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President Ahmed al-Sharaa visited Syria’s northern city of Aleppo Saturday as the country marks a year since a lightning Islamist-led offensive that eventually toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad last December.The Islamist alliance, led by Sharaa, entered Aleppo on November 29 last year and swiftly took control of Syria’s second city.”Aleppo was reborn, and with its rebirth, all of Syria was reborn. In moments like these, a new history for all of Syria was being written, through Aleppo and its proud citadel,” Sharaa said on Saturday, addressing a crowd of hundreds from outside the city’s famous monument.Shortly afterwards, he appeared at the top of the citadel’s tower near a huge Syrian flag.Aleppo was an early venue for anti-Assad demonstrations in 2011 that spiralled into civil war.For four years the city was divided between a government loyalist sector in the west — with most of the population — and rebels in a small zone in the east.The Assad government was accused of dropping barrel bombs from helicopters and other aircraft onto rebel areas, while the insurgents fired rockets into government territory.Ally Russia came to Assad’s assistance in September 2015, helping government forces to lay siege to the rebel zone by cutting off its last supply route.Assad’s forces reclaimed complete control of the city on December 22, 2016 when a final convoy of rebels and civilians left eastern Aleppo.Sharaa’s Islamist forces launched their lightning offensive on November 27 last year.They went on to seize Damascus on December 8, toppling Assad and ending more than half a century of his family dynasty’s iron-fisted rule.

Pole-sitter Oscar Piastri won Saturday’s sprint race at the Qatar Grand Prix with his McLaren teammate and title favourite Lando Norris third.Norris now leads Piastri by 22 points and the Briton can claim his maiden Formula One crown if results go his way in Sunday’s penultimate grand prix.The other title contender Max Verstappen finished fourth for Red Bull to drop 25 points behind Norris with a maximum 50 points remaining from Sunday’s race and the season-closer in Abu Dhabi next weekend.This was a return to form for Piastri after a recent slump, and the 19-lap dash could not have gone smoother for the Australian as he led from lights out to the flag, with George Russell’s Mercedes in second.”It’s been a good weekend so far, everything went smoothly in the sprint,” said Piastri, who was making his return to the podium for the first time since Monza in September.”Just need to keep it rolling,” he added.”The pace has been strong, and it is a track I have enjoyed in the past and I am enjoying it again, clearly!”Norris will have been relieved to have avoided any trouble as he edges closer to a maiden title.”I tried to go forwards (towards Russell), we got pretty close at the start but it was good,” Norris said.”It is hard to pass here, so all about qualifying. I think it will be close, I don’t think it will be an easy one,” he added.Qualifying for the race takes place at the Lusail International Circuit later Saturday.

A new draft law on conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose support is crucial for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, has sparked uproar in Israel, with the opposition denouncing it as a special privilege for “draft-dodgers”.Under a ruling established at the time of Israel’s creation in 1948, men who devote themselves full-time to studying sacred Jewish texts are given a de facto pass from mandatory military service.But this exemption has come under mounting scrutiny from the rest of Israeli society — particularly when tens of thousands of conscripts and reservists are mobilised on several fronts, despite the fragile truce halting the war in Gaza.The ultra-Orthodox make up 14 percent of Israel’s Jewish population.Keeping ultra-Orthodox parties on board is key to the survival of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, and their opposition to mandatory military service proposals sparked a mass rally in Jerusalem in October.Two ultra-Orthodox parties rejected a draft bill in July that would have seen an increasing number of ultra-Orthodox men enlisted each year, and financial penalties for those who refuse to comply.On Thursday, a new draft was put forward by Boaz Bismuth, the chairman of parliament’s cross-party foreign affairs and defence committee, which rolls back significantly from the previous text.The new proposal includes only minimal penalties for ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers, notably a ban on travelling abroad or obtaining a driving licence.It also lowers enlistment quotas and facilitates exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men who study in religious seminaries known as yeshivas.Lawmakers will debate the text on Monday.The centre-right Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper ran a front-page headline on Friday reading “Conscription on paper only”, denouncing “an obvious fraud”.”The new ‘conscription’ law will not recruit anyone,” it read.Bismuth has called the bill “balanced” and “responsible”.- ‘Contemptible politics’ -The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party quit the government in July over the previous draft conscription bill, and now Netanyahu’s coalition only holds 60 out of 120 seats in parliament.Ministers from the other main ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, resigned from the cabinet over the issue, though the party has not formally left the coalition.Shas is now threatening to bring down the government if Netanyahu fails to grant the exemptions he had promised the ultra-Orthodox parties in 2022 when forming the coalition.The decades-old de facto exemption was challenged at the Supreme Court level in the early 2000s, since when successive Israeli governments have been forced to cobble together temporary legislative arrangements to appease the ultra-Orthodox, who are the makers and breakers of governments.The opposition has slammed the latest draft bill, believing it is too soft, and is vowing to bring it down.Opposition leader Yair Lapid called the text an “anti-Zionist disgrace” on X, denouncing the “contemptible politics of the corrupt and the draft-dodgers”.”This law is a declaration of war by the government on the reservists,” said former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is expected to run against Netanyahu in elections due by November 2026.In June 2024, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the state must draft ultra-Orthodox men, declaring their exemption had expired.The government has also been forced to cut certain subsidies to yeshivas, much to the chagrin of the ultra-Orthodox parties.- ‘Flagrant inequality’ -Only two percent of ultra-Orthodox Jews respond to conscription orders according to the military, which has created units specifically for them.There are around 1.3 million ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, and roughly 66,000 men of military age currently benefit from the exemption, a record number according to local media reports.On November 19, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the government was required to present an effective proposal for conscripting the ultra-Orthodox.The ruling notes that the “flagrant inequality” created by their exemption has “worsened significantly” with the war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.It also says ultra-Orthodox conscription fills a “real security need” as the army requires about 12,000 soldiers to fill its ranks.The court did not set a deadline for the adoption of a conscription law, but only for a debate on the issue in parliament.

With a pot of glue, a blade and a keen eye, Manal al-Saadani repairs tattered banknotes — a necessity in the Gaza Strip, where the cash in circulation is wearing out.For every revived note she gives back to a customer, they give her a few coins in return.As Gaza remained blockaded for much of the Israel-Hamas war since October 2023, basic supplies were depleted, including banknotes, with no new ones supplied to its banks.Every day, Saadani carries her small plastic table a few kilometres from Al-Bureij refugee camp and sets it up in the market in Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.A string of people come to Saadani’s table, showing her the flaws in their Israeli shekel notes.”I decided to work and started repairing banknotes,” she told AFP, explaining it is her only source of income.”Because I’m a woman… most people on the street stood by me and supported me. They would bring me 20-shekel notes and tell me: ‘We want you to repair this for one or two shekels.’ Which I accepted, and thank God for that.”Working on a thick sheet of glass, she uses the blade from a utility knife to work the glue into the paper and smooths it out on the surface with her fingertips.Saadani holds the notes up to the light, studying the damage and examining her handiwork.But she wishes she was at home with her daughters instead.”Look at me with compassion and mercy and understand me as a Palestinian mother,” she said, her voice straining with emotion.”I am very tired.”- Cash crisis -The Israeli new shekel is used throughout the Palestinian territories. One shekel is worth $0.30.The Bank of Israel’s first Series C notes entered circulation in 2014. They feature the portraits of prominent Hebrew poets, with the 20 note in red, the 50 in green, the 100 in orange and the 200 in blue.Saadani rubs colours back into the notes to refresh their appearance.”Go and buy some biscuits with it,” she said, handing back a customer two 20-shekel notes.Nabila Shenar, one of Saadani’s customers, explained how tattered banknotes make life difficult.”Most of the money is damaged,” she told AFP.”If we try to use this money to buy anything from any grocery store, they tell us it’s damaged and unusable.”Therefore, we’ve had to go to people who repair money for two shekels for 20-shekel notes and three shekels for 50-shekel notes.”They need to find a solution to this problem and provide us with money so we can live our lives and buy what we need, but because of these damaged banknotes we can’t buy anything.”