Latest news with #Arabs
Scottish Sun
4 hours ago
- Sport
- Scottish Sun
Dundee Utd 1 UNA Strassen 0: Sapsford strike the difference as Jim Goodwin's men get off Scot free in Euro clash
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THERE was no homegrown player in the starting lineup for the first time in their history - but Dundee United just about kept Scotland's flag flying in Europe. The Arabs went all the way to the 1987 UEFA Cup final with the likes of Paul Hegarty, David Narey and Eamonn Bannon among 13 Scots who featured in the defeat to Gothenburg. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 3 Sapsford's goal the difference at Tannadice Credit: PA 3 Jim Goodwin named a side with no Scots in it Credit: PA 3 Dundee United will take a 1-0 lead to Luxembourg with them Credit: PA But it was a different story last night as boss Jim Goodwin named seven of his 11 multi-national summer signings and saw one of them - Australian Zac Sapsford - hand them a first leg advantage. It was far from easy, though, despite the Arabs bossing possession against a Strassen side that finished second in Luxembourg's top flight last season yet trailed in 18 points behind winners Differdange. They failed to convert their dominance into goals as they struggled to break down a dogged visiting team who were content to suck things up then hit on the counter. It left Goodwin's side hanging on at times in the later stages and leaves the tie uncomfortably in the balance ahead of next week's second leg at the 3,500 capacity Stade Municipal de la Ville de Differdange. United started well, with Kristijan Trapanovski's early turn and shot straight at visiting keeper Koray Ozcan then a great reverse ball from Zac Sapsford sent Vicko Sevelj clear on goal but he was denied by a brilliant stop from the goalie. But by that stage United had also survived a scare when Daryl Myre latched onto a long ball forward. New Arabs No1 Yevhenli Kucherenko raced out of his goal and was relieved to turn and see a looping shot drop just wide. Sevelj's pass then freed Trapanovski but his shot with the outside of his right foot was beaten clear by Ozcan then the Croat drilled a shot just wide. Ozcan was having a busy spell and next he clawed away Krisztian Keresztes' towering header. This was United's first game in Europe since they'd beaten AZ Alkmaar 1-0 in the home leg of a Conference League qualifier three years ago only to crash 7-0 in the return leg in the Netherlands. But they boast a proud record at this level, including that UEFA Cup final and one European Cup semi-final. Legendary Mixu Paatelainen lifts lid on Jim McLean's brutal blast, infamous Walter Smith bust-up and his Hibs job regrets Goodwin had never faced continental opposition as either a player or manager. While United tried to take the game to their visitors, Strassen were content to bide their time. Goodwin wouldn't have been happy with a goalless scoreline at the break but it took less than two minutes after the restart for United to go in front. Ivan Dolcek had been at the club for less than a week but he picked out Sapsford whose drive wrong-footed Ozcan and nestled in the net. For a moment it looked like that would be the catalyst United needed as Trapanovski fired wide moments later then Ozcan pushed Karesztes' header over. Max Watters had come on for Dolcek in the 63rd minute but he was forced off after just eight minutes. Replacement Owen Stirton quickly got into the action as he crashed in a shot which Ozcan tipped onto the post. United sub Panutche Camara thought he was about to hit a second but saw his shot blocked by a sea of bodies after the ball had flashed across the face of goal. But while the score remained 1-0 Strassen continued to pose a threat as they pushed for a late equaliser late on. Kucherenko had to pull off a smart save to keep out Matheus De Souza in injury time as United eventually saw things out. What the manager said: Jim Goodwin 'We'd rather be sitting here with a 3-0 advantage but at 1-0 it's still very much game on. 'The disappointment is more the fact we didn't do ourselves justice in the second half. When we were in possession we just didn't move it quickly enough. 'We were too sloppy and we'll try to improve those things next week. It's still very early days for this group of players but there's a lot to work on going into next week.' Keep up to date with ALL the latest news and transfers at the Scottish Sun football page
TAG 91.1
7 hours ago
- Health
- TAG 91.1
Dubai scientists advance precision medicine with Arab pangenome study
In a groundbreaking development for healthcare and genetic research, scientists at Dubai's Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) have published the first-ever Arab Pangenome Reference—a major leap forward in precision medicine for the region. The research, featured in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, provides a vital foundation for personalised healthcare tailored to Arab populations. Using advanced DNA sequencing from 53 individuals of diverse Arab heritage living in the UAE, researchers identified over 110 million new DNA base pairs, nearly nine million small genetic differences, and more than 235,000 larger structural variations unique to Arabs—many of which had never been documented before. The study supports the UAE's National Genome Strategy, launched in 2023 to push the frontiers of personalised and preventive medicine. One notable finding was a duplicated gene called TAF11L5, found in Arab individuals but absent in global genetic databases. Scientists believe this could offer new insights into disease risk and treatment response. Researchers say the Arab Pangenome will help close long-standing gaps in global genomic data and enable the development of more accurate diagnostic tools and therapies for the region. The project also developed 'PanScan', a bioinformatics tool to support more complex analysis of human pangenomes. Although not the central focus of the study, PanScan enables researchers to detect gene duplications, novel DNA changes, and complex DNA structures. Now publicly available on GitHub, a common resource used by scientists worldwide, the tool was created to support the Arab Pangenome Reference and similar efforts globally. Scientists at the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, the learning and discovery arm of Dubai Health, have published the first Arab Pangenome Reference, marking a major milestone in both regional and global genomic research. The study, released in… — Dubai Media Office (@DXBMediaOffice) July 24, 2025
Atlantic
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Worst-Kept Secret of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
One of the more poorly kept secrets of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that many of those involved would prefer to take all the land and have the other side disappear. A 2011 poll found that two-thirds of Palestinians believed that their real goal should not be a two-state solution, but rather using that arrangement as a prelude to establishing 'one Palestinian state.' A 2016 survey found that nearly half of Israeli Jews agreed that 'Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.' A poll in 2000, conducted during negotiations toward a two-state solution, found that only 47 percent of Israelis and 10 percent of Palestinians supported a school curriculum that would educate students to 'give up aspirations for parts of the 'homeland' which are in the other state.' These stark statistics illustrate why the conflict has proved so intractable: Palestinians and Israelis subscribe to dueling national movements with deeply held and mutually exclusive historical and religious claims to the same land. After a century of violence and dispossession, it should not be surprising that many would happily wish the other side away, if such an option existed. The current American administration, though, is the first to reinforce those ambitions, rather than curtail them. Aside from the efforts of beleaguered moderates, what restrains the region's worst impulses is not principle, but practicality. Neither side can fully vanquish the other without unending bloodshed, and the international community has long refused to countenance an outcome in which one group simply routs the other. Instead, successive American presidents—with the notable exception of Donald Trump—have insisted that Israelis and Palestinians resolve their differences bilaterally at the negotiating table. Efforts to broker territorial compromise have repeatedly failed, but they had the effect of constraining maximalist aspirations on the ground. Consider the admission of Matan Kahana, a conservative Israeli politician: 'If there was a sort of button you could push that would make all the Arabs disappear, sending them on an express train to Switzerland where they would live fantastic lives, I would press that button,' he told a student group in a right-wing settlement in 2022. 'But what can you do? There is no such button. It therefore seems we were meant to coexist on this land in some way.' The comments leaked and Kahana was compelled to apologize, but the private recording revealed something interesting: Even a pro-settler lawmaker speaking to a sympathetic audience understood that the dream of ousting the other was unrealistic. That began to change on October 7, 2023. Hamas, a Palestinian faction fanatically committed to ending Israel, massacred some 1,200 Israelis, and the Israeli far right saw an opportunity to attain its own thwarted ambitions. In 2005, Israel had forcibly removed all of its settlers from Gaza and ceded the Strip to Palestinian control. Eighteen years later, as Israel's army reentered the area, the radicals in Benjamin Netanyahu's government sought to turn back the clock—and to expel any Palestinians in their way. 'The sole picture of victory in this war that will allow us to lift our heads,' the lawmaker Limor Son Har-Melech declared in late 2023, 'is settlements across the entire Gaza Strip.' In November, Har-Melech and her allies spoke at a conference titled 'Returning to the Gaza Strip' in Ashdod, a city between Tel Aviv and Gaza. Weeks later, more than 100 activists gathered in central Israel under the banner, 'Practical Preparation for Settlement in Gaza.' In January 2024, 15 of the 64 members of Netanyahu's governing coalition at the time attended an even larger gathering in Jerusalem, where speakers openly advocated the 'voluntary migration' of Gazans—a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. Polls show that a clear majority of Israelis oppose the resettlement and annexation of Gaza. Even some Israelis who dream of one day ruling the entire land balk in practice at the notion of maintaining a perpetual military occupation against a Hamas insurgency. But Israel's prime minister is beholden to the minority demanding exactly that. Netanyahu's fragile coalition received just 48.4 percent of the vote in Israel's last election, and relies on explicitly anti-Arab far-right factions to remain in power while Netanyahu is on trial for corruption. President Joe Biden understood this dynamic, and his administration undertook a public and private pressure campaign to prevent Netanyahu from acceding to his hard-right allies. 'We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land,' the State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a January 2024 statement, publicly rebuking two Netanyahu ministers for their 'inflammatory and irresponsible' call to encourage 'migration' from Gaza to make way for Jewish settlement. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to the region and assured America's Arab allies that it opposed forced displacement. 'Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow,' he said at a press conference in Doha, Qatar. 'They cannot, they must not, be pressed to leave Gaza.' Blinken then traveled to Israel, where he apparently delivered the same message to Netanyahu. The next day, the Israeli leader posted a video in which he declared, 'Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population.' A member of Netanyahu's party told the press that the prime minister's stance had shifted because of American pressure. For the moment, maximalism had been shoved back into the box. Then Donald Trump won reelection, and everything changed. The same day Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Netanyahu fired Yoav Gallant, his defense minister, who had opposed the resettlement of Gaza and publicly criticized the prime minister for refusing to commit to returning the territory to Palestinian control. In one fell swoop, the chief external (Biden) and internal (Gallant) obstacles to conquering Gaza were removed. The only pressure exerted on Netanyahu now was from the hard right. And then Trump himself seemingly joined its cause. On February 4, sitting next to a surprised Netanyahu in the Oval Office, Trump dramatically undid all of Biden's efforts, promising to take over Gaza, relocate its residents, and turn the area into the 'Riviera of the Middle East.' The president may have conceived of this vision out of some misdirected sense of compassion, believing it would provide better lives for Palestinians now stuck in what he correctly termed a 'demolition site.' But whatever Trump's intentions, his proposal was immediately taken as affirmation of the maximalist dream of many Israelis, and an explicit warrant for ethnic cleansing by the Israeli far right. Once that prospect turned from a pipe dream into a president's plan, it quickly became an obstruction to concluding the conflict. At a press conference in May, Netanyahu declared that implementing Trump's vision was now a condition for ending the war. Last week, the director of the Mossad reportedly visited Washington to discuss the 'voluntary' relocation of 'hundreds of thousands of Palestinians' to third-party countries. All the while, Gaza's hunger crisis has dramatically worsened, while hostages continue to languish in Hamas dungeons. Far from expediting the conflict's end, Trump's proposal has been marshaled to prolong it. And as long as the president does not explicitly reject the goal of removing the Gazan population, it will continue to bedevil his plans for the region. That's because the maximalists are now driving events. Hamas, a messianic cult that never cared for the civilians it hid within and beneath, will happily continue fighting its unwinnable war against Israel to the last Gazan. Netanyahu will do whatever keeps his coalition in power, kowtowing to the far right and extending the war in service of their aims rather than winding it down. But this is not the outcome that Trump or his administration professes to want. The president has not raised his Riviera idea in months, and has instead begun pressuring Israel to compromise. 'MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!' Trump posted on Truth Social June 29. 'The president's message on this conflict in the Middle East, which has been going on for a long time and has become quite brutal—especially in Gaza—is clear,' Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday. 'He wants the killing to end, to negotiate a cease-fire in this region, and he wants to see all of the hostages released from Gaza.' But the president's message is not clear. It is contradictory, and that is the source of the problem. This week, Trump dispatched his Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff overseas, amid hopes of clinching a deal. But if the administration wants more than another temporary cease-fire that will inevitably collapse, it needs to stop feeding the Israeli right's dream of conquest—in Gaza, but also the West Bank. It must make clear that neither nation is going anywhere and once again confine the absolutist aspirations it unwisely unleashed. Netanyahu may want to placate the far right, but with his coalition falling apart and elections scheduled for 2026 in any event, he absolutely cannot afford to lose the American president before his next campaign. Whatever Trump dictates, as both Israel's and Netanyahu's primary patron, the prime minister will have to accept. A president's words have power. With his Gaz-a-Lago intervention, Trump made attaining a lasting cease-fire in Gaza—not to mention broader peace in the Middle East—much harder. But by the same token, he has the capacity to reverse that reality, if he is willing to disown his biggest blunder.
Euractiv
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Euractiv
Keffiyeh clash: Palestine symbol may or may not be allowed in EU Parliament
Clarity is not a concept often associated with the European Parliament. So it should come as little surprise that more than week after a keffiyeh- wearing staffer was swiftly escorted out of a meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no one in a position of real authority there can say for sure whether the garb, long the signature of deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, is permissible under the parliament's house rules. "There is no specific formal dress code in the Parliament," a spokesperson told Euractiv, adding that staffers "are expected to conduct themselves with discretion and respect" for the institutions. "This also applies to their choice of attire in their specific workplace." Any questions? The keffiyeh, originally worn by rural Arabs as sun protection before becoming the symbol of Palestinian nationalism and youth rebellion in the West , landed on the agenda last Tuesday. D uring a committee meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, right-wing MEPs took aim at a parliamentary official sporting the black-and-white checked scarf. 'Civil servants are not here to make ideology,' Spanish EPP lawmaker Antonio López-Istúriz White protested, a remark that was echoed by his group's fellow Andrey Kovatchev, from Bulgaria. The staffer was then escorted out of the meeting room, parliamentary sources told Euractiv. In the telling of the parliament spokesperson, the meeting in question 'was briefly interrupted and, as always in such cases, precautionary measures were taken for the meeting to continue without any disruption." The move triggered a headscarf backlash, with progressive MEPs and their assistants appearing in full keffiyeh regalia for the rest of the proceedings. 'I do not see the issue at all [...] I think that person is dressed completely normally," far-left lawmaker Marc Botenga said, adding that no similar concerns had been raised when staff wore Ukrainian symbols. After last week's skirmish, some parliamentary staffers were instructed not to wear the in committee meetings, Euractiv has learned. The Parliament's staff regulations are vague regarding the display of political symbols. 'When performing your duties, you must refrain from taking action that might favour any one group or political party,' an ethics guidebook provided by the Parliament's HR department to personnel reads. 'As an official or other servant of Parliament, you must give politically neutral and balanced advice and support, unless you are employed by a political group.' Yet given that there are no Palestinian parties in the parliament, it is not clear how a keffiyeh might violate that stricture. . The Parliament spokesperson declined to clarify what rules apply to religious garments. Where there is an alleged breach of a staff member's duty to maintain neutrality, however, 'the matter will be investigated on a case-by-case basis,' another Parliament official told Euractiv. Belgian laws concerning freedom of speech do not have a direct effect on the Parliament. The EU's constitutional documents state that the 'premises and buildings of the Union shall be inviolable' – unless Belgian corruption authorities need to raid an MEP's office. Since the buildings are 'exempt from search, requisition, confiscation or expropriation,' the Parliament sets its own rules. If only someone knew what they were. Nicoletta Ionta contributed to this report. (mm)
Shafaq News
a day ago
- Politics
- Shafaq News
IHEC's ink decision reopens wounds in Iraq's electoral trust
Shafaq News The Independent High Electoral Commission's (IHEC) decision to abolish the use of indelible ink in Iraq's upcoming November 2025 elections has ignited sharp criticism from key political forces, especially in Kirkuk. While the commission frames the move as a modernization step toward a fully biometric system, its political ramifications point to a deeper crisis of confidence in Iraq's fragile democratic institutions. A Symbol of Integrity Removed For years, indelible ink has served as a visible assurance that each voter casts only one ballot. Commonly used in many developing democracies—including India, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and Nigeria—it offers a low-tech but highly symbolic method of deterring voter fraud. Iraq, like Egypt and other transitional democracies, has historically relied on the "ink step" to build credibility in elections marred by factional competition and institutional weakness. While advanced democracies often dispense with ink—relying on secure digital registries, ID systems, or mail-in voting—the Iraqi context differs starkly. In a system burdened by disputed voter rolls, weak oversight in peripheral regions, and contested ethnic territories, the ink is more than an anti-fraud measure; it is a public demonstration of electoral fairness. Biometric Promise Meets Political Skepticism IHEC justifies the ink's removal on technical grounds. According to commission officials, the biometric voter cards—complete with fingerprint and facial recognition—make manual safeguards redundant. These cards are meant to verify voters electronically, ensuring each person votes only once and only in their designated station. Yet this rationale has not convinced everyone, particularly in volatile areas. The Unified Iraqi Turkmen Front and the Arab Council in Kirkuk issued swift condemnations, arguing that the ink's elimination could pave the way for renewed manipulation, especially in provinces like Kirkuk, where past elections have been marred by allegations of demographic engineering and vote tampering. According to Mohammed al-Saadoon, a specialist in electoral affairs, the concerns voiced by Arab and Turkmen communities in Kirkuk stem from previous incidents in which individuals were reportedly able to vote at multiple stations or centers. This, he notes, has fueled widespread suspicion of fraud, particularly in the absence of rigorous and independent auditing of voter registries by a specialized committee. Kirkuk's Fragile Balance Kirkuk's history of ethnopolitical contention further complicates the issue. As a province disputed between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen, every electoral mechanism is intensely scrutinized. The ink's removal has reignited long-standing fears among Turkmen and Arab communities of demographic manipulation—specifically, the claim that thousands of Kurdish voters were registered in the province after 2003 to tilt electoral balances. These fears have been exacerbated by what some describe as IHEC's reluctance to enforce Federal Court decisions mandating a comprehensive audit of voter lists in Kirkuk. Al-Saadoon emphasizes that such demands for audit and reform are not new but are persistently raised because Kirkuk represents a focal point of competition among its three main communities. Arabs and Turkmen, he says, view the verification of voter registries as a necessary step toward restoring faith in the electoral process. On the other side, Kurdish parties reject accusations of voter inflation, asserting that any increase in Kurdish voter numbers reflects the return of previously displaced families to Kirkuk under earlier government decisions—not an attempt to engineer the province's demographics. At stake is the perceived legitimacy of Iraq's electoral system in regions where politics remains zero-sum and where the loss of a seat could mean the erosion of community rights or federal funding. In such contexts, visible anti-fraud mechanisms carry enormous symbolic weight. Their removal, especially without extensive stakeholder consultation, may deepen already festering doubts in the democratic process.
