The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) announced Sunday evening the postponement of the first leg matches of the AFC Champions League Round of 16 and the first leg matches of the AFC Champions League 2 (West Zone), which were scheduled to be played in several Middle Eastern countries during the first week of March. This decision comes amidst the escalating security and military conflict in the Middle East.

According to a statement issued by the AFC the matches scheduled for March 2nd and 3rd in the UAE and Qatar, involving clubs from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Iran, have been postponed to a later date “due to the rapidly changing situation in the region.” The statement emphasized that matches in the eastern regions of the continent will proceed as originally scheduled.

The AFC indicated that it is closely monitoring the security situation and remains committed to ensuring the safety of players, teams, and fans above all other sporting considerations. It confirmed that the new match dates will be announced later through official channels.

Arab countries affected by sporting suspensions

In the same context, some Arab countries witnessed modifications or partial suspensions of their local sporting schedules and public events due to the ongoing security tensions:

• Qatar: The Qatar Stars League announced the postponement of two matches from the Doha Bank Stars League until further notice, in an effort to ensure public safety amid escalating regional tensions. • The UAE and Saudi Arabia: Local club matches and sporting events scheduled for early March were postponed due to travel and security concerns, with some clubs temporarily suspending their competitive activities pending a more stable situation.

• Kuwait announced the suspension of all local sporting competitions until further notice, including football tournaments and other popular sports, amid the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran, in order to protect athletes and fans.

Teams and athletes in countries such as Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon also faced difficulties in organizing sporting activities or traveling during the escalation, especially with some airlines suspending or withdrawing their services over the region. This led to the postponement or rescheduling of some local matches for logistical and security reasons.

Uncertainty and resumption dates

With the security situation continuing to deteriorate in the Middle East, football and other sports in the region remain in a state of uncertainty regarding the resumption of normal activities. Reports indicate that sports federations are considering alternative options, such as holding matches in a centralized location in a neutral country or rescheduling them for a later week if the security situation improves.

Sports in Asia and the Arab region continue to face unprecedented challenges due to the current situation. The scheduling of major competitions remains contingent on improved stability in the region and a return to safer levels of travel and security, so that the sporting events calendar is not disrupted seasonally.

Featured image via the Canary

The UK’s RAF Akrotiri air base in Cyprus has had to issue a security alert in the early hours of Tuesday 3 March 2026. The Daily Mirror reported that:

According to the Cyprus Mail, a security alert was briefly issued at the UK’s Akrotiri RAF base in Cyprus early on Tuesday.

Just before 8am, staff at the base were warned for the third time since Sunday night of an “ongoing security threat” and told to return home and remain indoors until further notice.

Personnel were also instructed to stay away from windows, take shelter behind solid furniture, and wait for further updates.

The alert came just hours after Keir Starmer again lied that the UK is not involved in attacks on Iran, despite allowing US warplanes to use RAF bases for such attacks.

More than sixty flights to and from Cyprus had already been cancelled before this latest attack. Iran will consider UK assets a legitimate target because of Starmer’s collaboration in the illegal US-Israel attacks on its cities, hospitals and leadership.

Starmer continues to endanger British civilians, service personnel and interests.

Featured image via the Canary

Around 3.8 million adults experienced domestic abuse in the last year in England and Wales (ONS), and one in four of us will experience it in our lifetime. These figures still barely capture the number of people currently living in fear across our towns, cities and rural communities, as too many domestic abuse crimes still go unreported.

At Hestia we see the devastating impact of domestic abuse every day. Many live with abuse for years before being able to reach out for help or before anyone around them notices.

This is why we need a whole-society approach to tackling domestic abuse. We need charities, businesses and government pulling in the same direction, creating the networks, services and safe spaces that help people escape abuse and rebuild their lives.

Community solutions in action

Hestia’s Safe Spaces programme, launched in 2020 as part of its UK Says No More campaign, demonstrates what cross-sector collaboration can deliver. Working with banks, pharmacies, and other community-based partners, Safe Spaces creates simple, accessible places for people to seek help.

Participating organisations such as TSB, Boots and others provide a discreet room within their branches or stores. These are private and confidential areas in high street locations, where anyone experiencing domestic abuse can access support. Inside a Safe Space, survivors can connect with specialist services, make phone calls to loved ones or lawyers, access online support, and take other steps on their journey towards safety. For many, this can be lifechanging, even lifesaving.

Born out of the pandemic, there are now around 4,300 Safe Spaces across the UK. We aim to reach 5,000 by the end of 2026. But the goal isn’t just more locations – it’s ensuring they are visible, trusted and genuinely accessible. We want Safe Spaces on every high street and in every community, including remote and rural areas. To do that, we need sustained commitment from government, alongside our corporate partners.

Halving violence against women and girls

The Government’s Freedom from Violence and Abuse strategy, published in December, laid out its plan to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. It rightly recognises the need for a whole-society response to domestic abuse.

Safe Spaces is exactly the kind of model the strategy calls for: charities and businesses combining their strengths to create practical, everyday support for survivors.

To make Safe Spaces universal and genuinely accessible, government must play its part. That means encouraging collaboration, removing barriers to partnership and providing the stability needed for long-term planning.

Above all, it requires sustained investment. You cannot build trust between partners or survivors on year-to-year funding. If Safe Spaces are to become a permanent feature of the UK’s response to domestic abuse, they must be openly backed and properly resourced.

Domestic abuse affects every community. It deserves a response from every part of society. When government, business and charities work together, we can ensure that anyone experiencing abuse gets help when and where they need it most.

Find Safe Spaces in your constituency

Visit uksaysnomore.org/safespaces to find your nearest Safe Spaces or look out for this logo on your local high street. 

How to access a safe space

1. Look for the Safe Spaces logo displayed in participating pharmacies, banks and other venues.
2. Ask a member of staff at the counter to use the Safe Space. You do not need to explain why.
3. You will be shown to a private room.
4. Inside, you can use a phone to call a helpline, contact a friend or family member, or access specialist support information online.
5. You can leave at any time. The service is free and confidential.

While Whitehall sketches out long‑term reforms, the small frontline charities that actually deal with real‑time crises are vulnerable; and with them goes the State’s unofficial safety net for veteran care.

Small charities are the quiet engine of veterans’ care, and that engine is close to stalling. They’re absorbing soaring demand, complex cases, and suffering from restrictive funding models that reward appearance and brand over outcomes. They’re also carrying the heaviest burdens created by ‘client dumping’, because they are the last ones who ever say no. If these charities fall, the entire system will feel the shock. This suggested scenario will be exacerbated without the immediate introduction of an enforceable Veterans’ Charter that protects standards, responsibilities, and accountability across the system.

Signposting cannot replace expertise or actual delivery – and big reforms cannot compensate for the collapse of frontline capacity. This is not a marginal concern: it is an existential threat to veteran care.

I recently read a quote by Vincent Van Gogh who wrote that “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together”. Certainly this is true in the charity world where many of the achievements of ‘big beasts’ – i.e. the household name organisations – are underpinned by the actions of myriad smaller charity operators. The planned system will collapse without them.

Is this a reality? In its first annual Charity Sector Risk Assessment, published in September 2025, the Charity Commission highlighted financial sustainability as one of the most pressing issues facing the sector. The fact is that more charities are closing, at a time when increasing numbers of people depend on their services. Three months earlier, research published by Civil Society confirmed that nearly half of small charities feared they would have to close within the year.

So what will this mean to those at the bottom of the pile? As I write I’m mindful of a veteran who recently reached out for help. In 2013 she had been arrested by service police and released without charge over her time in Afghanistan. She said, “I still lie awake every night wondering if there will be another knock at the door”. She served for 24 years and has a chest full of medals, but now understands that if that knock comes, again she is utterly on her own. Her words were very chilling and absolutely crystalised the case for a formal Veterans’ Charter.

The belief that being a veteran qualifies individuals for a lifetime of care is a fallacy that rings hollow for her every night. What are her rights? Where is the support? As a veteran without any obvious maladies or problems, will the latest ‘OP’ care for people like her? Into which box will the ‘one size fits all’ drop-in or call centre OP-erator put her? To whom will she be ‘referred’? Who will be responsible if she is let down… again?

She is but one example and the ‘sound of silence’ from those in power is making things worse for people like her. The ongoing possibility of historic prosecutions is creating a climate of uncertainty that places significant psychological and social strain on many former service personnel, underscoring the need for a clear and protective Veterans’ Charter. This has to stop, because we are already seeing the human cost of such abandonment . These veterans are human beings with families. They served their country as part of a team, but when facing this fight they are on their own. Without defined policy boundaries or consistent safeguards, veterans find themselves living with chronic anxiety, reactivated trauma, and a persistent fear that actions taken under the rules and expectations of the time may be retrospectively judged.

The moral case for a Veterans’ Charter, which would provide the clarity, assurance, and institutional commitment necessary to mitigate these harms and ensure that those who served are treated with fairness, consistency, and respect, is utterly clear.

Hers isn’t a problem that can be solved with a grant, a badge, an offer of accommodation, a prosthetic or a holiday. It’s an unexpected plunge into a vortex of indefinite uncertainty and anxiety. Referral is the right course of action if it leads to a valid source of practical help, but when that help doesn’t exist, it’s just buck passing and can never be an effective answer. This decorated officer’s case not only illustrates serious gaps in the practical approach to future care; it also exposes the moral anomalies in government/veteran relations. 

The safety net provided by the smaller charities in the Veterans’ world, once strong and flexible, is unravelling fast as, due to consistently increasing long-term costs, small charities become increasingly unable to fulfil their de facto backstop role. The language of gratitude – while knowing, privately, that the system cannot pay the bill – is the instrument that turns the looming crisis of the current charity-dependent model into an unmanaged decline‑dependent model, with the worst possible outcome being that that people will steer clear of defence (i.e. the armed forces) as a career. From a pragmatic, if not moral, perspective this should surely be an incentive to build something safer, fairer and, in the long run, more effective contributor to the defence of nation?

So what does the everyday risk look like from our perspective, as an operational charity delivering crisis support? The small, specialist frontline charities that Veterans Aid deals with – the ones that step in when no one else will – are reaching the limits of their endurance. Costs for housing, detox, and crisis support have soared; resources have not. These organisations have filled the gaps for decades, quietly absorbing risk that rightly belongs to the State. But that goodwill reservoir is almost dry. The whole issue has been exacerbated by the blatant ‘dumping’ of complex or costly cases on smaller charities by various agencies purporting to deliver services for veterans.

The smaller delivery charities cannot operate on goodwill and don’t have the capacity to wade through the labyrinthine processes involved in raising funds from government or other major funders. To make matters worse, our exposure to current funding models clearly illustrates that they do not reflect the realities of running a frontline operational charity in the 21^st Century.

If this very real situation happens, there will be many who assume that the large-brand military charities (the ‘big beasts’) will step up to the plate. Many do superb work, but during my extensive exposure to the sector I have observed that they rarely get involved in real-time crises. Furthermore money ( i.e. fundraising ), which is their major activity, is often peripheral in terms of real life needs. Veterans, and their families, who increasingly press Ministers about what support is in place, are beginning to realise that the Armed Forces Covenant isn’t a guarantee of anything. This lack of foresight represents a huge risk of reputational damage to any government adhering to the myth that the Armed Forces Covenant has teeth.

Without an effective frontline, I struggle to see how the remaining top-down support will be able to cope with the sheer rapidity and complex nature of the problems that are frequently presented to it. In the case quoted above, Veterans Aid took immediate, positive action. We linked her to a therapist within the hour and are moving quickly to get appropriate legal support to explore and clarify her position. Thanks to this swift and practical intervention she will be able to continue working and contributing to society; but this support should be a basic right, not something offered serendipitously because the veteran in distress had the good fortune to find her way to an organisation prepared to help her. If the smaller delivery charities disappear, through no fault of their own, then veterans will face a hopeless abyss. I wonder what that will do for recruiting.

The CSJ’s latest Rough Sleeping Tracker figures reveal that 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night last autumn, the highest number ever recorded: an increase of 96 per cent since 2021 and 171 per cent since 2010. Inevitably, some of these will be veterans.

The risk of doing nothing is real; rising homelessness, spiralling costs, and a moral failure that I believe no government should be willing to tolerate. The buffer that once quietly protected Britain’s veterans is very fragile. If it goes, the chaos won’t fall on charities; it will fall on Whitehall.

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The government has recently announced a US-UK pharmaceuticals deal, promising that the UK will be given priority for new medicines and become a “life sciences superpower”. In reality, the deal looks set to cost the NHS billions each year for little to no discernible benefit. That’s why I’m joining patients’ groups and experts in calling for a proper debate before any deal is signed. 

Before entering Parliament, I worked for almost 20 years in the pharmaceutical regulation and compliance industry. I know very well the pressures facing the sector, and all the challenges that can prevent potentially life-saving drugs from reaching the market. There aren’t many MPs who have come to the Commons from that industry, but you don’t need two decades of experience to see what is happening here: Big Pharma companies, with the backing of Trump, are trying to strong-arm our government into accepting massive price rises. 

Under the terms of this deal, England’s medicines watchdog, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), will be forced to raise its threshold for assessing the ‘cost effectiveness’ of new medicines by 25 per cent. That means paying more for medicines – and accepting worse value for money. The government is also seeking to ram through legislation that would give government ministers the power to raise the value-for-money threshold, removing NICE’s independence over such decisions.

Worse, the Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed to me that it will seek to impose this dangerous change through the back door. This means MPs are unlikely to have the chance to debate or vote on changes that would expose the NHS further to corporate lobbying for higher prices. 

At the same time, the deal with Trump will dismantle NHS safeguards against overspending on medicines. The costs of making these drugs haven’t risen by some similar proportion – research by Global Justice Now shows that of the drugs that are costliest to the NHS, the majority could be manufactured for less than 10 per cent of the price pharma companies charge the NHS. 

The government has so far confirmed that the deal will cost £1bn over its first three years, to be taken from existing NHS funding, and they’ve conceded that costs will then grow year-on-year. With a commitment to double spending on medicines to 0.6 per cent of the UK’s GDP, that would mean an eye-watering £9bn extra each year.   

The health economist Professor Karl Claxton has calculated that diverting even £1bn from existing NHS budgets could cause over 4,500 additional deaths every year. He predicts the greatest impact on reduced survival would be for patients with cancer, circulatory, respiratory, and gastrointestinal diseases.  

Our government has agreed to this deal largely because of the threats Trump is levying on the UK: a 100 per cent tariff on our drug exports if we don’t play ball. But even on these terms, the government’s approach is woefully short-sighted. In exchange for permanently slicing away our safeguards against NHS overspending, we’ll get just three years of tariff-free pharma exports. With industry figures already reporting that the Trump administration is planning yet another raid on NHS budgets, it’s even harder to see the strategy behind the concessions we’re making. 

And for all the talk from the Labour government about life sciences investment, there are no signs or guarantees that any such investment will be forthcoming. One big pharma company, AstraZeneca, has already announced that it will maintain its freeze on any UK investments despite this deal. 

Ultimately, the refusal to allow democratic oversight on this deal should worry us all. This deal has been pushed through with no parliamentary input, and both politicians and the public have been left in the dark as to the deal’s full text and the government’s assessment of the likely impacts on the NHS.

The government is conducting this deal in secrecy because it knows it cannot explain to voters, in plain English, why it is letting Trump hold the NHS budget hostage. Labour knows that this deal could badly damage public finances and the NHS. That is why it is preventing MPs from debating it. 

I call on all MPs from all parties to join me in demanding transparency over the terms of the UK-US pharma deal. The public deserves to see both the deal itself and the impact assessment, which the government is withholding. 

With such dire possible consequences for the health and lives of NHS patients, Parliament must have the final say over whether we’ll accept Trump and big pharma’s bullying. If we give in this time around, they’ll only be coming back for more.

Iqbal Mohamed is the Independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley