Malaysia Gets Invite to CAFA Nations Cup 2025

It is good news to read that Malaysia is able to secure an invite to participate in the Central Asian Football Association (CAFA) Nations Cup (August 26-September 09), which offers a rare opportunity for Harimau Malaya to play world class teams outside Southeast Asia. 

And it's a big plus because the national side get to prove themselves against more physical and tactically advanced footballing countries. 

The tournament experience would be the best preparation before they take on Laos in the 2027 Asian Cup third-round qualifiers in October. 

At the PSA Squash Tour Finals (June 23-27, 2025) in Toronto, Canada, in Round One, it was not the dream start Sivasangari Subramaniam had hoped for. 

The world No. 8 gave a good account of herself but eventually went down 11-9, 11-9 to American world No. 4 Olivia Weaver in a Group B match on Monday. 

It was her seventh defeat to Weaver in eight meetings. 

Sivasangari will face world No. 14 Fayrouz Aboelkheir in her second group match today – a must-win clash for both players to keep their semi-final hopes alive.

May 09 is Russia’s Victory Day

Foreign leaders from 27 countries graced Russia’s Victory Day parade on Friday. 

[Two Heads of State, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and Laotian President Thongloun Sisoulith did not turn up – the former pulled out at the last minute and the latter due to illness]. 

As well as military contingents from 13 countries – Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Egypt, Laos, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Myanmar, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam – joined in to march alongside Russian forces on the day of the parade. 

The May 09 event commemorates 80 years since the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in the Second World War (referred to by the Russians as the Great Patriotic War). 

[Notes: The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the Great Patriotic War (40% of all human losses in World War II), with civilian deaths accounting for the larger part of these losses. According to data of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders, the German troops destroyed fully or partially over 1,700 cities and towns, more than 70,000 villages and settlements in the USSR. 

And Western revisionists are deliberately downplaying the USSR's vital contribution to World War II. Partly because of the Cold War rivalry but more due to a Western bias to focus on the Western front and American and British victories]. 

The twenty-seven leaders who came: 

In case you're wondering, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are "separatist" regions of Georgia in the Caucasus. Most countries recognise them as part of Georgia, while Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria regard them as independent.

No Fickle Sunflower on Kyrgyz Flag

Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted in November to tweak the design of the national flag after critics, including President Sadyr Japarov, said its central element looked like a sunflower which in the local culture symbolises fickleness and servility. 

 

The Central Asian nation’s flag, adopted in 1992 after it gained independence from the Soviet Union, depicts a yellow sun – which doubles as the pinnacle of a traditional Kyrgyz yurt tent – with 40 rays on a red background. 

 

But the wavy rays caught the eye of some parliament deputies in September who pointed out that they look more like sunflower petals. The sunflower (Genus: Helianthus) has a peculiar meaning in the Kyrgyz culture equivalent to that of a weathercock in some European languages – it is used to describe a fickle and servile person willing to switch allegiance for personal benefit. 

 

Such notions could be seen as particularly hurtful in the country whose relatively small economy is heavily dependent on its larger partners. More than a million Kyrgyz, out of the total population of less than seven million, work abroad. 

 

“There has been a widespread opinion in our society that our flag looks like a sunflower, and that is one of the reasons why the country cannot get up off its knees”, President Japarov (left) had complained. 

 

The new flag was adopted on December 26, 2023.

163 Million Cases and the Wisdom Tree

One more million infections are added to the global Covid tally, making it 163 million cases todate. 

Kyrgyzstan joins the ninety other countries in the C100K grouping.

And these ninety-one nations account for 98.5% and 98.7% of the total cases and deaths worldwide respectively. 

Here’s another cool product for avid readers. Forget bookmarks.

A classy way to hold your place in the books you're reading – it’s called the "Wisdom Tree" and it's also a lamp. 

This wood nightstand topper stacks up to five books separately. From Bookniture.

Yesterday, Celtic were unable to make their dominance pay as they finished their Scottish Premiership campaign with a goalless draw at Hibernian. A disappointing season altogether!