DOHA: Morocco coach Walid Regragui has urged his team to believe they can defeat powerhouse Spain as they attempt to reach a first World Cup quarter-final.
The north African side are in the last 16 for only the second time after advancing as winners of Group F ahead of 2018 runners-up Croatia, having defeated Belgium and Canada in Qatar.
“It will be a very testing game for us. We’re coming up against one of the best footballing nations in the world. I think they’re one of the favorites to reach the final,” Regragui said on Monday.
“That said, we’ve also got things up our sleeve. We’ve had one extra rest day compared to them and we’re going to try and pull a surprise out of the bag.
“If we’re able to send Spain packing I think this will be a wonderful surprise not only for us but for our country.”
Spain denied Morocco a famous win at the 2018 World Cup with a last-gasp equalizer in a 2-2 draw, the only point the Moroccans picked up in Russia.
“We’re not seeking revenge at all. We’re not looking at what happened in the past,” said Regragui, who was appointed in August.
“We’ve got a new generation and, for me, the mentality has to change with the Moroccan team. All the negative aspects, that’s the old Morocco, we’ve changed. Our country’s changed.”
Morocco, the lone Arab nation and the last African team remaining in Qatar, will have the vocal backing of thousands of fans for Tuesday’s game at Education City Stadium.
“We’ll come out swinging. We want to hoist the Moroccan flag way up high. We’re playing first and foremost for us and our country,” said Regragui.
“All Arabs and Africans, we want to make them happy. We want their prayers and we want their support so it can give us that extra ingredient to win. Before it was just the Moroccans that supported us.”
Morocco would become just the fourth African team to reach the quarter-finals — after Cameroon in 1990, Senegal in 2002 and Ghana in 2010 — if they beat the 2010 champions.
Morocco’s only other appearance in the last 16 came in 1986, when they lost 1-0 to eventual runners-up West Germany.
“I don’t think we should go out with any sort of complex,” said Regragui.
“Yes, we’re the underdog, but we know what Spain are made of and the recipe is easy. We shouldn’t be worried, we should have no regrets and give the best of ourselves.”
Morocco to ‘come out swinging’ against Spain at World Cup
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Morocco to ‘come out swinging’ against Spain at World Cup
- Morocco coach Walid Regragui has urged his team to believe they can defeat powerhouse Spain as they attempt to reach a first World Cup quarter-final
- “If we’re able to send Spain packing I think this will be a wonderful surprise not only for us but for our country,” said Regragui
Palestinian teenager who died in Israeli prison showed signs of starvation, medical report says
- Starvation was likely the leading cause of death for a Palestinian teenager who died in an Israeli prison, according to an Israeli doctor who observed the autopsy
- Ahmad, who was held for six months without being charged, is the youngest Palestinian prisoner to die in an Israeli prison since the start of the Gaza war
TEL AVIV: Starvation was likely the leading cause of death for a Palestinian teenager who died in an Israeli prison, according to an Israeli doctor who observed the autopsy.
Seventeen-year-old Walid Ahmad, who had been held for six months without being charged, suffered from extreme malnutrition, and also showed signs of inflammation of the colon and scabies, said a report written by Dr. Daniel Solomon, who watched the autopsy, conducted by Israeli experts, at the request of the boy’s family.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of Solomon’s report from the family. It did not conclude a cause of death, but said Ahmad was in a state of extreme weight loss and muscle wasting. It also noted that Ahmad had complained to the prison of inadequate food since at least December, citing reports from the prison medical clinic.
Ahmad died last month after collapsing in Megiddo Prison and striking his head, Palestinian officials said, citing eyewitness accounts from other prisoners. Israel’s prison service said a team was appointed to investigate Ahmad’s death and its findings would be sent to the authorized authorities.
Ahmad is the youngest Palestinian prisoner to die in an Israeli prison since the start of the Gaza war, according to Physicians for Human Rights Israel, which has documented Palestinian prisoner deaths. He was taken into custody from his home in the occupied West Bank during a pre-dawn raid in September for allegedly throwing stones at soldiers, his family said.
The autopsy was conducted on March 27 at Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, which has not released a report of its findings and did not respond to requests for comment. The Ahmad family’s lawyer, Nadia Daqqa, confirmed Solomon, a gastrointestinal surgeon, was granted permission to observe the autopsy by an Israeli civil court.
Widespread abuse in Israeli prisons, rights groups say
Rights groups have documented widespread abuse in Israeli detention facilities holding thousands of Palestinians who were rounded up after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the war in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority says Israel is holding the bodies of 72 Palestinian prisoners who died in Israeli jails, including 61 who died since the beginning of the war. Israel often holds on to bodies of dead Palestinians, citing security grounds or for political leverage.
Conditions in Israeli prisons have worsened since the start of the war, former detainees have told the AP. They described beatings, severe overcrowding, insufficient medical care, scabies outbreaks and poor sanitary conditions.
Megiddo Prison, a maximum security facility where many Palestinian detainees, including teens, are held without charge, is regarded as one of the harshest, said Naji Abbas, head of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
Israel’s prison service said it operates according to the law and all prisoners are given basic rights.
Ahmad’s lawyer, Firas Al-Jabrini, said Israeli authorities denied his requests to visit his client in prison, but three prisoners held there told him Ahmad suffered from severe diarrhea, vomiting, headaches and dizziness before he died. They suspected it was caused by dirty water, as well as cheese and yogurt prison guards brought in the morning and that sat out all day while detainees were fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the lawyer said.
Malnourished and frail
According to Dr. Solomon’s report the autopsy showed that Ahmed likely suffered from inflammation of the large intestine, a condition known as colitis that can cause frequent diarrhea and can in some cases contribute to death.
But medical experts said colitis usually doesn’t cause death in young patients and was likely exacerbated by severe malnutrition.
“He suffered from starvation that led to severe malnutrition and in combination with untreated colitis that caused dehydration and electrolyte levels disturbances in his blood which can cause heart rate abnormalities and death,” said Dr. Lina Qasem Hassan, the head of the board for Physicians for Human Rights Israel who reviewed the report at the request of the AP.
She said the findings indicated medical neglect, exacerbated by Ahmad’s inability to fight disease or infection because of how malnourished and frail he was.
Dr. Arne Stray-Pedersen, a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Oslo in Norway who was not involved in the autopsy, said the report suggests there was a period of prolonged malnutrition and sickness lasting at least a few weeks or months. “Based on the report, I interpret the underlying cause of death to be emaciation-wasting,” he said.
Scabies rashes were also noted on his legs and genital area, the report said. There was also air between his lungs that expanded into his neck and back, it said, which can cause infection. Air can come from small tears in the lungs, which can occur from severe vomiting or coughing, it said.
Ahmad’s family said he was a healthy high schooler who enjoyed playing soccer before he was taken into custody. His father, Khalid Ahmad, said his son sat through four brief court hearings by videoconference, and he noticed at one of them, in February, that his son appeared to be in poor health.
The family hasn’t yet received a death certificate from Israel, the elder Ahmad said Friday, and are hoping Dr. Solomon’s report will help bring his son’s body home.
“We will demand our son’s body for burial,” he said “What is happening in Israeli prisons is a real tragedy, as there is no value for life.”
Pakistani novelist bags global award at Women Changing the World Awards 2025
- Alishba Khan Barech, Pakistan’s youngest self-published novelist, hails from southwestern Balochistan province
- Her work centers around “rewriting dominant narratives” especially around militancy-hit Balochistan, says state media
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s self-published novelist Alishba Khan Barech bagged the “Young Woman of the Year” award at the Women Changing the World Awards 2025 program this week, state-run media reported, dedicating her victory to the people of the southwestern Balochistan province she hails from.
Barech is Pakistan’s youngest self-published author and a native of Balochistan province’s Nushki district, which often features in headlines for militant attacks. She was announced as one of 12 finalists for the Young Woman of the Year award in February 2025, selected from a pool of 751 nominations across over 50 countries.
The Women Changing The World Awards is a global program that honors women making a positive impact across industries such as business, sustainability, leadership, health, education, innovation, and technology. The awards ceremony was held at the Park Hyatt London River Thames from Apr. 2-3.
“As I’ve said before, my mission has always been to rewrite the narratives that define us,” Barech was quoted as saying by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP).
“This award is dedicated with all my heart to my parents, my teachers, my beloved province Balochistan, and my country Pakistan.”
The Pakistani writer said winning the award was “more than a personal milestone” for her, adding that it was proof that stories of resilience rise from Nushki and “not just headlines of conflict and militancy we’ve grown used to.”
State-run APP said Barech’s work centers on rewriting dominant narratives, particularly around Balochistan, where separatists are fighting the state for a larger share in the province’s natural resources.
“She is Pakistan’s youngest novelist and memoirist, having written her debut novel at the age of 11, youngest memoirist at 14 and self-published author at 16,” the APP said.
It said Barech has worked with UNICEF Pakistan as its youth ambassador for mental health and polio eradication, adding that she currently serves as a youth adviser to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and is also a member of the National Youth Council.
The Pakistani author serves as a youth ambassador for the cricket franchise Quetta Gladiators and is the first Pashtun woman from Balochistan, South Asia, to secure a merit scholarship to the John Locke Summer University.
Pakistan signs energy, industrial collaboration agreements with Belarus in push for investment
- Communications Minister Abdul Aleem Khan visited Minsk this week on two-day visit to bolster bilateral trade, investment ties
- Pakistan, Belarus have moved closer to foster stronger trade and economic cooperation in various priority sectors in recent months
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Belarus signed key agreements related to energy, industrial collaboration and communications this week, state-run media reported on Sunday, amid Islamabad’s push to secure foreign investments for economic stability.
Pakistan’s Communications Minister Abdul Aleem Khan arrived in Minsk on Thursday for a two-day visit to bolster foreign trade and investment ties between the two countries.
During the visit, Khan stressed setting up trade corridors between the two countries to facilitate access to Central Asian countries through routes in Pakistan, China, Afghanistan, or Iran.
“Pakistan and Belarus have signed multiple cooperation agreements on energy, transport and communications during a high-level Pakistani delegation’s visit to the Eastern European country this week,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan said in a report.
“The agreements cover joint projects in energy infrastructure, industrial collaboration, and postal services, with plans to formalize terms during the prime minister’s upcoming visit to Belarus,” it added.
During the signing ceremony of the agreements on Friday, Khan said both sides aimed to convert past discussions into measurable progress, particularly those related to transport networks and energy solutions.
“Belarusian Energy Minister Denis Moroz said his country is committed to ensuring greater collaboration with Pakistan across various sectors,” Radio Pakistan said.
Pakistan and Belarus have moved closer to foster stronger trade and economic cooperation in recent months. Both countries marked 30 years of diplomatic ties last year, with Belarus’ prime minister visiting Islamabad in October 2024 to meet key Pakistani civilian and military officials to bolster economic cooperation.
Islamabad has aggressively pushed for trade and investment ties with regional allies such as China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Central Asian countries and others recently in its bid to escape a prolonged macroeconomic crisis.
Pakistan has signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) worth billions of dollars with businesses and entities in China, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Azerbaijan and other countries since last year to ensure sustainable economic growth, driven by increasing exports and financial reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Nostalgia fuels UK boom in vintage video game repairs
- The shelves lining Luke Malpass’s home workshop are a gamer’s treasure trove stretching back decades, with components of vintage Game Boys, Sega Mega Drives and Nintendos jostling for space and await
STOKE ON TRENT: The shelves lining Luke Malpass’s home workshop are a gamer’s treasure trove stretching back decades, with components of vintage Game Boys, Sega Mega Drives and Nintendos jostling for space and awaiting repair.
Parcels from gamers seeking help arrive from around the world at RetroSix, Malpass’s Aladdin’s cave.
He has turned a lifelong passion for gaming into a full-time job, answering the common question of what to do with old and worn machines and their parts.
“I think it can be partly nostalgic,” said Malpass, 38, as he surveyed the electronics stacked at his home in the central English city of Stoke-on-Trent.
He said the huge revival in retro games and consoles is not just a passing phase.
“Personally, I think it is the tactile experience. Getting a box off the shelf, physically inserting a game into the console... it makes you play it more and enjoy it more.”
Electronic devices and accessories, some dating back to the 1980s and the dawn of the gaming revolution, await to be lovingly restored to life.
Malpass has between 50 to 150 consoles needing attention at any one time, at a cost of between £60 ($78) and several hundred pounds.
It’s not just nostalgia for a long-lost childhood.
He believes it’s also a way to disconnect, unlike most online games which are now multi-player and require skills honed over long hours of practice to reach a good level.
“Retro gaming — just pick it up, turn it on, have an hour, have 10 minutes. It doesn’t matter. It’s instant, it’s there, and it’s pleasurable,” he told AFP.
With vintage one-player games “there’s no one you’re competing against and there’s nothing that’s making you miserable or angry.”
Malpass, who is a fan of such games as “Resident Evil” and “Jurassic Park,” even goes so far as to buy old televisions with cathode-ray tubes to replicate more faithfully his experience of playing video games as a kid.
Video clips he films of his game play, which he publishes to his YouTube channel, have won him tens of thousands of followers.
“I think people are always going to have a natural passion for things that they grew up with as a child.
“So I think we’ll always have work. It’ll evolve. And it won’t be, probably, Game Boys,” Malpass said.
“There’s always going to be something that’s retro.”
This week a survey organized by BAFTA, the British association that honors films, television, and video games, voted the 1999 action game “Shenmue” as the most influential video game of all time.
“Doom,” launched in 1993, and “Super Mario Bros.,” in which Mario first started trying to rescue Princess Peach way back in 1985, came in second and third place.
And on Wednesday, Nintendo unveiled details of its long-awaited Switch 2 console.
It includes new versions of beloved favorites from the Japanese giant — “Mario Kart World” and “Donkey Kong Bonanza.”
Held every four months, the London Gaming Market, dedicated to vintage video games, has been attracting growing numbers of fans.
“I’m a huge ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ fan... You never know what you’re going to find when you’re out here so I’m just always on the lookout,” said Adrian, a visitor wearing a T-shirt with a Sonic image.
Collectors and gamers sifted carefully through stacks of CD discs and old consoles hoping to find hidden treasures.
For Andy Brown, managing director of Replay Events and organizer of the London event which is now in its 10th year, the Covid-19 pandemic marked an upturn in the return to vintage games.
“I think people were stuck at home, wanting things to do that made them remember better times because it was a lot of doom and gloom around Covid,” he told AFP.
A study earlier this year by the US association Consumer Reports found 14 percent of Americans play on consoles made before 2000.
And in September, Italian customs busted a gang smuggling counterfeit vintage video games, seizing 12,000 machines containing some of the most popular games of the 1980s and 1990s.
Explosions as Kyiv under missile attack, says mayor
- Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 3 people were injured so far, and said there was reported wreckage falling in two non-residential sites
- Last week, a Russian missile struck a residential area in President Zelensky's home city of Kryvyi Rig, killing 18, including 9 children
KYIV, Ukraine: Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the city was under missile attack on Sunday with explosions in the Ukrainian capital, two days after a Russian missile killed 18 people in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown.
Klitschko said paramedics had been sent to two districts in Kyiv, while the Ukrainian air force said missiles had entered the northern Chernihiv region.
“Explosions in the capital. Air defense is in operation,” Klitschko said on Telegram.
“The missile attack on Kyiv continues. Stay in shelters!“
He added that three people were injured so far, and said there was reported wreckage falling in two non-residential sites.
Across Ukraine, air raid alerts were also issued for the Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions.
The attacks come at a time when US President Donald Trump is pushing for a partial ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, more than three years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion, while seeking a thaw in ties with the Kremlin.
On Saturday, Zelensky slammed the US embassy for what he called a “weak” statement that did not blame Russia for the deadly missile strike on his home city Kryvyi Rig. Nine children were among the 18 fatalities.
In one of the deadliest strikes in recent weeks, a Russian missile struck a residential area near a children’s playground in the central Ukrainian city.
Seventy-two people were wounded, 12 of them children, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Sergiy Lysak said after emergency operations ended overnight.
In an emotional statement on social media, Zelensky named each of the children killed in the attack, accusing the US embassy of avoiding referring to Russia as the aggressor.
“Unfortunately, the reaction of the American embassy is unpleasantly surprising: such a strong country, such a strong people — and such a weak reaction,” Zelensky wrote.
“They are even afraid to say the word ‘Russian’ when talking about the missile that killed the children.”
The Ukrainian president took aim at the US Ambassador Bridget Brink after she posted a message on X on Friday evening that said: “Horrified that tonight a ballistic missile struck near a playground and restaurant.”
Brink, who was appointed by Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden and has been ambassador since May 2022, added that “this is why the war must end.”
Zelensky wrote on Saturday: “Yes, the war must end. But in order to end it, we must not be afraid to call a spade a spade.”
“It is wrong and dangerous to keep silent about the fact that it is Russia that is killing children with ballistic missiles,” Zelensky reiterated in his evening address.
“It only incites the scum in Moscow to continue the war and further ignore diplomacy.”
The Ukrainian leader was born in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rig, which had a pre-war population of around 600,000 people.
Zelensky said the children killed by the latest attack ranged in age from a three-year-old boy, Tymofiy, to a 17-year-old teenage boy, Nikita.
Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of Kryvyi Rig’s military administration, said three days of mourning had been declared on April 7, 8 and 9.
“This is nothing less than a mass murder of civilians,” he said.
Pictures circulated by rescue services showed several bodies, one stretched out near a playground swing.
Russia’s defense ministry said it “delivered a precision strike” in the city “where commanders of formations and Western instructors were meeting.”
The General Staff of the Ukrainian army retorted that Moscow was “trying to cover up its cynical crime” and “spreading false information.” It accused Russia of “war crimes.”
Trump, who said during his re-election campaign he could end the three-year conflict within days, is pushing the two sides to agree to a ceasefire but his administration has failed to broker an accord acceptable to both.
Zelensky said the missile attack showed Russia had no interest in stopping its full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022.
The president hailed “tangible progress” after meeting British and French military chiefs in Kyiv on Friday to discuss a plan by London and Paris to send a “reassurance” force to Ukraine if and when a deal on ending the conflict is reached.
Zelensky wrote on social media that the meeting with British Chief of the Defense Staff Tony Radakin and French counterpart Thierry Burkhard agreed “the first details on how the security contingent of partners can be deployed.”
This is one of the latest efforts by European leaders to agree on a coordinated policy after Trump sidelined them and opened direct talks with the Kremlin.
