed the dangerous developments in the situation in the Gaza Strip and its surroundings, the continued harm to unarmed civilians due to the escalation in Israeli military operations, and the importance of the international community playing its role in preventing the forced displacement of the people of Gaza.
The two ministers also discussed ways to intensify communication with international parties to put an end to the military escalation and enable the delivery of relief aid and medical equipment, in addition to finding a just and comprehensive solution that meets the aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Prince Faisal discussed similar matters during phone calls with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita.
Alyssa Thomas helps the Connecticut Sun force Game 5 with 92-82 win over the Minnesota Lynx
Thomas had 18 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds to help the Sun stave off elimination and beat the Minnesota Lynx 92-82 on Sunday in their semifinal series
Updated 30 min 38 sec ago
AP
UNCASVILLE, Connecticut: With the season on the line, Alyssa Thomas and Ty Harris helped Connecticut force a decisive Game 5.
Thomas had 18 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds to help the Sun stave off elimination and beat the Minnesota Lynx 92-82 on Sunday in their semifinal series. The victory set up a winner-take-all fifth game Tuesday night in Minnesota.
“Both of these, franchises have been here, right? We have a lot of players on our roster that have been here that understand certainly what it takes and tonight’s effort is not going to be good enough,” Connecticut coach Stephanie White said.
“We expect them to make adjustments. We’ll make some tweaks and adjustments as well. ... It’s about players making plays. It’s about the extra efforts, the hustle plays. It’s about not being denied and finding something deep inside of you that just allows you to come out on top.”
The winner will face the Liberty in the WNBA Finals that start Thursday in New York. The Lynx and the Liberty already met for a championship this season with Minnesota beating New York for the Commissioner’s Cup title.
Harris was inserted back into the starting lineup for the first time since injuring her ankle in Game 1 in the opening round series against Indiana. She responded with 20 points to lead the Sun, who now will try to return to the Finals for the third time in six seasons. The Sun still are looking for the franchise’s first WNBA championship.
White said she let Harris know at shootaround in the morning. She only played about seven minutes in Games 2 and 3, but was able to play 30 on Sunday and was a difference maker.
“Stay composed, be poised and be ready when your number is called,” said Harris, who was scoreless in her limited minutes in Games 2 and 3.
Napheesa Collier did what she could to try to get Minnesota the win, finishing with 29 points and 13 rebounds.
“We’re not happy with, you know, how we came out the last two games. Our offense was able to lift us up last game, but if that’s not working, we have to rely on our defense,” Collier said. “It’s not been good last two games. So we have to go home and defend our home court. We’re both playing for our lives, so we have to play at that level of intensity.”
Minnesota is trying to get back to the Finals for the first time since the 2017 season. That year, the Lynx won their fourth championship in a span of seven years.
The Sun rallied from a seven-point halftime deficit behind Thomas and Harris. The game was tied at 61 before the Sun scored seven of the final nine points of the third quarter to go up 68-63 heading into the fourth.
Harris’ 3-pointer with 5:48 left made it a 10-point game and quashed any hopes the Lynx had of finishing off the series Sunday. Minnesota was only able to get within eight the rest of the way.
“Typical AT, she’s a stat stuffer, steps up in big moments,” White said. “Put the ball in her hands a lot. made plays for herself and others. We ask her to do a lot for us on both ends of the floor. We got a lot from her and continue to need to get a lot from everybody moving forward.”
Collier helped the Lynx build a seven-point lead after one quarter and Minnesota was up 47-41 when DiJonai Carrington stole the ball from Natisha Hiedeman and took it in for a layup. Hiedeman answered by hitting a 3-pointer from just inside halfcourt right before the buzzer to give the Lynx a 50-43 lead at the break. Collier finished the first half with 14 points and Hiedeman had 12 against her former team.
AC Milan fall at Fiorentina after De Gea’s penalty heroics
The 27-year-old’s winner was made possible by De Gea pulling off two incredible stops to deny Theo Hernandez and then Tammy Abraham from scoring penalties
Marin lashed home the 88th-minute penalty which gave Cagliari a point at the Allianz Stadium after Roberto Piccoli was clumsily brought down by Douglas Luiz
Updated 40 min 50 sec ago
AFP
MILAN: AC Milan slumped to a 2-1 defeat at Fiorentina on Sunday after having two penalties saved by star man David De Gea, while Juventus fell further behind Serie A leaders Napoli on a day of spot-kick drama.
Albert Gudmundsson lashed home the decisive goal in the 73rd minute of a match in Florence which was packed with drama and featured three failed attempts from the penalty spot.
The 27-year-old’s winner was made possible by De Gea pulling off two incredible stops to deny Theo Hernandez and then Tammy Abraham from scoring penalties in a superb display from the former Spain goalkeeper.
Those saves contributed to Milan missing the chance to move second above champions Inter Milan and Juventus, with the latter held 1-1 by Cagliari due to Razvan Marin’s late penalty.
“We need to work out why we played the way we did because at times we did well but we couldn’t keep it up over the course of the match,” said Milan defender Matteo Gabbia, who received his first Italy call-up on Friday.
Instead Milan, who did level Yacine Aldi’s first-half opener for Fiorentina when Christian Pulisic deftly guided home Hernandez’s cross on the hour, sit sixth and five points behind Napoli.
Adli’s opener came in the 35th minute, after Milan goalkeeper Mike Maignan made the first penalty save of the evening, easily keeping out Moise Kean’s weak effort after Hernandez was penalized for kicking Dodo.
Italy international Kean had a tough night, missing a series of chances, having two goals rightly ruled out for offside and thumping the crossbar with a rocket in stoppage time, but he did provide the knockdown from which Gudmundsson won a thrilling contest.
Marin lashed home the 88th-minute penalty which gave Cagliari a point at the Allianz Stadium after Roberto Piccoli was clumsily brought down by Douglas Luiz.
Romania midfielder Marin’s arrowed penalty levelled Dusan Vlahovic’s 15th-minute spot-kick and moved Cagliari a point above the relegation zone.
It was the first goal conceded by Juve in Serie A this season and left Thiago Motta’s third-placed side three points behind Napoli.
“We created a few opportunities but there was always the feeling that Cagliari could get back into the game,” said Motta.
“What happened today is all our own fault.”
Cagliari could have even snatched a last-gasp win as Adam Obert thumped the post in the fifth minute of stoppage time, with Juve down to 10 men following Francisco Conceicao’s sending off almost immediately after Marin’s equalizer for trying to win a penalty by simulating a foul.
Juventus would have almost certainly had the full three points had Vlahovic not wasted a huge chance in the 78th minute in front of Paul Pogba, who was in the stands after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decided on Friday to cut his doping ban from four years to 18 months.
France midfielder Pogba can return to action in March but sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli gave the impression that the 31-year-old has no future at Juve.
“We’ll make our decision once the CAS decision has been made official. He was a great footballer but he hasn’t played for a long time,” Giuntoli said pre-match.
Juve have been joined on 13 points by their next opponents Lazio, who are fourth after winning their fourth straight match in all competitions, 2-1 over Empoli.
Roma’s sporting director Florent Ghisolfi meanwhile demanded “respect” for his team after the capital club were denied a late penalty during their 1-1 draw at Monza.
Georgios Kyriakopoulos’ 87th-minute challenge on Tommaso Baldanzi, which was if anything worse than Douglas Luiz’s on Piccoli, sparked a furious reaction from Roma’s players on the pitch and Ghisolfi later vented his frustration to Sky.
“What happened today was unacceptable, it was a clear penalty. Why did VAR not intervene?” said the Frenchman.
“There is a huge amount of frustration in the dressing room. We demand respect.”
Bologna’s difficult start to life under Vincenzo Italiano continued with a goalless draw against 10-man Parma.
Worse than the Naksa and Nakba combined? One year on and no hope in sight
It was the horror of Deir Yassin that more than any other single incident symbolized the violent ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 that came to be known as the Nakba — “the catastrophe”
In the 12 months since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, echoes of Deir Yassin and traumatic memories of the Nakba, have surfaced afresh in the collective consciousness of the Arab world
Updated 52 min 53 sec ago
Jonathan Gornall
It would be wrong to say that the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, a settlement a few kilometers west of Jerusalem whose origins can be traced back to at least the 16th century, no longer exists.
Certainly, its name has been erased from the maps, and the Arabs and the generations of their forebears who once lived here are long gone, while the remains of the village’s derelict cemetery were bulldozed in the 1980s to make way for a new highway.
But some of the 144 stone buildings of Deir Yassin, including one of the two schools built by the villagers, can still be seen, glimpsed behind a security fence and incorporated into the sprawling campus of an Israeli hospital for the mentally ill.
Old Arab buildings remain from the village of Deir Yassin, now part of a mental hospital in Jerusalem, where irregular Jewish troops massacred over 100 Palestinians and drove out the remaining residents in 1948. (AFP/File)
The Kfar Shaul psychiatric hospital was built on the site of the village in 1951, with no apparent regard, ironic or otherwise, for the traumatic events that had taken place there just three years earlier.
On April 9, 1948, Zionist terrorists attacked Deir Yassin and, in the words of the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, carried out “the best known and perhaps bloodiest atrocity” of the civil war that broke out following the adoption by the UN of the controversial Partition Plan for Palestine.
Opinion
This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)
Approximately 250 residents of Deir Yassin, including men, women and children, were massacred in cold blood by members of the Jewish paramilitary Irgun and Lehi organizations.
Just over a month after the massacre, part of the wave of Jewish terrorism designed to seize as much land as possible for the Zionist colonial enterprise, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel, on May 14, 1948.
What happened at Deir Yassin in 1948 was by no means unique.
Israeli nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu (3rd L) joins Palestinians in their memorial march on April 7, 2005 at the original site of their former village of Deir Yassin in Jerusalem. (AFP)
But it was the horror of Deir Yassin, news of which spread quickly, that more than any other single incident symbolized the violent ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 that came to be known as the Nakba — “the catastrophe.”
In the 12 months since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, echoes of Deir Yassin and traumatic memories of the Nakba, and of the Naksa “setback,” the subsequent seizure by Israel of the remaining Palestinian territories in 1967, have surfaced afresh in the collective consciousness of the Arab world.
Caption
Over the past year in Gaza, more than 40,000 people, including over 10,000 children, have been killed by Israel’s forces, exacting indiscriminate and disproportionate vengeance for the 1,200 Israelis killed by Hamas on Oct. 7 and the more than 40 hostages are thought to have died in captivity.
On Sept. 17 and 18, Israel began an extraordinary assault on Lebanon, when hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies boobytrapped by Israeli agents exploded in the hands of members of Hezbollah across Lebanon. More than 40 people were killed and thousands injured, including many civilian bystanders, children among them.
Days of airstrikes followed, aimed at killing Hezbollah leaders but inevitably claiming more civilian than combatant lives.
By Sept. 25 the Ministry of Health in Lebanon had already reported 558 killed, including 50 children, and more than 1,800 injured.
And then, early on Tuesday, Israeli troops invaded Lebanon.
Smoke rises over Dahiyeh in Beirut's southern suburbs, after Israeli air strikes, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Sin El Fil, Lebanon, October 6, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Once again, Arabs fearing for their lives and those of their children at the hands of Israel are on the move, evoking fraught memories of the Nakba and the Naksa.
On Sept. 24 and 25, “following significant escalation in the armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the subsequent arrival of Palestine refugees from the south seeking shelter in safer areas,” UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) opened three emergency shelters in the vicinity of the city of Saida, on the coast.
UNRWA paints a picture tragically reminiscent of the scenes witnessed in 1948 and again in 1967.
Israeli soldiers operate at a location given as southern Lebanon in this image released on October 6, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS)
“The intensive airstrikes,” it reports, “have displaced tens of thousands of civilians, with many seeking shelter in the north. The city of Saida has reportedly experienced a large influx of displaced persons, leading to shortages of basic supplies such as bread and drinking water.”
As of Sept. 24, “around 200,000 people were estimated to be displaced in Lebanon,” with almost half on the move since the pager attacks on Sept. 17.
By now the situation is almost certainly even worse. Today, as the world looks on, apparently helpless or unwilling to intervene, history is repeating itself.
Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
Harris has faced criticism for seemingly avoiding one-on-one interviews with national media since she took over as the Democratic nominee, and Trump hammered away at this Sunday
Updated 07 October 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: With just one month left in a deadlocked US presidential election, Donald Trump urged supporters Sunday in battleground Wisconsin to get out the vote, as Kamala Harris kicked off a week-long media interview blitz with a focus on reproductive rights.
Polls have the Republican and Democrat candidates neck and neck, fueling a high-cost, high-intensity scramble for each and every wavering voter in the seven key states that are likely to decide the outcome on November 5.
Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 and this was his fourth visit in eight days. Harris was there earlier this week, holding a rally in Ripon, birthplace of the Republican Party, where she appealed to moderate and disgruntled conservatives.
“I’m only asking you to do one thing,” Trump told the crowd in the town of Juneau. “Just go out and vote.”
Trump also repeated false allegations that the Biden-Harris administration had redirected relief funds for areas devastated by Hurricane Helene and spent it on migrant programs.
Harris, he said, is “someone who steals your wealth and abandons your family when the flood waters rise.”
Harris has faced criticism for seemingly avoiding one-on-one interviews with national media since she took over as the Democratic nominee, and Trump hammered away at this Sunday.
“She doesn’t do interviews because she can’t answer the questions. She can’t answer anything,” he said.
In her bid to reach key voters, the vice president is taking to the airwaves in the coming week with a host of television, radio and podcast appearances.
Harris began her media flurry with an appearance Sunday on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” — one of the most popular programs on Spotify — that focuses on advice and issues affecting women.
She addressed reproductive rights — which Democrats view as a major vote winner among undecided voters, especially women.
At one point Harris was asked how she felt when she heard Trump, in their presidential debate last month, say that some Democratic states allow the “execution” of babies after birth.
In an impassioned reply, Harris denounced that as “a bold-faced lie,” something “outrageously inaccurate” and “insulting to women.”
“This guy,” she added, “is full of lies.”
Asked how she was feeling with just a month to go before the election, the vice president replied, “nervous” — then jokingly mentioned what she called an old adage: “there are only two ways to run: without an opponent or scared.”
Trump’s visit to Wisconsin came on the back of a theatrical campaign return on Saturday to the same venue in Butler, Pennsylvania where he narrowly avoided a would-be assassin’s bullet back in July.
The former president campaign’s team had hoped to recapture the momentum he enjoyed at that time — riding high in the polls before President Joe Biden upended the race by withdrawing and being replaced by Harris.
In a long, often rambling speech delivered from behind bulletproof glass, Trump suggested his political opponents may have been behind the failed assassination bid.
“Those who want to stop us... have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and who knows, maybe even tried to kill me,” he told tens of thousands of supporters who had gathered for the event.
The gunman, who was shot dead, was a registered Republican and investigators have found no motive — and no political link — to his attempt on the former president’s life.
Harris spent Saturday in North Carolina, meeting relief workers and residents in one of the areas most impacted by Helene, which left a trail of destruction across half a dozen states and more than 220 people dead.
Later in the week, she will also be a guest on ABC’s “The View,” as well as “The Howard Stern Show” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” — all of which are seen as generally sympathetic to the Harris campaign.
And former president Barack Obama will add his star power by stumping for Harris in key swing states from Thursday right through until election day, the campaign says.
Hezbollah rockets hit Israel’s Haifa and Tiberias, 10 injured
Israel’s military said fighter jets hit targets belonging to Hezbollah’s Intelligence Headquarters in Beirut, including intelligence-gathering means, command centers, and additional infrastructure sites
Updated 07 October 2024
Reuters
JERUSALEM: Hezbollah rockets hit Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, Israeli police said early on Monday, and Israeli media reported 10 people were injured in the country’s north.
Hezbollah said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with a salvo of “Fadi 1” missiles. Media reports said two rockets hit Haifa on Israel’s Mediterranean Coast and five others hit Tiberias 65 km (40 miles) away.
Police said some buildings and properties were damaged, and there were several reports of minor injuries with some people taken to a nearby hospital.
Video taken by surveillance camera showed the moment a Hezbollah rocket hit Haifa.
Reuters was able to independently verify the location with the design and outline of the buildings, business signs, trees and road layout that match the file and satellite imagery of the area. Reuters was able to independently verify the date with corroborating reports and the timestamp of the footage.
Israel’s military said fighter jets hit targets belonging to Hezbollah’s Intelligence Headquarters in Beirut, including intelligence-gathering means, command centers, and additional infrastructure sites.
Over the past few hours, the airstrikes struck Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in the area of Beirut, the military said, noting that secondary explosions were identified following the strikes, indicating the presence of weaponry.
Airstrikes also struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa area, including weapons storage facilities, infrastructure sites, a command center, and a launcher, the military said.
It blamed Hezbollah for deliberately embedding its command centers and weaponry beneath residential buildings in the heart of the city of Beirut and endangering the civilian population.
