Premier League owners: In buying English football clubs Abu Dhabi and its brands have become part of UK image
Manchester City’s was a takeover that pushed us towards the very modern term of “sportswashing” but it has yielded more than just reputational improvements in a part of the world where Amnesty International says freedom of expression is unduly restricted.
War crimes: ICC to arrest Israel’s Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leader for starvation in Gaza and persecution of Palestinians
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
End of Middle Crisis remains remote as Israeli airstrike hits central Beirut near key government offices, embassies
The target of the airstrike remained unclear, and the Israeli army did not issue a prior warning. Ambulance sirens echoed through the streets as an Associated Press photographer on the scene saw significant casualties on the street.
Raped and impregnated by IS fighters, thousands of Yazidi women abandon children when rescued
Yazidi captives are often too afraid to seek help, four survivors said. Rafida Naif, a 26-year-old Yazidi woman, spent 20 months at al-Hol. She said she feared she would be killed if she identified herself to guards and wasn’t immediately removed from the IS family she was with. When the family would hear a vehicle approaching their tent, she said, they would hide her in a hole and cover it with cardboard or bedding.
How Iraq’s displaced Yazidis suffocate in Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism faith hotchpotch
Iraqi officials say more than 5,000 Yazidis, most of them men and older women, were killed in the initial assault in August 2014, their bodies dumped in mass graves. Some 6,400 others, mainly women and children, were captured. Sold into domestic and sexual slavery or trained as fighters and suicide bombers, they were passed from owner to owner across the group’s “caliphate,” which at its peak spanned roughly a third of Iraq and Syria.
Israeli intensify attacks in central and southern Gaza that killed 37 people, medics say
Israeli airstrikes also killed people in Gaza City and in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, where Israeli forces have operated since October 5, medics said. At Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, medics said Israeli fire from a drone wounded three medical workers in the facility.
Iranian official assured would-be Trump assassin that if the plot failed, it I’d be postponed to after election
Attorney General Merrick Garland explained the severity of the threat posed by Iran to US national security, highlighting ongoing efforts to target American officials on US soil. This plot follows previous charges against a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a similar murder-for-hire scheme targeting US officials.
Longstanding differences in Israeli government become public as PM Netanyahu sacks defence minister
For months there had been open disagreements between Netanyahu and Gallant reflecting a wider split between Israel’s right-wing governing coalition and the military, which has long favoured reaching a deal to end the fighting and bring home scores of hostages held by Hamas.
Middle East crisis: Israel’s strikes on Iran spark interest in air-launched ballistic missiles
The US tested a hypersonic ALBM, the Lockheed Martin AGM-183, but it received no funding for the 2025 fiscal year. Because it has a large arsenal of cruise missiles and other types of long-range strike weapons, Washington has otherwise shown little interest in ALBMs.
Iran’s supreme leader threatens Israel and US with ‘a crushing response’ over Israeli attack
The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The US military operates on bases throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence or THAAD, battery in Israel.
