LONDON: Real Madrid’s pursuit of a 15th European Cup marches on. Chelsea, meanwhile, do not know when they will compete on this elite stage again. Real’s 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday completed a 4-0 aggregate victory and saw the Spanish giants advance to the Champions League semi-finals for the 11th time in 13 seasons. Rodrygo scored twice in …

RIYADH: Cristiano Ronaldo was upstaged by another former Manch­ester United forward in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday as Al-Hilal’s Odion Ighalo scored twice from the penalty spot in a 2-0 win over Al-Nassr. Portugal striker Ronaldo moved to Al-Nassr on a lucrative deal last January and scored eight goals in his first five games but he has been unable to sustain …

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will attend a meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) to be held in India next month, the Foreign Office said on Thursday. “Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will be leading the Pakistan delegation to the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) being held on May 4-5 2023, in Goa, India,” FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahrah Baloch announced …

NEW YORK: Fox News on Tuesday disposed of one legal threat with its $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, but the network still faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from another voting technology company, Smartmatic USA, over its coverage of debunked election-rigging claims. Dominion accused Fox and its parent company Fox Corp of ruining its business by airing claims that its machines were …

RAWALPINDI: Cricket fans in Rawalpindi hope the T20 International series between Pakistan and New Zealand is not dampened by inclement weather on Thursday when both the teams enter the ground for the fourth match of the five-game series. After the first three games in Lahore, the action shifts to Rawalpindi for the last two T20s. Two spells of rain on …

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations is ready to take ‘baby steps’ towards recognising the Taliban as it considers options to persuade Afghanistan’s de facto rulers to soften their attitude towards women. For reviewing the option, and its repercussions, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will host a meeting of special envoys for Afghanistan from around the world in Doha on May …

KARACHI: Code writers making top-drawer artificial intelligence (AI) tools that’ve gained traction at a mass scale worldwide don’t always belong to Silicon Valley. Some of these geeks can be found in quintessentially middle-class Karachi neighbourhoods like Gulistan-e-Jauhar. They went to local universities and still beat Ivy League graduates to the top of the AI hill. AIAV, a personalisation engine created …

GENEVA: Rather than fixating on the impact of the world’s soaring population, the world should look at women’s reproductive rights to shore up “demographic resilience,” the UN said on Wednesday. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) — the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency — acknowledged there was widespread anxiety over the size of the world’s population, which is expected …

ISLAMABAD: In an apparent deviation from the law, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is reported to have extended Rs239 billion credit to the PMLN-led coalition government in January-February to meet ballooning debt servicing requirements of the domestic commercial banks. Under the State Bank of Pakistan Act amended in 2022 on the dictation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), government …

Oil prices were down in Asian trade on Thursday as the US dollar strengthened on rate-hike expectations and after recent economic data from the US and China did not do enough to encourage expectations that demand will improve. Brent crude futures lost 78 cents or 0.94 per cent to trade at $82.34 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) futures …