US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington will encourage Doha to continue to play a constructive role in Gaza during a press conference with Israel’s PM in Jerusalem on Monday. The comments come after last week’s Israeli attack on Qatar’s capital which targeted Hamas leaders.
Arab and Muslim leaders are meeting in Qatar’s capital Doha for an emergency summit after Israel’s unprecedented attack on the city killed five Hamas members and one Qatari security officer. Al Jazeera’s Urooba Jamal is there.
“She went into labour and gave birth on the side of the road while trying to find help.”
India’s most recent encounter with Pakistan in the Asia Cup was celebrated as a patriotic spectacle: a win dedicated to the armed forces and those affected by the Pahalgam attack. Such declarations, however, expose something deeper: a strategy of playing politics with sport, hypocrisy masked as principle.
Beneath this posturing and tokenism lies a contradiction too stark to ignore. This is not just sport. It is cynical theatre in which administrators, players and commentators attempt to ride on two boats at the same time. The hypocrisy is visible to anyone with a sane set of eyes.
At the heart of this contradiction is the relationship between India and Pakistan in cricket. Officially, India refuses bilateral cricket with Pakistan. The line is firm: no tours, no series and no diplomacy. The justification rests on national security, especially after the clash between the South Asian neighbours in May.
Indian artists are banned from collaborating with their Pakistani counterparts. Pakistani singers and actors once popular in India have been cut off on social media and otherwise. Indian celebrities themselves are trolled and shamed for past collaborations done on neutral grounds.
Yet the same ecosystem explodes with excitement when India faces Pakistan in multination tournaments. Matches are packaged as spectacles, marketed as the “greatest rivalry” and cashed in for billions in advertising revenue.
This duality is not accidental. Jay Shah, now serving in International Cricket Council (ICC) leadership, has been accused of pressuring Team India into playing Pakistan despite reluctance from within the camp. Sanjay Raut, a member of parliament in India, recently alleged that Shah’s hand forced the decision, turning the match into an obligation rather than a choice.
If true, this signals how far politics has penetrated Indian cricket administration for the sake of money and clout. The game is no longer simply sport but a vehicle for symbolic battles decided in boardrooms, not dressing rooms.
The hypocrisy becomes sharper when one considers the home environment. While Indians in other spheres faced online lynching for working with Pakistani colleagues even before the war, cricketers are being placed on a pedestal for defeating Pakistan. It is not only about double standards. It is about a calculated exploitation of sentiment.
Cricket is permitted as the only arena of “contact” because cricket sells more than most things in India. The ban on cultural exchange is explained as nationalism, but cricket is exempted in the name of multilateral obligations and commercial survival. Dedications of wins to soldiers and terror victims act as moral cover for what is essentially a business transaction. This is sheer hypocrisy and tokenism.
If India insists on involving politics in sport, consistency demands more. Look at Muslim athletes and countries known for boycotting matches against Israeli opponents. They forfeit games, risk sanctions and face bans. Whatever one thinks of their politics, their actions are clear, uncompromised and costly. They make a stand and face consequences.
India refuses bilateral cricket with Pakistan yet plays them in ICC tournaments because the money is too big to lose, especially when most of it comes home through viewership endorsements and advertisements. It tries to sail on two boats, waving nationalism with one hand while collecting profits with the other. The dedication of victories to the armed forces does not erase that contradiction. It exposes it.
The India-Pakistan rivalry itself is not what it used to be. Competitive balance has tilted drastically. India has dominated recent contests due to the Pakistani team’s poor form. Suspense is long gone, but the manufactured hype remains.
Broadcasters and advertisers pump the match as if it still defines the fate of nations. In reality, it defines the fate of sponsorship deals. The sporting value is hollowed out. The symbolic gestures after each victory only add to the theatre. In their latest match on Sunday, Indian players refused to shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts.
Such dissonance turns patriotism into branding and erodes the dignity of national discourse. The Board of Control for Cricket in India, the ICC leadership and political voices close to the game must confront this contradiction. Cricket cannot remain both business and battlefield. A rivalry stripped of sporting essence but inflated with symbolism cannot endure. The Pahalgam victims deserve solidarity but should not be used as props for cricketing theatre. Sport deserves freedom from tokenism.
Instead of continuing this hybrid model of opportunism, India can opt for one of two choices. It can refuse to play Pakistan entirely, across all formats, including ICC tournaments. That would align deeds with words at the highest level. It would be costly in terms of ICC sanctions and revenues, but it would at least be consistent.
Or India can accept playing Pakistan as part of sport while removing politics and symbolic dedications from the game. That would mean treating cricket as cricket, not as a stage for nationalism.
India’s cricket establishment must choose one path. If it wants politics in sport, it must show the courage of consistency. If it wants to keep politics out, it must strip away the hollow dedications and patriotic posturing. The current approach of trying to sail on two boats is not sustainable. It fools no one, neither at home nor abroad. Cricket is being diminished by this hypocrisy and so is national dignity.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushila Karki has named three new ministers, just days after the dissolution of parliament was triggered by deadly protests.
Karki, who on Friday became the Himalayan nation’s first female leader, made Om Prakash Aryal home minister, Rameshwar Prasad Khanal finance minister and Kulman Ghising energy minister on Monday.
list of 3 itemsend of list
Aryal is a human rights lawyer who has taken on legal cases in the public interest, Khanal is a former finance secretary who recently recommended major economic reforms, and Ghising is a former state power utility chief credited with ridding the country of its load-shedding problems.
In a ceremony broadcast on television from outside the fire-damaged presidential office, President Ramchandra Paudel swore in the three new ministers.
Known for their anticorruption stances, they will serve alongside Karki in an interim government that has promised to work towards ending corruption. It will govern the country for six months until national elections are held in early March.
Their appointments come less than a week after veteran leader KP Sharma Oli resigned as prime minister amid unrest that deepened when demonstrators were shot dead by police on Monday.
Led by Gen Z, the protests quickly escalated, with key public buildings, including Parliament, set ablaze.
The demonstrations started on September 8 over a short-lived social media ban and exacerbated burgeoning popular anger over systemic corruption and poverty.
At least 72 people died in last week’s violence, the Nepalese authorities said on Sunday.
After young activists recommended Karki for the role, the 73-year-old former chief justice was named as the country’s interim leader late on Friday.
In her first public comments, she said on Sunday that the country should come together to rebuild, promising that she would work “according to the thinking of the Gen Z generation”.
“What this group is demanding is the end of corruption, good governance and economic equality,” she said.
Speaking from the Civil Service Hospital, Subash Dhakal, a 19-year-old protester who was shot in the knees, said he was proud of his role in bringing about a change in government.
“I have no regrets at all,” he told the AFP news agency.
On August 28, just before inequality protests spread like wildfire across Indonesia, the police blocked a peaceful climate march on the streets of Jakarta. Indigenous peoples, farmers, fisherfolk and people in wheelchairs carrying fairly innocuous signs that read, “Save the Earth! Save generations!” were pushed back by the police and prevented from reaching the State Palace, a frequent demonstration site.
Even though climate advocates formally notified authorities of the march, held to urge the passage of a Climate Justice Bill, demonstrators still got a small taste of aggressive police tactics. These police tactics turned deadly later in the week in fiery youth-led protests against lawmaker perks, in which at least 10 people were killed and thousands detained.
There’s no sugarcoating what many Indonesians feel about the recent violence: anger but also dread and fear. We are a nation of survivors, having faced the brutality of a military dictatorship that lasted three decades and killed an estimated 500,000 to one million civilians. Our collective skins bear the scars of authoritarian rule, which still tingle. But we’ve also never allowed guns and tear gas to silence us – which is why civil society has pushed initial demands to scrap lawmaker perks even further.
Now, people no longer want just piecemeal responses that try to put the lid on boiling rage. They want thorough reforms that would address the sources of pent-up anger: low wages and rising costs of living while oligarchs and big corporations bleed the people dry. This is scarcely a new narrative. But as the fiery protests show, people have to draw the line at some point.
The climate movement, too, is drawing the line. We too are tired of being ignored while the planet keeps heating up, our rainforests are being cut down, “green” mining is driving Indigenous peoples from their land, and coal plants keep running despite repeated pledges by our leaders to phase them out.
Indonesia is among the world’s top 10 emitters. It is also home to some of the world’s largest – and last remaining – carbon sinks. Both reducing emissions and protecting natural resources are crucial to keeping the planet cool and protecting the people from even more devastating climate impacts.
But instead of using these resources wisely for wealth redistribution and sustainable national development, our leaders have repeatedly been accessories to corruption and environmental plunder that benefit cronies and big corporations at the expense of the people and the planet.
Next week, President Prabowo Subianto is expected to appear at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. It is the first time in a decade that an Indonesian leader will attend the forum. It is clear that the president wants to make his mark as a global leader of significance. But his ambitions can’t shine in the dark. To earn credibility and prove that his military past does not define his current leadership, he must first ensure that human rights are respected at home.
Prabowo has made exceptionally strong statements on climate commitments. At the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro last year, he announced plans for the early retirement of all coal-fired power plants within 15 years. Even more dramatically, he said in July that Indonesia could achieve 100 percent renewable energy within the next 10 years.
But more than statements, we need action embodied in concrete plans and ambitious emissions reduction goals. Indonesia’s latest climate pledge, the Second Nationally Determined Contribution, which the government aims to submit before Prabowo’s UN speech, will be a litmus test – just like how he responds to demands for justice and reform.
Meanwhile, as inequality deepens, the climate crisis rages on. Extreme floods, longer droughts and more intense heatwaves may hit us all, but their impacts are not equal. The poor and the working class are the ones suffering the most as they lose their livelihoods, their homes and, now, even their most basic human rights. And unless we act with urgency and courage, our children will inherit a planet where survival itself becomes a privilege, not a right.
There can be no climate justice without human rights. Whenever there’s injustice, we must put up a good fight – whether it concerns the climate or social injustice.