DUBAI: The underlying tensions between the cricket boards of India and Pakistan flared into a diplomatic spat within the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) on Tuesday after ACC Chairman Mohsin Naqvi rejected a demand to hand over the Asia Cup 2025 trophy. Sources told Geo News that Naqvi insisted the silverware must be collected by the Indian skipper in person. The contentious issue arose during a routine ACC meeting in Dubai, chaired by Naqvi—who also heads the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB)—where BCCI Vice-President Rajeev Shukla repeatedly pressed for the trophy handover. An Agenda Item Becomes a Sticking Point Naqvi initially responded…
Author: Raja Zahid Khanzada
LONDON: Britain’s Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood announced on Monday that the government plans to significantly tighten the rules governing how migrants can settle permanently, making applicants prove their value to society, including demonstrating a “high standard” of English proficiency. This policy shift represents the latest effort by the ruling Labour Party to counter the rising influence of the populist Reform UK party, whose anti-immigration agenda has dominated public discourse and pressured Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to adopt a more hardline approach. New Standards for ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ Most migrants are currently eligible to apply for “Indefinite Leave to…
LONDON: British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has issued a stark warning regarding the state of ethnic relations in the United Kingdom, asserting that anti-Muslim hatred has reached a scale she has “never known in my lifetime.” Her comments were delivered at a fringe event during the Labour Party’s annual conference, hosted by Lord Michael Gove. Recounting her own history with abuse, Mahmood said: “When I was a child, I think I was seven or eight years old, that’s the first time I heard the word ‘Paki’ [a racial slur]… so it’s not as if I haven’t been racially abused before.”…
Iran confirmed on Tuesday that 120 of its nationals are being deported from the United States under President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown and are scheduled to fly home this week. The move highlights a rare instance of cooperation between the two long-time adversaries on consular affairs. Hossein Noushabadi, a foreign ministry consular affairs official, told the Tasnim news agency, “120 people should be deported and flown home over the next couple of days.” He added that the “US immigration service has decided to deport around 400 Iranians currently in the United States, most of them after entering illegally.” …
WASHINGTON, D.C.: U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed an extraordinary gathering of hundreds of senior officers summoned from around the world near Washington on Tuesday, stating that the American military must urgently fix “decades of decay” within its ranks. The wide-ranging 45-minute speech comes at a time of escalating controversy for the military, marked by President Donald Trump’s deployment of troops in Democratic-run U.S. cities and his order for lethal strikes against small, alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. The President has also commanded strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and Tehran-backed Yemeni rebels since taking office. The End of the…
LONDON/GAZA: Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister whose political legacy remains heavily tarnished by the 2003 Iraq War, is poised to take a leading role in Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan for Gaza. The move is expected to intensify the long-standing controversy surrounding his involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. Blair, 72, is reportedly set to join the board of an international transitional authority in the Palestinian territory. He is credited alongside Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner with crafting the US leader’s comprehensive plan for the region. Experience Versus Credibility “I wouldn’t say that Trump anointed him, it’s that…
SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence developer, is facing mounting criticism from its paying ChatGPT subscribers following reports that users are being switched to “more conservative” AI models without their consent during sensitive conversations. Over the past week, online forums like Reddit have been flooded with complaints. The core of the frustration lies with new safety guardrails introduced this month, which automatically reroute discussions away from the user’s chosen, high-capability model—such as GPT-4o or GPT-5—whenever emotionally charged or legally delicate topics are detected. Subscribers argue that this practice fundamentally undermines the premium service they are paying for. A significant…
A major fire at South Korea’s National Information Resources Service (NIRS) data centre in Daejeon has knocked hundreds of critical government services offline, raising urgent alarms about systemic failures in the country’s digital backup infrastructure. Investigators suspect an expired battery manufactured by LG Energy Solution triggered the blaze, placing renewed focus on the infrastructure resilience of one of the world’s most technologically advanced nations. Widespread Disruption and Slow Recovery The fire, which erupted during routine maintenance on Friday, immediately disrupted approximately 647 government systems, including services managed by the Korea Customs, the National Police Agency, and the National…
Artificial intelligence (AI) firm OpenAI has announced the launch of parental controls for its ChatGPT platform on both web and mobile. The action comes on the heels of a troubling lawsuit filed by the parents of a teenager who died by suicide, alleging that the AI chatbot had coached their son on methods of self-harm. The Microsoft-backed company stated that the new controls allow parents and teenagers to mutually opt-in for stronger safeguards. This is achieved by linking their accounts, where the parental controls activate only if an invitation from one party is accepted by the other, ensuring a consensual…
HANGZHOU, CHINA: Chinese AI developer DeepSeek has released its latest “experimental” large language model, which it claims is both more efficient to train and boasts improved capabilities for processing long sequences of text compared to its predecessors. This technical step highlights the fierce competition driving innovation in the global AI landscape. The Hangzhou-based company referred to DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp as an “intermediate step toward our next-generation architecture” in a post on the developer forum Hugging Face. This forthcoming architecture is highly anticipated, expected to be DeepSeek’s most important product release since its earlier V3 and R1 models, which previously sent a notable…
