Author: ALJAZEERA

Renaissance Berkane awarded a 3-0 win over USM Alger in the CAF African Confederation Cup after Algerian customs confiscated the visiting team’s kits.Moroccan club Renaissance Berkane have been awarded a 3-0 win over hosts USM Alger (USMA) in the first leg of their African Confederation Cup semifinal despite refusing to play when their kit was confiscated by Algerian customs. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) said on Thursday that Sunday’s second leg in Morocco would go ahead as scheduled. CAF added that USMA, who are the defending champions, would face further sanctions. Berkane went to the stadium in Algiers last…

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Palestinian group Hamas has said it remains committed to achieving an agreement with Israel to end the war on Gaza, but only if its conditions including a lasting ceasefire are met. Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the group’s political bureau, said that Hamas “is serious about releasing Israeli captives within the framework of an agreement” that also ensures the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. He told Al Jazeera Arabic in a televised interview on Thursday that Hamas will not accept a truce without a permanent ceasefire and a complete halt of Israel’s assault on the Gaza…

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Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief says former leader ‘among those being investigated’.Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is being investigated in connection with a corruption probe involving his sons, the country’s anticorruption agency has confirmed. Azam Baki, chief commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), said on Thursday that Mahathir was “among those being investigated”. “Let the investigations conclude first, until an appropriate time when we can state the findings of the case,” Azam told reporters in the northeastern state of Kelantan. A spokesperson for Mahathir, who led the Southeast Asian country from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to…

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Haitham Kaabna and his family were terrified when dozens of Israeli settlers stormed their village of Tajamaa al-Murajaat in the occupied West Bank on October 13. The settlers, he says, were protected by the army and carried M16 assault rifles as they attacked farmers. For two weeks, settlers destroyed olive trees, vandalised cars and stole cattle. The violence led to the forced displacement of some 200 Palestinian families from Tajamaa al-Murajaat, in the Jordan Valley. Kaabna stayed, until settlers entered his home on October 26 and he felt he had to flee with his family to safety. “Maybe 40 settlers…

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Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist and CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX, is once again at the centre of a heated debate about free speech and censorship. Since buying X, the platform formally known as Twitter, in 2022, Musk has sparred with governments and public figures around the world about what is acceptable to post online. The mercurial billionaire is now embroiled in separate legal battles with the governments of Brazil and Australia over their attempts to curtail content deemed to be harmful, such as misinformation, violent material and racist speech. In each case, Musk has accused government…

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Tech giants’ shares surge after stronger-than-expected earnings.Google and Microsoft have reported double-digit profit increases, buttressing the case for the tech giants’ heavy investment in artificial intelligence (AI). The quarterly results announced on Thursday by Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft came in ahead of expectations, sending their shares 11 percent and 4 percent higher, respectively, in after-market trades. Alphabet reported a profit of $23.7bn in the first three months of the year, a rise of 57 percent. The Silicon Valley giant also announced its first-ever dividend, at $0.20 per share. Google chief Sundar Pichai said AI text-to-image model Gemini had helped…

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Another day, another tragedy in Gaza. At the time of writing, rescuers were pulling bodies out of the rubble after an Israeli air strike on a residential building in southern Gaza’s Rafah city. Meanwhile, a few miles away in Khan Younis, the grisly effort of digging up bodies buried in mass graves on the grounds of the Nasser Hospital continues. The Palestinian death toll is now more than 34,000 and 1.1 million people in Gaza are experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity. The world is also on edge, as many fear a wider regional war after Iran sent a retaliatory…

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