British newspapers, both in electronic and print versions, covered separate topics, among the most important of which: the transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo to the Saudi club Al-Nasr Football Club, the US warning that ISIS has an army on standby and the fact that it is possible to impose travel restrictions on those coming from China.
The beginning comes from the Independent electronic newspaper and from a report entitled “Cristiano Ronaldo transfers a large financial contract to a Saudi club”.
On Friday, Cristiano Ronaldo completed his lucrative move to Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr Club in a deal that marks a historic moment for football in the Middle East, but one that will see one of Europe’s biggest stars fade from the sporting podium.
The Saudi club hailed the move in a social media post featuring a photo of five-time Ballon d’Or winner Cristiano holding up the club shirt after signing the deal, describing it as “history in the making”.
The report believes the deal gives Ronaldo, 37, a huge profit in what could be the last contract of his football career. He cited media reports claiming the Portuguese star could get up to $200 million a year from the deal, making him the highest-paid footballer in history.
In a statement, Ronaldo said he was “eager to try out a new football league in another country”. Adding that after winning European football, he now feels this is the right time to share his experience of him in Asia.
After a celebrated career which saw him win the Champions League with United and Real Madrid, as well as league titles and cups in England, Spain and Italy, the newspaper suggests the Portuguese striker may now want to see the last few years of his career on the road from the spotlight of European football.
The report notes that while the signing is a huge boost for football in the Middle East, it will also fuel controversy over Saudi Arabia’s use of so-called “sports wash” to boost the country’s international image.
constant threat
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Al-Hol camp, Syria, June 2020
And to The Times newspaper and an article written by Middle East correspondent, Richard Spencer, headlined “US warns organization of what is known as Islamic State has army on standby.”
The paper cited a report by US Central Command that there are some 20,000 fighters and organization leaders detained in Iraq and another 10,000 in Syria. Furthermore, the 25,000 children in camps such as al-Hol in northeastern Syria represent “the potential next generation of ISIS”.
The report called on the international community to work together to remove these children from this environment, returning them to their countries or communities of origin, while improving living conditions in the camp.
The report stated that despite the active role of US, British and other Western forces in northeastern Syria and Iraq, hundreds of anti-ISIS operations were conducted in the two countries. However, there are two main reasons for the continued threat posed by the group.
The first: his attacks on prisons, where his fighters are being held, and the second: the chaotic government of large parts of the country, in which four dominant powers are in conflict: the regime of President Assad, the Syrian Democratic Forces supported by ‘West, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib and Turkish-backed ex-combatants in the north.
The feasibility of imposing Corona restrictions
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And we conclude our tour of The Telegraph newspaper and an article prepared by the deputy director of Global Health Security, Samuel Lovett, entitled “Why imposing travel restrictions on China is a waste of time”.
The writer believes that with the worsening COVID-19 picture in China, compounded by a lack of reliable data, many governments have been quick and decisive in taking preventive measures to protect their people.
Japan, India, Italy, the USA and recently Great Britain have imposed corona checks on passengers from China.
While concerns about the high tide of infections in China and the impact it could have on the epidemic are understandable, from the article’s point of view, imposing travel restrictions on the country is unlikely to prove effective. which was confirmed by Professor Daniel Valoch, of the Pasteur Institute in Shanghai, “experience shows that travel restrictions have little effect in the absence of other measures,” he said.
“If variants with a fitness advantage emerge, they will always find a way around and the best that can be achieved is a short delay when they arrive.”
Previous attempts to prevent the spread of the Delta and Omicron variants outside India and South Africa, respectively, also failed miserably. In both cases, simply enforcing travel restrictions delayed the inevitable, and over time, the two dynasties became world dominant.
“Travel restrictions are unnecessary, in the context of little or no infection control in the countries that impose them,” said Aris Katzourakis, professor of evolution and genomics at the University of Oxford.
And the writer quotes Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, who says travel restrictions, which are ‘probably effective in the first place’, can usually be enforced for two different purposes.
The first, an attempt to keep local infection cases down” is currently irrelevant for Britain, where more than 1.3 million people in the country are estimated to have tested positive for Covid last week.
The second is to try to keep new mutants and variants of the virus out of the country. On this basis, the decision to impose travel restrictions on China would be logical, with the exception of “at present there is no evidence” indicating the emergence of a new and dangerous strain of the virus in China and the Chinese. Adds Dr. Peacock.
The writer explains that it is natural that the lack of data that China shares with the international scientific community, including the number of cases, the severity of the disease and genetic mutations, make it difficult to draw definitive conclusions, but all the signs indicate that there is no ‘is nothing of major concern currently circulating about it.China.
But Dr Megan Cale, an epidemiologist at the UK’s Health Security Agency, believes one of the proposed solutions is to continuously monitor recent travelers from China after they arrive, in an attempt to identify any new variants they might be carrying. “Although this is expensive, it would be cheaper than screening all travellers,” she said.
