Category World News

After Royal Challengers Bengaluru defeated Punjab Kings by eight wickets in a lopsided qualifier to reach the 10-team final, Virat Kohli edged closer to winning his first-ever Indian Premier League title.

Bengaluru were only 102 short of the required score for Sunday’s final due to their bowlers’ outstanding performance on Thursday, which gave them just 10 overs before opener Phil Salt, who led the charge with a score of 56 not out.

If Punjab can defeat Mumbai Indians’ Eliaser on Friday in the final, the team can still advance to the final.

Kohli has been Bengaluru’s top scorer this season, scoring 12 goals.

Since the league’s inception in 2008, the former India captain has been a part of the franchise. In 2009, 2011, and 2016, Bengaluru made it to the finals, but they each lost in three of those three games.

Salt remarked, “It’s a great feeling right now.” We had a second bite of the cherry, of course, but it’s a great feeling to get that out of the way first.

Simply put, it gives us that momentum. At the tail end of the tournament, it’s a cliche, but it’s so true.

Bengaluru have shown themselves to be formidable this year.

Their fiery pace attack, led by a returning Josh Hazlewood, bundled out Punjab in 14.1 overs.

At the halfway point of their innings, Hazlewood led Bengaluru’s superb pace display, which saw them defeat Punjab to 71-7.

Rival skipper Shreyas Iyer was one of Hazlewood’s (3-21) victims, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar took Prabhsimran Singh’s most notable wicket this season.

Suyash Sharma, who claimed 3-17 in his final three overs, sent leg-spinner Marcus Stoinis to make 26 before losing his stumps.

In their six powerplay overs, Bengaluru jumped to 61-1 in the fourth over, a 48-4 victory for Punjab, with Salt striking boundaries almost at will.

According to the defendants’ attorneys, Diego Maradona’s medical team’s murder trial has been declared a mistrial in a case that shocked Argentina after his 2020 death, according to lawyers for the defendants.

The new trial’s date was not initially announced on Thursday, and no new judges had been chosen. Judge Julieta Makintach, one of the three judges in the case, resigned on Tuesday amid accusations of ethical breach.

Maradona, who almost won the 1986 World Cup for the Argentine team by almost one-time, lost to heart failure while recovering from brain and skull surgery. He was 60.

His death shook the country and caused intense mourning all over the world, particularly in Naples, Italy, where he had led Napoli’s scorned team to acclaim both domestically and internationally.

Maradona, who was regarded as one of the greatest and most recognizable players to ever grace a football field, endured a long-term drug addiction and had connections to the Naples underworld during that time.

His 1986 World Cup heroics have since become a sporting legend. The controversy surrounding his controversial first goal in a quarterfinal was dubbed the “Hand of God,” as it resulted in an Argentinian victory over England, a rival nation that had only recently wagered a war over the Falklands Islands, also known as the Islas Malvinas in Spanish.

However, Maradona’s second goal was incredible, seeing him swing past several England rivals from his own half to score the decisive second.

Maradona was named one of Brazil’s Pele among the two “Players of the Century” in 2000 by the football governing body Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).

In a trial that started on March 11th, his medical team’s seven members were accused of homicide without cause. The defendants have refuted the allegations that Maradona’s treatment was “simple homicide with eventual intent.” Between eight and twenty years in prison were they facing.

Kabila was in Goma, a city in the east of the country, on Thursday when the M23 militia seized it along with several other areas earlier this year.

Without releasing a statement, an AFP team of journalists witnessed Kabila meet local religious leaders in Lawrence Kanyuka, the M23 spokesperson.

According to Reuters, the former president spoke with locals in Goma, according to three unnamed sources close to Kabila.

The former president is scheduled to meet with the former president as part of a possible treason trial for his alleged support for M23.

Kabila’s immunity was lifted earlier this month, allowing for his prosecution.

The ex-president, who has been living in self-imposed exile since 2023, denies the allegations and criticizes the charges against him as “arbitrary decisions with disconcerting levity.”

A Kabila aided by a member of his entourage told AFP on Thursday that they both had the “same goal” in mind when they attempted to end the presidency of Felix Tshisekedi, despite the absence of a formal alliance between their parties.

Rwanda’s government and the UN claim that Rwanda has backed the M23 with weapons and troops, which the neighboring nation denies.

Concerned that the renewed violence will elicit a full-fledged conflict similar to the ones that the DRC experienced in the late 1990s, when several African nations joined forces and carried out massacres that claimed the lives of millions of people.

According to the UN, about 700,000 people have already been displaced by the current fighting this year.

Amnesty International accused M23 of carrying out abuses against civilians in areas under its control on Tuesday, including “torture, killings, and enforced disappearances.”

The organization stated in a statement that “These acts may amount to war crimes because they violate international humanitarian law.”

According to LGBTQ adults, a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that transgender people in the United States have less social acceptance than lesbian, gay, or bisexual people.

According to “The Experiences of LGBTQ Americans Today” report released on Thursday, about six out of ten LGBTQ adult respondents in the poll said there is “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of social acceptance in the US for gay and lesbian people.

Only about one in ten people, including transgender people, said the same thing about non-binary people, and about half claimed there was “not much” or “no acceptance at all” for transgender people.

After Donald Trump’s election, the survey of 3,959 LGBTQ adults was conducted in January, just before he took office and began a number of policies that question transgender people’s existence and their place in society.

Trump rejected scientific and empirical claims that gender is a spectrum, in his first day in office by signing an executive order urging the government to recognize people as male or female based on the “biological truth” of their future cells at conception.

Since then, Trump has forbid transgender athletes from competing in female sports events, pushed transgender service members from serving in the military, and attempted to block federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender people under the age of 19.

About half of US adults are in favor of Trump’s approach to transgender issues, according to a poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in May.

According to the Pew poll, transgender people are less likely than gay or lesbian adults to say they are accepted by all of their families. Although the proportion of gay or lesbian people said they were accepted by their siblings and friends, the majority of LGBTQ people said they were.

Compared to roughly one-third of transgender people, about half of gay and lesbian people said their parents did. Compared to the three in ten who are gay or lesbian, only about one in ten reported feeling accepted by their extended family.

About two-thirds of LGBTQ adults said the landmark US Supreme Court ruling, which legalized same-sex unions on June 26, 2015, boosted same-sex couples’ acceptance “a lot more” or “somewhat more” than that.