Basra, Iraq – A few hours ahead of the opening match of the 25th edition of the Arabian Gulf Cup in Iraq’s southern port city of Basra, thousands of Iraqis have already headed towards the city’s Basra International Stadium. The opening matches of the football tournament are Iraq against Oman at 7pm local time (16:00 GMT), followed by Saudi Arabia against Yemen in the same stadium. It is the second time Iraq is hosting the tournament, which has been held since 1970. Iraq’s record is strong – despite only participating for the first time in 1976, and being banned from the…
Author: National Tone
Gianluca Vialli was Chelsea’s player-manager when they won the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1998Former Chelsea striker and manager Gianluca Vialli, who played 59 times for Italy, has died at the age 58.Vialli was re-diagnosed in 2021 and in December 2022 left a role with Italy’s national team to focus on his health.”Gianluca was a splendid person and he leaves a void that cannot be filled,” said Italian Football Federation (FIGC) president Gabriele Gravina.”I hoped until the end that he would be able to perform another miracle. Yet I am comforted by the certainty that what he did for Italian…
Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration has signed a contract with a Chinese company to extract oil from the Amu Darya basin and develop an oil reserve in the country’s northern Sar-e Pul province. The contract was signed on Thursday by acting Minister of Mines and Petroleum Sheikh Shahabuddin Delawar and an official of Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co (CAPEIC) in a ceremony held in capital Kabul. It was the first major public commodities extraction deal the Taliban administration has signed with a foreign company since taking power in 2021. Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Chinese ambassador…
Kenneth Roth, the longtime head of Human Rights Watch, had his fellowship offer rescinded because of the organisation’s criticism of Israeli policies, according to The Nation.The Harvard Kennedy School in the United States rescinded a fellowship offer to the former head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) over the well-respected organisation’s criticism of Israeli government policies, US magazine The Nation has reported. Kenneth Roth, who spent nearly three decades as the executive director of HRW before announcing his retirement in April, was offered to join as senior fellow by the executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at…
A group of 11 officers, led by a human rights activist, was behind the attempt, according to a government statement.Chad’s government says its security forces foiled an attempt by a group of army officers to destabilise the country and undermine constitutional order. “This plan was devised by a restricted group of conspirators composed of 11 army officers,” the government said in a statement on Thursday, adding that Baradine Berdei Targuio, president of the Chadian Human Rights Organisation, was at the helm of it. A group of 11 officers, including Targuio, was behind the attempt, according to the government statement which…
Stripping the two men of their positions comes as Vietnam’s Communist Party intensifies fight against corruption.Vietnam’s National Assembly has voted to dismiss two deputy prime ministers from their posts, a government statement said, in what analysts believe is a new escalation in an anti-corruption crackdown. There was no explanation of parliament’s decision to remove Pham Binh Minh and Vu Duc Dam on Thursday but the move comes at a time when the Communist-ruled country is intensifying its fight against corruption, despite concerns the campaign is paralysing routine transactions as officials fear being entangled in probes. The parliament also ratified the…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected out of hand a Russian order for a truce over the Orthodox Christmas period, saying the proposed ceasefire is a trick to halt the Ukraine army’s progress in the eastern Donbas region and allow Moscow to bring in more troops. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a 36-hour ceasefire – which will run from midday Friday (09:00 GMT) until the end of Saturday (21:00 GMT) – after a call for a Christmas truce by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the Kremlin said on Thursday. “Taking into account the appeal…
A court in the southeastern United States has struck down South Carolina’s so-called “fetal heartbeat” law, which bans abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy. The South Carolina Supreme Court issued its decision on Thursday, calling the ban an “unreasonable restriction” that “violates a woman’s constitutional right to privacy”. The law was overturned in a narrow three-to-two vote, with the majority siding with the plaintiffs: two South Carolina physicians, a women’s clinic in the city of Greenville and the healthcare nonprofit Planned Parenthood. “This is a monumental victory in the movement to protect legal abortion in the South,” the…
San Antonio Spurs guard Devin Vassell is set to undergo an arthroscopic procedure on his left knee, according to ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski. .acf-block-preview .instagram-twitter-container width: 340px; margin: 0 auto; Vassell has been dealing with knee soreness, which kept him out of the lineup for three non-consecutive games. The team provided no timeline on his return. The 22-year-old has elevated his game this season and has averaged 19.4 points per game – compared to 12.3 last season – in an average of 31.3 minutes over 29 games. He is currently the second-leading scorer on the squad, only behind Keldon Johnson Vassell…
The world’s glaciers are shrinking and disappearing faster than scientists thought, with two-thirds of them projected to melt out of existence by the end of the century at current climate change trends, according to a new study. But if the world can limit future warming to just a few more tenths of a degree and fulfil international goals – technically possible, but unlikely, according to many scientists – then slightly less than half the globe’s glaciers will disappear, the study concluded. Mostly small but well-known glaciers are marching towards extinction, its authors said. In a worst-case scenario of several degrees of warming,…