EFL criticises ‘undermining’ of cup as Palace date set

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The English Football League has criticised the “undermining” of the Carabao Cup after it was forced to compromise on the date of Crystal Palace’s quarter-final because of fixture congestion.

Palace will now face Arsenal in the last eight at Emirates Stadium on Tuesday, 23 December at 20:00 GMT.

The other three quarter-finals take place the previous week but the Eagles’ commitments in the Uefa Conference League – they host Finnish club KuPS at Selhurst Park on 18 December – has left them with four games in nine days.

Palace host Manchester City on 14 December and are away to Leeds on 21 December, either side of the KuPS game.

A statement from the EFL was critical of the “expansion of European cup competitions” which it believes was “implemented without adequate consultation with domestic leagues”.

The EFL said it had “shown a willingness to compromise” but scheduling conflicts are “now entirely unavoidable”.

“To continue making endless concessions only serves to undermine the reputation of the EFL Cup,” said the statement.

“It also challenges the traditional scheduling of the English football calendar and strength of our domestic game.”

Uefa’s European calendar now stretches across 10 midweeks, rather than the six of two seasons ago, with the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League each given a standalone week for exposure.

It has caused a huge logistical headache, with the third round of the EFL Cup having to be seeded and played across two weeks to keep clubs in the Champions League and Europa League apart.

Palace boss Oliver Glasner said last week it would be “irresponsible” if the club were forced to play two games in three days.

The EFL said it shared the “frustration and concern” of managers and players concerning the congested programme which deprived clubs of the “necessary time for preparation” and ability to “field their strongest line-ups” in the EFL Cup.

The Premier League recently blamed the increased number of European fixtures for there being just one game on 26 December in the English top flight.

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OpenAI, Amazon sign $38bn AI deal

The artificial intelligence triumphant will be able to run AI workloads across Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure under a new $ 38 billion agreement that OpenAI has signed with Amazon.

The e-commerce giant’s first major AI push came with the seven-year deal announced on Monday, which came after a restructuring last week.

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The ChatGPT maker will have access to thousands of Nvidia graphics processors to train and test its artificial intelligence models thanks to the new agreement.

According to experts, this does not mean OpenAI can’t use AWS-hosted websites, including those hosted by The New York Times, Reddit, and United Airlines.

According to the statement, “AWS’s ability to scrape content from AWS-hosted websites [can be done for anything that is already publicly readable.” According to Joshua McKenty, CEO of the AI detection company PolyguardAI, “this is strictly speaking about the economics of rent versus buy for GPU]graphics processing unit] capacity.”

The agreement also serves as a significant endorsement of the e-commerce giant’s cloud unit, AWS, which some investors believed had lost to rivals Microsoft and Google in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. The business’s impressive growth in the September quarter tempered those fears.

By the end of 2026, OpenAI will have access to all planned capacity, with room to grow even further in 2027 and beyond.

According to the companies, Amazon intends to distribute hundreds of thousands of chips, including Nvidia’s GB200 and GB300 AI accelerators, in data clusters designed to train OpenAI’s upcoming wave of models and power ChatGPT’s responses.

On Amazon Bedrock, which offers a variety of AI models for businesses that use AWS, OpenAI models are already available.

With the most drastic restructuring, OpenAI’s previous non-profit roots were further eroded, as was Microsoft’s first right to refuse to provide services under the new arrangement.

Image challenges

Even though CEO Andy Jassy claimed in an earnings call on Thursday that the layoffs were not caused by AI, Amazon made the announcement about an AI investment days after the company fired 14, 000 employees.

According to Jassy, “the announcement we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, nor even not even completely AI-driven,” at least at this point.

Sam Altman, the startup’s CEO, stated that the startup is dedicating $1.4 trillion to developing 30 gigawatts of computing power, enough to power roughly 25 million homes in the United States.

According to Altman, “massive, reliable compute is required to scale the frontier AI.” The broad compute ecosystem that will power this new era and provide for everyone is strengthened by our partnership with AWS.

The sheer volume of energy needed for AI data centers to operate is getting more and more concerning. By 2028, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, AI data centers will consume up to 12% of US electricity.

According to an AP/NORC poll conducted in October, 41 percent of Americans are particularly concerned about the impact of AI on the environment, while 30 percent are concerned as the industry expands its footprint in other US.

bubble-like behaviors

Fears that the AI boom may be exploding due to falling valuations of AI companies and their significant spending commitments, totaling more than $1 trillion for OpenAI, have sparked fears.

According to a Reuters report from June, OpenAI has already contracted with Google to provide it with cloud services. Additionally, it reportedly agreed to purchase $300 billion worth of computer hardware for roughly five years.

While Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership, which the two formed in 2019, has helped it to take the top spot among its Big Tech competitors in the AI market, both companies have recently started reducing their reliance on one another.

Amazon and OpenAI had no immediate comment options.

2027 Polls: Gov Diri Promises Tinubu, APC 99% Votes In Bayelsa

Senator Duoye Diri, the governor of Bayelsa State, pledged to support President Bola Tinubu with 99% of the vote in the 2027 general elections.

Diri made the pledge during a ceremony in Yenagoa to formally welcome him to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Among the dignitaries present at the event were Vice President Kashim Shettima, President Tinubu, President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, and other party loyalists.

Bayelsa, a state long associated with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is in for a major political transition with the event.

Following extensive consultations, Governor Diri resigned from the PDP on October 15, 2025.

Dapo Abiodun (Ogun), Lucky Aiyedatiwa (Ondo), Sheriff Oborevwori (Delta), Hope Uzodimma (Imo), Umo Eno (Akwa Ibom), and others were among the APC Governors present.

Read more about Shettima, Akpabio, and APC governors in Bayelsa as Diri joins the ruling party.

The governor addressed the audience, saying, “I am not a bossy type, I have come to unite us so that we can work together and produce a 99 percent result in Bayelsa come 2027.” I’m not familiar with the opposing side’s position.

He also recalled the encouragement and love he had gotten from the APC since deciding to switch camps.

Diri claims that because of what he described as the direction the APC-led Federal Government gave him, he made the decision to abandon the PDP and become governor.

Without defining what he meant, the governor claimed that the government is in love with the Ijaw people.

He stated that his goal as a leader in Bayelsa is to unite every party member, describing himself as a team player.

“Bayelsa State and the Federal Government have a lot of work to do together if we align with them because they love the Izon people so much.

Anyone telling you otherwise is for his own selfish agenda, so don’t let anyone deceive you. Many people were concerned that the APC might have divided into factions.

What the latest polls are showing in the Mamdani vs Cuomo NYC mayoral race

Early voting has ended for New York City’s mayoral race, and residents of the city’s five million registered voters will cast ballots on November 4 to choose the city’s next leader.

Over the past nine days, the New York City Board of Elections reported that 734, 317 early votes had been cast, more than quadrupling the number for the mayoral elections to be held in 2021.

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Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani leads RealClearPolitics on a 45.8% scale, holding a 14.7-point lead over independent Andrew Cuomo at 31.1 percent and a 28.5-point lead over Republican Curtis Sliwa at 17.3 percent.

Liberal voters in New York were drawn to Mamdani’s proposals for universal, free childcare, free buses, and a rent freeze for residents who reside in one million rent-regulated apartments because he is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Every four years, there are mayoral elections in New York City, with a two-term maximum for any candidate. Following a number of controversy, most notably his federal criminal indictment on bribery and conspiracy charges, which was ultimately dismissed by a judge in April, Democrat Eric Adams, the current mayor, who has been in office since January 2022, withdrew his candidacy earlier this year.

In the largest city in the nation, progressive, establishment, and conservative forces are pitted against one another in this year’s contest, which is notable for its three-way dynamic.

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How reliable are the polls?

According to a number of polls from RealClearPolitics, Mamdani is currently three to 25 points ahead of Cuomo.

Every poll has some degree of uncertainty. There are margins of error, but pollsters aim to capture a representative sample and reflect the electorate as a whole. As a result, actual support falls within a few points of the reported figures, with surveyors using different language on issues like how to treat undecided voters.

Different outcomes are aggregated to reduce bias.

What is the process of polling?

In the run-up to the primaries and general election, polling organizations like Emerson College, Marist College, and Quinnipiac University regularly conduct public opinion surveys.

Surveys ask voters about their candidate preferences, key issues that affect their vote, and approval ratings using random sampling, including contacting voters via phone, text, or online.

Marginal margins of error and sample sizes are included in poll results to aid in the interpretation of findings’ accuracy and fidelity.

How voting is conducted

The general election uses a first-past-the-post system, which is different from the primaries, which used ranked choice voting (RCV).

In New York City as of February, there were 5.1 million registered voters, of which 65% were Democrats and 1% were Republicans. One million people voted in the election on November 4th, but no party had registered them. Voter registration ended on October 25.

Just over 1.1 million voters cast ballots in the most recent mayoral election in New York City, or roughly 21% of registered voters.

Residents of New York must:

  • Become a United States citizen
  • Have lived in New York City for at least 30 days.
  • You must be at least 18 years old (you can preregister at 16 or 17 but not until you turn 18)).
  • Not be incarcerated for a felony conviction
  • Not have a court determined that a person is mentally incapable.
  • not be able to cast a ballot elsewhere

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When do polls close and open?

On November 4 (02:00 GMT on November 5), polling locations will be open between 6 am (11:00 GMT) and 9 pm (02:00 GMT).

Polling stations in the city open between 8am and 10am and close between 4pm and 9pm, but times vary depending on where you are in the city.

On October 25, early voting began and ended on November 2.

Barton ‘crossed line’ with offensive X posts

Reporter for Rowan BridgeNorth of England

BBC Former Man City midfielder Joey Barton, wearing sunglasses and a dark grey jacket, is pictured arriving at Liverpool Crown Court. He is holding his left hand up to the top of his jacket as he walks toward the court. The background is blurred.BBC

A jury has heard that former football player and manager Joey Barton “crossed the line between free speech and a crime” by posting social media posts about Jeremy Vine, Lucy Ward, and other female television pundits Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward.

The 43-year-old former Manchester City midfielder is accused of 12 counts of sending a grossly offensive electronic message with the intention to afflict others.

The charges stem from posts on X’s social media platform in January and March of last year.

“Cutting, caustic,”

Mr. Barton is accused of using slang to refer to Mr. Vine as a paedophile in messages posted by him.

In a reference to the infamous serial killers, he is also accused of referring to former footballers Ms. Ward and Ms. Aluko as “the Fred and Rosemary West of football commentary.”

According to Mr. Wright, who denies all the charges, has a “sizeable following on X in excess of two million” and that his social media posts are “may well be described as cutting, caustic, controversial, and forthright.”

Some people might even find some of them amusing, he added.

Everyone has the right to express opinions that are all those things.

In a democratic, free society, they are even permitted to express opinions that are offensive, shocking, or personally offensive when taken against and when compared to modern standards for a diverse, equal, open, and multiracial society.

“Groosely offensive.”

We claim that the defendant, Mr. Barton, straddled the line between a crime and free speech on 12 occasions, adding: “We claim that Mr. Barton crossed the line between a crime and a free speech.

He “engaged in a quite deliberate course of conduct” on 12 occasions between early January and mid-March last year, when he targeted three people who are in different ways in the public eye through a slew of obscene electronic communications with the intention of causing anxiety or distress.

According to Mr. Wright, the defendant had cultivated a publicly expressed dislike for female commentators in what he views as the male domain of football.

In an X post to the “Fred and Rose West of commentary,” he likened Ms Aluko and Ms Ward to the “Fred and Rose West of commentary” and said the former was “only there tick boxes.”

“Puerile and infantile”

Mr. Vine, a TV and radio presenter, responded to Mr. Barton’s comparisons by asking, “What’s up with Joey7Barton? ” on X. I just took a moment to consider the Rose West incident.

A brain injury can change a person’s character, such as anti-social behavior and inhibitions. I’m so happy that he’s okay.

The defendant’s lawyer argued to the jury that “the defendant did not interpret these interventions as a concern for his well-being but as an insult.”

He sent a message to Jeremy Vine’s X account saying, “You big bike nonce,” in which he responded.

Mr. Barton then reposted an image of Mr. Vine with the message “If you see this fella by a primary school call 999,” according to Mr. Wright.

We claim that a grown man’s defamatory, sincere, and infantile behavior toward these people was beyond what is acceptable in society and is therefore regarded as criminal.

Before he transitioning to management after his retirement, Mr. Barton also played for Queens Park Rangers, Burnley, and Marseilles as well as Manchester City.

After almost three years in charge, he was fired from Bristol Rovers in October 2023.

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