Israel’s new aid system is criticized by Arab states as illegal because it is alleged to be a weapon of Gaza’s hunger. According to UAE envoy Mohamed Abushahab, who spoke to 22 Arab League members at the UN, “Starvation is being used as a weapon of war.”
In their second T20 international in Lahore, Pakistan defeated Bangladesh by 57 runs to win the series 2-0.
Sahibzada Farhan, who won the toss at Gaddafi Stadium before posting a score of 201-6, was named Player of the Match after top scoring with 74 for the hosts.
After Hasan Nawaz recorded the best strike rate of the innings with an unbeaten 51 off 26 balls, Bangladesh responded with a fair fight.
Tanzim Hasan, a Bangladeshi bowling allrounder, added 50 off 31 balls to close the match, which was cut to 77-7.
Abrar Ahmed’s off-break spin helped Pakistan win their first T20 home series victory since December 2021, limiting the visitors by winning 3-19 off of his four overs.
Salman Agha, the Pakistan captain, commented after the barren run’s conclusion, “I didn’t know it was three and a half years.
“It was a flawless performance, and that surpasses anything else,” the statement read.
Everyone “likes” the team atmosphere, where everyone can play for Pakistan, and “everyone is enjoying it.”
Sahibzada replaced Fakhar Zaman in the opener at the same venue, which won the first match by 37 runs.
The right-hander’s six sixes and four fours in his 41-ball innings fully justified the decision.
With Shoriful Islam limping out of his first bowl, the match couldn’t have started badlyr for Bangladesh. The left-arm seamer appeared to tweak a groin in his follow-through pass, adding to the tourists’ long list of pacers who have been omitted.
The momentum changed when Shoriful was hurt, according to Bangladesh skipper Litton Das.
We didn’t have much bowling, but we did well because I would have our batters on this track any day to chase 200.
“Whoever bats well must keep going, for 13 or 14 overs,” he said, “but after four overs, we didn’t bat well, and there were back-to-back wickets.”
We don’t practice the fundamentals in cricket at the moment; you have to do them.
Before the collapse, Bangladesh’s chances of recovering from the opening defeat were ended by reaching 44-0 in the fourth over of the chase.
Tanzid Hasan, the opener, hit 33 of his 19 balls in the stand, but Faheem Ashraf’s seam soon became clear as he fell.
The American government has launched an investigation into alleged attempts to pass for Susie Wiles in political communications.
Following a report about the impersonation in The Wall Street Journal the day before, a White House official confirmed to The Associated Press that a probe had been launched.
According to anonymous sources, senators, business leaders, and governors have been contacted by a posing as Wiles, a close friend of President Donald Trump.
Some callers claimed to have used artificial intelligence to mimic Wiles’ voice.
The messages about Wiles should know or did not sound like her in other ways, according to The Wall Street Journal, which was the time of the giveaway. For instance, the newspaper reported that some messages had poor grammar or were too formal.
Additionally, Wiles’s personal phone number was not the one he typically used. However, some of the interviewers who spoke to The Journal claimed to have had a conversation with the impostor before realizing that Wiles herself was the culprit.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director, Kash Patel, issued a statement on Friday denouncing any impersonation campaigns.
“It is our administration officials’ top priority to ensure that they can communicate securely to accomplish the president’s mission,” Patel said.
The bureau earlier this month made it known that “malicious actors” were using “text and voice messaging” to imitate government officials.
According to sources close to the chief of staff, someone hacked into Wiles’ personal mobile phone and gained access to her contacts in this case.
Wiles, a long-time Republican consultant, was born and raised in Florida, where she first held the position of chief of staff for a Republican mayor of Jacksonville.
She has since risen to higher positions in politics, helping to lead Rick Scott’s Republican gubernatorial campaign and later playing a similar role in two of Trump’s presidential campaigns.
She served as Trump’s national campaign manager in 2024 and led his first successful election campaign in Florida in 2016.
On November 7, Trump announced that Wiles would accompany him to the White House as his chief of staff, which oversees the president’s daily affairs. The White House staff also coordinates and supervises policy development.
US media reported that Trump’s presidential campaign announced in August 2024 that it had been hacked by Iran and that sensitive documents had been stolen, despite the FBI’s efforts to establish how her personal contacts got into her impersonator.
Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, warned that if Israel continues to halt humanitarian aid to Gaza, France will have to take a tough stance on it. He reiterated France’s support for a two-state solution and urged Israel to allow food, water, and medicine.
While facing a crucial shift to artificial intelligence (AI) that might undermine its position, Google has been back in federal court to defend its internet empire.
In a legal proceeding that will decide the company’s plans to change after its dominant search engine was declared an illegal monopoly by US District Judge Amit Mehta last year, one of the key issues raised on Friday were the key issues being discussed during the closing arguments of the case.
Justice Department attorneys are trying to persuade Mehta to pass a radical change that includes a ban on Google paying to lock its search engine in as the default on smart devices and an order requiring the company to sell its Chrome browser in response to the brandishing evidence presented during a recent three-week stretch of hearings.
As alternative, conversational search options are emerging from AI startups hoping to use the Department of Justice’s four-and-a-half-year-old case to gain the upper hand in the next technological frontier, Google lawyers claim only minor concessions are necessary.
Mehta hints that he was looking for a middle ground between the two camps’ proposed remedies by using Friday’s hearing to question both sides’ attorneys and pose probing and pointed questions.
The judge remarked, “We’re not trying to kneecap Google,” adding that the goal was to “kickstart” rivals’ ability to challenge the search giant’s dominance.
Mehta will spend the majority of the next few months considering a decision before Labor Day in the US (September 1), following the daylong closing arguments. Google has already made a promise to challenge the court’s ruling, which would require it to seek redress before the judge grants a ruling in its search engine monopoly.
Both sides of this showdown agree that AI will have an impact on how the industry will evolve in the future, but they disagree on how Google will react.
The Justice Department contends that Google’s power cannot be stifled by AI alone, and that the parent company’s $2 trillion parent company, Alphabet Inc., is one of its biggest shareholders.
Mehta stated in a court filing on Friday that he was still unsure about whether to include AI’s potential to disrupt the search industry in his upcoming ruling. Mehta’s opening statement, “This is what I’ve been struggling with,” was.
Justice prosecutor David Dahlquist urged the judge to appoint forward-thinking remedies that wouldn’t allow Google to use its monopoly to profit unfairly from the AI race.
Despite opposition from OpenAI and Perplexity, Google has already been using AI to transform its search engine into an answer engine, which has so far helped maintain its position as the internet’s main gateway.
The Justice Department contends that Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai’s nearly 20-year-old contribution to the development of the Chrome browser would be one of the most successful countermeasures to stop Google from amassing sizable amounts of browser traffic and personal data that could be used to keep its grip on the AI era.
If Mehta orders the sale of the Chrome browser, executives from OpenAI and Perplexity testified last month that they would be eager bidders.
Google should “get to work” on its own products, according to Google’s attorney John Schmidtlein, who spoke on Friday.
Apple, mobile app developers, legal experts, startups, and other parties have voiced their opinions regarding Google’s future.
Apple filed briefs opposing the Justice Department’s proposed 10-year ban on such lucrative lock-in agreements, claiming that it collects more than $20 billion annually to make Google the default search engine for the iPhone and other devices.
Apple told the judge that the contract ban would make Google even more powerful because it would be able to hold onto its money while consumers would still choose its search engine. The company also claimed that the company would lose money by investing in its own research. Additionally, the Cupertino, California-based business claimed a ban wouldn’t force it to create a rival search engine to Google.
A group of legal experts claimed in other filings that the Justice Department’s proposed divestiture of Chrome would be an improper penalty that would cause unwarranted government interference in a company’s operations.
Meanwhile, former FTC officials James Cooper and Andrew Stivers expressed concern that another proposal, which would require Google to share its data with rival search engines, “does not account for the expectations users have developed over the years regarding the privacy, security, and stewardship” of their personal information.
Due to the negative effects the proposed changes would have on the tech sector, the App Association, a group that mostly represents small software developers, also advised Mehta against adopting them.
While Israel is waging a Gaza-related war, it is expanding its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The largest number of illegal settlements ever to be constructed simultaneously is reported by Israel as being in the occupied West Bank.
According to far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, the settlements are meant to halt the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In the meantime, the Israeli army is expanding its offensive, destroying homes, roads, and facilities like hospitals and waterways, basically making the West Bank uninhabitable.
According to the UN, settler violence against civilians, including destroying crops and removing trees, is at an all-time high.
Europe has reacted by threatening sanctions against the development of more illegal settlements. Can they actually have an impact, though?
What does this mean for Palestinians of all kinds? And is it nearly impossible to create a Palestinian state right now?
Presenter: James Bays
Guests:
Xavier Abu Eid – Former PLO negotiation team adviser and political analyst
Israeli author, academic, and political commentator Ori Goldberg