Category World News

Who: India vs Australia
What: ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 Group A game
When: Sunday, October 13, 6pm (14:00 GMT)
Where: Sharjah Cricket Stadium, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
How to follow: Al Jazeera’s live coverage begins at 10:00 GMT

With a victory over India on Sunday, reigning champions Australia will advance to the semifinals of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, which they will use to celebrate their seventh-best season.

To begin the tournament being held in the United Arab Emirates, the Aussies are the tournament’s top team with six points, following three straight victories. Given their far superior run rate, which was greatly improved by their nine-wicket win over Pakistan on Friday, the Australians are likely to finish in second place even if they lose.

India, on the other hand, simply must win. On the basis of their three games, they currently lead New Zealand in terms of net run rate, with two victories and one loss. In the tournament opener between the Kiwis and Indians, the Kiwis defeated them by a shocking 58 runs.

Ashleigh Gardner will take the place of Australia’s Alyssa Healy, who suffered a calf injury in the victory over Pakistan.

“The fearless brand of cricket that we’ve adopted over the last five, six years has certainly led to a lot of success”, Gardner said of Australia’s unbeaten streak and six world titles. Everyone “got that” very early on and held that belief. In the power play, you can see us taking on the new ball bowlers before simply attacking with the hand. Everyone who joins this team clearly understands their duties, which is what has contributed to our success over the years.

” India are one of the best T20 cricket teams in the world. Therefore, we will need to be able to change our focus very quickly.

Head-to-head record: India vs Australia

Australia lead the 34-match head-to-head record by a comfortable margin of 26 wins. India has won eight straight games against the juggernaut of Australia, with their most recent victory being in Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium in January.

Form guide: India

With a victory over rivals Pakistan and the mauling of Sri Lanka, India recovered from their opening defeat to New Zealand. The women in blue want to advance to the semis by defeating the world champions in the end.

Last five games: W W L L W

Form guide: Australia

The reigning world champions, who came into this tournament after winning the T20 series against New Zealand, can’t seem to put a foot wrong. They are a winner of this tournament without a doubt.

Last five games: W W W W W

How can India qualify for the semifinals?

• India will be qualified with six points after defeating Australia and New Zealand and Pakistan.
• If India loses, they will hope that at least one of their games will be lost in New Zealand and that Australia’s record win over Pakistan will reduce their net run rate. The top-performing countries in Group A would then be Australia and India, both in terms of net run rates.
• The Australasian teams will qualify for the semis with at least six points each if India loses but New Zealand wins both of their matches, and Harmanpreet Kaur’s team will be eliminated.
• Australia will be the table toppers if India loses, but New Zealand defeats Sri Lanka and loses to Pakistan, leaving the other three teams to battle it out for the net run rate. In such a scenario, India’s higher net run rate is likely to see them through.

How can Australia qualify for the semifinals?

• With eight points, defeat India to claim the top spot in the table.
• In the event that Australia loses, they would either want New Zealand to lose to Pakistan and Sri Lanka, giving Australia and India six points and Pakistan and New Zealand four.

• Australia could also rely on their high net run rate to get them through.

Pitch and weather conditions: Sharjah

In hot and humid conditions, both tournament venues have produced relatively low-scoring matches.

The team bowling first in Sharjah will still have to deal with sleety conditions even though the Middle Eastern summer is already over.

Dew has not played a role in the tournament so far and will not affect the toss-winning captain’s decision.

India team news

After missing the previous two games with an injury, India will hope that their handy all-rounder Pooja Vastrakar will be fit for their final game. Sajana Sajeevan is likely to make the exit, so should she make a comeback to the playing XI?

Squad: Harmanpreet Kaur (captain), Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh (wicketkeeper), Yastika Bhatia (wicketkeeper), Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy, Renuka Singh Thakur, Dayalan Hemalatha, Asha Sobhana, Radha Yadav, Shreyanka Patil, Sajana Sajeevan.

Australia team news

Healy and Vlaeminck, both of whom limped off the field during the match against Pakistan, will be tested on their fitness.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s campaigns are running wild with last-minute appeals to voters as the country’s presidential election is set to take place in less than three weeks.

What is the week’s biggest political news in a few seconds? Look no further.

We’ll provide you with a primer on the candidates’ standing in the polls and five key takeaways from the previous seven days.

The election at a glance

• How many days left?

There are 23 days left before the November 5 election.

• Harris has a slight lead, according to national polling averages.

As of October 11, the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight shows Vice President Kamala Harris up by 2.5 points, with 48.5 percent support compared to former President Donald Trump’s 46 percent.

Another polling average, from the website 270toWin, shows Harris again with a marginal lead, with 49.3 percent support. Trump, meanwhile, is at 46.5 percent.

• Any surprises?

Harris, the Democrat, could be poised to flip one of Trump’s key demographics: suburban voters.

A poll conducted by Reuters and Ipsos on October 10 revealed Harris’ Republican rival was 47 percent to 41 among suburbanites, according to the news agency Reuters and market research poll.

However, a poll from Siena College and The New York Times showed Harris might be losing support among Black voters two days later. She pulled in 78 percent support — a drop from the estimated 90 percent support her fellow Democrat, Joe Biden, earned in 2020.

Hurricane Milton becomes disinformation battleground

Milton, a Category 5 storm, sprang into the Gulf of Mexico in three days, earning the highest Saffir-Simpson score.

Rarely have we witnessed such quick growth. Milton is considered to be one of the Atlantic basin’s most intense hurricanes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And it was heading straight for Florida, the contiguous state of the United States.

Politicians were also getting ready for a flood of disinformation as Florida prepared for impact.

In the weeks that followed, Trump had made a number of false accusations, including that the Democratic-led federal government was “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.”

Joe Biden, the outgoing president, reacted violently to Milton’s landfall by blasting Trump, his former political rival, in his White House remarks about the storm.

“Over the last few weeks, there’s been reckless and irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies about what’s going on”, Biden said, calling the distortions “un-American”.

“Former President Trump has led this onslaught of lies”, he added.

In Las Vegas, Harris herself criticized Trump. “This is not a time for people to play politics”, she said, in reference to the Republican.

Trump and Harris spar with the media.

Harris zipped from one interview to the next in a recent media blitz at the start of this week after being previously criticized for failing to cover the national media.

It completely changed the way her campaign started. Harris didn’t give any significant interviews until late August after making her announcement on July 21.

And even then, it was a joint interview with her running mate, Tim Walz. Her first solo interview came a couple of weeks later, on September 13, with a local TV station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

But in the past week, Harris has cranked up the frequency of her media appearances. She appeared on the television talk show series The View and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as well as on the podcast Call Her Daddy and on the radio with The Howard Stern Show.

Additionally, on Monday, her prerecorded interview with the obnoxious TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes aired.

The two interviews were intended to be one and the same: Donald Trump had been requested to sit down for a recording by 60 Minutes.

But host Scott Pelley announced that the Trump team had pulled out of the agreed-upon interview, citing “shifting explanations”, including that the Republican might be fact-checked on air.

Trump and 60 Minutes had a point where they continued to fight. Trump claimed the newsmagazine was trying to “make her look better” when a teaser version of the Harris interview showed the vice president responding to a question differently than the longer version.

Additionally, he demanded that the Federal Communications Commission “TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE.” The remarks earned a rebuke from the commission’s chair, who warned that such an action would threaten free speech.

Harris refers to health as a benefit over Trump.

Through much of the 2024 election, questions of health and competency have loomed large — even dooming one candidate’s run.

The 81-year-old Biden was forced out of the race for president after a subpar debate performance in June because of questions about his leadership ability and age. It was the culmination of months of speculation and attacks, as Trump dug into Biden as a “weak” and “sleepy” old man.

But at 78 years old, Trump himself has faced questions about his age and mental competency.

This week, those inquiries came back into focus. Last Sunday, The New York Times ran a story analysing Trump’s “rambling” and increasingly longwinded speeches, questioning whether his speech patterns reflected the toll of age.

And then, on Saturday, the White House released a memo touting his Democratic rival’s health.

The 59-year-old Harris, it read, “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency”.

Trump has long praised his abilities based on his performance on cognitive tests. On Saturday, his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to the media scrutiny with a statement, arguing that Harris “does not have the stamina” of Trump.

According to Cheung, “all have concluded that he is in excellent and flawless health to be Commander in Chief.”

Trump lays out blueprint for anti-immigrant agenda

Trump increased his attacks on immigrant Americans this week on the campaign trail, continuing a trend of false and obscene claims.

Trump has gone to great lengths to project a hardline image, which has been one of his political career’s defining issues.

However, critics warn that his nativist rhetoric is becoming more extreme, resembling those of white supremacists and other divisive figures.

Trump made up false accusations that murderers were en masse crossing the US border with the Hugh Hewitt Show in an audio interview on Monday.

“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States”, Trump said. “Now a murderer, I believe this: It’s in their genes. And our nation is currently rife with many bad genes.

The Republican continued to make up stories about immigrants as criminals in interviews throughout the week, most notably on Friday.

Speaking in Aurora, Colorado, Trump pledged that, if re-elected, he would use his first days in office to “expedite the removal” of “savage gangs” from abroad, as well as invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law, as a tool for mass deportation.

He also urged Americans who murder US citizens to receive the death penalty.

Despite Trump’s portrayals of lawlessness, studies have shown that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than US-born citizens.

Bob Woodward’s book paints unflattering portrait

In the US journalism lexicon, reporter Bob Woodward enjoys near-mythic status.

In 1972, he and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein helped reveal President Richard Nixon’s role in the Watergate scandal, thereby precipitating the politician’s eventual resignation.

Since then, Woodward has published dozens of books, purporting to show the inner machinations of US politics. His most recent entry, which came right before the presidential election, provided an unflattering glimpse of Trump’s alleged relationship with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia.

The book, which has the title War, was first announced on Tuesday and will soon be available on bookstore shelves.

A source with the organization claimed that Trump has called Putin at least seven times since he left office on its pages. The book also claimed that, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump sent virus-testing machines that were in short supply to Putin.

News outlets have since struggled to independently verify some of the book’s most headline-grabbing claims. And Trump’s team refuted them entirely, calling Woodward an “angry, little man”.

“None of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man”, Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, wrote in a statement.

However, Mark Milley, the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the former US military officer with the highest position, is one of the prominent names in the book.

In the final stretch of the neck-and-neck race for president, former president Donald Trump was holding a rally in deep-blue California.

The Saturday night gathering close to the Coachella Valley, which is famous for its annual music festival, took place 22 days before the November 5 vote.

The final stretch of the election is typically reserved for mad-dash visits to the most competitive battleground states, which include Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada this year.

Trump’s stop in California, a Democratic stronghold, is therefore unusual because it is all but certain to support the vice president’s victory, is a result. Harris, who was both born and raised in the state, was previously the district attorney of San Francisco and the attorney general of California. He is still well-known there.

In the last presidential election, in 2020, Trump lost in California to Democrat Joe Biden by nearly 30 percentage points.

Speaking at the rally, Trump said: “The Radical Left Democrats have destroyed this state, but we are going to save it, and we’re going to make it better than ever”.

Before turning to a well-known stump speech that focused on false claims about migrant crime in the US, Trump said, “You definitely had someone here that was horrible, Kamala… and now she wants to destroy our country.”

Despite polls indicating that the economy is at the top of the voter’s agenda, Trump declared migration to be his top priority.

The state visit has been widely viewed as a campaign to bolster Republican support. That is especially important for California’s six crucial House of Representatives races.

This election season, both the House and the Senate, the two branches of the US Congress, are in jeopardy. Additionally, Republicans and Democrats are split in some California congressional districts.

Republicans may be able to control the lower chamber if they win one of the six close races in the House.

Going to California gives Trump the “ability to swoop in and leverage this big population of Trump supporters”, Tim Lineberger, who was communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan and worked in the former president’s administrations, told the Associated Press news agency.

He’s “coming here and activating that”, Lineberger added.

The decision may also serve as a means of increasing Trump’s final vote count. The Electoral College, a weighted voting system that awards candidates’ electors based on the state-level vote, determines who will win the US presidential election.

Nearly all states award all their electors in a winner-takes-all system: Even if a candidate wins by a small margin in a given state, they receive all the electors.

As Trump did in 2016, a candidate could lose in the overall popular vote but still win in the Electoral College system. In 2020, however, he lost in both measures to Biden.

The former Republican president has endured a painful experience despite never having won the popular vote. With a population of nearly 40 million, California has the potential to elect electorate candidates who might not otherwise consider it worthwhile to vote.

Former California Republican Party chairman Jim Brulte told the Associated Press, “I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he wants to win both the popular vote and the Electoral College.”

Battleground blitz

Trump’s California visit is sandwiched between a rally in Arizona on Sunday and a stop in Nevada on Saturday, which are two battleground states more suited for presidential campaigns in the final weeks.

Trump’s campaign aimed to capitalize on indications that Latino men are increasingly turning away from Democrats at a roundtable with Latino voters in Nevada.

For her part, Harris visited North Carolina, which was recently devastated by Hurricane Helene. She claimed that her visit was “first and foremost to see how they’re doing in the wake of the hurricane.”

Additionally, Harris was scheduled to meet with Black community leaders and promote her “opportunity economy.” North Carolina was only marginally defeated by Trump in the 2020 presidential election, but the eastern state has been favored by Democrats in some recent polls, thanks to its large Black and college-educated population.

Harris released the results of a health exam earlier in the day. She was described as having “the physical and mental resilience necessary to successfully carry out the presidency’s duties.”

Harris quickly demonstrates that the 78-year-old Trump has not passed on health exams, which has long been a practice for presidential candidates in the US.

She told reporters, “It is obvious that he and his team do not want the American people to really see what he is doing and whether or not he is actually fit to serve as president of the United States,” she said.

Trump’s campaign claims that the former president “has voluntarily released updates from his personal doctor” and the doctor who treated him following a July assassination attempt.

Analysts warn that Israel’s expanding military campaigns in the Middle East could hurt Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances as the country’s presidential election approaches.

The US electorate rarely prioritizes foreign policy. But Israel’s yearlong war in Gaza, as well as its intense bombing campaign in Lebanon, have spurred questions about the US’s role in the conflict.

President Joe Biden’s administration has consistently supported Israel, splitting the Democratic base and turning some voters, especially Arab Americans, against the party.

In a contest between Harris and former Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, anger toward the Biden administration could mean that Arab voters in important states like Michigan stay home in November.

“This is a constituency that, by the second term of the Obama administration, identified as Democrat by a two-to-one margin”, Jim Zogby, the co-founder of the Arab American Institute, told Al Jazeera. “Party identification is currently essentially tied at 38 percent each,” says one candidate.

Much of that decrease, he said, has to do with the Biden administration’s support for the war in Gaza, which has erased entire neighbourhoods and killed more than 42, 000 people, many of them women and children.

That campaign has been enabled by about $20bn in US weapons assistance.

“It’s less that this group of voters is getting more conservative, and more that they want to punish this administration for what they’ve allowed to happen”, said Zogby.

“There’s a sense that Palestinian and Lebanese lives don’t matter”.

Eroding support

A September poll by the Arab American Institute found that Harris and Trump were virtually tied among Arab voters, receiving 41 percent and 42 percent support, respectively.

That figure significantly improves the Democrats’ standing. After the start of the Gaza war, Biden’s support among Arab voters waned, falling to just 17 percent in October 2023, making him eligible for re-election.

In the presidential election for 2020, Biden previously received 59 percent of the Arab vote.

When Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, following a debate performance that underscored concerns about the 81-year-old’s age, some voters hoped his replacement, Harris, would bring a fresh approach.

However, Harris has so far declined to support a ceasefire between Biden and the United States, even as Israel’s recent escalatory strikes have put the Middle East in the midst of a wider regional conflict.

When asked if she would have strayed from Biden on any issues in a TV interview this week, Harris responded, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.

During the Democratic National Convention in August, the Harris campaign received criticism for allowing a Palestinian American to speak on stage to express the suffering in Gaza.

“People are looking for the slightest gesture of humanity, and the campaign just won’t give it to them”, said Zogby. “They’re making a mistake that will cost them votes”.

Swing states

More than 80% of Arab Americans believe that Gaza will play a significant role in shaping their vote, despite the fact that the majority of voters don’t prioritize it.

A small number of swing states, which determine the outcome of the country’s presidential elections, are where many of those voters are concentrated.

The Midwestern battleground state of Michigan, for instance, has the second-largest Arab population in the country. It also has the largest percentage of Arab Americans of any state: Nearly 392, 733 people identify as Arab in a state of 10 million.

Harris has a lead there of only about 1.8 percent, which is a reasonable margin of error given polling averages.

And third-party candidates like Jill Stein, who has actively appealed to the Arab and Muslim American vote in the area, could undermine her razor-thin lead in the state.

According to Michael Traugott, a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Center for Political Studies, “the situation in Gaza has complicated Democratic chances in Michigan.”

If a large portion of the state’s Arab population stays home on election day, Harris will suffer because we anticipate things to be close, he said.

However, there are bitter disagreements within the community about how to best use its electoral leverage given that Michigan’s Arab American population is not a monolith.

Some think that a Michigan loss for Harris would warn other candidates that they undervalue the influence of Arab voters.

Trump, a pro-Israel hawk, faces an unacceptable risk in some circles: the Republican has previously said that Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza and has pledged to deport foreigners who engage in pro-Palestine student protests.

The Uncommitted National Movement, an organization created as a protest movement against President Obama, is one of the groups attempting to walk a tightrope between those viewpoints.

During primaries, the movement called on Democrats to vote “uncommitted”, rather than throwing their support behind the Democratic president.

The movement claims it cannot support Harris and opposes a second Trump presidency as the November 5 general election approaches.

“As a Palestinian American, the current administration’s handling of this genocide has been beyond enraging and demoralising”, a spokesperson said in a video released this week.

“But it can actually get worse,” he continued. Nobody wants a Trump presidency more than]Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, because that is his ticket to wiping Palestine off the map”.

Expanding fighting

The Middle East’s looming threat of further escalation has acquainted the final weeks of the presidential race, giving the US election an air of uncertainty.

In response to the assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hassan Nasrallah, among others, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel in early October.

Israel also launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon on the same day, along with its deadly aerial bombing operation there. Israel is anticipated to also take action against Iran.

Analysts worry that a significant Israeli retaliation could spark a destructive conflict between Israel and Iran, a worry shared by many Americans.

According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in September, 44 percent of Americans are very or very concerned about the Middle East’s Middle East’s fighting spreading. The possibility of US forces becoming more directly involved was shared by 40 percent of respondents.

Respondents who shared the Democratic Party’s views were also more likely to believe that the US should do more to stop the Israeli-led conflict in Gaza.

According to Laura Silver, associate director of global research at Pew, the results reflect divergent political viewpoints between Republicans and Democrats regarding foreign policy.

“Republican-affiliated Americans are much more likely to want the US to provide weapons to Israel, and they’re somewhat less likely to want the US to play a diplomatic role”, Silver said.

She noted that both younger and older people had different perspectives on the Israeli-Palestine conflict in general and the conflict in Gaza in particular.

In contrast to just 16 percent of those between the ages of 50 and 64, who said the Biden administration favored Israel too much in the current war, according to a February poll found that 36 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 said this.

However, Zogby claimed that Democrats have not yet acknowledged the changes being made in important demographics, including young people and communities of color, regarding the Palestine issue.

Israel’s second assault on UNIFIL’s southern Lebanon headquarters left several soldiers injured.