Sin categoría
Messi’s boyhood club Newell’s creates school for kids with disabilities
AFP/Editor
Stefano may be just a kid, but he feels like a champion when he dribbles and scores like his beloved Lionel Messi.
The boy is one of nine children who just enrolled at the brand new football school for kids with learning disabilities, created by the Argentine great’s childhood club Newell’s Old Boys.
“We’re a real football family. My husband played for the club, my other two sons did too and the oldest got to the fourth division,” said Stefano’s mother, Marisa Meroi.
“Stefano wanted to be like his brothers,” she said.
Now he gets to practice dribbling, passing and shooting like his football hero who was on the Newell’s books as a child.
“I like Messi, I like (Nacho) Scocco (a Newell’s striker). I play well. I love my family, I love my mom,” said Stefano, 10, who has Down’s syndrome, adding that the club is “my life.”
Stefano gets kitted out in the Newell’s colors and then joins the eight other children aged from 6 to 12 with similar learning disabilities at the Griffa Sports Center used by the first team.
Based in Rosario, some 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, Newell’s are not the only club to launch such an initiative but theirs is a weekly training session that is free for the participants.
Going to training is a highlight of the day for the children, but also for the parents who watch their young players’ progress from the sidelines.
Sometimes the parents also join coaches in holding kids by the hand as they learn to control the ball. Some children shoot into an empty net before celebrating wildly.
Stefano is skilful and a natural footballer.
“He plays in another club with kids that don’t have special needs. Now he’s crazy about this. It’s amazing to have an inclusive school given the times we live in,” said Meroi.
– All champions –
Gonzalo Cejas is the father of Valentino, another of the school’s young athletes.
“I’m happy that he’s playing a sport. He likes playing with the ball. Right away we signed up so he could experience this. There are a lot of Nuls fans in the family,” he said, using the local nickname for Newell’s.
Silvina Casella, whose son Lazaro is in the program, says this is just one of “several sports” they’re going to try to “see how he gets on.”
Despite the fact that the school could tend to their child’s special needs, it took some convincing for Lazaro’s father to get onboard.
The city is split along footballing colors between Newell’s red and black and Rosario Central’s blue and yellow.
“We decided he would come despite his father being a Rosario Central fanatic,” said Casella.
When the session ends, Meroi and the other parents put on their masks. Covid-19 has ravaged Rosario as it has the rest of the Argentina, which has recorded more than 2.8 million cases and over 61,000 deaths.
Sin categoría
Convicted gang member challenges Guatemala’s anti-gang law, citing Human Rights Violations
A member of a criminal gang currently facing sentencing for the crime of extortion has filed a constitutional appeal before Guatemala’s Constitutional Court against the recently approved and enacted Anti-Gang Law.
The appeal, submitted by Dylan Smaily Archila García, argues that the new legislation violates his fundamental human rights and claims there were procedural irregularities during its approval process, according to local Guatemalan media.
Archila García filed the motion just hours after the law took effect. The new legislation, passed by Guatemala’s Congress, increases penalties for crimes linked to gang activity and authorizes the construction of a mega-prison, modeled after El Salvador’s Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT).
Local outlets reported that in his petition, Archila García contends that the approval of the law did not comply with constitutional requirements and requests that the Court issue a ruling to annul the legislation, effectively halting its enforcement.
The appeal further claims that the Anti-Gang Law infringes on due process rights, as it allegedly fails to guarantee a fair criminal trial in which defendants can prove their innocence, undermining legal certainty and judicial security.
Through this legal action, the petitioner seeks to have the law suspended and ultimately struck down by the Constitutional Court, preventing it from being debated again in Congress.
International
Trump warns Hamas that they will be “eradicated” if they break the ceasefire with Israel in Gaza
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, urged Hamas again this Monday to stop the violence and take the terms of the peace plan it promotes with Israel in Gaza, warning that otherwise they could be “eradicated,” although in turn he ruled out the possible presence of soldiers from his country in the Strip.
“We have peace in the Middle East for the first time in history; we reached an agreement with Hamas for which they will be very good, they will behave well and they will be kind. And if not, we will go and we will eradicate them,” the president told the press during a meeting at the White House with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Trump clarified, however, that if that happened “there would be no American soldiers on the ground at all” because it would only be enough to ask several of the countries that supported the peace proposal to take charge of the Palestinian militant group: “Israel would intervene in two minutes,” he added.
“I could tell them to intervene (to the countries) and take care of it. But for now, we haven’t said it. We are going to give (Hamas) a small chance and, hopefully, there will be a little less violence,” said the president, whose plan received the support of Arab and European nations during a peace summit in Egypt.
The American insisted that the militant group “has been very violent, but no longer has the support of Iran. He no longer has the support of anyone. They have to behave well, and if they don’t, they will be eradicated,” he repeated.
Israel bombed several points in Gaza on Sunday and killed dozens of people, in response to what it interpreted as a “violation” of the agreement by Hamas, a week after the entry into force of the ceasefire promoted by the Trump Administration.
The bombings took place after clashes in the Rafah area, located in southern Gaza and controlled by the Israeli Army, which left two Israeli soldiers dead.
After these clashes, Israel claimed to have “resumed the application of the ceasefire”. Shortly after, Trump assured for his part that the truce “is still in force.”
The Republican president had already threatened last week to “kill” Hamas members if they did not comply with the ceasefire agreement with Israel and “continue to kill in Gaza.”
The militant group has mobilized in Gaza to regain control after the start of the ceasefire in the Strip, which has meant the withdrawal of Israeli troops from half of the territory. In the midst of this tense situation, there have also been clashes between Hamas and other local militias.
Several videos show summary executions of people whom Palestinian militants accuse of collaborating with Israel, which according to local sources, have occurred in Gaza City.
Sin categoría
Trump files $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times
U.S. President Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times, which denounced the legal move on Tuesday as an attempt to silence the press.
In this new stage of his presidency, the 79-year-old Republican leader has escalated his long-standing hostility toward traditional media, repeatedly attacking critical journalists, limiting their access, or taking them to court.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Florida, seeks $15 billion in damages, along with additional punitive compensation “in an amount to be determined at trial.”
The New York Times had reported last week that Trump threatened legal action over articles concerning a birthday letter allegedly sent by him to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The letter featured a typed message inside the outline of a nude woman. Trump denies that the accompanying signature is his.
“For too long, The New York Times has been allowed to lie, defame, and slander me freely — and that ends NOW!” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
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