DOHA // The team of Sumaya Al Meshaiei, Shamma Al Muhairi and Shaikha Al Rumaithi won the UAE's first gold medal of the Arab Games on Wednesday in the women's 25m pistol team event. Al Meshaiei also won silver for the UAE in the individual event, with Al Muhairi and Al Rumaithi fourth and fifth, respectively.
Ayecha Al Balooshi added to the Emirates' success with a silver in the women's 58kg weightlifting category, coming just behind Tunisia's Nadia Hosni.
The track and field events at the Games start Thursday at Khalifa Stadium in Doha.
The events are doubling up as a qualifying competition for the 2012 Olympics, which is an added incentive for the 11 UAE athletes taking part.
Omar Al Salfa, the bronze medallist in the 200m at July's Asian Athletics Championships in Japan, is the country's top medal hope. He begins his campaign on Saturday.
Betihem Belayneh and Alia Saeed are in action today in the women's 1,500m final.
Elsewhere, Khalid Yousuf shot Wednesday's best round, a one-over-par 73, as the UAE seized the early lead in the golf competition being played at the Doha Golf Club.
With Ahmed Al Musharrekh (75) and Faris Al Mazroui (84) also contributing to the score, the UAE team carded an impressive combined gross score of 232, taking a one-shot lead over Bahrain (233) after the end of the first round.
Egypt and hosts Qatar were tied for third on 236, three strokes ahead of Morocco in the 72-hole stroke-play event where the three best scores in a team of four are recorded.
Playing solid golf from tee to green, Yousuf created a string of birdie opportunities and could have gone even lower but missed a couple of close-range putts.
"The important thing is that they all combined as a team. And if they can keep the momentum going, they can go the full distance," Chris Vallender, the UAE national coach, said.
"The course is set up nicely and if you putt well you can post good numbers.
"I am pretty pleased the way the boys are striking the ball. The confidence is there and let's see how things shape up over the next three days."
The competition has attracted leading amateur golfers from 10 countries as part of the Arab Games, a regional multi-sport event, which is held every four years since 1953.
The UAE moved up to ninth in the medals table after Wednesday, with nine in total (one gold, four silver and four bronze).
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.
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How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
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Armies of Sand
By Kenneth Pollack (Oxford University Press)
T20 World Cup Qualifier
October 18 – November 2
Opening fixtures
Friday, October 18
ICC Academy: 10am, Scotland v Singapore, 2.10pm, Netherlands v Kenya
Zayed Cricket Stadium: 2.10pm, Hong Kong v Ireland, 7.30pm, Oman v UAE
UAE squad
Ahmed Raza (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Rameez Shahzad, Darius D’Silva, Mohammed Usman, Mohammed Boota, Zawar Farid, Ghulam Shabber, Junaid Siddique, Sultan Ahmed, Imran Haider, Waheed Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Zahoor Khan
Players out: Mohammed Naveed, Shaiman Anwar, Qadeer Ahmed
Players in: Junaid Siddique, Darius D’Silva, Waheed Ahmed
Match info
Uefa Champions League Group F
Manchester City v Hoffenheim, midnight (Wednesday, UAE)
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