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Australia grants asylum to 2 more members of Iranian women’s football team

Published

6 months ago

2026/03/11

Priyan

Iranian players react from the bench during the Women's Asia Cup football match between Iran and South Korea on the Gold Coast, Australia, on March 2, 2026 (Aljazeera)

Australia ⁠has confirmed that two more members of the Iranian women’s football team have received humanitarian visas, after five players were earlier granted asylum over concerns for their safety should they return to Iran, following the team failing to simg their national anthem before a recent match.

A player and a member of the team’s support staff decided ⁠to stay ⁠in Australia after seeking asylum, Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke told reporters on Wednesday.

The pair has now joined five other team members granted humanitarian visas on Tuesday, Burke told reporters.

He said the pair sought asylum before the team departed the country late on Tuesday night, adding that all the women were taken aside individually by Australian officials and interpreters, without Iranian minders present, and offered asylum as they passed through security at Sydney airport.

“They were given a choice,” said Burke, who later posted images of the players on social media.

“In that situation, what we made sure of was that there was no rushing, there was no pressure,” he said.

Burke also said that some people linked to the team were not offered asylum, without providing details. One member of the delegation delayed boarding the departing flight from Sydney while they contacted family members and deliberated about staying in Australia, Burke said.The team’s departure from their hotel in Australia’s Gold Coast and arrival at the domestic airport in Sydney before their international departure took place amid protests, as Iranian Australians sought to prevent the women from leaving the country, citing fears for their safety in Iran.

“We weren’t sure which way that person would go,” he said. “That individual ultimately made their own decision.”

The seven team members who had requested asylum have received temporary humanitarian visas, which is a pathway to permanent residency in Australia, Burke said.

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the visas offered to the team members are valid for 12 months and are similar to those granted to applicants from Ukraine, Palestine and Afghanistan.

The team’s departure from their hotel in Australia’s Gold Coast and arrival at the domestic airport in Sydney before their international departure took place amid protests, as Iranian Australians sought to prevent the women from leaving the country, citing fears for their safety in Iran.

Concerns about the players’ safety emerged after Iranian state television labelled the team “traitors” for refusing to sing the ⁠national anthem before their first Asia Cup match in Australia. The team later sang the anthem at other matches.

However, the office of ‌Iran’s ‌general prosecutor said on Tuesday that the remaining members of the team were invited home “with peace and confidence”, Iranian media reported.

“These loved ones are invited to return to their homeland with peace and confidence, and in addition to addressing the concerns of their families,” the general prosecutor’s office was quoted as saying by Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, also urged the players to “come home”.

“To Iran’s women’s football team: don’t worry – Iran awaits you with open arms,” Baghaei wrote on X on Tuesday.

The Iranian team joined the Women’s Asian Cup tournament in Australia, just as the US and ⁠Israel launched their war on Iran, killing the country’s ⁠supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many senior officials.

At least 1,255 people have been killed in the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has entered its 12th day and has seen devastating air strikes on the capital, Tehran, and other cities, as well as key infrastructure and civilian sites.

The high-profile offer of asylum to the football players also comes as the Australian government has moved to introduce legislation to ban people from certain countries traveling to Australia who authorities fear might overstay their visa due to the war in the Middle East.

According to the ABC, the proposed law would allow the government to stop people from nominated countries entering Australia for up to six months, even if they already have a valid temporary visa.

The Australian Greens party said on Tuesday that the law was “clearly aimed at preventing people from Iran from seeking safety in Australia”.

“We know who this is aimed at by Labor – it’s aimed at the people of Iran, the people of Lebanon, the people of Qatar and the entire Middle East. It is clearly designed to be a Trump-like mass visa freeze,” said Greens Senator David Shoebridge, referring to the governing Australian Labor Party and US President Donald Trump, who has also banned people from certain countries from entering the US.

According to the ABC, the proposed law would allow the government to stop people from nominated countries entering Australia for up to six months, even if they already have a valid temporary visa.

The Australian Greens party said on Tuesday that the law was “clearly aimed at preventing people from Iran from seeking safety in Australia”.

(Aljazeera)

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Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down

Published

21 hours ago

2026/09/13

Priyan

There was no alternative to developing AI, Anthropic boss Dario Amodei said [BBC]

The head of AI company Anthropic has called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down and to be closely monitored.

In an essay, Dario Amodei said developing AI was not in question, but the risks associated with it were “serious” and companies and governments must be given time to address them.

The bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, have both said they agree with Amodei.

There have been growing concerns recently about the technology’s potential risks. An AI researcher who left Anthropic this week told the BBC that “if we don’t slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future”.

Jacob Coxon told Laura Kuenssberg that people working at AI companies were “genuinely frightened… genuinely concerned about the fate of humanity in the next two years”.

“It’s not at all an exaggeration to say that the people who are involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction,” Coxon said.

“Many of the people who are sort of deep in the weeds on actually coding the thing believe that there is like a greater than ten percent chance, or even greater. Some smaller, but they all have different numbers for a probability that humans might die. And they all keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology.”

In Amodei’s essay, called We Must Pace the Frontier and made public on Saturday, he proposed a three-point plan that includes independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed, industry-wide regulation and global regulation.

As his proposal made the rounds, even competitors voiced support for the idea of third-party monitors who could evaluate the safety of models as they are developed.

“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X. He called independent evaluators “a great idea.”

In a new interview with Fortune Magazine, Altman had sounded similar safety concerns, saying standards were “not at a place” to push AI capabilities much further.

He added that he believed AI beyond human control is “absolutely” possible.

Elon Musk meanwhile said the Anthropic boss was “right”.

The warnings have prompted calls to action, but US President Donald Trump has so far rejected such fears, saying on Thursday he was concerned “if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position”.

Cyber-security concerns have grown as new models have exhibited more and more powerful hacking capabilities.

Anthropic withheld its Mythos model from public use when it was announced in April that it could independently escape the testing environment, known as the sandbox.

In the run-up to the release of its most recent Astra model, OpenAI cited cybersecurity concerns as it explained it had paused certain aspects of the model’s development.

Safety has also taken centrestage in the rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI.

Amodei, who had previously worked as a vice president at OpenAI, has said he co-founded Anthropic in 2021 so he could build safer and more trusted AI models.

In his essay, Amodei pointed out that AI had advanced “drastically faster” including its “ability to build the next generation of AI” – and mentioned an incident involving rival OpenAI which has revealed that agents conducted cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack in July.

The OpenAI agents had “essentially acted as a fanatically devoted collective”, Amodei said. OpenAI has said it is slowing down training of certain advanced AI models and tools as a result.

Amodei called for “building AI at a balanced rate that aims to ensure its safety while still achieving its benefits”.

This would not mean “halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third party evaluators to confirm this”.

He was committing Anthropic to this “unilaterally” – as well as calling on governments “to require other frontier companies to match”.

Amodei said he recognised that regulation might not be able to keep up with the pace of AI, and therefore called on AI companies to “voluntarily work together to set standard” in parallel with regulation.

The Anthropic CEO went on to address the impact that a slowdown would have on the industry and competition with leading developers worldwide, particularly China.

“I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” Amodei said.

This would have to be done in a co-ordinated manner “without sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI”. Any slowdown would have to be limited, he said, to avoid allowing China to pull ahead.

He urged the US government to take measures so that US companies’ AI chips could not be sold to China – or the technology shared with authoritarian countries.

His former employee, Jacob Coxon, told the BBC, however, that the initiative to slow down must go beyond the US – “there’ll need to be some sort of co-ordinated slowdown with China if we’re going to avoid a race at an international scale”.

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It’s spin vs spin as India and Sri Lanka battle for Asia Cup title

Published

22 hours ago

2026/09/13

Priyan

Harmanpreet Kaur and Chamari Athapaththu pose with the trophy [ACC]

If spin is to decide the Women’s T20 Asia Cup final, both India and Sri Lanka have plenty to call upon. India’s spin attack, led by Deepti Sharma, has taken 26 wickets in the tournament, the most by a side. Sri Lanka are next with 25. That makes it seem like a spin vs spin and more spin kind of title contest.

On the plus side for India is that they have appeared well-rounded on the whole. Smriti Sharma and Shafali Verma have scored the bulk of the runs.

Sri Lanka, by contrast, have had to fight for momentum with the bat on the slow Dubai pitches. They were 33 for 4 in the semi final against Pakistan before Hrshitha Samarawickrema and Kavisha Dilhari revived and then completed the chase. Prior to that, they were 44 for 5 against Bangladesh and had to depend on Samarawickrama’s composed knock to seal their semi-final spot. They were also 45 for 5 against Indonesia in the league stage, before Nilakshi Silva lifted them.

That batting order has looked shaky. Chamari Athapaththu allying just 63 runs from four innings and Imesha Dulani 64 from four innings is a concern. And India’s bowling – quick bowler Nandani Sharma has been in good form too – might be tougher to handle than what Sri Lanka have faced so far.

India’s recent record against Sri Lanka also makes them favourites. They swept the five-match T20I series in December 2025 at home, and have won nine of their last ten T20Is against them.

But Sri Lanka’s one victory in that stretch came in the biggest game of all: the 2024 Asia Cup final in Dambulla, when they chased down 166 with eight wickets to spare to win the title.

That means Sri Lanka have both a challenge and a cause for optimism. They will need their batters to withstand Nandani and India’s spin trio – Deepti, N Shree Charani and Prema Rawat – and find a way to build partnerships, rather than leave too much for the middle and lower-middle order to do.

India have the balance and form while Sri Lanka, the defending champions, know better than most that a final can reset the equation. Not to forget, despite their struggles with the bat, Sri Lanka have an all-win record in the Asia Cup so far, the same as India.

Shafali Verma has made fast starts a recurring theme, scoring 168 runs in four matches at an impressive strike rate of 169.69. Two of her knocks have been 64s, and she has shown little sign of taking her foot off the accelerator. In the final, how she sets up the innings could be crucial.

Sri Lanka have found ways to recover from early collapses, with different players stepping up at different stages. But they need their talisman, Chamari Athapaththu, to come to the fore in the final. Athapaththu has made an impact with the ball – she is the tournament’s joint-highest wicket-taker – but her batting is yet to click. She has crossed 30 only once in four matches, in the opener against UAE. A noteworthy contribution with the bat, to go with her threat with the ball, could give Sri Lanka the spark they need against India.

India have fielded an unchanged XI in the tournament so far and, barring injuries, should do the same.

India Women (probable): Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Pratika Rawal, Harmanpreet Kaur (capt), Richa Ghosh (wk), Bharti Fulmali, Deepti Sharma, Prema Rawat, Kranti Gaud, N Shree Charani, Nandani Sharma

Sri Lanka have used 14 of their 17 players. In the semi-final against Pakistan, they left out Vishmi Gunaratne and Chethana Vimukthi for Hasini Perera and Mithali Ayodhya, which might be their ideal XI.

Sri Lanka Women (probable): Imesha Dulani, Chamari Athapaththu (capt), Sanjana Kavindi, Harsthitha Samarawickrama, Hasini Perera, Kavisha Dilhari, Nilakshika Silva, Kaushini Nuthyangana (wk), Sugandika Kumari, Chamudi Praboda, Mithali Ayodhya

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ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi’ departs Colombo

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/12

Priyan

The Italian Naval Vessel ‘ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi’ departed the Port of Colombo today, 12 September 2026, after completing a replenishment stop for logistics and services.

During the ship’s stay, the Commanding Officer of ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi, Captain Marco GUERRIERO, called on the Commander Western Naval Area, Rear Admiral Harsha De Silva, at the Western Naval Command Headquarters.

Members of the visiting crew also toured several tourist attractions across the Colombo area during their port call.