MADRID: Mounir Nasraoui, the father of Barcelona and Spain star winger Lamine Yamal, was stabbed late on Wednesday at a parking lot in the northeastern Spanish town of Mataro, La Vanguardia newspaper reported, citing official sources familiar with the matter.
Reuters was not able to independently confirm the report. The regional Mossos d’Esquadra police force and a spokesperson for the Mataro local government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to La Vanguardia report, Nasraoui was taken to the Can Ruti hospital in the nearby city of Badalona and his diagnosis was “serious.” It added that local and regional police had located several witnesses of the incident.
However, a later report by sports website Relevo, also citing official sources, said Nasraoui had been released from hospital and was back at his home.
Yamal, a soccer wonderkid who grew up in coastal Mataro — a working-class, multi-ethnic suburb of Barcelona — became the breakout star of the recent Euro 2024 held in Germany.
Spain won the tournament, helped in part by the 17-year-old scoring against France in the semifinal on July 9.
Father of Spain soccer star Lamine Yamal stabbed, report says
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Father of Spain soccer star Lamine Yamal stabbed, report says
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- According to La Vanguardia report, Nasraoui was taken to the Can Ruti hospital in the nearby city of Badalona and his diagnosis was “serious”
Children of Daesh suspects returned to France doing well: prosecutor
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- Overall 170 women had returned from Iraq and Syria to France
- Until 2022, France only brought back children on a case-by-case basis
“There are 364 children in 59 departments (areas in France), who are followed by judges for children, and who benefit from coordination from my office to make sure they have optimal care,” Olivier Christen told the France Info radio station.
Another anti-terror prosecutor had in 2018 expressed fear that the children of French nationals who joined Daesh after it set up a so-called caliphate in 2014 could be “ticking time bombs.”
But Christen, who leads the National Anti-Terror Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) opened in 2019 in the wake of a spate of jihadist attacks, brushed aside that worry.
“These 364 children in no way seem to me to correspond to that expression,” he said.
“They are being closely monitored... They pose no particular difficulty.”
“There are very different situations. Some are very, very young children, others are fully fledged teenagers,” he added.
Overall 170 women had returned from Iraq and Syria to France, he said, including 57 from detention camps in northeast Syria in recent years since the Daesh caliphate’s territorial collapse in 2019.
Of the 364 children who had been brought to France, “169 have been repatriated over the past two years,” he added.
Until 2022, France only brought back children on a case-by-case basis, prioritizing orphans and some children of women who had agreed to give up their parental rights. But Paris changed that policy two years ago.
Daesh seized control of large swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, before Syrian forces spearheaded by Kurds and backed by a US-led coalition ousted them from their last patch of land in eastern Syria in 2019.
Kurdish autonomous authorities in northeast Syria have been holding around 56,000 people, including 30,000 children, in detention centers and camps.
Among them are Daesh fighters and their families, as well as displaced people who fled the fighting.
Biden, Harris to visit Sept. 11 sites, White House vows ‘never again’
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- Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will start their day with a visit to the site where planes brought down the World Trade Center’s twin towers
- Donald Trump will also attend the New York City ceremony, along with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
NEW YORK: US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday will observe the 23th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the US with visits to each of the three sites where hijacked planes crashed in 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Biden and Harris will start their day with a visit to the New York City site where planes brought down the World Trade Center’s twin towers.
Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, was due to traveled to New York after debating her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, with just eight weeks left before the Nov. 5 presidential election.
No remarks are scheduled at the site, where relatives will read the names of those who died.
Trump will also attend the New York City ceremony, along with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a source familiar with the plans said.
Biden and Harris will then fly to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where passengers on United Flight 93 overcame the hijackers and the plane crashed in a field, preventing another target from being hit. Then they will head back to the Washington area to visit the Pentagon memorial.
“We can only imagine the heartbreak and the pain that the 9/11 families and survivors have felt every day for the past 23 years and we will always remember and honor those who were stolen from us way too soon,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday.
“We will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that an attack like this never happens again,” she said.
Biden issued a proclamation honoring those who died as a result of the attacks, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Americans who volunteered for military service afterwards.
“We owe these patriots of the 9/11 Generation a debt of gratitude that we can never fully repay,” Biden said, citing deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones, as well as the capture and killing of Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and his deputy.
US congressional leaders on Tuesday posthumously awarded the congressional gold medal to 13 of those service members who were killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Taiwan grounds Mirage fighter jet fleet after crash at sea
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- The Mirage was conducting nighttime exercises late on Tuesday after taking off from the Hsinchu air base when it suffered a loss of engine power and the pilot bailed out
TAIPEI: Taiwan’s air force said on Wednesday it had grounded its fleet of French-made Mirage fighter jets for maintenance checks after one crashed off the island’s northwest coast, though the pilot was rescued.
The Mirage was conducting nighttime exercises late on Tuesday after taking off from the Hsinchu air base when it suffered a loss of engine power and the pilot bailed out. Rescuers later found him and took him to hospital.
The air force said the Mirage fleet has now been grounded for checks, and that they would ensure sufficient coverage from other aircraft to make up for those taken out of rotation.
The US-built F-16 fighter jet is the mainstay of Taiwan’s air force. Taiwan received its first of 60 Mirage 2000 jets in 1997, though they have been upgraded several times since then. At least seven have since been lost in accidents.
Taiwan’s air force has suffered a series of crashes in recent years, including in 2022 when it grounded its Mirage fleet after one crashed into the sea off the east coast.
While Taiwan’s air force is well trained, it has been repeatedly scrambling to see off Chinese military aircraft flying near the island in the past five years, though the accidents have not been linked in any way to these intercept activities.
Donald Trump makes surprise ‘spin room’ visit after US presidential debate
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PHILADELPHIA: Minutes after being hustled by Kamala Harris during their US presidential debate on Tuesday, Donald Trump appeared in front of reporters to get the last word.
As the debate drew to a close, cries of surprise went up at the entrance to the press room.
Trump had made an unexpected entrance to the “spin room,” where the candidates’ spokespeople and supporters usually hurry to distribute talking points to journalists.
Cameras and microphones in hand, dozens of reporters crowded behind thin ribbons to get as close as possible to the former president.
“What about black voters?” a reporter asked, managing to stand out from the crowd. “I love them. They love me,” the Republican billionaire declared.
Others tried to get his opinion on the 90-minute debate, during which 59-year-old Democratic candidate Harris had launched a relentless attack.
“I thought it was a great debate,” Trump said.
“I thought it was my best performance, actually, but I don’t even view it as a performance,” he added.
“Our country is in decline. We’re a nation in decline. And I thought that when we got that out, she was unable to defend it.”
Trump walked around the room, trailed by reporters, and after fielding a few questions, he finally disappeared behind black curtains.
“The fact that he showed up in the media filing center and spin room at the end, we haven’t seen that in years,” said Aaron Kall, director of debates at the University of Michigan.
“He wants to try to change the subject to something as quickly as possible.”
Both Trump and Harris will be back on the campaign trail on Wednesday, with less than two months left before the election.
They will take part in separate ceremonies to honor the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Russian lawmaker warns the West over supplies of long-range missiles to Ukraine
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- Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine – Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s Duma
- Sources said last week that the US was close to an agreement to give Ukraine of long range weapons
MOSCOW: Russia will consider the United States and its allies to be parties to the Ukraine war and Moscow will use more powerful weapons if the West allows Ukraine to use long-range weapons for strikes deep into Russia, a senior lawmaker said on Wednesday.
“Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s Duma, the lower house of parliament, said on Telegram.
Volodin said that the United States, Germany, France, and Britain were becoming parties to the conflict.
“All this will lead to the fact that our country will be forced to respond using more powerful and destructive weapons to protect its citizens,” Volodin said.
US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that his administration was “working that out now” when asked if the US would lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long range weapons in the war.
Sources said last week that the US was close to an agreement to give Ukraine such weapons, but that Kyiv would need to wait several months as the US works through technical issues ahead of any shipment.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran had supplied Russia with ballistic missiles in what he said was a “dramatic escalation.” Tehran said the claims were “ugly propaganda.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading for Western countries to supply longer-range missiles and to lift restrictions on using them to hit targets such as military airfields inside Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that he could deploy conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies if they allowed Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia with long-range Western weapons.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 with thousands of troops, triggering the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Putin casts the conflict in Ukraine as part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
The West and Ukraine describe the invasion as an imperial-style land grab by Putin and has vowed to defeat Russia on the battlefield.