New Syrian leaders say they want to contribute to ‘regional peace’
New Syrian leaders say they want to contribute to ‘regional peace’/node/2583808/middle-east
New Syrian leaders say they want to contribute to ‘regional peace’
Members of the media react during a power cut ahead of the press conference of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, in Damascus, Syria, December 20, 2024. (REUTERS)
New Syrian leaders say they want to contribute to ‘regional peace’
France, Germany, Britain, and the United Nations have also sent emissaries to Damascus in recent days to establish contacts with the new authorities
Updated 21 December 2024
AFP
DAMASCUS: Syria wants to contribute to “regional peace,” the country’s new authorities said late Friday, after a meeting between leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa and a US diplomatic delegation.
“The Syrian side indicated that the Syrian people stand at an equal distance from all countries and parties in the region and that Syria rejects any polarization,” the statement said.
It said the new authorities wanted to “affirm Syria’s role in promoting regional peace and building privileged strategic partnerships with countries in the region.”
A Syrian official had previously told AFP that the meeting between Al-Sharaa — known previously by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani — and the US delegation led by Barbara Leaf, head of the Middle East at the State Department, was “positive.”
Al-Sharaa, the leader of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group that seized power in Damascus, was previously the target of US sanctions.
But after their first formal contact in Damascus on Friday, Washington announced it had dropped a bounty for his arrest.
“Based on our discussion, I told him that we were dropping the offer of a reward,” Leaf told reporters.
She said she told the new Syrian leader of the “critical need to ensure that terrorist groups cannot pose a threat inside Syria or outside, including to the United States and our partners in the region.”
He “committed to doing so,” she said, adding he had appeared to her as “pragmatic.”
HTS, which leads the victorious coalition of armed groups in Damascus, claims to have broken with jihadism and has sought to reassure people of its ability to revive the country after nearly 14 years of civil war.
France, Germany, Britain, and the United Nations have also sent emissaries to Damascus in recent days to establish contacts with the new authorities.
The West is wary of the risk of fragmentation of the country and the resurgence of the jihadist group Islamic State, which has never been completely eradicated there.
Girelli fires Italy past Norway and into Euro 2025 semifinals
Italy will play either holders England or Sweden in the last four next Tuesday after Girelli headed home the decisive goal in the final minute in Geneva from Sofia Cantore’s cross
The Italians will be a tough nut to crack after seeing off Norway, who have two of the women’s game’s biggest stars in Ada Hegerberg and Caroline Graham Hansen
Updated 20 min 41 sec ago
AFP
GENEVA: Cristiana Girelli shot Italy into the semifinals of Women’s Euro 2025 on Wednesday with a brace, including a last-gasp winner, in the Azzurre’s historic 2-1 triumph over Norway.
Italy will play either holders England or Sweden in the last four next Tuesday after Girelli headed home the decisive goal in the final minute in Geneva from Sofia Cantore’s cross.
The Italians hadn’t reached last four of a Euros since losing the final to Germany in 1997 and will be a tough nut to crack after seeing off Norway, who have two of the women’s game’s biggest stars in Ada Hegerberg and Caroline Graham Hansen.
“Cantore gave me an incredible ball for the second goal. She looked up, saw where I was and just put it on my head, so it was easy for me to put it in the goal,” said Girelli.
“I didn’t realize how close we were to the end of the match... I still can’t believe it, to tell you the truth, I can’t believe it, it’s just magnificent.”
Hegerberg, who also missed a penalty, netted for the Norwegians in the 66th minute after Girelli opened the scoring five minutes after half-time.
Juventus forward Girelli has now scored 61 times for her country, with Wednesday’s double probably the most important goals of her career.
She is also the oldest woman to score more than once in a women’s Euros at the age 35 years and 84 days.
The Norwegians were pioneers of modern women’s football and the first country to win the World Cup, European Championship and Olympics but have fallen behind since triumphing at the Sydney Games.
Now managed by Gemma Grainger, Norway haven’t reached the semifinals of a major tournament since losing the final of the 2013 Euros.
Italy were the better side for large chunks of the match but continued to squander chances just as they did while qualifying from Group B behind Spain.
Arianna Caruso was the the first to fluff her lines in the ninth minute when after bundling her way into the penalty area she scuffed a great opportunity wide.
Girelli then stopped Emma Severini from heading home Barbara Bonansea’s inviting cross in the 20th minute by challenging for the same ball even though she had little chance of getting an effort on target.
And moments later Severini hit a weak shot at Norway goalkeeper Cecilie Fiskerstrand after being sent clean through by Caruso’s superb first-time pass.
Hegerberg almost made Italy pay in the 37th minute when Thea Bjelde’s deflected low cross struck her thigh and dribbled wide in front of an open goal.
Girelli finally gave Italy their deserved lead by prodding home Cantore’s mishit shot, but going behind seemed to wake Norway up and as she did in their first Group A match against Switzerland, Hegerberg both won and then shot wide a penalty.
The former Ballon d’Or winner made up for her horrendous mistake six minutes later when she pounced on hesitant goalkeeping from Laura Giuliani to poke home the leveller.
Both teams traded blows from that point but it looked like extra time was nailed on until Girelli struck at the last, perfectly guiding home Cantore’s searching cross and giving Italy a date with one of the tournament favorites in the next round.
Starvation among kids in Gaza reaches record levels, humanitarian chiefs tell UN Security Council
More than 5,800 children diagnosed with acute malnutrition last month, triple the number compared with February
UNICEF chief Catherine Russell says children are being killed and maimed as they queue for food and medicine
Updated 49 min 29 sec ago
Arab News
NEW YORK: Children in Gaza are suffering from the worst starvation rates since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023, aid officials told the UN Security Council on Wednesday, in a devastating assessment of the conditions young Palestinians in the territory face as they try to survive.
“Starvation rates among children hit their highest levels in June, with over 5,800 girls and boys diagnosed as acutely malnourished,” said the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher.
Israel imposed an 11-week blockade on humanitarian aid earlier this year, and has only allowed a trickle of relief supplies to enter the territory since the end of May. The effects on the health of children have been catastrophic, according to the details presented to members of the Security Council. Levels of acute malnutrition have nearly tripled since February, just before the total blockade on aid was imposed.
“Children in Gaza are enduring catastrophic living conditions, including severe food insecurity and malnutrition,” UNICEF’s executive director, Catherine Russell, told the council.
“These severely malnourished children need consistent, supervised treatment, along with safe water and medical care, to survive.”
We’re failing Gaza’s children. Seen through their eyes, our failure is a betrayal of their right to be children.
History will judge this harshly. So will the children.
We call for a ceasefire in Gaza, protection of children and release of all hostages. https://t.co/9Y0dHG7Yhz
Yet youngsters in the territory are being killed and maimed as they queue for lifesaving food and medicine, she added. Last week, nine children were among 15 Palestinians killed by an Israeli strike in Deir Al-Balah while they waited in line for nutritional supplies from UNICEF.
“Among the survivors was Donia, a mother seeking a lifeline for her family after months of desperation and hunger,” Russell said.
“Donia’s 1-year-old son, Mohammed, was killed in the attack after speaking his first words just hours earlier. When we spoke with Donia, she was lying critically injured in a hospital bed, clutching Mohammed’s tiny shoe.”
Russell painted a bleak picture of desperation for the 1 million Palestinian children in the territory, where more than 58,000 people have been killed during the 21 months of war.
Among the dead are 17,000 children — an average of 28 each day, the equivalent of “a whole classroom of children killed every day for nearly two years,” Russell said.
Youngsters also struggle to find clean water supplies, she added, and are therefore forced to drink contaminated water, increasing the risk of disease outbreaks; waterborne diseases now represent 44 per cent of all healthcare consultations.
“Thousands of children urgently need emergency medical support,” Russell said, and many of those suffering from traumatic injuries or severe preexisting medical conditions are at risk of death because medical care is unavailable.
She repeated calls from other UN officials for Israel to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza “at sufficient speed and scale to meet the urgent needs of children and families.”
A new aid-distribution system, introduced and run by Israel and the US, has sidelined traditional UN delivery mechanisms and restricted the flow of humanitarian supplies to a fraction of what was previously available.
Since the new system, run by the newly formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, began operating, hundreds of people, including children, have been shot dead as they gathered to collect aid.
Russell urged the Security Council to push for a return to UN aid-delivery systems so that essentials such as medicine, vaccines, water, food, and nutrition for babies can reach those in need.
Fletcher, the humanitarian chief, told the council that the shattered healthcare system in Gaza meant that in some hospitals, five babies share a single incubator and pregnant women give birth without any medical care.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher speaks to delegates about the situation in Gaza during a United Nations Security Council meeting at UN headquarters in New York City on July 16, 2025. (REUTERS)
He said the International Court of Justice has demanded that Israel “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance,” and added: “Intentionally using the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare would, of course, be a war crime.”
During the meeting, Israel faced strong criticism from permanent Security Council members France and the UK.
The British ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, described the shooting of Palestinians as they attempted to reach food-distribution sites as “abhorrent.”
She called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and said the UK “strongly opposes” the expansion of Israeli military operations.
French envoy Jerome Bonnafont said Israel must end its blockade of humanitarian aid, and denounced the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation system as “unacceptable and incompatible” with the requirements of international law.
He said an international conference due to take place on July 28 and 29 at the UN headquarters in New York, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, would offer a “pathway toward the future” and identify tangible ways in which a two-state solution might be reached to end the wider conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Dorothy Shea, the ambassador to the UN from Israel’s main international ally, the US, said the blame for the situation in Gaza lay with Hamas, which continues to hold hostages taken during the attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the conflict in Gaza.
New details in Air India crash probe shift focus to senior pilot, WSJ reports
Updated 50 min 58 sec ago
Reuters
A black-box recording of dialogue between the Air India flight’s two pilots indicates it was the captain who turned off switches that controlled fuel flowing to the plane’s two engines, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with US officials’ early assessment of evidence uncovered in the crash investigation.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
Healthy babies born in Britain after scientists used DNA from three people to avoid genetic disease
Updated 17 July 2025
AP
LONDON: Eight healthy babies were born in Britain with the help of an experimental technique that uses DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating rare diseases to their children, researchers reported Wednesday.
Most DNA is found in the nucleus of our cells, and it’s that genetic material — some inherited from mom, some from dad — that makes us who we are. But there’s also some DNA outside of the cell’s nucleus, in structures called mitochondria. Dangerous mutations there can cause a range of diseases in children that can lead to muscle weakness, seizures, developmental delays, major organ failure and death.
Testing during the in vitro fertilization process can usually identify whether these mutations are present. But in rare cases, it’s not clear.
Researchers have been developing a technique that tries to avoid the problem by using the healthy mitochondria from a donor egg. They reported in 2023 that the first babies had been born using this method, where scientists take genetic material from the mother’s egg or embryo, which is then transferred into a donor egg or embryo that has healthy mitochondria but the rest of its key DNA removed.
The latest research “marks an important milestone,” said Dr. Zev Williams, who directs the Columbia University Fertility Center and was not involved in the work. “Expanding the range of reproductive options … will empower more couples to pursue safe and healthy pregnancies.”
Using this method means the embryo has DNA from three people — from the mother’s egg, the father’s sperm and the donor’s mitochondria — and it required a 2016 UK law change to approve it. It is also allowed in Australia but not in many other countries, including the US
Experts at Britain’s Newcastle University and Monash University in Australia reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday that they performed the new technique in fertilized embryos from 22 patients, which resulted in eight babies that appear to be free of mitochondrial diseases. One woman is still pregnant.
One of the eight babies born had slightly higher than expected levels of abnormal mitochondria, said Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell and developmental genetics scientist at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the research. He said it was still not considered a high enough level to cause disease, but should be monitored as the baby develops.
Dr. Andy Greenfield, a reproductive health expert at the University of Oxford, called the work “a triumph of scientific innovation,” and said the method of exchanging mitochondria would only be used for a small number of women for whom other ways of avoiding passing on genetic diseases, like testing embryos at an early stage, was not effective.
Lovell-Badge said the amount of DNA from the donor is insignificant, noting that any resulting child would have no traits from the woman who donated the healthy mitochondria. The genetic material from the donated egg makes up less than 1 percent of the baby born after this technique.
“If you had a bone marrow transplant from a donor … you will have much more DNA from another person,” he said.
In the UK, every couple seeking a baby born through donated mitochondria must be approved by the country’s fertility regulator. As of this month, 35 patients have been authorized to undergo the technique.
Critics have previously raised concerns, warning that it’s impossible to know the impact these sorts of novel techniques might have on future generations.
“Currently, pronuclear transfer is not permitted for clinical use in the US, largely due to regulatory restrictions on techniques that result in heritable changes to the embryo,” Williams, of Columbia, said in an email. ”Whether that will change remains uncertain and will depend on evolving scientific, ethical, and policy discussions.”
For about a decade, Congress has included provisions in annual funding bills banning the Food and Drug Administration from accepting applications for clinical research involving techniques, “in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include a heritable genetic modification.”
But in countries where the technique is allowed, advocates say it could provide a promising alternative for some families.
Liz Curtis, whose daughter Lily died of a mitochondrial disease in 2006, now works with other families affected by them. She said it was devastating to be told there was no treatment for her eight-month-old baby and that death was inevitable.
She said the diagnosis “turned our world upside down, and yet nobody could tell us very much about it, what it was or how it was going to affect Lily.” Curtis later founded the Lily Foundation in her daughter’s name to raise awareness and support research into the disease, including the latest work done at Newcastle University.
“It’s super exciting for families that don’t have much hope in their lives,” Curtis said.
What We Are Buying Today: ‘Lovera’ Saudi chocolate brand
Updated 16 July 2025
Nada Hameed
Lovera is a Saudi chocolate brand with branches across the Kingdom and the GCC.
One day, while visiting a friend on short notice, I wanted to bring a gift that was both delicious and visually appealing. This is when I stumbled across Lovera on ToYou.
I chose the salted caramel bites, coated in fine Belgian chocolate and topped with crispy almonds.
The box contained three layers, about 35 pieces in total, and came in vibrant neon-orange packaging tied with a beautiful ribbon.
The chocolates were a hit; rich, smooth and perfectly balanced in flavor.
They offer a wide range of collections, including crunchy bites, truffles and seasonal assortments, but they may not suit all budgets as prices are on the higher end.
They also provide catering services for large events such as weddings, Eid gatherings and corporate parties. This includes options beyond chocolates, including tarts, eclairs, brownies and elegant finger canapes.
Lovera also has a cafe that serves a selection of cakes, hot and cold drinks, desserts, ice cream, mojitos and breakfast items. Their service can sometimes be slow and the items on the menu may not always be available.
