Royal Challengers Bengaluru [RCB]  might look at Gujarat Titans [GT] across the ring in Qualifier 1 of IPL 2026, and wonder if they helped create this monster. When GT went to Bengaluru on April 24, they were still a conservative side straddling the middle of the table, and happy with a 57-ball hundred from their opener. But they have been a changed unit since RCB cruised to that chase of 206 against them that day.

Since that match, the halfway point for GT, their run rate has increased by nearly a run per over. That is 20 runs per innings. By the time they faced RCB next, they were giving more importance to balls remaining than to wickets in hand while chasing. When batting first, GT were looking to score above par; there has been a pair of 229s in the two matches they have batted first in since that Bengaluru debacle.

The thing with GT is that they have a team with such strong basics that they don’t need to make only subtle changes to their approach. Their control rate has gone from 80% to 75%. A little more risk, a lot more rewards. Their bowling has only become more streamlined over this period with Jason Holder adding constant threat to an already good attack. The result is a 6-1 win-loss record in the second half of their tournament.

The United States has launched strikes on targets in southern Iran, the US military has said, as Tehran’s top negotiators gather in Qatar for talks aimed at reaching a peace deal with Washington.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out the “self-defence strikes” to protect US troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.

“Targets included missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines,” Navy Captain Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, said in a statement to Al Jazeera late on Monday.

“US Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.”

CENTCOM did not provide further details on the strikes.

The latest attacks come despite there being a ceasefire officially in place between the US and Iran since April 8.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said the strikes are likely to derail the ongoing negotiations to end the US-Israel war on Iran.

“There is very limited information coming from the US side; we don’t know the extent of the operation. It’s hard to say whether this skirmish is unusual,” he said.

“But Trump is keen to move forward with negotiations and solidify a peace deal.”

Earlier on Monday, a high-level Iranian delegation arrived in Doha to discuss roadblocks to a permanent peace deal.

The arrival of the delegation, which includes Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, came as US President Donald Trump said that peace talks were “proceeding nicely”, even as he insisted that he would not agree to anything less than a substantial deal.

“It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

[Aljazeera]

Pope Leo XIV has called for the “disarming” of artificial intelligence (AI), warning that “new forms of slavery” are tied to its rise.

The Catholic Church leader warned on Monday against “a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets,” driven by “the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance”.

His concerns regarding AI were presented in his first encyclical, titled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), in person at the Vatican. Encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from a pontiff to the church’s 1.4 billion members.

Leo insisted that ownership of AI data must not be left solely in private hands, called for policymakers to protect the rights of workers and keep children safe from the technology, and urged the cooling of competition between AI companies.

“What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” Leo said.

The Catholic leader continued by calling for “robust ⁠legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility”.

“AI now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death,” he said. “Like nuclear energy, it must be at the service of all and of the common good.”

Monday’s highly anticipated text, spanning nearly 43,000 words, has been in the works nearly since Leo’s election as pope a little more than a year ago.

Pope Leo presented the encyclical alongside AI experts, including Christopher Olah, co-founder of US giant Anthropic.

Anthropic is embroiled in a legal battle with the United States military after opposing the use of its technology for lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance.

At the presentation, Olah said AI companies operate “inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing”.

He welcomed input from outside actors like the Catholic Church to “push events in a better direction”, saying that “the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community”.

Olah highlighted three areas he said required ⁠urgent attention: the risk of widespread job losses, the need to ensure that AI benefits are extended worldwide, and the unresolved question of how to interpret increasingly complex and sometimes opaque system behaviour.

In the encyclical, Leo also sounded the alarm over AI-directed weaponry, saying it was “not permissible to entrust lethal” decisions to tech.

Leo has repeatedly clashed with the White House over the US-Israel war on Iran and its use of religion to justify conflict.

The “just war” theory, espoused recently by the administration of US President Donald Trump, was “outdated”, Leo wrote, adding that “no algorithm can make war morally acceptable”.

[Aljazeera]