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‘LUMINARA’, the PSL’s 10th edition’s trophy.—courtesy PCB LAHORE: The Pakistan Super League (PSL) is hoping to expand from six to eight teams after the 2025 season, PSL CEO Salman Naseer said on Thursday. First staged in 2016 in the United Arab Emirates due to security concerns, the PSL is now hosted in Pakistan, where it aims to strengthen its commercial appeal and competitiveness. The planned expansion comes at a key commercial juncture for the PSL, with media and sponsorship rights going up for sale. PSL 2026 will also embrace new cities with Peshawar set to host its first exhibition game,…

TURIN: Pakistan’s special athletes made a historic splash at the Special Olympics World Winter Games clinching two gold medals in cross-country skiing and snowshoeing events. Muneeb Ur Rehman led the charge, winning Pakistan’s first gold medal in the men’s 50-meter cross-country skiing event. Moazzam Iqbal followed suit, securing another gold medal in the 800m snowshoeing race. Rovina Qurban added to Pakistan’s medal tally, claiming the silver medal in the women’s 50-meter cross-country skiing event. Muneeb, who hails from Swabi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was overjoyed with his victory. “This is my first time participating in the World Winter Games, and I’ve been…

PLAYERS of Pakistan and German junior teams in action during the fourth match at the Nasser Bunda Stadium on Thursday.—Tanveer Shahzad/White Star ISLAMABAD: Germany’s junior hockey team capped off their tour of Pakistan in a spectacular fashion, securing a superb 4-1 victory over their Pakistan counterparts here at the Naseer Bunda Hockey Stadium on Thursday. The win steered world champions Germany to a 4-0 clean sweep of the four-match series. Earlier, the touring side won the first three matches, staged in Lahore, 2-1, 2-1 and 4-3. From the opening whistle, the young Germans demonstrated an impressive level of precision and…

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has withdrawn its decision to slash match fees for players participating in the National T20 Cup, which begins on Friday at the Iqbal Stadium, Faisalabad. The PCB had recently reduced match fees from Rs 40,000 to Rs 10,000 without any official announcement, drawing discontent from domestic cricketers. However, on Thursday, PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi intervened, rejecting the decision and directing the board’s domestic cricket department to reassess the matter. While the PCB has yet to officially disclose the revised amount, sources indicate it has been set at Rs 30,000 per match — Rs 10,000…

These are the key developments on day 1,114 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.Here is the situation on Friday, March 14: Fighting Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces have trapped the remaining Ukrainian soldiers still in the country’s western Kursk region, where Kyiv’s troops have clung on for more than seven months in one of the key battles of the war after making a daring cross-border incursion. Putin told a news conference that the situation in Kursk was “completely under our control, and the group that invaded our territory is in isolation”. Ukraine’s military leadership has denied their forces are…

LONDON (AP) — For lovers of beer, lagers and ciders, London has an answer that’s off the beaten track: The Bermondsey Beer Mile, a loose collection of brewery bars and liquor stores that stretches well over a mile through the streets and railway arches of south London. The attraction stretches from near Tower Bridge to parts of Bermondsey, a gentrifying area that just a few years ago would have been considered best to avoid. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, hundreds of beer connoisseurs descend on two dozen or so breweries to sample a wide range of craft beers, ales, stouts,…

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration’s recent changes to student loans are causing frustration and confusion for some borrowers. In response to a February court ruling that blocked some Biden-era programs, the Education Department has taken down online and paper applications for income-driven repayment plans. “This especially hurts anyone who’s lost their jobs, including federal workers,” said Natalia Abrams, founder and president of the Student Debt Crisis Center. “A few months ago, they would have been able to get on a zero-dollar income-driven repayment plan.”The removal of application materials also has caused confusion around the recertification process for borrowers…

Demonstrators have flooded the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, in a show of solidarity with student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States. Thursday’s protest is the latest in a string of demonstrations after immigration authorities arrested Khalil on Saturday evening. The administration of President Donald Trump has said it intends to deport Khalil, who is Palestinian and married to a US citizen, over his role in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University. Khalil’s lawyers and supporters, however, believe the Trump administration is wilfully conflating criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza with support for…

AI company Sesame has released the base model that powers Maya, the impressively realistic voice assistant. The model, which is 1 billion parameters in size (“parameters” referring to individual components of the model), is under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used commercially with few restrictions. Called CSM-1B, the model generates “RVQ audio codes” from text and audio inputs, according to Sesame’s description on the AI dev platform Hugging Face. RVQ refers to “residual vector quantization,” a technique for encoding audio into discrete tokens called codes. RVQ is used in a number of recent AI audio technologies, including Google’s SoundStream and…

LONDON (AP) — John Lennon is being honored in a specially minted British coin collection to mark the year the Beatles great and peace advocate would have turned 85, the Royal Mint said Friday.The coin, which will go on sale on Monday, features a portrait of Lennon that is based on a famous image taken by music industry photographer Bob Gruen in 1974.It depicts a side profile of Lennon, taken on the roof of his penthouse in New York. Lennon was shot dead by Mark David Chapman in the city on Dec. 8, 1980 at the age of 40.Lennon’s name…