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Straits Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Russia warns US not to help Israel militarily against Iran
FILE PHOTO: Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov attends the BRICS Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 28, 2025. Mauro Pimentel/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo Russia warns US not to help Israel militarily against Iran MOSCOW - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned on June 18 that direct US military assistance to Israel could radically destabilise the situation in the Middle East, where an air war between Iran and Israel has raged for six days. In separate comments, the head of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service Sergei Naryshkin was quoted as saying that the situation between Iran and Israel was now critical. He warned the US against direct military assistance to Israel or even considering such 'speculative options', according to Russia's Interfax news agency. 'This would be a step that would radically destabilise the entire situation,' it cited him as saying. Earlier, a source familiar with US internal discussions said President Donald Trump and his team were considering a number of options, including joining Israel in strikes against Iranian nuclear sites. On June 17, Mr Trump openly mused on social media about killing Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but said 'We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.' Israel launched air strikes on June 13 against Iran's nuclear sites, scientists and top military leaders in a surprise attack that Russia condemned as unprovoked and illegal. Iran has responded with missile and drone attacks on Israeli cities. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who in January signed a strategic partnership treaty with Iran, has called for a cessation of hostilities between the two sides. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Russia urges Israeli restraint, says Iran has right to defend itself
FILE PHOTO: Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov attends the BRICS Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 28, 2025. Mauro Pimentel/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo Russia urges Israeli restraint, says Iran has right to defend itself MOSCOW - Russia is appealing to Israel to show restraint in the crisis with Iran, and believes Tehran is exercising its right to self-defence, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying on Monday. Israel launched a wave of strikes last Friday against Iran's nuclear sites and military leadership, and Iran has responded by firing missiles at Israeli cities. "The potential dangerous consequences of strikes on nuclear infrastructure facilities are obvious to everyone. This is a cause for concern for the entire international community, but, in addition to this, we are, of course, watching how world markets react to what is happening," state news agency TASS quoted Ryabkov as telling reporters. It was up to Israel, first and foremost, to show "restraint and common sense", he said. Russia seeks to play an influential role in the Middle East, though it lost a major ally there last year with the toppling of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, to whom it had provided military support for almost a decade in the country's civil war. Russia signed a strategic partnership treaty with Iran in January. It also has longstanding ties with Israel, though these have been strained by the Ukraine and Gaza wars. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan agreed in a phone conversation on Monday that the Israel-Iran confrontation was fraught with risks for the entire region, and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. The Kremlin said Russia was still ready to mediate between Iran and Israel, and its offer remained on the table to remove highly enriched uranium from Iran and convert it into civilian reactor fuel as a possible way to defuse the crisis over Tehran's nuclear programme. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Club World Cup 2025: 5 non-European teams that could upset giants
There are two billion-dollar questions looming over the Club World Cup, and one — will the European teams care? — seems to have an affirmative answer. They've been offered gobs of prize money, so they'll bring their A-list stars, and the tournament's other existential question will come into focus: Can the non-European teams hang with them? It's a billion-dollar question because it cuts to the core of this billion-dollar tournament. If the champions of Asia, Africa and the Americas can compete with Real Madrid and Chelsea, then the Club World Cup is unique; it's a competition worth building; it could be compelling for decades to come. Advertisement But if they can't, it's just a watered-down wannabe Champions League. If the latter stages are an all-Euro affair, it serves no distinct soccer purpose. The Club World Cup, therefore, depends on non-European contenders. Here are five that could rise to the occasion and surprise their wealthier* European counterparts. Flamengo, top of the Brasileirāo and surging in the Libertadores, arrive at the Club World Cup as Brazil's best hope. (Photo by Mauro Pimentel/AFP) (MAURO PIMENTEL via Getty Images) 1. Flamengo (Brazil) The richest club and current leader of soccer's strongest non-European league, the Brasileiro, is an obvious choice to lead this list. After a shaky start to the 2025 Copa Libertadores, the Rubro-Negro (Scarlet and Black) are flying. They've scored 12 goals in their last four games, which included a 2-0 win at Palmeiras. They have perhaps the deepest squad in South America, chock-full of experienced defenders, accomplished midfielders and dynamic attackers. Giorgian de Arrascaeta, the Uruguayan playmaker who has lit up Brazil's Série A for over a decade, is playing some of the best soccer of his career, with 13 goal contributions in just nine league appearances. Advertisement All of which is to say that Flamengo can absolutely trouble Chelsea in Group D, and others in the knockout stages. 2. Palmeiras (Brazil) In a tournament of change, amid a field of teams rocked by recent instability, Palmeiras stands out for its consistency. Under the guidance of Portuguese coach Abel Ferreira since 2020, O Verdão (The Big Green) have won two Copa Libertadores titles and back-to-back Brasileiros; they've accumulated the league's best Expected Goal differential (xGD) in each of the last three seasons. As with all South American clubs that produce excellent players, they've had to sell — Endrick to Real Madrid, Vitor Reis to Manchester City, Danilo to Nottingham Forest and so on. But they've restocked their cupboard with talent from within Brazil, across the Americas and even from Europe. Although they haven't quite hit their stride yet in 2025, all the pieces are in place to win Group A and make a Club World Cup run. Aleksandar Mitrović leads a star-studded Al Hilal squad into the Club World Cup amid sky-high spending, title pressure and a last-minute managerial shakeup. (REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed) (REUTERS / Reuters) 3. Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia) *Remember that asterisk above, next to 'wealthier'? Yeah, that doesn't apply in the case of Al Hilal, which is backed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. The club has spent over $500 million the past two years, and built a lineup that could feature goalkeeper Yassine Bounou (Morocco, formerly Sevilla); defenders Kalidou Koulibaly (Senegal, formerly Napoli and Chelsea), João Cancelo (Portugal, formerly Manchester City) and Renan Lodi (Brazil, formerly Atlético Madrid); midfielders Rúben Neves (Portugal, formerly Wolves) and Sergej Milinković-Savić (Serbia, formerly Lazio); and forwards Malcom (Brazil, formerly Bordeaux, Barcelona and Zenit) and Aleksandar Mitrović (Serbia, formerly Fulham). Advertisement How have they all jelled together as a team? Reasonably well, especially in their unbeaten 2023-24 season. But they stumbled occasionally in 2024-25, relinquished the Saudi title to Al Ittihad, and then sacked their manager, Jorge Jesus. To replace him, the PIF reportedly threw over $29 million per year at Inter Milan's Simone Inzaghi, who, a few days after a Champions League final stomping, and less than two weeks before the Club World Cup, will join up with the squad. Can he make his mark, or at least stabilize the club, in that brutally short window? That's the boom-or-bust question clouding Al Hilal's hopes. 4. Al Ahly (Egypt) Africa's most dominant modern club offers quite a contrast to Asia's (Al Hilal; see above). It does not have names that European soccer aficionados will recognize, nor boatloads of cash. But it does have an impressive track record that, crucially, extends beyond the CAF Champions League. Advertisement By virtue of its four continental titles in five years, Al Ahly repeatedly qualified for the former Club World Cup — the eight-team annual version now called the FIFA Intercontinental Cup — and here are its results: 2020: Beat Al-Duhail 1-0, lost to Bayern Munich 2-0, beat Palmeiras on penalties for third place 2021: Beat Monterrey 1-0, lost to Palmeiras 2-0, beat Al Hilal 4-0 for third place 2022: Beat Auckland City 3-0, beat Seattle Sounders 1-0, lost to Real Madrid 4-1 2023: Beat Al Ittihad 3-1, lost to Fluminense 2-0, beat Urawa Reds 4-2 for third place 2024: Beat Al Ain 3-0, lost to Pachuca on penalties Advertisement What all of that suggests is that, while Al Ahly probably can't come close to winning this new version of the Club World Cup, it can frustrate teams — including all three of its Group A opponents, Palmerias, Porto and Inter Miami. It kept clean sheets in eight of those 14 games above. It has an extensive recent history of defensive sturdiness. There is one notable caveat: Al Ahly appointed a new head coach, Jose Riveiro, less than two weeks ago. But its 2020-24 run spanned multiple coaches. Its strength isn't rooted in one man's leadership; it is, at this point, institutional. 5. Inter Miami (United States) Inter Miami makes this list because it has Lionel Messi. Messi can still do special things in group or knockout games, as he showed at his last FIFA tournament. Advertisement But there are all sorts of reasons that Inter Miami isn't equipped to excel at this tournament. Its roster, like most in MLS, is top-heavy. Its defensive, midfield and forward lines are often detached. Its back line is leaky. So, it ranks right alongside Al Hilal in the 'high ceiling, low floor' category.
The Guardian
08-04-2025
- The Guardian
Pelicans, the Red Arrows and a rice harvest: photos of the day
A sand dredger at work off Surfers Paradise Beach Photograph: Jason O'Brien/AAP A man from the Tupinamba indigenous group takes part in a ceremony on the first day of a gathering of 8,000 indigenous people from across South America and Oceania Photograph: Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images Kayakers paddle through floodwater in Frankfort Photograph: Jon Cherry/AP An aerial view of the Xiasha container terminal Photograph: AP An aerial view of evaporation ponds at the Guanxi salt fields Photograph: Wang Jianmin/VCG/Getty Images An worker checks a loom in a carpet factory Photograph: Channi Anand/AP A traffic officer in an air-conditioned helmet Photograph: R Satish Babu/AFP/Getty Images The Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft blasts off, carrying the Nasa astronaut Jonny Kim and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy to the International Space Station Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters A child plays in a displacement camp Photograph: Mahmoud ssa/Anadolu/Getty Images A woman harvests rice in a paddy field Photograph: Cem Genco/Anadolu/Getty Images Great white pelicans rest on the shores of Lake Cavuscu as they migrate from north from Africa Photograph: Seyit Konyali/Anadolu/Getty Images Soldiers with a mobile air defence take up their position during a Russian drone attack Photograph: Sofiia Gatilova/Reuters The Red Arrows and their Italian counterparts, the Frecce Tricolori , performing a flypast during state visit of King Charles and Queen Camilla Photograph: AS1 Iwan Lewis RAF/PA
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Whale song shows 'hallmarks' of human language
There's a reason "antidisestablishmentarianism" is more a piece of trivia than vital to the English language. Because a word that long is not what human language favours. According to experts, we tend toward efficiency and brevity — with statistical laws that persist across cultures. Perhaps now, even across species. Two new studies this week focused on whale song and found striking, structural parallels to human language, especially in humpback whales. To be clear, we're no closer to translating the meaning of those soulful, haunting, put it-on-a-best-selling-record songs from these ocean giants. But experts say it highlights the role of evolutionary pressures in complex communication. A humpback whale jumps out of the water off the coast of Brazil in June 2024. New research suggests that whale communication shares structural parallels with human language. (Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images) From the mouths of babes The first study, published in Science, focused on humpback whale song because it is culturally transmitted — in other words, taught and changed over time just like human language. The interdisciplinary collaboration took eight years as researchers painstakingly gathered recordings from a pod of humpbacks and broke them down into smaller components. The key to their analysis was a method based on how human babies learn. "One of the first challenges that infants face in breaking into language is discovering what the relevant units are," explains author Inbal Arnon, professor of psychology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Though they don't know they're doing it, babies use low-level statistical reasoning to figure out which relevant sounds are more likely to follow others. A volunteer at Endeavor Elementary's onsite daycare plays with an infant in Nampa, Idaho. How babies learn to decode adult speech was integral to new research on the structure of humpback whale song. (Darren Svan/Idaho Education News/The Associated Press) "Let's think about the [word] 'baby.' How likely are you to hear bee if you just heard bay?" Arnon said, suggesting that infants figure out these likelihoods innately. This logic led them to find a pattern in humpback whale song known as Zipfian distribution — which, in human language, dictates that the most frequent word is twice as used as the next frequent word. "It's this kind of characteristic fingerprint of human language," said Simon Kirby, co-author and professor of language evolution at the University of Edinburgh. "So it's a really surprising thing to find it in this completely unrelated species of humpback whales producing songs deep in the ocean." The researchers theorize that it flips the idea that we've evolved to be good at language — instead, they suggest it implies both that language evolves in order to be passed down better, and that this applies to species other than humans. "If a language has to be learned in order to get from one generation to the next," Kirby suggested, "then the languages that are learnable are the only ones that will survive." WATCH | What did you say? Whales can't hear each other over all our noise: Succinct Cetaceans The other study, published in Science Advances, found that whale song has parallels to another hallmark of human language: efficiency. "In general, in language, we try to convey as much information as we can," said Mason Youngblood, an animal behaviour and cultural evolution researcher at Stony Brook University in New York. He says the cost is high for humpbacks to sing, considering they bellow their songs across vast distances under water while holding their breath and cycling it through their bodies. "It's important to do so in the cheapest way possible," Youngblood said. "And the easiest way to do that is by reducing vocalization time." The research found some whales — including humpbacks, bowhead, blue and fin whales — adhere to two linguistic laws: Menzerath's Law and Zipf's Law of Abbreviation. Put simply, both laws mean you spend less time blabbing. While not quite universal, Youngblood says it points to the constraints that shape the evolution of communication in different species. Moving, but not meaning Shane Gero, a scientist in residence at Ottawa's Carleton University and the lead biologist for Project CETI, finds the cultural transmission aspect interesting. "You learn these things from your mother and your grandmother and your grandmother's mother," said Gero, who was not involved with the study. "And that yields the need for speakers and listeners to … be concise, for lack of a better word." But he and others warn that breaking down whale song in this way is not like breaking down a sentence into words — in other words, just because we can find patterns in their songs doesn't mean we know what whales are saying. "Detecting a pattern like this doesn't make any direct connection to semantics," Gero explained from Ottawa. "In fact, there's plenty of science that shows you can find this in improvisational jazz." A humpback whale waves its fin out of the water off the coast of Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. Scientists say that just because we can detect patterns in whale song, it doesn't mean we know what they're saying. (Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images) That comparison to musical structure might be the best way to appreciate the parallels, suggests Tecumseh Fitch, a cognitive biologist at the University of Vienna who studies bioacoustics. "We really don't have any reason to think that these humpback whale vocalizations are telling a story," Fitch told CBC News from Sanibel, Fla. "I think the term song is perfectly appropriate. They're like melodies. It has some meaning, but it's not 'word meanings' the way [human] language does."
