Category World News

Bulgaria ⁠will hold a snap parliamentary election on April 19, President Iliana Iotova has said.

The announcement on Wednesday comes after the resignation of the previous government in December following weeks of anticorruption protests.

Last week, Iotova tapped Andrey Gyurov, deputy governor of ⁠the Bulgarian National Bank, to head a caretaker government tasked with preparing the way for the vote.

“I will make a decree to have elections on the 19th of April,” Iotova told ⁠a news conference on Wednesday, after meeting Gyurov, ⁠who presented the members ⁠of his caretaker government.

Bulgaria, which joined the eurozone on January 1, has faced prolonged political ‌instability, with parties unable to form stable ruling coalitions in a fragmented ‌parliament.

The upcoming parliamentary election will be ‌the eighth in just five years in the country.

The conservative GERB party came first in the most recent election in 2024, forming a coalition government.

People, however, began taking to the streets in late November over the 2026 draft budget, with protesters branded it as an attempt to mask rampant corruption.

Last month, Bulgaria’s longtime President Rumen Radev, a vocal government critic who supported the protests, announced his resignation amid speculation that he was looking to take part in the elections.

In an address to the nation, Radev, 62, said at the time he was eager to participate in the “battle for the future” of the European Union and NATO member.

Ukraine has slammed the move to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under their own national flags at the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics 2026 and overturn the ban imposed after Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Russia and Belarus will have a combined 10 para-athletes at next month’s Paralympics, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said in a ⁠statement on Tuesday.

“The decision by the @Paralympics organisers to allow killers and their accomplices to compete at the Paralympic Games under national flags is both disappointing and outrageous,” Ukraine’s Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi wrote on social media.

Russian and Belarusian flags “have no place at international sporting events that stand for fairness, integrity, and respect. These are the flags of regimes that have turned sport into a tool of war, lies, and contempt,” he added.

Attacking President Vladimir Putin, Bidnyi said, in Russia, “Paralympic sport has been made a pillar for those whom Putin sent to Ukraine to kill – and who returned from Ukraine with injuries and disabilities.”

Belarus and Russia were banned from Paralympic competitions after the invasion of Ukraine, but regained full membership rights in the IPC after member organisations voted in September 2025 to ⁠lift their partial suspensions.

International federations for each sport on the Paralympic Games programme had said they would maintain bans on athletes from those countries, but Russia and Belarus won an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport back in December against the ‌International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS).

“Following the decision by IPC members at September 2025’s IPC General Assembly … and December’s subsequent Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision … both NPCs were eligible to apply for bipartite slots through FIS for the Milano-Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games in the sports of Para alpine skiing, Para cross-country skiing and Para snowboard,” the IPC said in a statement, referring to the National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) of Russia and Belarus.

Russia will have two spots in Para alpine skiing, two in Para cross-country skiing ⁠and two in Para snowboard.

“NPC Belarus has been awarded ⁠four slots in total, all in cross-country skiing – one male and three female,” the IPC added.

While the athletes can compete under their own flags at the Paralympics from March 6 to 15, a limited number of Russian and Belarusian ⁠athletes are competing as independent neutral athletes without flags or anthems at the ongoing Winter Games, with the Olympic committees of the ⁠two nations still sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee.

The ⁠IPC’s decision left Ukrainian Vladyslav Heraskevych, who was disqualified from the skeleton event at the Olympics last week, fuming.

The IPC decision left Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych, who was last week disqualified from the skeleton event at the Milano – Cortina Olympics, fuming.

An Indian university is facing backlash after one of its professors was caught falsely presenting a Chinese-made robot dog at a major artificial intelligence summit, it has reportedly since been asked to leave, as the institution’s own.

“You ⁠need to meet Orion. This has been developed by the Centre of Excellence at Galgotias University,” Neha Singh, a professor of communications, told Indian state-run broadcaster DD ⁠News this week.

But social media users quickly identified the robot as the Unitree Go2, sold by China’s Unitree Robotics for about $2,800 and widely used in research and education globally.

The episode has drawn sharp criticism and has ‌cast an uncomfortable spotlight on India’s AI ambitions.

The embarrassment was amplified by Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who shared the video clip on his official social media account before the backlash. The post was later deleted.

Galgotias and Singh have subsequently said the robot was not a university creation and the university had never claimed otherwise.

“Let us be clear, Galgotias has not built this robodog, neither have we claimed,” it said in a post on X. “But what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies.”

The university stall remained open to visitors as of Wednesday morning with university ⁠officials fielding questions from media about accusations of plagiarism and ⁠misrepresentation.

Galgotias has yet to receive any communication about being kicked out of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, a representative at the booth was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.

‘Laughing stock globally’

The Indian National Congress opposition party used the incident to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is hosting nearly 20 world leaders and dozens more national delegations at the five-day summit.

“The Modi government has made a laughing stock of India globally, with regard to AI. In the ongoing AI summit, Chinese robots are being displayed as our own,” the party posted on X.

“This is truly embarrassing for India,” it said while calling the incident “brazenly shameless”.

The India AI Impact Summit, which runs until ⁠Saturday, has been billed as the first major AI gathering hosted in the Global South. Modi, Google CEO ⁠Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei ⁠are to address the gathering on Thursday.

The event has faced organisational difficulties since opening on Monday with delegates reporting overcrowding and logistical issues.

South Africa beat the United Arab Emirates by six wickets in New Delhi, chasing down a victory target of 123 with 40 balls to spare, to finish the group stage of cricket’s Twenty20 World Cup unbeaten.

South Africa opted to field first on Wednesday and restricted the UAE to 122-6, with veteran pace bowlers Corbin Bosch returning 3-12 from four overs and Anrich Nortje taking 2-28.

The South Africans raced to 123-4 in 13.2 overs, taking the last seven runs in singles after their fourth wicket fell.

Next up for Aiden Markram’s side is a repeat of the 2024 final against India in Ahmedabad on Sunday in their first match of the Super Eights.

India won the final in Barbados to lift the trophy and are firm favourites to repeat on home soil.

Rain showers delayed the start of South Africa’s reply, and then the first over netted just one run.

But from that point on, the Proteas accelerated to victory by adding 13 runs off the second over and 18 from the third until Haider Ali bowled skipper Aiden Markram for 28 from 11 balls – all but two of his runs coming from boundaries.

Dewald Brevis led the scoring with 36 before he was out within two scoring shots of victory, and Ryan Rickelton scored 30 as the 2024 runners-up dominated the bowling.

For the UAE, Alishan Sharafu led the scoring with 45 from 38 deliveries before he was caught in the outfield off Nortje’s bowling in the 18th over.

It was South Africa’s fourth consecutive win in the tournament, including a double-tiebreaker victory over 2024 semifinalist Afghanistan that required two Super Overs.

The South Africans rested David Miller, front-line spinner Keshav Maharaj, Marco Jansen and Lungi Ngidi before the Super 8 stage.