Category World News

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan have cast doubts over their participation in the T20 World Cup after Bangladesh were kicked out of the tournament by the International Cricket Council (ICC).

Bangladesh, whose spot in the upcoming global tournament was confirmed in June 2024, were expelled from it on Saturday after a weeks-long impasse with the ICC over the demanded relocation of their fixtures from India to Sri Lanka. The ICC gave Bangladesh’s berth to Scotland, the next best-ranked T20 team.

The ICC was accused of practising “double standards” in its extraordinary move to oust a full member nation on the basis of a logistical deadlock.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) swiftly threw its weight behind Bangladesh and said it will not make a “final decision” on its team’s participation until next week.

PCB Chairman Mohsin Naqvi met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday to discuss the issue but did not clarify whether Pakistan would travel to the tournament, which begins on February 7.

“It was agreed that the final decision will be taken either on Friday or next Monday,” Naqvi, who is also Pakistan’s interior minister, said in a post on X.

All of Pakistan’s World Cup matches have been scheduled in Sri Lanka because of the fraught relations between New Delhi and Islamabad.

What’s the Bangladesh-India T20 World Cup controversy all about?

The controversy involving the three South Asian nations began three weeks ago when the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) requested that all of its team’s matches scheduled to be played in India be shifted to Sri Lanka. It cited concerns over its players’ safety and security.

It followed the abrupt removal of Bangladeshi fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman from his Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise, the Kolkata Knight Riders, upon a directive from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The reason the BCCI gave was “developments all around”. That might refer to the deteriorating ties between Dhaka and New Delhi since August 2024 when Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted from power and fled to India, where she continues to live.

Bangladesh reasoned that if one of their players was not safe in India, it could not jeopardise the safety of the entire squad and support staff.

However, the ICC, currently led by Jay Shah, the son of Indian Home Minister Amit Shah and a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, rejected the relocation request. The governing body said there were no “credible” or “verifiable” threats to the Bangladeshi team.

After a further back-and-forth between the BCB and the ICC – during which neither party moved from its original position – Bangladesh were ousted from the tournament and replaced by Scotland.

Why has the ICC been accused of ‘hypocrisy’?

In late 2024, the ICC brokered a three-year agreement between India and Pakistan that allowed both countries to play their matches at neutral venues whenever their neighbour hosted an international tournament.

The decision came after India’s refusal to travel to Pakistan for the ICC Champions Trophy over security concerns raised by the Indian government. India played all their matches, including the final, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

For the ICC Women’s World Cup 2025, cohosted by India and Sri Lanka, Pakistan played their fixtures in Sri Lanka and are scheduled to do the same at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026.

BCB President Aminul Islam pointed at this agreement and accused the ICC of “hypocrisy” for dismissing a similar request from Bangladesh.

While the BCB and the ICC were stuck in an impasse, the PCB decided to partake in the dispute by supporting Bangladesh’s request for a neutral venue.

At an ICC board meeting called to discuss the issue last week, Pakistan were the only full member nation to support Bangladesh’s position. Other board members endorsed the idea of replacing Bangladesh if they refused to play in India.

Why have Pakistan become involved in this affair?

While the controversy has to do with sport, the underlying tensions are deeply political, and the three nations share decades-long fractured ties.

After the 1947 partition of British India, India emerged as an independent state while a Muslim-majority Pakistan was created with eastern and western wings separated by more than 2,000km (1,300 miles).

Less than 25 years later, the eastern wing broke away after a bloody war to become Bangladesh. Indian troops played a decisive role in supporting Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founder and Hasina’s father.

Fast forward to 2024 – the once-close ties between India and Bangladesh were fractured with Hasina’s ouster, and the ties between Bangladesh and Pakistan, previously near rock bottom, improved rapidly.

So as Bangladesh were locked in negotiations with the ICC, Naqvi, Pakistan’s cricket chief, publicly criticised the governing body.

“You can’t have double standards,” Naqvi said on Saturday.

“You can’t say for one country [India] they can do whatever they want and for the others to have to do the complete opposite. That’s why we’ve taken this stand and made clear Bangladesh have had an injustice done to them. They should play in the World Cup. They are a major stakeholder in cricket.”

How have Pakistan reacted, and what can they do next?

Within days of the BCCI’s decision to remove Mustafizur from the IPL, the PCB reacted by offering the star Bangladeshi bowler an option to register for the Pakistan Super League, the country’s premier franchise T20 tournament.

Despite reports in Pakistani media that the PCB may pull out of the T20 World Cup, Naqvi has not indicated that might be the case.

There has also been speculation that Pakistan may forfeit their match against India on February 15 in Colombo as a symbolic gesture in support of Bangladesh.

With a final decision expected on Friday or Monday, the ongoing uncertainty could disrupt Pakistan’s preparations for the tournament. They are scheduled to play the tournament’s opening game on February 7 against the Netherlands.

Ehsan Mani, former chairman of the ICC and the PCB, has warned the PCB against withdrawing from the World Cup.

“This brings politics into the game, and I have always advocated that the two should be kept strictly separate,” he told Al Jazeera.

What happens if Pakistan withdraws from the T20 World Cup?

The rivalry between Pakistan and India on the political pitch has long spilled over onto the cricket field, which has increasingly become a proxy battleground, especially since tensions escalated drastically after a four-day military confrontation between the two neighbours in May.

India’s refusal to travel to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy, which they went on to win unbeaten in the UAE, further strained relations.

When the teams met again at the Asia Cup in September, Indian players declined to shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts. After a tense final, which India won, the Indian team also refused to accept the trophy from Naqvi, who also heads the Asian Cricket Council.

Ali Khan, a professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences and author of Cricket in Pakistan: Nation, Identity, and Politics, described Pakistan’s support of Bangladesh as “absolutely the principled stance to take”.

“If India and Pakistan can both be accommodated in similar situations, then why not another full ICC member [Bangladesh]? It is also important for Pakistan to stand up for the way the ICC is operating now,” he told Al Jazeera.

Khan cautioned, however, that threatening a boycott was a step too far.

“It veers towards performative and petty point-scoring then. Pakistan should continue to bring up the inequity within the ICC at every meeting forcefully, persuade and shame others to speak up as well. That requires strong diplomacy rather than chest-thumping.”

Meanwhile, veteran Indian cricket writer Sharda Ugra said Pakistan’s intervention appeared aimed at building an alliance.

“If Pakistan does back out of the tournament, it will obviously disappoint the cricket community,” she said.

Ugra believes Naqvi’s move is aimed at “annoying the ICC and the BCCI and putting them on the back foot”, especially as he is also Pakistan’s interior minister.

“But if Pakistan pulls out, it could have enormous consequences.”

How will this controversy impact cricket?

Khan argued that while the ICC has taken principled positions in the past, including the reintegration of apartheid-era South Africa, its balance has shifted.

“Sadly, India’s enormous financial clout in cricket has unbalanced the body so much that it has simply become a mouthpiece for the Indian government with other member nations also responsible for this through their timid acceptance of Indian diktat,” he said.

Ugra also criticised the England and Wales Cricket Board and Cricket Australia for their respective silence on the matter.

United States President Donald Trump’s $5bn lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase resurfaces his accusations of debanking – the act of removing a person or organisation’s access to financial services.

The complaint, filed in a Florida court on Thursday, alleges that the bank singled him out for political reasons and closed several of his accounts following the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was perpetrated by his supporters.

“JPMC does not close accounts for political or religious reasons. We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company. We regret having to do so, but often rules and regulatory expectations lead us to do so,” the bank said in a statement.

While the lawsuit was filed in his personal capacity, the concept of debanking has long been in the crosshairs of the Trump White House.

Late last year, the White House launched a high-profile effort targeting the nation’s largest financial institutions, accusing them of closing accounts based on political bias. Within days, Trump signed an executive order restricting banks from denying accounts on those grounds.

Trump has long framed “debanking” as a systemic effort targeting conservatives. But evidence for this claim is limited.

A Reuters news agency review of more than 8,000 complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found only 35 related to political or religious reasons, let alone targeting Christians or conservatives specifically.

The push by banks centres on the use of “reputational risk” as a standard that allows them to weigh the social or political fallout of doing business with a client.

Critics say this practice makes banks arbiters of morality – freezing, withholding, or closing accounts based not on financial considerations but on social and geopolitical concerns. This approach has pulled financial institutions into the middle of cultural and geopolitical debates.

While often cast as a partisan issue, data show that Trump’s core base, evangelical Christians, are not the ones typically targeted by debanking efforts.

A report from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), a research organisation that looks at the experience of the US Muslim community, found that 27 percent of Muslim Americans and 14 percent of Jewish Americans have faced trouble banking, compared with negligible rates among Christian denominations, especially with Trump’s core base, evangelicals, at 8 percent.

Overall, 93 percent of Muslim Americans reported experiencing trouble with banking access. In one situation involving Citibank, the New York Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) accused the financial institution of not opening the account of a Muslim woman because of her husband, whom she wanted to nominate as a beneficiary and who is a Palestinian Muslim. CAIR did not release the name of the woman at the centre of the complaint.

“It [debanking] is a huge barrier for actually Muslims fulfilling philanthropic goals,” Erum Ikramullah, a senior research project manager at the ISPU, told Al Jazeera.

“It’s a huge barrier for the actual Muslim-based, Muslim-led organisations who are managing relief both domestically and overseas.”

Between October 2023 and May 2024, at least 30 US nonprofits providing humanitarian aid to Gaza have had accounts closed.

“Muslim Americans and Armenian Americans have faced de-banking on account of their last names,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts who founded the CFPB in 2013, said in a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year.

But Trump continues to allege that groups like Christians and conservatives are the ones discriminated against.

Among them include the National Committee for Religious Freedom, led by former Republican Senator and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. Brownback alleges that Chase closed his account on religious grounds, a claim the bank denies.

Regardless, the push to take on the problem of debanking is a rare spot of bipartisanship in Washington, with Trump and Warren both agreeing that banks should change their ways.

Industry turmoil

A US banking regulator said last month that the nine largest US banks put restrictions on industries that it deems risky, but this has been a long-term issue for several industries.

Operation Choke Point, under the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama, targeted exploitative industries like payday lenders and arms dealers. The initiative pushed banks to consider entire categories of businesses – and the individuals who worked in them – as reputationally risky, even when that view lagged cultural sentiment.

In response, Frank Keating, the then-CEO of the American Banking Association, slammed the move in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, saying that the “Justice Department [is] telling bankers to behave like policemen and judges”.

Ultimately, that scrutiny affected people working in several industries over the last decade, most particularly in adult entertainment, cannabis, and cryptocurrency.

Within months of the new guidance from the Obama administration, hundreds of adult performers lost access to banking services from Chase Bank. The ability to keep a bank account persisted for adult performers. In 2022, adult performer Alana Evans penned an op-ed for The Daily Beast describing how Wells Fargo closed her account.

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade group, found that 63 percent of adult workers have lost access to a bank account because of their work in the legal industry, and nearly 50 percent have been rejected for a loan because of the nature of the profession.

“I think that when I talk to a lot of people about this issue, or when I’ve talked to even legislators about this, they really can’t believe it, because it’s never been anything that they’ve encountered personally. The idea that a bank could shut off your account because they disagreed with the type of work you do is sort of inconceivable to most people,” Mike Stabile, the director of public policy for the Free Speech Coalition, told Al Jazeera.

The cannabis business has faced similar problems. Over the last decade, both laws and public sentiment around marijuana use have drastically changed. Now, more people use marijuana daily than drink alcohol, and recreational use is legal in 24 states as well as Washington, DC.

Yet, legitimate businesses that cater to this growing market share and those who work for them have been subject to debanking.

Kyle Sherman, the CEO and founder of Flowhub, a cannabis payment processing company, testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee last year that his employees are routinely discriminated against in consumer banking. He alleged that one of his employees was denied a mortgage because of what he does for a living, as well as others who have had their personal accounts closed.

While state laws have shifted on marijuana’s stance, federal laws have not kept up, making it harder for banks to navigate the reputational risk.

Trump recently eased pressure on the marijuana industry by reclassifying the substance as Schedule III, which means it is less harmful, but it does not change the legality of sale and interstate commerce on the federal level.

“In some of the states that have recently gone legal with recreational and medical cannabis, the individual entrepreneurs [there] were previously considered outlaws. It is hard for a banker to get over the perception that yesterday, you were an illegal activity, and today, you’re a legal activity,” said Terry Mendez, the CEO of Safe Harbor Financial, a financial services company for the cannabis industry.

There has been a bigger about-face with regard to the cryptocurrency industry. At first, crypto was seen as a safe haven for illicit transactions because the underlying technology allowed for anonymous transfers, making it difficult for banks to determine which transactions were legitimate and legal and which ones were not.

As the industry began to move into the mainstream, the challenges were amplified. Exchanges and startups faced debanking or sudden account closures, and even major platforms like Coinbase struggled to maintain reliable banking partners.

“Historically, banks were kind of more naturally averse to crypto companies, going back to like 2018, to 2020, 2021. Crypto companies would often, when registering for accounts with banks, say that they were software development companies to try and avoid the mention of crypto because of fear of not being able to open a bank account, which, of course, then means it’s harder to make a payroll. It’s hard to take in funds from investors; you can’t pay vendors,” Sid Powell, the CEO of the asset management firm Maple Finance, told Al Jazeera.

That was not helped by the collapse of FTX, the notorious cryptocurrency exchange, pushing banks to pull back from working with the crypto industry.

Sentiment is shifting now. Under Trump, who has embraced crypto, financial regulators last year withdrew guidance that suggested that banks should be careful when working with the crypto industry. Powell says the executive order could help crypto avoid debanking in the future.

“It [the executive order] kind of signals to the FDIC and the OCC that they should act in a more balanced way when it comes to crypto companies and crypto startups, instead of taking a more hostile approach, or the approach of kind of lumping everyone in with the worst of the industry, which tended to happen post-FTX,” Powell added.

Powell was referring to the The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, an independent agency created by Congress to maintain stability in the nation’s financial system, and The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an independent bureau of the US Department of the Treasury, which charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agencies of foreign banks.

Trump’s personal gripes

Trump has also accused banks of not doing business with him, the primary driver of his interest in the debanking issue.

Banks can generally refuse to create accounts for potential customers who could be deemed as high risk.

“The president’s companies have filed [for] bankruptcy repeatedly. There have been years of reporting about financial institutions’ concerns with suspicious financial activity, and the president was found civilly liable for inflating the value of his assets that served as collateral for loans from financial institutions,” Graham Steele, an academic fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera.

Reuters reported last year that banks gauged Trump as a financial risk due to his plethora of legal challenges after his first term, including the suit brought by E Jean Caroll, which found Trump liable for sexual abuse. He has declared bankruptcy six times.

He also defaulted on loans totalling hundreds of millions of dollars several times, including a loan to Deutsche Bank. In 2024, a New York court ruled that the president fraudulently inflated his financial worth by more than $2bn.

“Notwithstanding the fact that the president is an inherently political figure, a financial institution could reasonably rely on any of these concerns, grounded in financial and legal risks, not ‘political’ beliefs, as a basis for declining to do business with a customer,” Steele said.

That did not stop the president from pointing fingers at banking giants, including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.

“I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that includes a place called Bank of America,” Trump told the executive during a Q&A session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year.

The Trump family also sued Capital One last March. The lawsuit alleged that it debanked The Trump Organisation after Trump incited an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after spreading misinformation alleging that he won the 2020 presidential election even though he had lost by a significant margin.

Trump debanks ‘liberal’ causes

Trump’s rhetoric on debanking is among his latest attempts to punish entities for political bias, while actively pushing actions that punish those who have viewpoints that oppose his own.

Trump has argued that debanking disproportionately targets conservatives and conservative-leaning businesses like firearms manufacturers. His pressure has moved the needle at Citibank. In June, it lifted its ban on banking services to gun sellers and manufacturers, a policy it put in place in 2018 after the shooting in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.

In March, his administration announced it would shut down a set of climate grants under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – known as the “green bank” – a $20bn programme created through the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act signed by his predecessor, President Joe Biden, in 2022 to channel financing for climate projects into underinvested regions.

Environment and Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin justified the decision by citing “misconduct, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud”, allegations he offered without evidence, and forced Citibank, which was holding the fund’s money for nonprofit distribution, to return the funds to the EPA.

The decision faced legal hurdles. But earlier this month, a US court of appeals allowed the Trump administration to continue axing the programme. The 2-1 ruling was decided by two judges appointed by Trump.

Last year, the White House also pressured companies seeking federal contracts to abandon diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, which it has long portrayed, without evidence, as undermining merit-based hiring.

Citigroup, historically one of the most vocal supporters of DEI in the financial services sector, scrapped its programme. Citibank holds multiple federal contracts with agencies including the Department of Defense and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo followed suit in February, scaling back their initiatives as well, as did many other companies.

As part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns, the White House has also pressured banks to cut financial services to immigrants. The administration is doing so by trying to cancel the social security numbers of migrants who have legal status in the US, which would essentially cut them off from access to basic financial services, including bank accounts and credit cards, The New York Times reported.

At the time, Leland Dudek, then the Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner and a Trump administration appointee, said the move to cut access would end their “financial lives”.

“There’s a real telling disconnect. They are saying, on the one hand, we wanna put a thumb on the scale and ensure that conservative groups are included in the financial system, while actively working to push out liberal coded groups by either freezing them out of the bank accounts when they get government grants, or trying to investigate and potentially bring criminal charges against the payment platform that serves liberal groups,” Steele said.

Steele questioned if taking on political bias would actually help communities that do not align with the Trump administration’s stated values and conservative viewpoints.

Thousands gathered in Tokyo to bid farewell to Japan’s last two pandas, Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei, as they began their return to China amid strained ties between the two countries. Their departure leaves Japan panda-less for the first time in over half a century.

Who: Benfica vs Real Madrid
What: UEFA Champions League
Where: Estadio da Luz, Lisbon, Portugal
When: Wednesday, January 27 at 8pm (20:00 GMT)
How to follow: We’ll have all the buildup on Al Jazeera Sport from 17:00 GMT in advance of our text commentary stream.

The league phase of this season’s UEFA Champions League (UCL) reaches its finale on Wednesday with some of Europe’s biggest names facing crunch ties – no bigger perhaps than Jose Mourinho leading Benfica against his former club Real Madrid.

Both sides are in need of a win if they are achieve their contrasting aims at this stage, with Benfica facing elimination from competing on the continent this season.

Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at a tie that has so much riding on it, including some small personal pride for one of Real’s most successful coaches.

What are Real Madrid’s Champions League chances?

Real have endured a turbulent season, with their coach Xabi Alonso sacked after only seven months in charge, but a serious challenge can still be mounted for a Spanish and European double.

Los Blancos find themselves hot on the heels of Barcelona in La Liga, having briefly claimed top spot when they beat Villarreal on Saturday, only for their rivals to reclaim the summit on Sunday.

In the Champions League, a draw may be enough to secure their automatic passage to the last 16, but only a win will guarantee it.

What are Benfica’s Champions League chances?

A win is an absolute must for Benfica, but it may not be enough to secure a place in the playoffs given the Portuguese giant’s rough run this season.

The Lisbon-based club currently sit in 29th position, out of the 36 competing teams, two points from claiming one of the 16 playoff spots.

A minus four goal difference will also hamper Benfica as they seek to climb above five teams to avoid elimination from the competition.

The domestic league season has seen them go unbeaten to date, but they have drawn six more games than leaders Porto, who are 10 points clear and similarly unbeaten.

How does Champions League qualification work from the league phase?

The top eight teams automatically qualify for the round of 16; the following 16 teams enter two-legged playoffs.

The bottom 12 teams, of which Benfica are currently one, drop out of all continental competition this season.

Real are currently third with 15 points, but the 10 teams immediately below them all have the chance to reach 16 points – which could see Los Blancos slide dramatically if they lose, while a draw will leave them sweating on other results.

When was Jose Mourinho manager of Real Madrid?

The former Chelsea, Inter Milan and Manchester United manager was in charge at Real for three seasons following his appointment in May  2010.

It followed huge success at Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan, where he won the Champions League with the former and the latter, while also securing a first top-flight title in 40 years for Chelsea.

Mourinho only took over at Benfica in September, replacing Bruno Lage as manager after a slow start to the season.

What was Jose Mourinho’s record at Real Madrid and what did he win?

Mourinho finished second to Barcelona in his first season in charge, despite Cristiano Ronaldo leading the La Liga scoring charts with 40 goals that season.

Lionel Messi smashed in 50 goals the following season, but it was Real’s Portuguese pair that emerged smiling with Real’s first league title in three years – Barca claimed the crown in each of those seasons.

Mourinho’s stint at Bernabeu came to an end the following season when Barcelona won the title by 15 points – it remains the biggest winning margin in the competition’s history.

How many times have Real Madrid and Benfica won the Champions League?

Real are the record winners of Europe’s premier club competition with 15 titles to their name. The last coming in 2024.

Benfica have lifted the trophy on two occasions, and both of those came in consecutive years.

In what was regarded as Benfica’s golden era, Portuguese legend Eusebio helped the team to wins against Barcelona in 1961, and Real Madrid in 1962.

A hat-trick from Hungary’s finest export, Ferenc Puskas, could not save Real, with Benfica running out 5-3 winners – which included a double from Eusebio.

When did Real Madrid last face Benfica in the Champions League?

The two European giants have not met since March 17, 1965, when Real won 2-1 in Madrid.

It was not enough to overturn their knockout tie after Benfica claimed the first leg 5-1 in Lisbon three weeks earlier.

Head-to-head

This is staggeringly only the fourth meeting between two of the biggest clubs from Spain and Portugal.

Benfica edge the matches 2-1, with the first meeting between the clubs coming in the final in May 1962.

Benfica team news

Alexander Bah, Samuel Soares, Dodi Lukebakio and Henrique Araujo all remain absent through injury. Richard Rios is close to a return, but this match may come too soon.

Sidny Lopes Cabral and Rafa Silva, who both arrived in the January transfer window, are ineligible to feature.

Benfica predicted starting lineup (4-2-3-1)

Trubin; Dedic, Araujo, Otamendi, Dahl; Aursnes, Barrenechea; Prestianni, Barreiro, Sudakov; Pavlidis

Real Madrid team news

Real Madrid welcome back Aurelien Tchouameni, who sat out Saturday’s win against Villarreal due to suspension.

Trent Alexander-Arnold’s thigh, Antonio Rudiger’s knee, and Eder Militao and Ferland Mendy’s hamstrings mean the Spaniards are light across the backline.

Real Madrid predicted starting lineup (4-3-3)