Category World News

Jacobo Ramon scored deep into stoppage time as Real Madrid rallied to beat Mallorca 2-1 and delay Barcelona’s title celebration.

Madrid needed the victory on Wednesday to keep Barcelona from clinching its 28th league title without winning another match. The Catalan club remains four points ahead and can still lift the trophy with a win at city rival Espanyol on Thursday.

Mallorca took the lead with a goal by Martin Valjent in the 11th minute and stayed ahead until Kylian Mbappe beat a couple of defenders to equalise in the 68th.

Ramon netted the go-ahead goal from inside the area five minutes into injury time, preventing Barcelona from winning the title, for now.

Mbappe is still in the race to be the league’s leading scorer, arriving for Wednesday’s match with 27 goals, two more than Barcelona’s Robert Lewandowski. Mbappe had a hat-trick in the loss to Barcelona on Sunday.

Barcelona virtually secured the title by coming from behind to beat Madrid 4-3 in Barcelona in the last “Clasico” of the season on Sunday. Madrid lost all four matches against Barcelona this season, being outscored 16-7. It was the first time Barcelona won every “Clasico” in a season that had at least three matches between the rivals.

Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti received a mostly indifferent reaction from the fans at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium on Wednesday after taking over the Brazil job.

The Italian was announced as Brazil’s new coach on Monday, and some Madrid fans criticised the coach for negotiating with the five-time champions with the La Liga season still under way.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country would not “bow to any bully” in response to United States President Donald Trump’s criticism of Tehran during his ongoing three-day Gulf tour.

“He [Trump] thinks he can come here, chant slogans, and scare us. For us, martyrdom is far sweeter than dying in bed. You came to frighten us? We will not bow to any bully,” he said on Wednesday in comments broadcast live on state TV.

Earlier in the day, during the GCC summit in Riyadh, Trump said that while he wanted to make a deal with Iran, the country “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons”.

Washington and Tehran have held four meetings that were mediated by Oman to help reach a deal over the latter’s nuclear programme.

While attending a state dinner in the Qatari capital in Doha on Wednesday, Trump repeated his publicly stated desire for a peaceful resolution to Iran’s nuclear programme and suggested the ball is in Tehran’s court.

“It’s a perilous situation, and we want to do the right thing,” Trump said. “We want to do something that’s going to save maybe millions of lives. Because things like that get started, and they get out of control.”

On Tuesday, Trump said that he wanted “to make a deal with Iran”, but “if Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch … we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure”. He added that he would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

Successive US administrations have sought to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. A sustained effort by world powers during the Barack Obama administration culminated in a 2015 agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

But when Trump succeeded Obama as US president, he unilaterally withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement in 2018, causing the deal to crumble.

Despite ongoing talks, the Trump administration has continued to impose sanctions on Iran.

On Wednesday, the US issued sanctions targeting Iran for efforts to domestically manufacture components for ballistic missiles, the US Department of the Treasury said.

Direct fire from the Israeli military hit the perimeter of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon’s (UNIFIL) peacekeeping positions in south Lebanon, the mission said.

In a statement on Wednesday, UNIFIL added that the incident on Tuesday was the first of its kind since Israel and Lebanese-armed group Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire last November.

UNIFIL said one of its bases in the village of Kfarchouba in southern Lebanon was hit. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.

“In recent days, UNIFIL has also observed other aggressive behaviour by the [Israeli military] towards peacekeepers performing operational activities in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1701,” it said in a post on X, referring to a UN resolution originally adopted in 2006 to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

UNIFIL is concerned by the recent aggressive posture of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) involving UNIFIL personnel and assets near the Blue Line, including yesterday’s incident in which a direct fire hit the perimeter of a UNIFIL position south of the village of Kfar Shouba.

Tuesday’s incident occurred near the Blue Line, a UN-mapped demarcation separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, it added.

Any unauthorised crossing of the Blue Line by land or by air from any side constitutes a violation of Security Council Resolution 1701.

UNIFIL cited other alleged incidents it blamed on the Israeli army, including being targeted by lasers while it was performing a patrol with the Lebanese army in the southern border town of Maroun al-Ras on Tuesday.

“UNIFIL protests all such and we continue to remind all actors of their responsibility to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and to respect the inviolability of UN assets and premises at all times,” it added.

Volatile ceasefire

Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s military said it killed a Hezbollah fighter in a strike on southern Lebanon.

“Earlier today [Wednesday], the [Israeli military] struck in the area of Qaaqaaiyet El Jisr in southern Lebanon, eliminating a Hezbollah terrorist who held the position of the commander of the Qabrikha area within the Hezbollah terrorist organisation,” a military statement said.

The November ceasefire ended a conflict in which Israel attacked Lebanon by air and invaded the country, devastating vast swaths of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli attack in September.

The ceasefire terms require that neither Hezbollah nor any other armed group have weapons in areas near the border south of the Litani River, which flows into the Mediterranean some 20km (12 miles) north of the Israeli border.

They require Israel to withdraw troops from the south and the Lebanese army to deploy into the border region.

Although the truce officially ended hostilities, sporadic cross-border attacks have continued. Israel has regularly broken the truce and carried out air raids across southern Lebanon, also hitting neighbourhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah retains strong support.

Israel still occupies five strategic hilltops along the border. While rockets have been fired into Israel from Lebanese territory on two separate occasions, Hezbollah has denied involvement.

Casandra Ventura, the singer popularly known as Cassie and former girlfriend of rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, has taken to the witness stand on the third day of his trial to portray a relationship defined by physical abuse and routine humiliation.

Testifying before the court on Wednesday, Ventura said Combs, who faces sex trafficking and racketeering charges, beat her and threatened to release compromising videos that could damage her career.

“He would grab me up, push me down, hit me in the side of the head, kick me,” Ventura, a rhythm and blues singer, told jurors in Manhattan federal court.

“It would just make him more violent, make him stronger, make him want to push me harder,” Ventura said of efforts to resist Combs’s violent behaviour during their decadelong relationship.

Prosecutors have alleged that Combs used his wealth and control of an entertainment empire to manipulate and coerce women, sometimes through physical violence, into participation in drug-fuelled sex parties known as “freak-offs” and then used videos of sexual encounters as blackmail.

“He said that it would ruin everything that I had worked for, that it would make me look like a slut, that I would be shamed,” Ventura said. “Nobody should do that to anyone.”

She stated participation in the “freak-offs” started to feel like “a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again” and she developed an opioid addiction to cope.

On one occasion in 2013, Ventura sent Combs pictures of injuries she sustained when he threw her into a bed frame so he could “remember” what he had done.

“You don’t know when to stop. You pushed it too far and continued to push,” he responded. “Sad.”

Combs’s lawyers have conceded that the rapper has an aggressive temperament and has physically assaulted people but state he has been incorrectly charged with racketeering and sex trafficking and a freewheeling sexual lifestyle is being misconstrued by prosecutors.