Sports highest court says Moroccan soccer shirt depicting map of disputed area was breach of rules

CAIRO: Talks resume in Cairo Friday on a second phase of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire that mediators hope will bring a lasting end to the Gaza conflict, a day after Israel’s military acknowledged its “complete failure” to prevent the 2023 Hamas attack that sparked the war.
Mediator Egypt said Thursday that Israeli, Qatari and US delegations were already in Cairo for “intensive” talks on the next stage of the ceasefire, after a first phase only reached following months of gruelling negotiations.
“The relevant parties have begun intensive talks to discuss the next phases of the truce agreement, amid ongoing efforts to ensure the implementation of the previously agreed understandings,” said Egypt’s State Information Service.
The ceasefire, whose first phase is set to expire on Saturday, has largely halted the fighting that began when Hamas militants broke through Gaza’s security barrier on October 7, 2023, in an attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Israel’s retaliation has killed more than 48,000 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN has deemed reliable.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent negotiators to Cairo on Thursday, after Hamas handed over the remains of four hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners under the truce.
An internal Israeli army probe into the October 7 attack, released on Thursday, acknowledged the military’s “complete failure” to prevent it, according to a military official who briefed reporters about the report’s contents on condition of anonymity.
“Too many civilians died that day asking themselves in their hearts or out loud, where was the IDF?” the official said, referring to the military.
A senior military official said at the same briefing that the military acknowledges it was “overconfident” and had misconceptions about Hamas’s military capabilities before the attack.
Following the scathing probe’s release, Israel’s military chief General Herzi Halevi said: “The responsibility is mine.”
Halevi had already resigned last month citing the October 7 “failure.”
During their attack, militants seized dozens of hostages, whose return was a key objective of the war.
Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas and to bring home all the hostages, but has faced criticism and protests at home over his handling of the war and the hostage crisis.
A hostage-prisoner swap early Thursday was the final one under the initial stage of the truce that took effect on January 19.
Over the past several weeks, Hamas freed in stages 25 living Israeli and dual-national hostages and returned the bodies of eight others.
It also released five Thai hostages outside the deal’s terms.
Israel, in return, was expected to free around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
Israel’s Prison Service said that “643 terrorists were transferred from several prisons across the country” and released on Thursday under the terms of the truce after Hamas returned the bodies of four hostages.
Hours after the handover on Thursday, an Israeli campaign group confirmed “with profound sorrow” the identities of the four bodies.
Ohad Yahalomi, Tsachi Idan, Itzik Elgarat and Shlomo Mansour “have been laid to eternal rest in Israel,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Israel Berman, a businessman and former member of the Nahal Oz kibbutz community where Idan was abducted, said that “until the very last moment, we were hoping that Tsachi would return to us alive.”
Among those freed in exchange was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail, Nael Barghouti, who spent more than four decades behind bars.
He was first arrested in 1978 and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of an Israeli officer and attacks on Israeli sites.
“We were in hell and we came out of hell. Today is my real day of birth,” said one prisoner, Yahya Shraideh.
AFP images showed some freed prisoners awaiting treatment or being assessed at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, after their release.
Several freed Palestinian prisoners were hospitalized following earlier swaps, and the emaciated state of some released Israeli hostages sparked outrage in Israel and beyond.
After the swap, Hamas called on Israel to return to delayed talks on the truce’s next phase.
“We have cut off the path before the enemy’s false justifications, and it has no choice but to start negotiations for the second phase,” Hamas said.

SEOUL: North Korea said Friday it had test-fired strategic cruise missiles to demonstrate its nuclear counter-attack capability, days after it vowed to respond to what it called escalating US-led hostilities since the start of the Trump administration.
The official Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the missile tests off the country’s west coast Wednesday. They were the North’s fourth missile launch event this year and the second of President Donald Trump’s second term.
The launches were designed to inform “the enemies, who are seriously violating our security environment and fostering and escalating the confrontation environment,” of the North Korean military’s counterattack capability and the readiness of its nuclear operations, KCNA said.
Kim expressed satisfaction over the results of the drills and said the military must be fully ready to use its nuclear weapons, the report said.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement later Friday that it had detected and tracked the North Korean launches. It said the South Korean military maintains readiness to repel any potential provocation by North Korea based on the solid South Korea-US military alliance.
Since his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump has boasted of his summitry with Kim during his first term and said he would reach out to Kim again. North Korea hasn’t directly responded to Trump’s overture as it continues its typical aggressive rhetoric against the US and weapons testing activities.
Many experts say Kim, now preoccupied with his support of Russia’s war against Ukraine with supply of weapons and troops, won’t likely embrace Trump’s outreach anytime soon. They say Kim could reconsider if he doubts he’ll maintain North Korea’s current solid cooperation with Russia after the war ends.
Last Saturday, North Korea’s Defense Ministry alleged the US and its allies were ramping up more serious military provocations targeting North Korea since Trump took power. It cited the recent US-South Korean aerial exercise involving a US B-1B bomber and other reported activities involving US military assets. A Defense Ministry statement said North Korea will counter the strategic threat of the US with strategic means.
Kim and Trump met three times from 2018-19 to discuss the fate of North Korea’s nuclear program, but their diplomacy derailed due to disputes over US-led sanctions on the North. Kim has since sharply increased the pace of weapons tests to expand and modernize his nuclear arsenal. Having a bigger nuclear arsenal now, experts say Kim would think he could win greater US concessions if he revives diplomacy with Trump.