Sadio Mane fired Senegal into the final of the Africa Cup of Nations with a 1-0 victory over seven-time winners Egypt.
The two-time African Footballer of the Year broke the deadlock in the 78th minute on Wednesday when he let fly from just outside the penalty area inside the bottom left corner after Lamine Camara’s initial effort was blocked.
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It sparked joy and relief among the Teranga Lions’ fans in Tangier, where the 2021 champions – after beating Egypt in the final – had taken the initiative but struggled to create clear chances against the Pharaohs’ stubborn defence.
Senegal captain Kalidou Koulibaly will miss the title match – against either host Morocco or Nigeria, who are playing in Rabat later on Wednesday – after picking up a yellow card that meant a suspension and then going off injured in the 23rd minute.
Koulibaly was booked in the 17th for a tactical foul on Omar Marmoush. The captain was also sent off in the group-stage win over Benin and consequently missed the win over Sudan. His tournament was effectively ended when he had to be replaced by Mamadou Sarr because of injury.
Nicolas Jackson had fired over just before Senegal displayed more attacking intent. Habib Diarra and Pape Gueye also had efforts saved.
Tensions boiled over when Mohamed Salah fouled his former Liverpool teammate Mane, but Senegal coach Pape Thiaw and Egypt counterpart Hossam Hassan managed to cool tempers.
Senegal’s Habib Diarra was booked for arguing, however, meaning he will miss the final, too.
Salah sent in a dangerous free kick that went through a host of players and out before the break. It was the closest the Pharaohs had gone to scoring.
As the semifinal passed the hour mark, the pattern of the opening half continued. Egypt were content to let Senegal have more possession, confident they would snuff out any threat to El Shenawy.
With 15 minutes of regular time remaining, Egypt had not had a goal attempt on target nor had they forced a corner.
Finally, with 12 minutes remaining, the Senegalese pressure was rewarded with two-time African player of the Year Mane scoring.
An ambitious long-range effort by Camara was deflected to Mane, and his low shot flew past El Shenawy and into the net.
The internationally recognised government of Yemen, known as the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), says its forces have recaptured two strategic southern provinces, reversing a month-long takeover by the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC).
In early December 2025, the STC, a UAE-backed secessionist force, seized the two oil-rich provinces of Hadramout and al-Mahra, which border Saudi Arabia, in a campaign that Riyadh described as a red line for its national security.
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Saudi Arabia, which backs the PLC, responded with a series of air strikes on STC positions, including an attack on the southern Mukalla port, targeting what it described as United Arab Emirates (UAE) weapons shipments to the STC.
The PLC and STC have long been allies in the fight against the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who captured Yemen’s capital Sanaa in 2014. Recent clashes have intensified instability in the war-ravaged nation and heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera unpacks the various groups fighting for control in Yemen, detailing who controls what on the ground and what this means for the humanitarian situation of the country’s 42 million people.
Who are the key players in Yemen?
There are three key players in Yemen: The Saudi-backed PLC, the Emirati-backed STC and the Iranian-backed Houthis.
(Al Jazeera)
Presidential Leadership Council (PLC)
The PLC is Yemen’s internationally recognised, Saudi-backed governing body, based in Aden.
The group has been led by Rashad al-Alimi since 2022, after former President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi formally transferred his powers to the new eight-member body, which was established to unify the various factions fighting the Houthis.
The council is composed of a mix of northern and southern political and military leaders. While it included the STC at its founding in 2022 to unite anti-Houthi forces, that alliance collapsed on January 7, 2026, when the PLC expelled the STC leadership following their attempt to seize the country’s eastern oil provinces.
The PLC’s mandate is to manage Yemen’s political, security and military affairs during a transitional period and to steer negotiations towards a permanent ceasefire.
Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council of Yemen, on September 14, 2022 [File: Omer Messinger/Getty Images]
Southern Transitional Council (STC)
The UAE-backed STC has undergone major changes over the past few weeks, leaving its future uncertain.
The group, which initially supported Yemen’s internationally recognised government against the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen, is seeking an independent state in southern Yemen, much like South Yemen before the unification of the country in 1990, under former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
On January 7, Yemen’s internationally recognised government announced that the STC’s leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, had committed treason and was dismissed from the Presidential Leadership Council.
Instead of attending a meeting in Riyadh, al-Zubaidi dramatically fled the country on January 8, reportedly heading to the UAE through Somaliland.
On January 9, a delegation of STC members in Riyadh announced the group’s disbandment. However, an STC official in Yemen rejected this announcement, telling Al Jazeera that the delegation members in Riyadh were “coerced” into making the statement.
Saudi Arabia is planning to host a conference of the main political factions from the south to shape the future of Yemen.
The president of Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, on September 22, 2023 [File: Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo]
Houthis
Ansar Allah, commonly referred to as the Houthis, is an armed group trained and backed by Iran, and holds a considerable area in the north and west of the country, including the capital, Sanaa.
The Houthis emerged in the 1990s but rose to international prominence in 2014, when the group rebelled against Yemen’s government, forcing it to step down.
The group then spent years, with Iran’s backing, fighting a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which has largely been frozen since a United Nations-brokered truce in April 2022.
The Houthis control several strategic locations along the Red Sea, including the key port of Hodeidah, giving them leverage over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is vital to global shipping.
In November 2023, the Houthis began targeting civilian and military vessels in the Red Sea suspected of having Israeli ties, a campaign aimed at pressuring Israel to halt its genocidal war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023. They also launched multiple missile and drone assaults against Israel, with several strikes reportedly hitting their intended targets.
Who controls what on the ground?
The Houthis control the northwestern regions of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, while the Yemeni government controls most of the rest of the country. The map below highlights who controls what in Yemen based on data from the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, an independent think tank focused on Yemen and its surrounding region.
The government claims to have control of Aden and other parts of southern Yemen, but STC forces remain in some areas. The government has also declared that all anti-Houthi military forces, including the National Resistance Forces, will now be integrated into the Yemeni military, but that process has not yet begun.
(Al Jazeera)
Yemen’s humanitarian situation
Yemen still suffers one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in the world, with acute malnutrition, food shortages, and infrastructure collapse affecting millions.
A decade of conflict, economic crisis and lack of social services and ability to work has pushed millions of children into acute malnutrition and scores of diseases, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Despite the fragile truce in 2022, which has reduced civilian deaths, access to the most vulnerable has been limited.
According to the United Nations, at least 17 million people, about half of Yemen’s population of 42 million, face acute food shortages.
In May 2025, the UN reported that 4.95 million people are facing Phase 3, crisis-level food insecurity, which includes 1.5 million people facing emergency-level food insecurity, Phase 4.
There are about 11 million children in need of humanitarian assistance, and nearly 20 million people in desperate need of help, along with nearly 4.8 million people displaced from their homes since 2015.
A protester who was shot in the face with a non-lethal round has been blinded in one eye and suffered skull fractures. Demonstrators had gathered outside an immigration service building in California when federal police opened fire at close range with paintball style weapons.
The Arctic town of Ilulissat is welcoming back the sun after two long months of polar night in western Greenland, but many say they worry what this new year will bring as US President Donald Trump threatens to take over the island.
X CEO Elon Musk has said he was not aware of any “naked underage images” generated by xAI’s Grok chatbot, as scrutiny of the AI tool intensifies worldwide.
“I [am] not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero,” Musk said in an X post on Wednesday.
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Musk’s comment on social media platform X comes as xAI and X face growing global scrutiny, including government investigations, calls by lawmakers and advocacy groups for Apple and Google to drop Grok from app stores, and bans or legal action in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.
Musk reiterated that Grok is programmed to refuse illegal requests and must comply with the laws of any given country or state.
“Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests,” Musk said.
Musk had said earlier on X that anyone using Grok to make illegal content would suffer the same consequences as if they uploaded illegal content.
Three Democratic United States senators last week called on Apple and Alphabet’s Google to remove X and its built-in AI chatbot Grok from their app stores, citing the spread of nonconsensual sexual images of women and minors on the platform.
A coalition of women’s groups, tech watchdogs, and progressive activists also called on the tech giants for a similar move.
Last week, X curtailed Grok’s ability to generate or edit images publicly for many users. However, industry experts and watchdogs have said that Grok was still able to produce sexually explicit images, and that restrictions, such as paywalling certain features, may not fully block access to deeper AI image tools.
In the United Kingdom, the law is set to change this week to criminalise the creation of such images, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Wednesday that X is working to comply with the new rules.
A Thai passenger train was crushed by falling construction cranes that slammed onto carriages, ripping roofs off and killing at least 29 people. Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng reports from the scene of the wreckage.
