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CAIRO: Qatari, Egyptian and US leaders called on Israel and Hamas to resume urgent talks on Aug. 15 either in Doha or Cairo to bridge all remaining gaps in the proposed Gaza ceasefire agreement and start implementing it without any delay, the three countries said in a joint statement on Thursday.
“It is the time to conclude a ceasefire agreement and release hostages and prisoners,” the statement added.
WOLVERHAMPTON, United Kingdom: Nottingham Forest’s stunning season continued with a 3-0 victory at Wolves on Monday to give manager Nuno Espirito Santo a winning return to Molineux.
England international Morgan Gibbs-White and the in-form Chris Wood struck before half-time to take Forest to within six points of leaders Liverpool, who they host in their next Premier League game.
Substitute Taiwo Awoniyi rounded off the scoring and a sixth consecutive win for Forest in stoppage time.
Defeat leaves Wolves outside the relegation zone only thanks to goal difference as they suffered a first defeat under new boss Vitor Pereira.
Forest remain third in the table but move level on points with Arsenal.
Even if a shock title challenge proves beyond Espirito Santo’s men, they are building up an impressive cushion in the race for Champions League football next season.
They are five points clear of fifth-placed Newcastle and six in front of struggling champions Manchester City in sixth.
A top-four finish would guarantee a return to the continent’s elite competition for the first time in 45 years for the two-time European champions.
However, fifth could also be good enough depending on how English club fare in European competition this season.
“We need to stay humble. We haven’t achieved anything yet, we need to work until the end and this can lead us to good moments,” said Espirito Santo.
Gibbs-White savoured his return to the club where he spent the early part of his career.
In front of the watching new England manager Thomas Tuchel, the midfielder did his case for further international recognition no harm with a cool finish from Antony Elanga’s pass.
Forest’s unexpected rise from battling relegation until the final day of last season into Champions League contenders has been build on a solid defense and Wood’s purple patch.
The New Zealand international turned in Callum Hudson-Odoi’s low cross for his 12th goal of the season to double the visitors’ lead just before half-time.
Wolves pressed and probed for a way back into the game after the break but were toothless in the absence of talisman Matheus Cunha through suspension.
Mats Sels was forced into one brilliant save to deny Jorgen Strand Larsen to preserve a ninth clean sheet of the season and fourth in a row.
That solidity is familiar to Wolves fans from Espirito Santo’s time in charge of their club between 2017 and 2021.
The Portuguese coach led Wanderers from the Championship into Europe for the first time in 39 years.
Now after troubled spells at Tottenham and Saudi club Al-Ittihad, he is recreating that magic to leave Forest fans in dreamland.
“As coaching staff we have this natural ambition of improving the players, this is what we are obsessed with,” he added.
“If we improve the players then the team will improve and if the team improves then the club will improve and the city will be happy.”
DAMASCUS: Syria is unable to make deals to import fuel, wheat or other key goods due to strict US sanctions and despite many countries, including Gulf Arab states, wanting to do so, Syria’s new trade minister said.
In an interview with Reuters at his office in Damascus, Maher Khalil Al-Hasan said Syria’s new ruling administration had managed to scrape together enough wheat and fuel for a few months but the country faces a “catastrophe” if sanctions are not frozen or lifted soon.
Hasan is a member of the new caretaker government set up by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham after it launched a lightning offensive that toppled autocratic President Bashar Assad on Dec. 8 after 13 years of civil war.
The sanctions were imposed during Assad’s rule, targeting his government and also state institutions such as the central bank.
Russia and Iran, both major backers of the Assad government, previously provided most of Syria’s wheat and oil products but both stopped doing so after the rebels triumphed and Assad fled to Moscow.
The US is set to announce an easing of restrictions on providing humanitarian aid and other basic services such as electricity to Syria while maintaining its strict sanctions regime, people briefed on the matter told Reuters on Monday.
The exact impact of the expected measures remains to be seen.
The decision by the outgoing Biden administration aims to send a signal of goodwill to Syria’s people and its new Islamist rulers, and pave the way for improving basic services and living conditions in the war-ravaged country.
At the same time, US officials see the sanctions as a key point of leverage with a new ruling group that was designated a terrorist entity by Washington several years ago but which, after breaking with Islamist militant group Al Qaeda, has recently signalled a more moderate approach.
Washington wants to see Damascus embark on an inclusive political transition and to cooperate on counterterrorism and other matters.
Hasan told Reuters he was aware of reports that some sanctions may soon be eased or frozen.
WASHINGTON: The first human death linked to bird flu has been reported in the United States, health authorities in the state of Louisiana said Monday, adding that the patient was elderly and suffered from other pathologies.
The patient, aged over 65, had been hospitalized for a respiratory ailment, and was the first serious case of human infection of the H5N1 virus to be detected in the United States. Despite this death, the public health risk posed by bird flu remains “low,” the statement said.
NEW ORLEANS: President Joe Biden on Monday visited a makeshift memorial at the site of the deadly New Year’s attack in New Orleans, holding a moment of silence before meeting with grieving families and attending a prayer service.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden made their first stop in the city Monday evening at a memorial that sprung up on city’s famous Bourbon Street, where the attack began last week when an Army veteran drove a truck into revelers, killing 14 and injuring 30 more.
Flowers and messages had been left at the base of more than 14 crosses erected on the sidewalk in the French Quarter. After Jill Biden placed white flowers at the memorial, she and the president stood in silence and bowed their heads.
Joe Biden crossed himself, and the the couple headed to the historic St. Louis Cathedral nearby, where the president and first lady met privately with the families of those killed, survivors and local law enforcement. Afterward, they were expected to attend an interfaith prayer service.
The visit is likely to be the last time Biden travels to the scene of a horrific crime as president to console families of victims. He has less than two weeks left in office.
“I think what you’re going to see this president do today is show up for the community, be there for the community in the hardest time,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Louisiana.
She went on, speaking about Biden’s own understanding of loss, and said, “He believes this is also an important part of the job that he believes he needs to do as president.”
It’s a grim task that presidents perform, though not every leader has embraced the role with such intimacy as the 82-year-old Biden, who has experienced a lot of personal tragedy in his own life. His first wife and baby daughter died in a car accident in the early 1970s, and his eldest son, Beau, died of cancer in 2015.
“I’ve been there. There’s nothing you can really say to somebody that’s just had such a tragic loss,” Biden told reporters Sunday in a preview of his visit. “My message is going to be personal if I get to get them alone.”
Biden often takes the opportunity at such bleak occasions to speak behind closed doors with the families, offer up his personal phone number in case people want to talk later on and talk about grief in stark, personal terms.
In addition to the meeting with families, Biden hoped to visit with first responders in New Orleans, according to Jean-Pierre.
The Democratic president will continue on to California following his stop in New Orleans. With a snowstorm hitting the Washington region on Monday, Biden’s trip began with Air Force One starting its takeoff from inside a large hangar instead of on the tarmac as thick snow covered the ground at Joint Base Andrews and snowplows worked to clear the runway.
In New Orleans on Jan. 1, the driver plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street. Fourteen revelers were killed along with the driver. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who steered his speeding truck around a barricade and plowed into the crowd, later was fatally shot in a firefight with police.
Jabbar, an American citizen from Texas, had posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he proclaimed his support for the Islamic State militant group and previewed the violence that he would soon unleash in the French Quarter.
Biden on Sunday pushed back against conspiracy theories surrounding the attack, and he urged New Orleans residents to ignore them.
“I spent literally 17, 18 hours with the intelligence community from the time this happened to establish exactly what happened, to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that New Orleans was the act of a single man who acted alone,” he said. “All this talk about conspiracies with other people, there’s not evidence of that — zero.”
The youngest victim was 18 years old, and the oldest was 63. Most victims were in their 20s. They came from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, New Jersey and Great Britain.
Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican, was asked on “Fox News Sunday” what the city was hoping for from Biden’s visit.
“How can we not feel for both the families of those who die but also those who’ve been injured in their families?” he asked.
“The best thing that the city, the state, and the federal government can do is do their best to make sure that this does not happen again. And what we can do as a people is to make sure that we don’t live our lives in fear or in terror — but live our lives bravely and with liberty, and then support those families however they need support.”
Jean-Pierre said Monday that Biden was directing additional resources to help New Orleans with major upcoming events, including Mardi Gras and the Super Bowl, with both events being assigned the highest level of federal support for security measures.
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Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein in Washington and Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
