KHARTOUM: The UN envoy for Sudan on Friday welcomed a deal between the country’s warring generals promising safe passage to civilians fleeing the conflict and protection for humanitarian operations in the East African nation.
The envoy, Volker Perthes, said the agreement was an important first step toward a cease-fire to the fighting which is about to enter its fourth week.
The Sudanese military and the country’s paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, signed a pact late Thursday vowing to alleviate humanitarian suffering across the country, although a truce remains elusive.
Both sides also agreed to refrain from attacks likely to harm civilians. The violence has already killed over 600 people, including civilians, according to the UN healthy agency.
“The most important element is that both sides commit to continue talks,” Perthes said during an online UN news conference from his office in Port Sudan. International efforts to turn the deal into a cease-fire have already started, he added.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the agreement, which outlines a series of shared pledges and promises to “facilitate humanitarian action in order to meet the needs of civilians.”
The deal signing-ceremony, brokered by the United Sates and Saudi Arabia, was aired by Saudi state media in the early hours of Friday morning. Neither the military nor the RSF immediately issued statements acknowledging Thursday’s pact.
It does not provide any detail on how the agreed-on humanitarian promises would be upheld by troops on the ground. Previously, both sides agreed to several short cease-fires, since the fighting broke out on April 15, but all have been violated.
In a post on Twitter, Amjad Farid, a Sudan analyst and former aid to the country’s prime minister, said the deal is unlikely to bring any real change on the ground. Other commentators expressed similar skepticism.
It is “composed of texts that are already in the international humanitarian law and treaties related to the treatment of civilians in times of war,” Farid wrote.
Despite the signing, residents in Khartoum said fighting continued throughout Friday morning.
“I woke up to an airstrike (landing) nearby,” said Waleed Adam, a resident living in the east of the capital.
Over the past weeks, the fighting has turned the capital Khartoum into an urban battlefield, and triggered deadly ethnic clashes in the western Darfur region. Around 200,000 people have fled the country, said UNHCR spokeswoman Olga Sarrado, who was also present at Friday’s news conference.
The US State Department late Thursday said talks in Jeddah will now focus on arranging “an effective cease-fire of up to approximately 10 days.”
The UN and several rights groups have accused both sides — the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — of numerous human rights violations. The army has been accused of indiscriminately bombing civilian areas, while the RSF has been condemned for widespread looting, abusing residents, and turning civilian homes into operational bases. Both continue to level blame at each other for the violations.
Perthes, who has received death threats and calls to resign, said he is committed to staying in Port Sudan and overseeing the humanitarian effort taking place in the coastal city. He described those who threatened him as marginal “extremists” and said that there is a wide appreciation of UN efforts in Sudan.
UN envoy: Humanitarian deal between warring sides first step toward ceasefire in Sudan
https://arab.news/nndgt
UN envoy: Humanitarian deal between warring sides first step toward ceasefire in Sudan
- Rival parties have shown no sign they are ready to offer concessions to end fighting that erupted on April 15
- Mediators pushed the sides to sign the declaration of principles on civilian protections to reduce tensions
Trump goes from court to campaign at a bodega in his heavily Democratic hometown
- The visit would be Trump’s first campaign appearance since his criminal hush money trial began, making the presumptive GOP nominee the first former president in US history to stand criminal trial
NEW YORK: Donald Trump plans to visit New York’s Harlem neighborhood Tuesday after spending his second day in a lower Manhattan courtroom as a criminal defendant.
Trump was expected to stop by Sanaa Convenient Store, a tiny bodega that sells chips, sodas and other snacks. Trump aides said the former president and current Republican nominee chose the store because it has been the site of a violent attack on an employee. He will also highlight consumer inflation under President Joe Biden, aides said.
The visit would be Trump’s first campaign appearance since his criminal hush money trial began, making the presumptive GOP nominee the first former president in US history to stand criminal trial.
Trump will be confined to the courtroom on most days, dramatically limiting his movements and his ability to campaign, fundraise and make calls. Aides have been planning rallies and other political events on weekends and Wednesdays, the one weekday when court is not supposed to be in session. Plans also include local appearances Trump can make after court recesses each day.
Trump’s stop in Harlem demonstrates the former president’s determination to amplify familiar campaign arguments even within the strictures of being a criminal defendant.
In July 2022, Jose Alba, a clerk at the store in Hamilton Heights, a heavily Hispanic section of Harlem, was attacked by 35-year-old Austin Simon. The resulting altercation, captured on surveillance video, ended with Alba fatally stabbing Simon. Alba was arrested and charged with murder but the Manhattan district attorney dropped the charges within weeks, saying they could not prove Alba had not acted in self-defense.
On another evening in August 2022, according to the New York Post, owner Osamah Aldhabyani was in the store when a customer entered and an altercation between the two ensued. The customer was arrested, the newspaper reported.
Before his arrival, Trump’s campaign distributed materials to journalists criticizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for his handling of the stabbing case, including the weeks Alba spent jailed at Rikers Island without bail. Bragg oversees the office now prosecuting Trump.
The former president’s local appearance also affirms his intentions to campaign in his home state, even though New York remains overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2020, Biden garnered more than 60 percent of the vote in the state and ran up even wider margins in New York City. Trump insists he can win New York in November anyway, and he has mused about holding rallies in the South Bronx and Queens, where the former president was born and grew up, and even Madison Square Garden.
“I may rent Madison Square Garden,” he said in an interview with Breitbart News. “That’s the belly of the beast, right?”
That would be a prohibitively expensive proposition, particularly as his campaign has worked to save cash as it confronts a fundraising gap with Biden.
“You know, the president is very keen on New York,” Chris LaCivita, Trump senior campaign adviser, told The Associated Press last month as he talked up the campaign’s efforts to put more states in play. Still, LaCivita laughed when asked whether he agrees. “I don’t get out in front of the boss. I do what the boss says. The boss drives,” he said.
Trump has argued that the ongoing influx of migrants to the city, where he grew his real estate empire and became a tabloid fixture, has made New Yorkers more willing to vote for him since his 2020 loss to Biden. The city has struggled to house the new arrivals, putting many up in city hotels.
“I think we have a chance. New York has changed a lot in the last two years,” he told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. “The people of New York are angry. People that would have never voted for me because I’m a Republican — I mean they’re Democrats ... I think they’re going to vote for me. So I think we’re going to give New York a heavy shot.”
Trump cited the 2022 New York governor’s race, when Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul prevailed over Republican former Rep. Lee Zeldin — but by a much tighter margin than usual for her party’s statewide nominees.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a top Trump ally, said Monday that Trump will be campaigning all over the state while he’s forced to be on trial in New York.
“He’s going to make the best out of this,” she said, adding that “Democrats in New York and the judge and everyone, they’re really going to regret it.”
At the least, Trump, long a famous figure for New Yorkers, showed Tuesday that he can still turn heads in the city.
“Papito Trump is coming. Yeah!” said one passerby ahead of the former president’s arrival.
Lesandra Carrion, 47, who lives in the neighborhood, came out to see the former president when she heard he might be visiting.
She said she doesn’t agree with everything Trump says or does but declared that “he speaks the truth.” Carrion cited the rising migrant population and strained city resources. “I think that he will make a difference,” she said of Trump.
As for his troubles at the courthouse at the south end of Manhattan, Carrion was dismissive. “He’s going to beat that,” she said. “We all make mistakes at the end of the day. But he’s the truth and light. I feel that God is in him.”
Uncertainty surrounds US Republicans’ plan for separate Ukraine, Israel aid bills
- The proposal fueled uncertainty about the long-awaited aid package, particularly for Ukraine, given fierce opposition toward from some far-right Republicans, who have threatened to oust Johnson if he allows a House vote on assistance for Kyiv
WASHINGTON: US Democrats said on Tuesday they would wait to decide how to respond to a proposal from the Republican-led House of Representatives to consider national security assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan separately, rather than as one bill.
More than two months after the Senate approved a $95 billion package of security assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and other US partners in the Indo-Pacific, House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that the House would consider the aid this week, but would do so as separate pieces of legislation.
The proposal fueled uncertainty about the long-awaited aid package, particularly for Ukraine, given fierce opposition toward from some far-right Republicans, who have threatened to oust Johnson if he allows a House vote on assistance for Kyiv.
Democrats in the House and Senate — and the White House — said they would look at Johnson’s proposals, even as they stressed that the best and quickest strategy would be for the House to pass the legislation approved by the Senate in February.
Johnson’s plan was endorsed on Tuesday by the leaders of the House Appropriations, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees, and the chairperson of the defense appropriations subcommittee.
“We don’t have time to spare when it comes to our national security. We need to pass this aid package this week,” Representatives Tom Cole, Mike Rogers, Michael McCaul, Mike Turner and Ken Calvert said in a joint statement.
Turner and Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, said separately in a statement after a classified briefing that Ukraine’s situation on the ground was critical and aid must be passed now.
Consideration of separate bills could add weeks to the timeline for the aid to become law, as it must pass the House and then go back for a vote in the Senate, before it can be sent to the White House for Democratic President Joe Biden’s signature.
“I am reserving judgment on what will come out of the House until we see more about the substance of the proposal and the process by which the proposal will proceed,” Senator Chuck Schumer said as the Senate opened.
“Hopefully, we will get details of the speaker’s proposal later today. Again, time is of the essence,” Schumer said.
Representative Pete Aguilar, a member of the House Democratic leadership, told a press conference he would wait for the substance of the bill before drawing any conclusions.
“We don’t want to sink any plan that delivers aid to our allies,” he said.
TEXT, TIMELINE STILL TO COME
The text of the bills was not released — it was expected as soon as late Tuesday — but there would be separate measures providing assistance to Ukraine as it fights a Russian invasion, Israel after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and a weekend air assault by Iran, and partners in the Indo-Pacific as they face an increasingly aggressive China.
It also was not clear which country’s assistance the House would consider first. Republicans have tried repeatedly to push through aid for Israel without anything for Ukraine, an approach Democrats have rejected.
The White House has also opposed standalone aid for Israel.
When asked whether the White House would support the four separate bills, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said the administration was awaiting more information.
“It does appear at first blush that the speaker’s proposal will, in fact, help us get aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel and needed resources to the Indo-Pacific for a wide range of contingencies there. We just want to get more detail,” he told reporters.
Johnson told Fox News on Tuesday that the fourth bill would include additional sanctions on Russia and Iran as well as the “REPO Act,” a provision regarding the seizure of Russian assets to help Ukraine.
Ukraine backers have been pushing Johnson to allow a vote on supplemental funding since last year. But Johnson had given a variety of reasons to delay, including the need to focus taxpayer dollars on domestic issues.
Many hard-right Republicans, especially those closely allied with former President Donald Trump, who is challenging Biden in the November presidential election, fiercely oppose sending billions more dollars to Ukraine.
At least two far-right Republicans have threatened to seek Johnson’s removal as speaker if he allows a vote on assistance for Ukraine. Johnson said he would not resign.
It was not clear whether he would be removed in case of a hard-right rebellion, as some Democrats have said they would vote to save Johnson’s job to prevent chaos in the House. Last year, conservatives ousted then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and it took three weeks before Johnson was elected.
Mbappe’s PSG punish 10-man Barca to reach Champions League semis
- The visitors started with determination and penned Barcelona back in their own territory, but it was the hosts who took the lead
BARCELONA: Kylian Mbappe struck twice as Paris Saint-Germain battled back to beat 10-man Barcelona 4-1 and book a place in the Champions League semifinals with a 6-4 aggregate triumph on Tuesday.
Raphinha fired Barcelona ahead early on but Ronald Araujo’s 29th-minute red card turned the tide in PSG’s favor, despite the Spanish champions leading by two goals following a 3-2 quarter-final first-leg win.
Ousmane Dembele and Vitinha levelled the tie for PSG and the deadly Mbappe hit a brace to put them into the final four for the first time since 2021.
The French champions have never won the trophy despite huge investment but demonstrated they have the attacking weapons in their squad to do so.
Five-time winners Barcelona were dreaming of a first semifinal return since 2019 but Araujo’s red card for pulling down the relentless Bradley Barcola undermined their grip on the tie.
PSG coach Luis Enrique, who led Barca to the 2015 Champions League, said he believed his team would turn things around despite never having managed to after a first-leg defeat, and so it proved.
The visitors started with determination and penned Barcelona back in their own territory, but it was the hosts who took the lead.
Explosive 16-year-old starlet Lamine Yamal ripped past Nuno Mendes and crossed to the near post where Raphinha turned home despite pressure from Achraf Hakimi.
It was the Brazilian winger’s third goal of the tie after his brace in Paris.
Robert Lewandowski fired another chance over the top for Barcelona before Barcola tilted the tie in PSG’s favor. The winger was a nightmare for his French compatriot Jules Kounde to handle.
Barcola teed up Mbappe but Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen denied him well, before Araujo was sent off for bringing him down.
The Uruguayan center-back pulled Barcola back as he burst into the area, leaving Barca with 10 men.
Dembele whizzed the resulting free-kick narrowly over, but soon found the net, as he did in the first leg.
The former Barcelona winger struck after 40 minutes from another Barcola cross, which raked across the area to the back post where Dembele was arriving to fire into the roof of the net.
Barcelona sacrificed Yamal for defender Inigo Martinez after Araujo’s red card and it left them with few outlets in attack.
With PSG controlling the game Barcelona soon paid the price for their inability to keep possession.
Vitinha was given far too much space on the edge of the box and he drilled into the bottom corner to put PSG ahead on the night.
Ilkay Gundogan hit the post at the other end for Barcelona before their coach Xavi was sent off for a show of dissent on the touchline.
The Catalans were losing their heads and Joao Cancelo clumsily fouled Dembele to hand PSG a penalty.
Mbappe, who had been kept quiet in the first leg, hammered it into the top corner for his 40th goal across all competitions.
The striker’s future may lie in Spain, with Real Madrid aiming to sign him in the summer at the end of his contract, and he made no friends in Barcelona by hopping the advertising hoardings and running toward fans to celebrate.
Another member of Barcelona’s backroom staff was dismissed after Gundogan had a penalty appeal waved away and it became clear the hosts had no response.
Mbappe wrapped up the win in the 89th minute after a fine Ter Stegen double save, leaving Barcelona the victims of another bitterly disappointing night in Europe.
Dortmund sink Atletico to reach Champions League semifinals
- Former winners Dortmund, fifth in the German top flight and struggling to qualify for next season’s Champions League, will next face PSG for a place in the final at Wembley on June 1
DORTMUND, Germany: Borussia Dortmund fought back to beat Atletico Madrid 4-2 in their quarter-final second leg on Tuesday, securing a 5-4 aggregate victory and a first Champions League semifinal since 2013.
Trailing 2-1 from the first leg, goals from Julian Brandt and Ian Maatsen had Dortmund 2-0 up at half-time.
Visiting coach Diego Simeone made three changes at half-time including bringing on Angel Correa and his energy told immediately, Mats Hummels conceding a poor own goal before the Argentine netted to put Atletico back ahead in the tie.
But those goals brought a sluggish Dortmund back to life, with Niclas Fuellkrug and Marcel Sabitzer each scoring in a three-minute period to send the Bundesliga club through.
Former winners Dortmund, fifth in the German top flight and struggling to qualify for next season’s Champions League, will next face Paris Saint-Germain for a place in the final at Wembley on June 1.
The home side should have been level in the tie after three minutes but Sabitzer took an extra touch with the goal beckoning, allowing Atletico to cover.
Just moments later, Atletico had a major chance of their own, as Alvaro Morata raced through one-on-one with the goalkeeper but chipped the ball well wide of the post.
Buoyed by an 80,000-strong home crowd trying to one-up last week’s atmosphere in the Spanish capital, Dortmund pushed and prodded, with Karim Adeyemi blasting straight at Jan Oblak.
Dortmund broke through after 34 minutes, Brandt collecting a Hummels chip and shooting on the turn, the ball bouncing through Oblak’s hands.
The home side were ahead in the tie just five minutes later, Maatsen threading in from an acute angle after he was given space to run in the Atletico box.
With Simeone sensing his chances of qualifying for the semis for a fourth time as Atletico boss slipping away, he shuffled his deck at half-time, making three changes including hooking the ineffective Morata for Correa.
Dortmund’s wobbles suddenly returned, letting the visitors back into the tie.
Hummels turned Mario Hermoso’s header into his own net from an Atletico corner under little pressure and with goalkeeper Gregor Kobel waiting to save.
Atletico smelt blood and could have levelled when Correa dragged the ball just wide.
The World Cup winner made up for his miss on 64 minutes when he cut through a penalty area crowded with yellow shirts and smacked the ball in, sending Atletico in front on aggregate.
The goal jolted Dortmund back into action and Edin Terzic’s men scored twice in three minutes to retake the overall lead.
Fuellkrug headed in a Sabitzer cross and the Austrian midfielder then got a goal of his own, shooting through the Atletico defense and into the bottom corner from the edge of the box, grabbing Dortmund a famous victory.
Riyadh Season becomes official partner of World Snooker Championship
RIYADH: Riyadh Season will become the official partner of the World Snooker Championship, Saudi entertainment chief Turki Alalshikh announced on Tuesday.
Riyadh Season and the World Snooker Tour signed an agreement to expand and develop the game in the Middle East and bring in more fans.
Additionally, Ronnie O’Sullivan, who has won a record 23 Triple Crown titles, will serve in an ambassadorial role in a three-year deal, announced on Tuesday. As part of this agreement guarantees that O’Sullivan will play in all WST events in Saudi Arabia and will also make special trips to the Kingdom to coach and foster aspiring talent.
Saudi Arabia hosted its first-ever WST event last month — Riyadh Season World Masters in Snooker — which was won by O’Sullivan.
That tournament will return as part of the next Riyadh Season this winter and will feature the world’s top ten players, and two others as wild cards.
The event will again feature the innovative golden ball, known as the Riyadh Season ball, which will give players a chance to score a world record break of 167 if they pot it at the end of a maximum 147.
Alalshikh, the head of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, confirmed that the prize for the ‘super maximum’ will be doubled to $1 million should anyone succeed in achieving the milestone.
“Riyadh Season is delighted to be a partner of the World Snooker Championship, which will start next Saturday and continues until May 6th at Crucible in Sheffield,” said Alalshikh.
WST Chairman Steve Dawson said: “We are honoured to work with HE Turki Alalshikh on his visionary plans for progress. We share his ambition of bringing snooker to many more fans across the Middle East, and to foster new talent and develop grassroots structures.
