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F1 title fight is increasingly focused on McLaren but Verstappen still hopeful

JEDDAH: Ahead of Sunday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, this Formula 1 season is looking like McLaren vs. McLaren. Still, defending champion Max Verstappen of Red Bull says he hasn’t lost hope. McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are the only ones to consistently have the pace through the first four rounds of the championship. Norris has a three-point lead but admits he isn’t at his best — though he had the fastest time of the day in practice on Friday — while Piastri has momentum after winning in Bahrain last week. Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes have all had their moments but none has been a consistent challenger, as McLaren’s 58-point constructors’ championship lead shows. Friday practice Norris went fastest in the second practice session, while Yuki Tsunoda crashed to continue his difficult start with Red Bull.

Morocco ex-football club chair denies seizing villa in drug case

CASABLANCA: The former president of Morocco’s most successful football club maintained in court Friday that he legally acquired a villa he is accused of seizing from a convicted Malian drug trafficker dubbed the “Escobar of the Sahara.” Said Naciri, who was chairman of Casablanca club Wydad AC and president of the city’s prefectural council, is being tried alongside the head of a regional council in eastern Morocco, Abdennabi Bioui, in a vast drug trafficking case related to the jailed kingpin. Both defendants — former officials of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), a member of the country’s ruling coalition — have been in custody since the end of 2023, and face charges of “possession, marketing, and export of drugs,” as well as corruption and related offenses. Naciri was accused by the Malian trafficker, Ahmed Ben Brahim, of having wrongfully dispossessed him of a villa in an upscale Casablanca neighborhood, one of Naciri’s lawyers told AFP. But Naciri denied the allegation in court on Friday, saying he legally purchased the villa though a real estate company in 2017 before finalizing the acquisition in 2019. “I am taking advantage of my hearing before the court to refute the false allegations being made,” he told the court, presenting documents and testimony that he said supported his version of events. The trial is the first in Morocco to see prominent political figures accused in a drug trafficking case. It opened last May, and involves 25 people alleged to have played roles in the trafficking network of Ben Brahim, who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence. Ben Brahim, whose complaint initiated the proceedings against Naciri and Bioui, accuses the pair of helping him smuggle drugs to elsewhere in

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Morocco Sport News

F1 title fight is increasingly focused on McLaren but Verstappen still hopeful

Morocco ex-football club chair denies seizing villa in drug case

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