When the president of the Confederation of African Football, Patrice Motsepe, announced plans to move AFCON from a two-year to a four-year cycle, it raised a big question: Who actually benefits from that change? Samantha Johnson speaks to sports analyst Usher Komugisha about the power dynamics shaping the debate, and what it could mean for African football.
Iran’s state media says dozens of security forces have been killed during protests in the sanctions-hit country against a severe economic crisis, as the parliament speaker warned the United States and Israel of retaliatory strikes if Washington attacks the Islamic Republic.
State television said on Sunday 30 members of the police and security forces were killed in Isfahan province, while the commander of the Law Enforcement Command Special Units said eight security forces were killed on January 8 and 9 during operations to quell riots in various cities. The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday that 109 security personnel had been killed in the protests across the country.
The Iranian Red Crescent, meanwhile, said a member of its team died during an attack on one of its relief buildings in Gorgan, the capital of Golestan province.
The reported figures come as Iranian authorities step up efforts to quell the country’s largest protests in years, which have seen thousands of people take to the streets in anger over the soaring cost of living and inflation.
The Interior Ministry said the “riots” are gradually subsiding while the attorney general has warned that those involved in the unrest could face the death penalty.
Speaking in parliament on Sunday after threats of military strikes by US President Donald Trump, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned the US against “a miscalculation”.
“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories (Israel) as well as all US bases and ships will be our legitimate target,” said Qalibaf, a former commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said Qalibaf’s words are “a new level of escalation, at least rhetorically”.
Some lawmakers reportedly rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting: “Death to America!”
Asadi said the authorities are “trying to draw a line between protesters and what they call rioters, or what Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came out to call saboteurs”.
“They are saying that they understand the situation and complexities related to the economic difficulties people are facing,” he said, adding that Qalibaf recognised the right of people to take part in protests in his remarks earlier in the day.
Trump said on Saturday the US is “ready to help” as protesters in Iran faced an intensifying crackdown by the authorities.
“Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!” Trump said in a social post on Truth Social, without elaborating.
His comments come a day after he said that Iran was in “big trouble” and again warned that he could order strikes.
“That doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard – where it hurts,” the US president said.
Meanwhile, a nationwide shutdown of the internet in Iran remains in place and has now lasted more than 60 hours, according to monitor Netblocks.
“The censorship measure presents a direct threat to the safety and wellbeing of Iranians at a key moment for the country’s future,” it said on Sunday, adding that the blackout is “now past the 60-hour mark”.
Iran’s police chief, Ahmad-Reza Rada, was quoted as saying by the state media on Sunday that the level of confrontation with rioters has been stepped up.
The Iranian army said on Saturday that it would defend the country’s “national interests” as it accused Israel and “hostile terrorist groups” of seeking to “undermine the country’s public security” amid the rapidly growing protest movement.
“The Army, under the command of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, together with other armed forces, in addition to monitoring enemy movements in the region, will resolutely protect and safeguard national interests, the country’s strategic infrastructure, and public property,” it said.
The demonstrations since late December are the largest in Iran since a 2022-2023 protest movement spurred by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.
Human rights groups have urged restraint amid reports of protest-related casualties and mass arrests, with Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights saying at least 51 protesters, including nine children, have been killed by security forces, and hundreds more have been injured.
I work for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organisation that has been present in Gaza for more than 77 years. AFSC began its work in 1948 when the United Nations asked it to organise relief efforts for Palestinian refugees who had been expelled from their land by Zionist forces.
For two years, AFSC’s Gaza staff helped set up and run 10 refugee camps in al-Faluja, Bureij, Deir el-Balah, Gaza City, Jabalia, Maghazi, Nuseirat, Khan Younis and Rafah. They worked to provide food, shelter and sanitation as well as setting up educational programmes for children.
In the decades that followed, AFSC’s programmes have provided support for agricultural development, kindergartens, midwife training, humanitarian aid and trauma healing. Since the start of Israel’s genocide in 2023, AFSC staff members in Gaza have provided more than a million meals, food parcels, fresh vegetables, hygiene kits and other essential supplies.
Now, for the first time since 1948, AFSC along with dozens of other international organisations is threatened with a ban from the Israeli government that puts lifesaving humanitarian work in jeopardy. This would have a devastating effect on the people of Gaza. And it cannot come at a worse time.
The mass killing in Gaza has not stopped. Despite a ceasefire, Israeli forces are carrying out ongoing raids, air strikes and large-scale demolitions across Gaza. Since the ceasefire began on October 10, these attacks have killed more than 420 Palestinians and injured more than 1,150.
And it is not just the bombs. Floods in Gaza have destroyed tens of thousands of tents while badly damaged homes continue to collapse on residents. The absence of medicines and proper healthcare is killing people as well; about 600 kidney disease patients have died as a result of lack of treatment.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to prevent temporary shelters, medicines and other desperately needed supplies from entering.
These actions have reinforced a longstanding Israeli policy aimed at depopulating Gaza and annexing the land. Israel’s prohibitively restrictive new registration policies and efforts to prohibit or limit international aid are part of this effort. Silencing independent humanitarian voices and dismantling humanitarian infrastructure serve to create conditions on the ground that make life in Gaza impossible. Gaza cannot recover or thrive without comprehensive reconstruction that restores its health system, education sector and critical infrastructure.
Just two weeks before the ceasefire began, an Israeli air strike struck my family home, killing nine of my immediate relatives, including two of my siblings, their spouses and their children.
When I spoke to surviving family members shortly afterwards, they told me the “responsibility is light now” – a phrase they used to express that the number of people to care for is less now.
Since that phone call, I have not stopped thinking about what responsibility truly means. For me, it did not become lighter. It grew heavier. Nine children were left orphaned. With each life taken from my family, the weight of responsibility only increased – the responsibility to remember, to care for those left behind and to bear witness to what has been done.
But this responsibility is not mine alone. It belongs to every nation, institution and individual who has sat idly by while Gaza burns – and especially those nations who have sent the bombs that continue to kill and destroy.
I first learned about the history of AFSC from my friend Ahmad Alhaaj, who benefitted from its work when he was a young refugee in 1948.
Ahmad passed away in Gaza City in January 2024. It is heartbreaking that he lived his entire life as a refugee, recounting stories of Israel’s 1948 massacres, only to spend his final days enduring a genocide. He died under siege and bombardment, ultimately losing his life because essential medicines were unavailable.
The story of Ahmad in Gaza in 2024 is tragically similar to his story in 1948. Then, he was 16 years old, a barefoot refugee following evacuation orders to Gaza from his village of al-Sawafir. What changed were the years; what did not was the condition of dispossession, displacement and abandonment.
But Ahmad’s story is not just about displacement. Ahmad’s story is a story of love – love for his village. He lived his entire life in Gaza as a refugee in a rented house, refusing to own a home so he would never forget his village or the house his parents were forced to leave behind. For Ahmad, ownership elsewhere risked erasing memory; remaining a renter was an act of fidelity.
This same love has been embodied by many Palestinians who chose Gaza, even under fire. It is a devotion to place that defies siege, displacement and death. Ahmad’s love reminds me of the dedication of my mentor and friend Refaat Alareer, who became Gaza’s great storyteller, giving voice to its people and its pain. On December 6, 2023, Israel killed Refaat along with his brother, sister and nephews in a targeted strike on his apartment.
Like Ahmad, Refaat paid for this love – this unbreakable connection to land and memory – with his life.
His poem If I Must Die has become a testament to this love and to an enduring hope – a message that has travelled beyond Gaza and transformed into a global story. Born of siege and resistance, the poem carries Gaza’s humanity to the world, insisting on life, memory and dignity even in the face of death.
In 1948, the Greater Gaza District was home to 34 villages. One of them was Ahmad’s. For our grandparents, Gaza was understood as something far larger than the narrow strip it later became. Their sense of place was expansive, rooted in villages, fields and continuous geography.
Our parents, however, witnessed Gaza steadily shrink. What had once been one of the largest districts in historic Palestine was reduced in 1948 to roughly 555sq km (215sq miles). It later shrank further, to about 365sq km (140sq miles) after Israel established a so-called demilitarised zone – land that was eventually annexed at the direct expense of Gaza’s people.
Today, Israel occupies more than half of Gaza. It has imposed what is known as the “yellow line”, which functions as a new de facto border that continues to expand, annexing new territory. Palestinians who cross it are executed. Even Fadi and Jumaa, ages 8 and 10, were not spared. Gaza is not just besieged; it is being physically erased, metre by metre, generation by generation.
The Gaza we love goes beyond lines and borders. Although the majority of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees from towns that today lie inside Israel, Gaza is the place we call home.
Today, Gaza has liberated the imaginations and consciences of people across the world. It transcends geography and the artificial lines drawn on maps – yellow or green.
Israel can ban international organisations and journalists, arrest our medical workers and bomb our poets. It can destroy lives and homes and cause suffering beyond measure. But it cannot ban our struggle for justice or our innate human desire to help one another survive. Despite the many obstacles and challenges we face, our work to support people in Gaza and across the occupied Palestinian territory will continue.
Gaza means liberty, sacrifice and love, even amid tents and rubble. And it will rise again from the ruins, as it has done throughout history.
Demonstrators took to the streets of Minneapolis, chanting the name of the woman killed by a federal agent in the city of the midwestern US state of Minnesota, amid widespread anger at the use of force in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Organisers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the United States on Saturday under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good”, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations of immigrants.
The slogan is also a reference to Renee Nicole Good, the 37-year-old mother of three, who was shot dead in her car by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
Thousands braved frigid weather and streamed towards a snow-covered park to mobilise near the scene of the shooting. They carried signs demanding “ICE OUT” of Minnesota.
At the start of the protest, a voice called out, “Say her name!” The crowd shouted back: “Renee Good!”
Her death has evoked strong emotions across the nation.
In Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), protesters marched in the rain from City Hall to the ICE field office. Others mobilised in New York, Washington, DC and Boston (Massachusetts), with the gatherings drawing dozens to hundreds of demonstrators.
More protests were planned for Sunday.
The calls to protest were being amplified by the “No Kings” movement, a network of left-wing organisations that mounted nationwide demonstrations against Trump last year.
The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a “domestic terrorist”, insisting the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defence.
This narrative is strongly disputed by local officials and numerous analysts and observers, who say footage shows Good’s vehicle turning away from the agent and not posing a threat to his life.
Officials and residents in Minnesota have expressed concern that local law enforcement agencies have been shut out of the FBI investigation into the Minneapolis shooting.
World number one Aryna Sabalenka brushed aside Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 6-3 in the Brisbane International final on Sunday to retain the title without losing a set ahead of her bid to reclaim the Australian Open title this month.
Kostyuk had beaten top 10 players Jessica Pegula, Mirra Andreeva and Amanda Anisimova on her way to the final but was no match for the sheer power of the US Open champion.
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Sabalenka is determined to win back the Australian Open title she relinquished last year, and her performance in the fierce Brisbane heat suggests she will be hard to beat at Melbourne Park this month.
“Thank you to my team for handling me. I’m really the toughest one to handle, and you guys are the toughest people in the world if you can handle me,” she told the crowd before directing a comment at partner Georgios Frangulis in the stands.
“Thank you to my boyfriend. Hopefully, soon I’ll call you something else, right? Let’s just put a bit of extra pressure on, right?”
Sabalenka raced off to a 3-0 lead in the opening set before coming a bit unstuck as her first serve deserted her and her 23-year-old opponent feasted on her second.
There were the familiar hangdog expressions as Sabalenka raised her eyes to the skies in reaction to spraying a shot high and wide, but it did not last for long.
Rallying at 3-3, Sabalenka reduced the number of wild swings and heaped the pressure on her 26th-ranked opponent with the sheer power and accuracy of her strokes.
She quickly wrapped up the opening set and was soon 3-0 up in the second after again taking Kostyuk’s first service game.
There was no way back for Kostyuk this time, and she faced a real battle just to hold her serve three times before Sabalenka served out to secure her 22nd WTA title, sealing the deal when her opponent netted a return on her first championship point.
Kostyuk said her thoughts were with the people back home in her war-torn country.
“I play every day with a pain in my heart, and there are thousands of people who are without light and warm water,” she said.
“Right now it’s minus 20 degrees [Celsius] outside, so it’s very, very painful to live this reality every day. It’s very hot here in Brisbane, so it’s difficult to imagine this, but my sister is sleeping under three blankets because of how cold it is at home.”
Sabalenka will be gunning for a third Australian Open and fifth major title at the year’s first Grand Slam, which starts on January 18.
Three Palestinians have been killed and seven wounded in Israeli attacks in different areas of the Gaza Strip in the latest violation of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, according to medical sources.
Sources told Al Jazeera the areas Israeli raids targeted overnight into Sunday included Rafah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the Zeitoun neighbourhood in the southeast of Gaza City and various other neighbourhoods across the besieged enclave, as Israel’s genocidal war continues unabated.
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In one attack, an Israeli quadcopter killed a Palestinian man who was being taken to a hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that two men were killed by Israeli military gunfire east of Zeitoun.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Gaza City, said, “It has been a very dizzying period of escalation. We can hear the sounds of Israeli drones hovering overhead in central Gaza City and also the eastern communities, as well as where Israeli forces continue attacks and beyond the agreed yellow line, which was supposed to mark the ceasefire’s front lines.”
“There is a widescale flattening of buildings in Rafah, which has been under Israeli military control for two years, in Khan Younis, in the eastern parts of it and in the Jabalia refugee camp. These activities are basically designed to expand the areas that are under the Israeli military control to be possibly used as leverage in further negotiations in the second phase of the ceasefire agreement.”
“What we are documenting are demolitions and strikes in already evacuated civilian spaces, raising questions about whether this is security enforcement or territorial reshaping under the cover of the ceasefire,” he added.
Separately, the Israeli army reported on Saturday that its forces killed three Palestinians in southern and northern Gaza neighbourhoods, claiming that they posed a threat to Israeli forces, with one specifically stealing military equipment.
It was not immediately clear if the deaths were caused by the same incidents reported by Gaza sources.
Meanwhile, a seven-day-old Palestinian infant died due to the extreme cold on Saturday as the Israeli blockade of vital necessities worsens the humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
Mahmoud al-Aqraa died in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza amid rapidly decreasing temperatures, according to medical sources.
Palestinians living in makeshift tents have little protection from strong winds and rain, as most shelters are made of thin canvas and plastic sheets.
Israel continues to block or limit the number of vital needs entering the territory, such as tents, mobile homes or materials to fix tents, in violation of the ceasefire it agreed with Hamas in October, as well as its obligations under international law as the occupying power in the Strip.
Temperatures at night in Gaza have fallen to as low as 9 degrees Celsius (48 degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days.
In a statement, the Gaza Civil Defence warned of a “catastrophe” due to the “low-pressure system that caused serious damage to temporary shelters, and thousands of tents were completely damaged”.
It also urged citizens to secure their tents to prevent them from being blown away, given that mobile homes are not allowed to enter.
“What is happening is not a weather crisis, but a direct result of preventing the entry of building materials and disrupting reconstruction, as people are living in torn tents and cracked houses without safety or dignity,” Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said.