Author: Editor

FOOTBALL icon Lionel Messi has sparked fresh excitement among FC Barcelona fans after making an emotional return to the newly renovated Camp Nou and hinting at a possible future comeback to bid the farewell he never received. Messi, who won a record eight Ballon d’Or awards and etched his name into Barça history as the club’s all-time top scorer, paid a private visit to the stadium on Monday. It marked his first appearance at the iconic venue since his dramatic exit in 2021. The Argentine superstar left Barcelona after 21 years when the club’s financial crisis prevented them from renewing…

AT least two people including a child have been killed in an Israeli drone strike east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, according to Al Jazeera reporters in the besieged Palestinian territory. Hamas condemned Israel’s “daily and continuous violations” since a truce came into effect last month, accusing it of maintaining a campaign of bombardments and demolitions across the besieged enclave. In a statement published on Telegram on Monday, the group said Israeli attacks had killed 271 people, over 90 percent of them civilians, and wounded 622 more since the ceasefire took effect on October 10. The Israeli military said…

AFTER Zohran Mamdani handily won the New York City mayoral election, becoming the city’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor-elect, Republican detractors in Washington, DC, said they would try to stop him from taking office. President Donald Trump, who threatened to withhold federal funds to New York City if Mamdani won, lent credence to misleading questions about Mamdani’s citizenship and falsely accused the Ugandan-born 34-year-old of being a communist. Some Republican lawmakers requested investigations into Mamdani’s naturalisation process and have called for stripping him of his United States citizenship and deporting him, accusing him without evidence of embracing communist…

A FEMALE TikToker accused of helping Mali’s army has been seized and killed execution-style by suspected insurgents. Mariam Cissé, said to be in her 20s and with over 100,000 TikTok followers, posted videos about life in her Tonka hometown in the northern Timbuktu region and often expressed support for the army. Her death has shocked the nation, which has been battling a insurgency since 2012. State TV said she had simply wanted to promote her community and support the army through her TikTok posts. Mali is grappling with a fuel blockade imposed on the capital by insurgent groups that has…

THE daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma has pleaded not guilty to terrorism-related charges at the start of her trial in the port city of Durban. Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla is being prosecuted over comments she made on social media four years ago during deadly protests in South Africa following the arrest of her father. A week of anarchy in several parts of the country in July 2021, including looting and arson, left at least 300 people dead and caused damage worth an estimated $2.8bn (£2.2bn). Zuma-Sambudla, 43, has been accused of fuelling this unrest and faces charges of incitement…

MANCHESTER City celebrated Pep Guardiola’s 1000th game in management with a statement 3-0 win over Liverpool to close to within four points of Premier League leaders Arsenal. Erling Haaland shrugged off missing an early penalty to head in his 99th Premier League goal before Nico Gonzalez’s deflected effort and a wonder strike from Jeremy Doku confirmed City’s status as Arsenal’s major title rivals. Liverpool have now lost four of their last five league games to leave the defending champions down in eighth, eight points off the top. Arsenal’s 10-game winning run came to an end in a 2-2 draw at…

THE White House says nearly 15,000 trucks carrying commercial goods and humanitarian aid have entered Gaza since October 10, but Palestinians and aid groups have sharply disputed the figures. White House spokesperson Dylan Johnson told Al Jazeera on Sunday an average of 674 trucks have entered Gaza daily since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire took effect. Humanitarian workers “have reached more than one million people with household food parcels since October 10”, while meal production in Gaza has increased 82 percent since late September, he said. “Eggs appeared on shelves in Gaza for the first time since February” when Israel began a…

AIRLINES in the United States have cancelled more than 3,300 flights amid a top transport official’s warning that air travel could “slow to a trickle” due to the ongoing government shutdown. The cancellations on Sunday came as Republicans and Democrats reached a stopgap deal to end the shutdown after the impasse over the passage of a funding bill dragged into its 40th day. Travel disruption has been mounting since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week ordered reductions in air traffic amid reports of air traffic controllers exhibiting fatigue and refusing to turn up for work. Some 13,000 air traffic…

UGANDAN President Yoweri Museveni has for the first time acknowledged that two Kenyan activists who were missing in his country for five weeks had been arrested. Last month, eyewitnesses reported seeing Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo being forced into a car by masked uniformed men after a political event where they were supporting Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine. News of their release was confirmed on Saturday but up to that point the authorities had denied that they were being detained. In a live interview on Saturday evening, Museveni described the two men as “experts in riots” who had then been…

A SUDANESE medical organisation has accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of engaging in a “desperate attempt” to conceal evidence of mass killings in Darfur by burning bodies or burying them in mass graves. The Sudan Doctors Network said on Sunday that paramilitaries are collecting “hundreds of bodies” from the streets of el-Fasher, in Sudan’s western Darfur region, after their bloody takeover of the city on October 26, saying the group’s crimes could not be “erased through concealment or burning”. “What happened in el-Fasher is not an isolated incident but rather another chapter in a full-fledged genocide carried out…

ARSENAL’s 10-game winning run came to an end as Brian Brobbey’s last-gasp goal gave Sunderland a dramatic 2-2 draw against the Premier League leaders, while Manchester United rescued a 2-2 draw at Tottenham on Saturday. Former Arsenal defender Dan Ballard fired Sunderland ahead with a powerful finish in the 36th minute at the Stadium of Light. That ended the Gunners’ run of eight consecutive clean sheets in all competitions. Bukayo Saka levelled with a composed finish in the 54th minute before Leandro Trossard smashed Arsenal into the lead from the edge of the Sunderland area in the 76th minute. Arsenal…

ISRAEL’s war on Gaza has not only razed entire neighbourhoods to the ground, displaced families multiple times and decimated medical facilities, but also poisoned the very ground and water on which Palestinians depend. Four weeks into a fragile ceasefire, which Israel has violated daily, the scale of the environmental devastation is becoming painfully clear. In Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, what was once a lively community has become a wasteland. Homes lie in ruins, and an essential water source, once a rainwater pond, now festers with sewage and debris. For many displaced families, it is both home and hazard. Umm…

PRESIDENT Donald Trump said no US officials would attend the G20 summit in South Africa, reviving debunked claims of white Afrikaners being systematically “killed and slaughtered” in the country. Trump had announced in September that Vice President JD Vance would travel to the meeting later this month instead of him, but has now said that US representatives will skip it entirely. “It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” Trump said on his Truth Social network. “No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.” Trump said that Afrikaners…

DJIBOUTI’s president Ismail Omar Guelleh, in power since 1999, will run for a sixth term in next year’s election, political sources told AFP, after parliament removed a constitutional barrier that had prevented him from running again. The tiny Horn of Africa nation is a stable state in an often troubled region, operating a major port that hosts military bases for the United States, France, China, Japan and Italy. “He has agreed to be a candidate in next year’s presidential election, everything went smoothly,” President of the National Assembly Dileita Mohamed Dileita told AFP, after a congress of the ruling People’s…

PROMINENT members of Tunisia’s political opposition have announced they will be joining a collective hunger strike in solidarity with jailed politician Jawhar Ben Mbarek, whose health they say has severely deteriorated after nine days without food. Ben Mbarek, the cofounder of Tunisia’s main opposition alliance, the National Salvation Front, launched a hunger strike last week to protest his detention since February 2023. Ben Mbarek’s father, veteran activist Ezzeddine Hazgui, said during a news conference in the capital Tunis on Friday that his son is in a “worrisome condition, and his health is deteriorating”. Hazgui said his family would launch a…

RUBEN Amorim has told Manchester United to “focus on the future” following former Old Trafford star Cristiano Ronaldo’s withering assessment of his old club. United are looking to rebuild following a woeful 2024/25 season, which saw them finish a lowly 15th in the Premier League and lose in the Europa League final to Tottenham Hotspur. Ronaldo insisted this week United manager Amorim cannot do “miracles” at a club that is “not on a good path”, saying “they need to change and it’s not only about the coach and players”. But when Ronaldo’s comments were put to his former Portugal team-mate…

TURKIYE says it has issued arrest warrants for genocide against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials. Among 37 suspects listed are Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, according to a Friday statement from the Istanbul prosecutor’s office, which did not publish the complete list. Turkiye has accused the officials of “genocide and crimes against humanity” that Israel has “perpetrated systematically” in its war on Gaza since October 2023. “The October 17, 2023, attack on the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital claimed 500 lives; on February 29, 2024,…

THE United States on Friday accused Iran of plotting to assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Mexico, in what would be the latest attempt to take the two countries’ conflict to another region. A US official said that the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force initiated the plot in late 2024 and that it was disrupted this year. “The plot was contained and does not pose a current threat,” the US official said on condition of anonymity. “This is just the latest in a long history of Iran’s global lethal targeting of diplomats, journalists, dissidents and anyone who disagrees with them, something that…

A TANZANIAN court has charged at least 240 people with treason following last week’s deadly election protests. President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner of the election with 98% of the vote, but the opposition – which was barred from contesting – denounced the poll as a sham. Security forces clashed with those protesting against the vote and, according to various sources, hundreds were killed. The authorities have downplayed the scale of the violence and maintained the election was free and fair. Many people were arrested and have now been charged with treason at a court in the economic…

EXPLOSION have been heard near the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, a day after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said it would agree to a humanitarian ceasefire. Residents in Khartoum, which is controlled by the army, told the AFP news agency that they were woken overnight by the sound of drones and explosions. The blasts appeared to take place near a military base and a power station in the early hours of Friday morning, the residents said. The RSF has not addressed these accounts, but Sudan’s military-led government said it would be wary of agreeing to a truce as the…