Iraq football legend Adnan Dirjal appointed minister of youth and sports in new cabinet

Adnan Dirjal, one of Iraq's most celebrated footballers, has been appointed as minister of youth and sports in the country’s new cabinet.

The former national team captain, who also managed his country, takes his place in the administration after Mustafa Al Kadhimi was voted in as Prime Minister on Wednesday night.

Dirjal, 60, is expected to prove a popular appointment given his status in Iraq.

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Born in Baghdad, the former central defender rose to prominence with Al Zawraa in the late 1970s, helping his team win the 1978/79 Iraqi league and cup double. He then spent trophy-laden spells at both Al Talaba and Al Rasheed, capturing domestic and regional titles at the latter.

However, Dirjal's success was not confined to club football. In 1979, he was part of the Iraq team which secured a first Gulf Cup title. Staged in Baghdad, the hosts won all six of their matches. Dirjal would go on to lift the Gulf Cup twice more, in 1984 and 1988, while also representing his country at three successive Olympic Games between 1980 and 1988. He famously scored the goal against South Korea in March 1984 which ensured their qualification for the Los Angeles Games that summer.

Dirjal was a key component of the team which captured gold at the 1982 Asian Games in India, where Iraq defeated Kuwait in the final. It remains their only gold at the event. Yet injury robbed him of the chance of competing at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico – Iraq’s first and, as of yet, only appearance at a global finals.

Dirjal retired from the national team in 1990 and, with 121 caps, sits third on the country’s all-time list for appearances. Only Hussein Saeed, a former teammate, and 2007 Asian Cup-winning captain Younis Mahmoud have more.

Dirjal would manage Iraq not long after, from 1991-1993, while he also served as secretary general of the Iraqi Football Association from 1990-1993 before embarking on a coaching career in club football.

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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WHAT IS GRAPHENE?

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

British Grand Prix free practice times in the third and final session at Silverstone on Saturday (top five):

1. Lewis Hamilton (GBR/Mercedes) 1:28.063 (18 laps)

2. Sebastian Vettel (GER/Ferrari) 1:28.095 (14)

3. Valtteri Bottas (FIN/Mercedes) 1:28.137 (20)

4. Kimi Raikkonen (FIN/Ferrari) 1:28.732 (15)

5. Nico Hulkenberg (GER/Renault) 1:29.480 (14)

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F1 The Movie

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Director: Joseph Kosinski

Rating: 4/5

COMPANY%20PROFILE

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