Pumas change 3 for title-chasing Springboks after thrashing Wallabies

ENT

Pumas change 3 for title-chasing Springboks after thrashing Wallabies

2024-09-20 04:17 Last Updated At：04:20

SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO, Argentina (AP) — Argentina changed three of its pack and could debut a tighthead prop against title-chasing South Africa in the Rugby Championship on Saturday.

The Pumas handed Australia its biggest defeat, 67-27, in Santa Fe two weeks ago and recorded its biggest win over a tier one team.

But the Springboks are the only unbeaten team and can clinch their first championship title since 2019 by not losing to Argentina in Santiago del Estero.

An Argentina upset win would set up a title decider between the teams in the last round next week in Nelspruit.

Pumas coach Felipe Contepomi has rotated in locks Pedro Rubiolo and Franco Molina for veterans Guido Petti and Tomas Lavanini, and made Joaquin Oviedo the starting No. 8 after a two-try performance off the bench, ahead of Juan Martin Gonzalez, who also bagged a try.

The backs were unchanged while the reserves were not.

The Pumas lost their two main backup props, Eduardo Bello, to a torn right ACL, and Mayco Vivas, who was unavailable. They have replaced them with uncapped tighthead Pedro Delgado, who is from Santiago del Estero, and Ignacio Calles, who has three previous caps. Calles was playing for Pau in France when the Pumas were crushing the Wallabies.

If they both get on, they will likely oppose Springboks Vincent Koch (56 caps) and Gerhard Steenekamp (six).

Delgado, aged 27, helped Dogos XV win the Super Rugby Americas in June. He was picked ahead of Racing 92's Lucio Sordoni.

Contepomi called Delgado “a pleasant surprise” in that he joined the squad on short notice last week and adapted quickly. “It is a great challenge for him,” the coach added. Captain and hooker Julian Montoya said, “We have a lot of confidence that he'll have a great game.”

The reserves returned to a traditional 5-3 split, from 6-2, to accommodate a third back, center-wing Matias Moroni, who missed both Australia tests due to a muscle tear.

Argentina: Juan Cruz Mallia, Bautista Delguy, Lucio Cinti, Santiago Chocobares, Mateo Carreras, Tomas Albornoz, Gonzalo Bertranou; Joaquin Oviedo, Marcos Kremer, Pablo Matera, Joel Sclavi, Julian Montoya (captain), Thomas Gallo. Reserves: Ignacio Ruiz, Ignacio Calles, Pedro Delgado, Guido Petti, Juan Martin Gonzalez, Gonzalo Garcia, Santiago Carreras, Matias Moroni.

AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby

Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5, with more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 19:29 Last Updated At：19:30

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and injuring at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany for nearly two decades, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The governor of the surrounding state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose from two to five and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.

Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had yet to come across a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.

“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, " Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters. “Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market.

Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on X.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.