With the Dubai World Cup Carnival getting under way in a week's time, the Jebel Ali Mile Prep on Friday has attracted just six entries. Yet, we could be in for a treat.
Just A Penny heads the weights as he returns to the Jebel Ali Racecourse, where he has recorded all seven of his victories across distances ranging from 1,200-1,950 metres.
“He has been training very well and is in great form at home. So we are expecting him to run a big race," his handler Doug Watson said.
The six-year-old son of Kodiac has to carry 60 kilograms, but the UAE champion trainer said: “He is a big horse, so carrying the weight should not be an issue.
"He is also going to improve - condition-wise - for the run in what is the first realistic option we have had for him at Jebel Ali this season."
Watson has set his sights on next year's Jebel Ali Mile and Jebel Ali Stakes for Just A Penny to compete in. "This has been his planned comeback with those races in mind," he added.
But the Jebel Ali Mile Prep is a wide-open race, with any of the six horses having a chance to claim the Rated Conditions prize. Just A Penny's challengers include Musabah Al Muhairi’s pair of Zainhom and Takatul, Ahmad bin Harmash’s duo of Rocket Power and Ennobled Friend, and the Nicholas Bachalard-trained Albernathy.
Rocket Power, in particular, is to be wary of.
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The five-year-old Kyllachy gelding has won over 1,200m at Jebel Ali. He will be ridden by Connor Beasley, Bin Harmarsh’s retained jockey, who said his mount relished the racetrack having won both his previous starts here.
“This is a much better contest," Beasley conceded, "but he is in good form and should be thereabouts."
Al Muhairi’s runners carry the silks of Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid, with Zainhom being ridden by Dane O’Neill and Takatul coming under Ben Curtis.
Meanwhile, Albernathy returns to his home track having finished in third place twice at Meydan this season.
“We are trying blinkers on him,” Bachalard said. “He has run well in both starts at Meydan this season, but we thought we would try something a bit different - thus the headgear."
Jebeli Ali's seven-race card meeting, which starts at 1.45pm, is not the year-ending meeting. Sharjah is set to host six races on Saturday.
The highlights of the meeting, which gets under way at 2.15pm, include the Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Cup - a Rated Handicap for thoroughbreds - and the Crown Prince of Sharjah Cup for Purebred Arabians with Prestige status.
MATCH INFO
Chelsea 4 (Mount 18',Werner 44', Hudson-Odoi 49', Havertz 85')
Morecambe 0
The biog
Born: Kuwait in 1986
Family: She is the youngest of seven siblings
Time in the UAE: 10 years
Hobbies: audiobooks and fitness: she works out every day, enjoying kickboxing and basketball
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
Electoral College Victory
Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate.
Popular Vote Tally
The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.
COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
The Vines - In Miracle Land
Two stars
Company%20Profile
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COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
What is hepatitis?
Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver, which can lead to fibrosis (scarring), cirrhosis or liver cancer.
There are 5 main hepatitis viruses, referred to as types A, B, C, D and E.
Hepatitis C is mostly transmitted through exposure to infective blood. This can occur through blood transfusions, contaminated injections during medical procedures, and through injecting drugs. Sexual transmission is also possible, but is much less common.
People infected with hepatitis C experience few or no symptoms, meaning they can live with the virus for years without being diagnosed. This delay in treatment can increase the risk of significant liver damage.
There are an estimated 170 million carriers of Hepatitis C around the world.
The virus causes approximately 399,000 fatalities each year worldwide, according to WHO.
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Stars:Robert Pattinson
Director:Matt Reeves
Rating: 5/5
