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A Japanese company lost contact with its Moon lander Resilience during a daunting final descent, dealing a blow to its bid to make history two years after a prior mission ended in a crash.Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to become only the third private firm — and the first outside the United States — to achieve …

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Uzbekistan are heading to next year’s World Cup for the first time in the country’s history, a feat that caps years of progress in a part of the world not known for its footballing prowess.The Central Asian nation qualified for football’s premier international tournament on Thursday thanks to a 0-0 draw with the United Arab Emirates — enough to seal the achievement with one game to spare.”I cannot convey my feelings. I am very, very happy — for the first time in 34 years the Uzbekistan national team has reached the World Cup,” Otabek Khaydarov, a 36-year-old entrepreneur told AFP in Tashkent after the final whistle.Ex-Soviet Uzbekistan started competing as an independent nation in the 1990s, following the break-up of the USSR.Footage shared on social media showed the players, draped in national flags, mobbing coach Timur Kapadze in the press room after the game.The expansion of the tournament from 32 to 48 teams has given traditional outsiders, like Uzbekistan, the chance to break into the top ranks of world football.But their success is not just down to a larger World Cup. Uzbekistan is one of Asia’s fastest developing footballing nations.And across Central Asia, the sport is in the ascendancy — backed by state funding and growing popularity in a region where combat sports traditionally reign supreme.Ravshan Khaydarov, the coach of Uzbekistan’s under-23 national team, said qualification is the result of “a long-term effort”.”Presidential decrees adopted to reform football five or six years ago marked the beginning of a process that is still ongoing,” he told AFP on the sidelines of a match in Tashkent, ahead of the crunch game against UAE.The construction of new stadiums and training centres, sometimes with FIFA’s support, has been crucial, he said.- State affair -Such backing from the top is essential in a region dominated by autocratic regimes.In both Uzbekistan and neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, the national football federations are controlled by powerful secret service chiefs.On the pitch, Uzbekistan’s charge to the tournament — to be staged across the United States, Canada and Mexico — was led by the star trio of centre back Abdukodir Khusanov, striker Eldor Shomurodov and winger Abbosbek Fayzullaev.Khusanov, who moved to Manchester City in a reported $45-million deal earlier this year, has become a national hero at home.Bootleg jerseys featuring his name and number are available at bazaars across the landlocked country.Footballing bosses are confident the success of Khusanov and Shomurodov, who plays for Roma in Italy, can be replicated.More than a third of the country’s 35 million people are under the age of 20 — a huge talent pool waiting to be coached.”It is important to have a systemic approach to identifying talent and selecting the best players who will become famous. The world will know Uzbekistan thanks to our national team,” said coach Khaydarov.”Our dream is to see Uzbek players in the best European clubs.”- ‘Creativity’ – The country has already had glory at the youth level, recently winning the Asian U17 and U20 Cups and qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics.”The strength of Uzbek football lies in the combination of play, technique, passing and attacking,” said Azamat Abduraimov, a former player and now coach.”Uzbek football has always been renowned for its creativity. We have always had good strikers and creative, technical midfielders. But we lacked success because we were weak in defence,” he added. Centre-back Khusanov, who Abduraimov coached as a teenager, has helped address that balance.Many see 21-year-old winger Fayzullaev, who plays for CSKA Moscow and was voted Asia’s best young player in 2023, as the next Uzbek in line for a big money move to Europe.His playing style has been compared to star Georgian winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who just won the Champions League with Paris Saint-Germain.For the national team, qualifying for next year’s World Cup brings a new set of challenges.Uzbekistan has never played an international match against a top European side, and most of its young talent still lack experience on the biggest stages.In Tashkent, supporter Otabek was relishing the step up.”I would like to have strong opponents at the World Cup, I know at that there will be no weak ones there.”

US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke Thursday, with both sides agreeing to talks to prevent an all-out trade war over tariffs and global rare earth supplies.Trump said the call reached a “very positive conclusion” and that they agreed to meet in person — but Beijing issued a more muted readout saying …

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Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli attacks killed at least 37 people on Thursday, as a US-backed aid group reported it had resumed operations after a one-day hiatus.The Israeli military has recently stepped up its campaign in Gaza in what it says is a renewed push to defeat Hamas, whose October 2023 attack sparked the war.But Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva rejected the term “war” to describe the conflict in the devastated Palestinian territory, accusing Israel instead of carrying out “premeditated genocide”.Gaza civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir said that “37 people have been martyred in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip”, reporting attacks up and down the length of the territory.The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.Calls have mounted for a negotiated ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but indirect talks between the parties have failed to yield a breakthrough since the collapse of the last brief truce in March.”What is happening in Gaza is not a war. It’s a genocide being carried out by a highly prepared army against women and children,” said Brazil’s Lula, who has previously used the legal term to describe the conflict.”It’s no longer possible to accept,” he added.French President Emmanuel Macron, who has declined to use the term himself, vowed at a joint appearance with Lula to “ramp up pressure in coordination with the Americans to obtain a ceasefire”.France is due later this month to co-host with Saudi Arabia a United Nations conference in New York on a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.- Aid sites reopen -Israel has also faced mounting international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, after it imposed a more than two-month blockade that led to widespread shortages of food and other essentials.It recently eased the blockade and has worked with the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to implement a new aid distribution mechanism via a handful of centres in south and central Gaza.But since its inception, GHF has been a magnet for criticism from the UN and other members of the aid world — which only intensified following a recent string of deadly incidents near its facilities.The United Nations and other aid groups have declined to work with GHF, citing concerns it serves Israeli military goals.Reports from Gaza that dozens were killed over the course of three days as they attempted to reach the group’s aid sites drew sharp condemnation.GHF shut down its distribution centres on Wednesday for what it called “reorganisation” to improve its work, but said it had reopened two of them on Thursday.”GHF can confirm that we were open for distribution today,” it said in an email to AFP, adding it had delivered 1.4 million meals at two sites on Thursday and more than 8.4 million since opening a little over a week ago.Gaza rescuers and eyewitnesses implicated Israeli troops in the instances of deadly gunfire near a GHF centre in Rafah.Israel’s military has maintained it does not prevent Gazans from collecting aid, but army spokesperson Effie Defrin said after one such incident on Tuesday that soldiers had fired towards suspects who “were approaching in a way that endangered” the troops.He added that the incident was under investigation.- Hostage bodies recovered -During their October 2023 attack, militants abducted 251 hostages, 55 of whom remain in Gaza, including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the remains of two Israeli-Americans killed on October 7 had been recovered in Gaza and returned to Israel.”In a special operation by the Shin Bet (security agency) and the (military) in the Gaza Strip, the bodies of two of our hostages held by the murderous terrorist organisation Hamas were returned to Israel: Judy Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai from Kibbutz Nir Oz, may their memory be blessed,” Netanyahu said in a statement.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said their return was “a stark reminder of the enduring cruelty” faced by the families of hostages still in Gaza.Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 4,335 people have been killed since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,607, mostly civilians.

For the first time in his short life, Imad Dib, orphaned by the Gaza war, was preparing to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha without his parents.”Dad would buy us a sheep, but now we are alone,” the 11-year-old said.Before the war, he said, “I loved Eid so much, I was excited for it each year, to be able to celebrate and wear new clothes,” he said of the Eid tradition, looking weary in his patched-up shoes.Every day, the boy returns to the ashes and charred tarp, which are all that’s left of the tent in which he once sheltered with his family. Dib said he wanted to remember his parents, who were killed in an Israeli air strike.This year, rather than celebrating, he is preoccupied simply with the thought of how he and his four sisters will find anything at all to eat.- Not one order -According to Muslim tradition, Eid al-Adha commemorates the sacrifice Ibrahim (known to Christians and Jews as Abraham) was about to make by killing his son, before the angel Gabriel intervened and offered him a sheep to sacrifice instead.In a normal year, Gazans would now be preparing for big family get-togethers, traditionally centred around the sacrifice and eating of a sheep.Markets would be busy with people shopping for sweets and pastries, while toy shops and those selling children’s clothes would stay open late into the night for last-minute gifts.Even poverty and the years-long Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory could not get in the way of the festivities.Yet 20 months of war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the militant group’s October 2023 attack, have brought an end to all that.With entire neighbourhoods levelled, almost all of the population displaced, often multiple times, and severe shortages brought on by a two-month blockade on aid, there is little possibility of celebration.”This time of year, I might receive up to 300 orders, including for calves and sheep, but this year I haven’t had a single one,” said Ahmed al-Zayigh, a butcher in Gaza City.Mohammed Othman, a 36-year-old displaced with his family to Deir el-Balah, said “One kilo of meat has become a dream… we just hope to find bread to feed our children on the day of Eid, and they will rejoice over flour as if it were meat”.Many Gazans said they longed for a time when it was possible, as prescribed in the Koran, to share part of their meat with the less fortunate.- ‘It tastes of blood’ -“Tomorrow we will go to the Eid prayer,” said Hamza Sobeh, 37, living in the Al-Mawasi displacement camp in southern Gaza.Sobeh was observing the fast ritual, which is believed to erase sins on the eve of the festival, and reciting takbirs — prayers glorifying God — with his children.”I want them to feel the joy of Eid, at least in a religious sense, so that they don’t lose hope,” he said, adding that he was considering buying them some date-filled pastries.However, the majority of people interviewed by AFP journalists said they would not be able to recreate even a sliver of the usual celebrations, and not just because it was unaffordable.”This Eid tastes of blood,” said Sami Felfel, from the north of the Gaza Strip.”These are the hardest years we’ve lived in Gaza,” he said.