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UAE) and Kuwait at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, Dubai at 8 pm IST. Oman had become the inaugural champions of the Gulf Cricket T20I Championship after beating UAE by five wickets in the final in September 2023.

Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people. Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican's various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza. «Yesterday, children were bombed,» said the pope. «This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.»

Infosys Founder Narayana Murthy said true nationalism is to work for the betterment of the country and not by merely wrapping oneself in the national flag. “The young generation must work with a sense of responsibility toward the nation and society. We must care for the underprivileged sections of society, or else we are no better than animals. Becoming a responsible citizen and working toward the country’s betterment is true nationalism. Merely wrapping oneself in the national flag does not make one a true nationalist,” Murthy said while speaking at the Sustainability Crusade award ceremony organised by the J P Shroff Foundation in Hyderabad on Friday.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. KYIV—When the director of Russia’s largest film studio met President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin last month, he made sure to highlight how he had supported the war effort—by handing over dozens of tanks and armored vehicles dating back to the 1950s. The company, Mosfilm, had used armored vehicles from the Soviet era as props for decades.

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has announced its investment in the US based healthcare BPO -Omega Healthcare Management Services and joins with Goldman Sachs Alternatives as Co-Lead investor. Omega is a leading technology-enabled healthcare management solutions provider. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, said an Ontario Teachers’ press release. ET first reported on 20th December that Ontario Teachers' is all set to acquire a majority stake in Omega. Ontario Teachers' is looking to invest about $700-800 million to buy out existing investor Everstone Capital, valuing Omega at $1.8 billion, ET reported.

Oil prices settled little changed on Friday as markets weighed Chinese demand and interest rate-cut expectations after data showed cooling U.S. inflation. Brent crude futures closed up 6 cents, or 0.08%, at $72.94 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 8 cents, or 0.12%, at $69.46 per barrel.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In the 17th century Visvagunadarsana by Venkatadhvari, two celestial beings go on a tour of India. Flying from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari, they review the land’s many towns and holy sites, with one gandharva noticing only bad, the other more good.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect's arrest on a walkway in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone. Other officers soon arrived to take the man into custody. The two people confirmed dead were an adult and a toddler, but officials said additional deaths could not be ruled out because 15 people had been seriously injured.

OpenAI said on Friday it was testing new reasoning AI models, o3 and o3 mini, in a sign of growing competition with rivals such as Google to create smarter models capable of tackling complex problems. CEO Sam Altman said the AI startup plans to launch o3 mini by the end of January, and full o3 after that, as more robust large language models could outperform existing models and attract new investments and users. Microsoft-backed OpenAI released o1 AI models in September designed to spend more time processing queries to solve hard problems.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was disallowed to address Friday congregation for the third consecutive week at the historic Jama Masjid in Srinagar as the locals termed it as interference in religious affairs of muslims. The Anjuman Auqaf which runs the affairs of the Jama Masjid Srinagar denounced the continuous house detention of Mirwaiz stating that the administration imposes arbitrary and unjustified restrictions on the religious functioning of Mirwaiz-e-Kashmir. “In such bitter cold, thousands of devoted men, women, children and physically challenged persons from various parts of the Valley gather at the historic central Jama Masjid in Srinagar to listen to the sermon of their beloved Mirwaiz,” read the statement. They said that the action of the authorities of keeping him under house arrest at his Nigeen residence “deeply hurts the sentiments of these devotees and deprives them of their religious freedoms.”

Accel India, an early-stage backer of Flipkart and Swiggy, has closed its eighth fund, securing $650 million in investor commitments, people briefed on the matter said. At the same time, Accel’s global growth fund based in the US has also closed its latest fund with a $1.35 billion corpus, the people said, citing US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. A portion of the funds raised will be allocated to Indian startups in their pre-IPO rounds, the people added. Once formally closed, Accel’s latest fund will boost its total commitments in India to nearly $3 billion. It signals a likely more active strategy by Accel to deploy capital through the India and the US growth funds across various lifecycle stages of startups.

Nvidia investors will soon reap in some awesome benefits in the coming months, when Donald Trump assumes the role of US President after Joe Biden's tenure. This is majorly because of the fact that Trump is considered to be pro-market and some of his economic policies, although reportedly inflationary, may bringing in a bulkload of money for the US Treasury, if reports are to be believed.

National Bank of Canada’s $5-billion takeover of Canadian Western Bank has cleared its final regulatory hurdle.

Long before the birth of modern Christmas, people marked the shortest day of the year- the winter solstice. Ancient cultures celebrated the return of the sun with festivals like Yule in Scandinavia. The Norse lit bonfires, feasted, and gathered in joy; this symbolized light over darkness. This tradition is what inspires the warm glow of candles and string lights in our current celebrations. Similarly, the Romans celebrated Saturnalia, a lively festival in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. Homes were decorated with evergreen boughs, feasts were shared, and small gifts were exchanged. These customs laid the foundation for the gift-giving and festive greenery that define Christmas today.

The film, which promises to keep audiences on the edge of their seats, has now confirmed its release date in US cinemas on Christmas Day in 2025, as mentioned in a report by Digital Spy.

There was also demand for state-specific projects on road development and railway, and for the Centre to bear a larger share of land acquisition costs for projects. FM will present the budget in February.

digital competition law to regulate large players is unlikely to be finalised before the second half of the next fiscal, as the government intends to have comprehensive inter-ministerial consultations due to the complexity of the subject matter, people aware of the development said. The idea is to bring in such a law that would neither stifle innovation nor make compliances onerous but ensure that large players don't take advantage of their dominant positions to distort competition in the market, one of the officials involved with shaping the formal policy ET. «So, it would take some time,» the person added. Also, the corporate affairs ministry is currently focused on amending the insolvency and companies laws first, on top of scaling up the PM Internship Scheme.

TReDS (Trade Receivables Electronic Discounting System) has seen significant growth in 2024, with the bills financed crossing ₹2 lakh crore, pointing to the benefits for small businesses for whom the working capital cycle is shortened by the platform. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed that at the end of October, the platform financed nearly 100,000 bills, with a combined value of ₹2.08 lakh crore. According to the data, more than 100,000 MSME sellers are registered on the four licensed TReDS platforms of Invoicemart, run by Axis Bank, M1xchange, Sidbi-promoted Receivables Exchange of India (RXIL), and C2FO Factoring Solutions, a global working capital provider.

inflation, especially in food items, dominated the discussions of the early December monetary policy review where two members voted for a rate cut, showed the minutes of the deliberations published Friday. The rate-setting panel, chaired by the then central bank governor Shaktikanta Das, kept policy rates unchanged amid demand for a reduction from two external members. Ram Singh and Nagesh Kumar — the two dissenting voices — cited the slowest growth in seven quarters in the three months to September, a 60 basis-point reduction in the FY growth projections, and low core inflation as factors having influenced their vote in favour of a quarter percentage point rate cut, showed the minutes.

At a meeting in the UK Parliament complex this week, stakeholders gathered to reflect on the report's findings and make the case that investing in ending malaria is the economically smart thing to do. It was noted how community health workers in India, comprising mainly women, are reaching remote populations and «significantly driving down malaria cases and deaths».