Author: Gulf News Week
Belgium has approved visas for Rawan Alkatari’s husband and three children, but they remain stuck in the Strip.Every nook and corner of Rawan Alkatari’s home in Aalst, a city in Belgium, is filled with pictures that remind her of her family in Gaza. “People who come to visit my home say it is beautiful. But I’ll see it as beautiful when it is filled with the sound of my children,” she said. The 30-year-old came to Belgium shortly before Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, having been granted asylum. But her husband Osama and three children – Lujayn,…
ATLANTA (news agencies) — Curveballs have been thrown a curve by a modern game valuing velocity over variety, disappearing from the major leagues by more than 20,000 annually.The Athletics have thrown curves on just 2.5% of pitches this season. The overall big league figure dropped from 10.7% in 2019 to 8.1% last year, the lowest since MLB starting tracking in 2008, before rising slightly to 8.5% this season.There were 22,962 fewer curveballs in 2024 than five years earlier.“You don’t really see a lot of people throwing 12-6 curveballs anymore,” Tampa Bay pitcher Shane Baz said. “They’d rather have a hard…
LONDON (news agencies) — Iga Swiatek’s Wimbledon championship moved her up to No. 3 in the WTA rankings Monday, and Amanda Anisimova’s runner-up finish allowed the American to break into the top 10 for the first time at No. 7.A year ago, Anisimova was ranked 189th and wasn’t able to get into the field at the All England Club automatically. So she tried to qualify but lost. This year, Anisimova was seeded at Wimbledon and made it all the way to her first Grand Slam final, beating No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals before losing to Swiatek 6-0, 6-0.“I…
Cnews agenciesE CANAVERAL, Fla. (news agencies) — The International Space Station’s first visitors from India, Poland and Hungary headed back to Earth on Monday, wrapping up a private mission and catching a ride home with SpaceX.Their capsule undocked from the orbiting lab and aimed for a splashdown the next morning in the Pacific off the Southern California coast.The short, privately financed mission marked the first time in more than 40 years that India, Poland and Hungary saw one of their own rocket into orbit. The three astronauts were accompanied by America’s most experienced space flier, Peggy Whitson, who works for…
WASHINGTON (news agencies) — Senate Republicans will test the popularity of Department of Government Efficiency spending cuts this week by aiming to pass President Donald Trump’s request to claw back $9.4 billion in public media and foreign aid spending.Senate Democrats are trying to kill the measure but need a few Republicans uncomfortable with the president’s effort to join them.Trump’s Republican administration is employing a rarely used tool that allows the president to transmit a request to cancel previously approved funding authority. The request triggers a 45-day clock under which the funds are frozen. If Congress fails to act within that…
Two experts talked to media about how the genocide in Gaza carries echoes of Srebrenica 30 years ago.The raw statistics speak to the scale of the suffering in two places, separated by decades. Israel has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, many of them women and children, and injured more than 138,000. With constant bombardment, man-made famine, and tactics like declaring a safe zone and then bombing it, experts say what Israel is doing amounts to genocide. In the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed some 68,000 Bosniaks, rounding people up based…
WASHINGTON (news agencies) — Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much, but they share a conviction that the government should help American manufacturers, one way or another.Democratic President Joe Biden handed out subsidies to chipmakers and electric vehicle manufacturers. Republican President Donald Trump is building a wall of import taxes — tariffs — around the U.S. economy to protect domestic industry from foreign competition.Yet American manufacturing has been stuck in a rut for nearly three years. And it remains to be seen whether the trend will reverse itself.The U.S. Labor Department reports that American factories shed 7,000 jobs in June…
LONDON (news agencies) — Jannik Sinner needed this victory.He wanted to win Wimbledon, of course, and it would have meant a lot to him no matter who the opponent was in the final.That this championship, his fourth at a Grand Slam tournament, came via a win over Carlos Alcaraz made it all the more significant to Sinner — and to the future of their burgeoning rivalry, the best men’s tennis has to offer these days and, perhaps, for many years to come.“It is important, for sure,” the No. 1-ranked Sinner said Sunday night after prevailing 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 against…
BERLIN (news agencies) — A German doctor went on trial in Berlin Monday, accused of murdering 15 of his patients who were under palliative care.The prosecutor’s office brought charges against the 40-year-old doctor “for 15 counts of murder with malice aforethought and other base motives” before a Berlin state court. The prosecutor’s office is seeking not only a conviction and a finding of particularly serious guilt, but also a lifetime ban on practicing medicine and subsequent preventive detention.Murder charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. If a court establishes that a suspect bears particularly severe guilt, that means…
Initial investigation indicates blast caused by a gas leak, but similar recent incidents have led to suspicions of drone attacks.At least seven people have been injured in an explosion at a residential building on the outskirts of the Iranian city of Qom, according to several Iranian news outlets. At least five emergency vehicles were dispatched after Monday’s blast to the Nasim Pardisan residential complex to attend to the injured, Iran’s Student News Network (SNN) reported, quoting Dr Mohammad Javad Bagheri, head of Qom’s Emergency Services. The state-affiliated Fars News Agency said the explosion happened at one of the buildings in…