Author: Editor

RAFAEL Nadal reached his first final on Saturday since winning the 2022 French Open, defeating Croatian qualifier Duje Ajdukovic in a three-set tussle in Bastad ahead of the Paris Olympics. A day after his four-hour quarter-final victory, the 22-time Grand Slam champion was again tested by Ajdukovic, the world number 130 who had won just two tour-level matches before this week. The Spaniard rebounded from dropping the opening set to prevail 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, returning to the final of a tournament he won as a teenager on his last appearance in 2005. “It was a very tough match. It was…

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to deliver a landmark speech to the US Congress this week as he fights off intense pressure to cut a Gaza war ceasefire deal with Hamas. On Wednesday, Israel’s longest-serving premier will become the first foreign leader to address a joint meeting of the two chambers four times – pulling ahead of Britain’s Winston Churchill on three. But analysts say the Gaza war since the October 7 Hamas attacks has created worrying tensions between Israel and the United States, its main military and diplomatic backer. Netanyahu’s office announced that he would meet US President…

FORMER president Bill Clinton and ex-secretary of state Hillary Clinton praised Joe Biden’s decision to abandon his White House reelection bid Sunday, and threw their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris to take up the baton. Lauding Biden’s “extraordinary career of service,” the Clintons said in a joint statement that they were “honored” to join him in endorsing Harris as the Democratic nominee “and will do whatever we can to support her.” “Nothing has made us more worried for our country than the threat posed by a second Trump term. He has promised to be a dictator on day one,”…

UGANDA’s President Yoweri Museveni has warned protesters that they will be “playing with fire” if they press ahead with plans to stage an anti-corruption march to parliament on Tuesday. Young Ugandans have been organising the march on social media to demand an end to corruption in government. They have been partly inspired by their counterparts in neighbouring Kenya, who organised mass demonstrations that forced President William Ruto to drop plans to increase taxes. The protests have since morphed into calls for his resignation. In a televised address, Mr Museveni warned the Ugandan organisers that their planned protest would not be…

SUDAN’s de facto leader has received an Iranian ambassador and sent his own to Tehran, cementing a rapprochement after an eight-year rupture. Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Sunday received Hassan Shah Hosseini, the new Iranian ambassador, in Port Sudan and sent Abdelaziz Hassan Saleh as the African country’s ambassador to Tehran. Sudan and Iran agreed last October to resume diplomatic relations, as the army-aligned government scrambled for allies during its war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The Sudanese government has been loyal to the army in its 15-month fight against the RSF. The Red Sea city…

PRESIDENT Joe Biden of the United States has withdrawn from the November 5 election, citing the interest of the nation as the reason. In a post on X, on Sunday, Biden said he would remain as President and Commander-in-Chief until his term ends in January 2025. “Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a Nation.” “Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. We’ve made historic investments in rebuilding our Nation, in lowering prescription drug costs for seniors, and in expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans. We’ve provided…

FRENCH authorities have recalled Olympics-branded water bottles for children containing excessive levels of endocrine disruptor Bisphenol A, a week ahead of the Paris Games’ opening. The reusable bottles made by the Vilac company have “levels of Bisphenol A not in line with regulations” on products designed for contact with foods, government website Rappel Conso (Consumer Recall) said Friday. The white-coloured flasks with beige, blue or red tops are branded with the Olympic rings, the Paris 2024 mascot or the Olympic flame. People who have bought them should return them to the place of purchase, authorities said. The bottles were sold…

THE Israeli military has continued its relentless bombardment of Gaza with strikes hitting the southern, central and northern parts of the territory. The Palestinian Civil Defence said on Saturday that its crews retrieved the bodies of 12 people who were killed in separate Israeli attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. The Israeli army had bombed a residential tower in the area. The Civil Defence also documented the killing of six Palestinians in the neighbouring Bureij camp, while 10 others were killed in Gaza City and other areas north of the territory. Israel also bombed a commercial building…

DONALD Trump is set to hold a triumphant first campaign rally Saturday since surviving an assassination attempt, in startling contrast to President Joe Biden, who remains hunkered at home with Covid, resisting unprecedented Democratic pressure to step aside. As Trump prepared to descend on battleground Michigan to stump with his vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance for the first time, Biden loyalists continued to defend the embattled president. “I’m all in,” Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow said in a call Saturday with reporters ahead of the Republicans’ rally in her state. She predicted that Trump and Vance would “try to rewrite…

MOROCCAN opposition figure and former minister Mohamed Ziane has been sentenced to five years in prison while serving a three-year term in another case, his lawyer said on Saturday. The former Rabat bar association president was convicted on charges of “embezzlement and squandering of public funds,” the lawyer Ali Reda Ziane, who is also his son, told AFP. The charges relate to funds the Moroccan Liberal Party (PML), of which Mohamed Ziane was the founder and chief, received in a 2015 electoral campaign. “This is a form of life sentence for an 81-year-old man, while legally nothing has been proven,”…

KENYA’s embattled president has announced a plan to form a new “broad-based government” following weeks of deadly anti-government protests sparked by an unpopular tax bill. However, six of the 11 ministers President William Ruto proposed in Friday’s address were from the cabinet he sacked just last week. When dismissing that cabinet, Mr Ruto had said the move came after “reflection and listening to Kenyans”. On Friday, he said the “crisis” Kenya was experiencing was lesser than the “opportunity” before the country. The demonstrations, in which more than 40 people died, began as a response to the tax rises. However, after…

THE reinstated deputy governor of Edo State, Philip Shaibu, on Friday accused his principal, Godwin Obaseki, of denying him entry into the state. Over the past few months, Shaibu and Obaseki have been at loggerheads over issues regarding the governorship election in the state. The 54-year-old, stated this during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, two days after Federal High Court in Abuja ordered his reinstatement as deputy governor. “Yesterday, I got intel that the governor has told his men that they must not allow me into town. I am a free-born of Edo State, nobody can stop me…

ATALANTA have set a €70m price tag on Nigerian forward Ademola Lookman, PUNCH Sports Extra reports. The Bergamo-based club are willing to let the forward depart this summer, but only if their financial demands are met. The asking price is similar to the fee they received from Manchester United for Rasmus Hojlund in 2024. Lookman, who joined Atalanta from RB Leipzig for €10 million in 2022, was instrumental in securing back-to-back European qualifications for the club. His standout performance came in the UEFA Europa League final, where he netted a historic hat-trick against Bayer Leverkusen, becoming the first player to…

THE International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”. Nawaf Salam, president of the ICJ in The Hague, read out the nonbinding advisory opinion issued by the 15-judge panel on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory on Friday. The judges pointed to a wide list of policies – including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies…

AT least 40 migrants have died after a boat they were travelling in caught fire off the northern coast of Haiti, a UN agency said Friday, with police saying the explosion was sparked by a voodoo ritual gone wrong. The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that the Haitian Coast Guard rescued 41 survivors, 11 of whom were hospitalized, including some for burns. But “at least 40 migrants have died, and several others were injured,” the IOM said. The fire began when a passenger lit a candle to start a voodoo ritual, police spokesperson Arold Jean said. Survivors told…

ZAMBIA’s President Hakinde Hichilema has taken the extraordinary step of firing the entire board of the country’s corruption-busting body, after they themselves were accused of corruption, which they deny. It comes days after the head of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), Thom Shamakamba, resigned from his post. Both he and the country’s solicitor-general – Marshal Muchende – were accused of taking kickbacks. Both men strongly deny the allegations. Since Mr Hichilema came to power three years ago, the authorities have been investigating a number officials from the former government accused of graft. Now, the explosive allegations are that ACC officials have…

KENYAN President William Ruto has announced a partial cabinet after weeks of antigovernment protests. In a televised address on Friday, Ruto announced 11 appointments, which include six members from the previous cabinet. The East African nation has been rocked by a month of protests that began as peaceful rallies against tax hikes but have evolved into a wider antigovernment campaign calling for Ruto to go. At least 50 people have died since the protests began on June 18, according to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. Last week, Ruto fired almost his entire cabinet, one in a series of…

MULTIPLE US airlines said they were beginning to resume operations Friday following a major worldwide computer systems outage that grounded or delayed thousands of flights across the country. The IT issue has wrought global havoc at airports, grounding flights in Europe and the United States, while also derailing television broadcasts in the UK and impacting telecommunications in Australia. At Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, Evyn Garson told AFP she and her family had been trying to travel to Florida for a wedding, but now “feel kind of stuck.” “We definitely considered just driving down there. But now it looks…

BUSINESSES including banks, airlines, telecommunications companies, TV and radio broadcasters, and supermarkets have been taken offline after blue screen of death error screens were seen on Windows workstations across the globe. Users on the subreddit for cyber security firm Crowdstrike reported issues in India, the United States and New Zealand. Major US air carriers including Delta, United and American Airlines grounded all flights early on Friday over a communication issue, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. “All… flights regardless of destination” were grounded due to the “communication issues”, the FAA said in a notice to airlines. Equities sank Friday as…

ISRAEL’s parliament has passed a resolution that overwhelmingly rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state, Israeli media reported. The resolution passed in the Knesset with 68 votes in favour and just nine against it early on Thursday. It said that a Palestinian state would pose “an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition with far-right parties co-sponsored the resolution. Opposition leader Yair Lapid’s centre-left party left the session to avoid supporting the statement, despite previously saying he favoured a two-state solution, the Times of…