Saudi legend Mohammad Noor announced in EA SPORTS FC 25 hero team
Updated 13 August 2024
Saudi Arabia
RIYADH: Saudi football legend Mohammad Noor has been included in a team of heroes for the upcoming EA SPORTS FC 25 release, the game maker annouced.
The retired player’s inclusion will mark the third time a Saudi player has been included in the set, officially called the Ultimate Team, which are usable game cards featuring retired players.
Noor spent the majority of his career with Al-Ittihad Club and is renowned for his illustrious career and numerous accolades.
His tenure at the Jeddah club is marked by his pivotal role in securing back-to-back AFC Champions League titles in 2004 and 2005. Representing the Green Falcons, he participated in multiple AFC Asian Cups and World Cups, contributing significantly to the national team's successes on the international stage.
EA SPORTS FC 25 has featured legendary players from the world’s game as in-game Heroes, including Saudi players Sami Al-Jaber and Saeed Al Oweiran. Noor’s addition continues this tradition, celebrating the rich history of Saudi football and its impact on the global stage.
SPORTS FC 25 is due to be released on Sept. 27, 2024.
Hezbollah threatens to resume firing missiles at Israel if it intensifies operations in Lebanon
Naim Kassem’s comments came as Lebanon’s Cabinet was meeting to discuss Hezbollah’s disarmament
Hezbollah officials have said the group will not discuss its disarmament until Israel withdraws from five hills it controls inside Lebanon
Updated 1 min 19 sec ago
BEIRUT: The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah warned Tuesday that if Israel intensifies its military operations against his group, the Iran-backed armed faction will resume firing missiles toward Israel. Naim Kassem’s comments came as Lebanon’s Cabinet was meeting to discuss Hezbollah’s disarmament. Beirut is under US pressure to disarm the group that recently fought a 14-month war with Israel and was left gravely weakened, with many of its political and military leaders dead. Since the war ended in November with a US-brokered ceasefire, Hezbollah officials have said the group will not discuss its disarmament until Israel withdraws from five hills it controls inside Lebanon and stops almost daily airstrikes that have killed or wounded hundreds of people, most of them Hezbollah members. Israel has accused Hezbollah of trying to rebuild its military capabilities. Israel’s military has said the five locations in Lebanon provide vantage points or are located across from communities in northern Israel, where about 60,000 Israelis were displaced during the war. Since the ceasefire, Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for one attack on a disputed area along the border. In a televised speech Tuesday, Kassem said Hezbollah rejects any timetable to hand over its weapons. “Israel’s interest is not to widen the aggression because if they expand, the resistance will defend, the army will defend and the people will defend,” Kassem said. “This defense will lead to the fall of missiles inside Israel.” Since the war ended, Hezbollah has withdrawn most of its fighters and weapons from the area along the border with Israel south of the Litani river. Last week, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun reiterated calls for Hezbollah to give up its weapons, angering the group’s leadership. The ceasefire agreement left vague how Hezbollah’s weapons and military facilities north of the Litani river should be treated, saying Lebanese authorities should dismantle unauthorized facilities starting with the area south of the river. Hezbollah maintains the deal only covers the area south of the Litani, while Israel and the US say it mandates disarmament of the group throughout Lebanon. Kassem said Hezbollah rejects a government vote over its weapons, saying such a decision should be unanimously backed by all Lebanese. “No one can deprive Lebanon of its force to protect its sovereignty,” Kassem said. Hezbollah’s weapons are a divisive issue among Lebanese, with some groups calling for its disarmament. The Israel-Hezbollah war started a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack against Israel from Gaza. It left more than 4,000 people dead and caused damage worth $11 billion.
Titan sub disaster tied to ignored warnings and weak oversight, Coast Guard says
Updated 1 min 55 sec ago
The Coast Guard report found the company’s safety procedures were “critically flawed” Jason Neubauer, with the Marine Board of Investigation, said that the findings will help prevent future tragedies
MAINE, USA: The 2023 Titan submersible disaster that killed five people could have been prevented, the US Coast Guard said Tuesday, but OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush ignored safety warnings, design flaws and crucial oversight that could have resulted in criminal charges — had he survived.
The Titan suffered a catastrophic implosion as it descended to the wreck of the Titanic, sparking a dayslong search in the North Atlantic off Canada that grabbed international headlines. The Coast Guard convened its highest level of investigation in the aftermath, and the disaster has led to lawsuits and calls for tighter regulation of the developing private deep sea expedition industry.
The Titan was owned by OceanGate, a private company based in Washington state. The Coast Guard report found the company’s safety procedures were “critically flawed” and cited “glaring disparities” between safety protocols and actual practices.
Preventing the next Titan disaster
Jason Neubauer, with the Marine Board of Investigation, said that the findings will help prevent future tragedies.
“There is a need for stronger oversight and clear options for operators who are exploring new concepts outside of the existing regulatory framework,” he said in a statement.
OceanGate suspended operations in July 2023. A spokesperson for the company said it has been wound down and was fully cooperating with the investigation.
“We again offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who died on June 18, 2023, and to all those impacted by the tragedy,” said the spokesperson, Christian Hammond.
Coast Guard report describes ‘red flags’ at OceanGate
Throughout the report, which spans more than 300 pages, investigators repeatedly point to OceanGate’s culture of downplaying, ignoring and even falsifying key safety information to improve its reputation and evade scrutiny from regulators. OceanGate ignored “red flags” and had a “toxic workplace culture,” while its mission was hindered by lack of domestic and international framework for submersible operations, the report says.
Numerous OceanGate employees have come forward in the two years since the implosion to support those claims. The report says firings of senior staff members and the looming threat of being fired were used to dissuade employees and contractors from expressing safety concerns.
“By strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges, OceanGate was ultimately able to operate TITAN completely outside of the established deep-sea protocols,” the report found.
The Titan’s inadequacies
Investigators found that the submersible’s design, certification, maintenance and inspection process were all inadequate. Coast Guard officials noted at the start of last year’s hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice.
Mounting financial pressures in 2023 led to a decision by OceanGate to store the Titan submersible outdoors over the Canadian winter, where its hull was exposed to temperature fluctuations that compromised the integrity of the vessel, the report said.
The Marine Board concluded that Rush, OceanGate’s CEO, “exhibited negligence” that contributed to the deaths of four people. If Rush had survived, the case would have been handed off to the US Department of Justice and he may have been subject to criminal charges, the board said.
The Marine Board said one challenge of the investigation was that “significant amounts” of video footage evidence that had been captured by witnesses was not subject to its subpoena authority because the witnesses weren’t US citizens.
The victims of the Titan disaster
In addition to Rush, the implosion killed French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British adventurer Hamish Harding and two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood.
The family of Nargeolet, a veteran French undersea explorer known as “Mr. Titanic,” filed a more than $50 million lawsuit last year that said the crew experienced “terror and mental anguish” before the disaster. The lawsuit accused OceanGate of gross negligence.
The Titan’s final dive
Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic site since 2021. The Titan’s final dive came on June 18, 2023, a Sunday morning when the submersible would lose contact with its support vessel about two hours later. The submersible was reported overdue that afternoon, and ships, planes and equipment were rushed to the scene about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Wreckage of the Titan would subsequently be found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said.
The Marine Board of Investigation held several days of hearings about the implosion in October 2024. During those hearings, the lead engineer of the submersible said he felt pressured to get the vessel ready to dive and refused to pilot it for a journey several years earlier.
Tony Nissen told the board that he had told Rush: “I’m not getting in it.”
South Africa urges more countries to stand up to Israel’s ‘genocidal activities’
Updated 31 min 59 sec ago
AFP
PRETORIA: More countries must stand up to Israel and recognize a Palestinian state to stop “the genocidal activities,” South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told AFP in an interview.
Pretoria has been leading calls against Israel’s action in Gaza, bringing a case before the International Court of Justice in December 2023, arguing that its war in the territory amounted to genocide.
As some of Israel’s allies “are now also saying, no, this can’t continue, it means that it is bringing us closer and closer to the Israel regime to stop the genocidal activities,” Lamola said.
Calling the organization “humanitarian” adds on to Israel’s humanitarian camouflage and is an insult to the humanitarian enterprise and standards, UN experts say
Updated 48 min 31 sec ago
AFP
GENEVA: United Nations special rapporteurs called Tuesday for the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to be immediately dismantled, saying aid was being “exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas.”
An exceptionally-large group of the UN-mandated experts voiced grave concerns over the GHF’s operations.
The private organization began distributing food in Gaza Strip in May as Israel began easing a more than two-month aid blockade on the Palestinian territory that had exacerbated existing shortages.
“The GHF ... is an utterly disturbing example of how humanitarian relief can be exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas in serious breach of international law,” the experts said in a joint statement.
“The entanglement of Israeli intelligence, US contractors and ambiguous non-governmental entities underlines the urgent need for robust international oversight and action under UN auspices.
“Calling it ‘humanitarian’ adds on to Israel’s humanitarian camouflage and is an insult to the humanitarian enterprise and standards.”
On July 22, the UN rights office said Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid in Gaza since the GHF started operations — nearly three-quarters of them in the vicinity of GHF sites.
“Without clear accountability, the very idea of humanitarian relief may ultimately become a casualty of modern hybrid warfare,” the special rapporteurs said.
“The credibility and effectiveness of humanitarian assistance must be restored by dismantling the GHF, holding it and its executives accountable, and allowing experienced and humanitarian actors from the UN and civil society alike to take back the reins of managing and distributing lifesaving aid.”
The joint statement was signed by Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Israel accuses her of having an “obsessive, hate-driven agenda to delegitimize the state of Israel.”
The statement was also signed by 18 other special rapporteurs, plus other UN experts and members of UN working groups — a notably large number for such statements.
Special rapporteurs are independent experts mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to report their findings. They do not, therefore, speak for the United Nations itself.
More than two million people live in the Gaza Strip.
GHF says it has distributed more than 1.76 million boxes of foodstuffs to date.
“We continue to improve our operations,” GHF executive director John Acree said Monday.
“We urge the international humanitarian community to join us — we have the scale and capacity to deliver more aid to the people of Gaza.”
Man of the match Meziane was on target himself on 76 minutes
Three minutes later Sofiane Bayazid put the result beyond doubt
Updated 47 min 46 sec ago
AFP
NAIROBI: Algeria thumped Uganda 3-0 in their opening African Nations Championships (CHAN) Group C match in Kampala on Monday.
Uganda’s defeat means it is the only co-hosting nation to lose their CHAN opening match following twin victories for Tanzania and Kenya over the weekend.
Ayoub Ghezala rose high to head in an Abderrahmane Meziane cross at the near post for the Desert Foxes before the break.
Man of the match Meziane was on target himself on 76 minutes with a superb left-footed curler from the edge of the box.
Three minutes later Sofiane Bayazid put the result beyond doubt after a one-two combination
with left-back Naoufel Khacef.
Uganda were left ruing two missed chances when Joel Ssrunjogi and Patrick Kakande’s long range efforts were thwarted by Algerian keeper Zakaria Boulhalfaya.
Uganda next meet Guinea who got their campaign off to a winning start with a 1-0 win over Niger in a tie that required frequent use of video assistant referee (VAR).
Teenage striker Mohammed Bangoura atoned for an early miss with the only goal two minutes into the second half which was confirmed after a VAR review, having initially been ruled offside.
