Jay Shah, the son of India's home minister Amit Shah, will replace New Zealander Greg Barclay, who chose not to seek a third term.
Shah, who is 35 years old, will become the youngest person to hold the position when he begins his term on December 1. (Photo: Getty Images)
By EasternEyeAug 28, 2024
INDIA's Jay Shah will take over as chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC) later this year, the governing body announced on Tuesday.
Shah, who is 35 years old, will become the youngest person to hold the position when he begins his term on December 1.
Shah, the son of India's home minister Amit Shah, will replace New Zealander Greg Barclay, who chose not to seek a third term.
The ICC confirmed that Shah was the sole candidate for the role. Currently, Shah is recognised as a key figure in cricket administration, serving as the secretary of the world's wealthiest cricket board.
In addition to his ICC role, Shah also serves as the president of the Asian Cricket Council. He emphasised his commitment to expanding the sport, particularly as cricket is set to return to the Olympics in the 2028 Los Angeles Games after a 128-year absence.
"We stand at a critical juncture where it is increasingly important to balance the coexistence of multiple formats, promote the adoption of advanced technologies, and introduce our marquee events to new global markets," Shah stated.
"Our goal is to make cricket more inclusive and popular than ever before," he added. "The inclusion of our sport in the Olympics at LA 2028 represents a significant inflection point for the growth of cricket, and I am confident that it will drive the sport forward in unprecedented ways."
Skin confronts colourism through horror, transforming memory into a grotesque clinic where melanin is harvested as a commodity.
Urvashi Pathania recalls her earliest memory of being bleached at nine after relatives said her dark skin would affect marriage prospects.
The film frames colourism as an “economic horror,” linking beauty standards to exploitation and resource plunder.
Skin was workshopped at the prestigious Sundance Labs and is being developed into a feature-length project.
Pathania believes horror is the most visceral way to capture inherited prejudice and social cruelty.
Full interview and the complete video are available on the Eastern Eye YouTube channel.
When filmmaker Urvashi Pathania talks about her short film Skin, her words carry the same sharpness and intimacy as the story itself. The short film leaves audiences equally unsettled and haunted. It’s not merely genre horror but a brave examination of colourism, where a personal wound becomes a grotesque clinic that harvests melanin as a commodity. In this Eastern Eye exclusive, Pathania discusses the origins and inspirations behind her film.
Filmmaker Urvashi Pathania opens up about the childhood memory that inspired her acclaimed short film Skin Getty Images
The film’s most harrowing image; of a woman submerged in a fluorescent tank as her skin dissolves, comes from a real childhood memory. “I was nine when one of my mum’s friends said, ‘Cute kid, but you need to do something about her dark skin if you ever want her to get married,’” Pathania remembers. Her mother, who was fair-skinned, listened. “She put a homemade bleaching paste on me,” Pathania says, “and I remember screaming in the bathtub.” That early sense of being trapped, of a body altered without consent, became the ghost at Skin’s core.
Pathania intentionally opens the film not with the clinic but with two sisters squabbling in a car. Ria, a dark-skinned influencer and a vocal champion of skin positivity, is the viewer’s entry point: incredulous, furious, and protective when Kanika announces she will bleach her skin. “Ria is the voice of the audience,” Pathania explains. “We enter through her disbelief and the love that’s tangled up in it.”
The clinic’s fluorescent hell, Markandeya, reveals the scale of the horror: an assembly line where dark-skinned women are drained and their melanin routed into glowing vats for wealthier, fairer clients. Pathania deliberately frames this as economic horror. “I wanted it to feel bigger than skin bleaching,” she says. “It’s about harvesting, of resources, of culture, of beauty rituals. Whether it’s the brown earth being plundered or the bodies of women of colour being commodified, the cost is always disproportionately ours.”
That cost is encoded in the film’s visual language. Pathania and her longtime cinematographer Catherine crafted a lighting palette that is as much metaphor as aesthetic. “Horror films usually hide terror in darkness. But here, the whitest moment is the most terrifying,” Pathania notes. Fair clients bask in amber-lit pools, their skin steeped in stolen warmth, while women of colour are exposed under cold, fluorescent tones that reveal the rawness of their natural skin. “It was the only way to show the truth of what Kanika loses,” Pathania says, referencing the film’s climax where her skin tone literally changes.
For Pathania, horror is a natural language to speak about inheritance, not genes, but the ideas passed down inside families and communities. Kanika’s desire to resemble her fair-skinned mother is a devastating detail because it links colourism to maternal love and social survival. “We like to blame our parents,” Pathania says, “but we carry it too. These cycles don’t just live in the past. They’re active.” The film, in fact, maps how affection and aspiration can become vectors for harm.
The film’s cruelest twist lands in its climax. Ria, the sister who loves her melanin, tries to rescue Kanika and becomes trapped instead, drained for the supposed benefit of others. “One person might individually gain—lighter skin, different treatment—but society pays,” Pathania says. “Every time a new standard is set, it hurts women as a whole.” The swap is designed to be both literal and moral: the personal gain of assimilation carries a social cost.
Juniper, the clinic director, weaponises empathy—polite, warm, a girlboss peddling empowerment as she harvests. “She’s complicit and trapped,” Pathania says. “In the feature version, you see the strings go even higher.”
Perhaps the most haunting image comes in the film’s closing: older women, waiting to bathe in stolen melanin, unaware of the violence behind their “fountain of youth.” Pathania denies them villainy and implicates us all. “They don’t know the cost,” she says. “They hear about a fountain of youth and want it. That desire is universal. The tragedy is that the system allowing it is invisible to them.”
Asked to name a single scene that sums up Skin, Pathania points to a quiet, devastating parallel: Ria struggling with foundation that’s too light while Kanika undergoes the bleaching ritual. “It’s the same violence in different forms,” she says. “One is subtle, one is grotesque. But both come from being told you’re not enough.”
Skin may be short, but it is not small. It exists as proof of a larger project. Pathania workshopped a feature script for Skin at the Sundance Labs, and the short reads like a hard, lucid preview of that longer story. She’s also writing other genre pieces, including a ghost story about housing injustice in Manhattan, because for Pathania, horror remains the most honest language for telling political stories that live in the body.
Skin lingers because it refuses easy catharsis. There’s no victory, only the echo of Ria’s screams in the tank. Pathania’s craft is in how she shows colourism doesn’t merely humiliate; it becomes a literal marketplace. “You can walk out of the clinic lighter,” she says. “But someone else pays the price.”
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Rapper Sean Kingston sentenced to three and a half years in US federal prison.
Fraud scheme, run with his mother, involved luxury goods worth more than £740,000.
Items included designer watches, furniture, a 232-inch LED TV and a bulletproof Cadillac Escalade.
Kingston apologised in court; his mother was jailed for five years in July.
Text messages showed the pair discussing fake payment receipts.
Conviction and sentencing
Rapper Sean Kingston has been sentenced to three and a half years in a US federal prison for his role in a fraud scheme worth over £740,000.
The Jamaican-American singer, whose real name is Kisean Anderson, was convicted earlier this year alongside his mother, Janice Turner, of wire fraud. Prosecutors said they exploited Kingston’s celebrity status to obtain luxury items without paying for them.
How the scheme worked
According to prosecutors, Kingston contacted victims via social media, claiming he wished to buy high-end products. He then invited them to his homes in South Florida, promising to promote their goods on his platforms or introduce them to other celebrities.
When payments were due, Kingston or his mother sent fraudulent wire transfer receipts. While some victims later received compensation after legal intervention or lawsuits, most were left out of pocket.
Evidence at trial
Prosecutors said the scheme netted more than £740,000 in goods, including luxury watches, furniture, a 232-inch LED television and a bulletproof Cadillac Escalade.
Text messages shown in court revealed Kingston instructing his mother: “I told you to make [a] fake receipt.”
Apology and defence
Before sentencing, Kingston apologised to the court and said he had learned from his actions. He will begin serving his sentence immediately.
His mother, Janice Turner, was jailed for five years in July.
Defence lawyer Zeljka Bozanic described Kingston as “a soft guy who grew up poor when he rose to fame overnight”, arguing he still had the mentality of a teenager and struggled to manage his finances.
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Ricky Jones attends an anti-racism protest in Walthamstow, London. (Photo: Reuters)
A COUNCILLOR was on Friday (15) acquitted of encouraging violent disorder for saying far-right activists should have their throats cut amid riots last year, drawing claims from right-wing politicians of a hypocritical "two-tier" justice system.
Ricky Jones made the comments at a counter-protest in London after three girls were murdered in Southport last summer and he was suspended by the Labour party.
Jones, 58, was cleared by a jury following a trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court. He had made the remarks to a crowd gathered near an immigration advice centre in London after reports that far-right supporters were planning a protest.
"They are disgusting Nazi fascists ... We need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all," he said, running a finger across his throat.
Jones gave evidence that he did not intend his words to be taken literally and said his comments referred to far-right stickers with hidden razor blades found on a train.
Right-wing politicians and activists said his case was an example of how Britain had an unfair police and justice system, with those who voice concerns about immigration treated differently to those who support liberal or left-wing causes.
They contrasted Jones' treatment with that of Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor who was jailed for 31 months for inciting racial hatred for a post urging mass deportation of migrants and the burning of their hotels.
Unlike Jones, she had pleaded guilty to the offence.
Misinformation on social media last year said the teenager who committed the Southport murders was an Islamist migrant, fuelling days of violent riots including attacks on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers.
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Onlookers gather near a destroyed bridge after flash floods on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, on August 15, 2025. (Photo: Getty Images)
HEAVY monsoon rains triggered landslides and flash floods across northern Pakistan, leaving at least 169 people dead in the last 24 hours, national and local officials said on Friday (15).
The majority of the deaths, 150, were recorded in mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
Nine more people were killed in Pakistan Kashmir, while five died in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, it said.
The majority of those killed have died in flash floods and collapsing houses.
Five others, including two pilots, were killed when a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government helicopter crashed due to bad weather during a mission to deliver relief goods, the chief minister of the province, Ali Amin Gandapur, said.
The provincial government has declared the severely affected mountainous districts of Buner, Bajaur, Mansehra and Battagram as disaster-hit areas.
In Bajaur, a tribal district abutting Afghanistan, a crowd amassed around an excavator trawling a mud-soaked hill, AFP photos showed.
Funeral prayers began in a paddock nearby, with people grieving in front of several bodies covered by blankets.
The meteorological department has issued a heavy rain alert for the northwest, urging people to avoid "unnecessary exposure to vulnerable areas".
In Indian Kashmir, rescuers pulled bodies from mud and rubble on Friday after a flood crashed through a Himalayan village, killing at least 60 people and washing away dozens more.
Scientists said climate change has made weather events around the world more extreme and more frequent.
Pakistan is one of the world's most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, and its population is contending with extreme weather events with increasing frequency.
The torrential rains that have pounded Pakistan since the start of the summer monsoon, described as "unusual" by authorities, have killed more than 320 people, nearly half of them children.
In July, Punjab, home to nearly half of Pakistan's 255 million people, recorded 73 per cent more rainfall than the previous year and more deaths than in the entire previous monsoon.
(With inputs from AFP)
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Since his T20 debut in September last year, Bethell has played 13 T20 internationals, 12 one-day internationals and four Tests.
JACOB BETHELL will become England’s youngest men’s international cricket captain after being named skipper for next month’s T20 series in Ireland.
The 21-year-old Warwickshire allounder has been appointed to lead England in the three-match series in Dublin from September 17 to 21. The matches will be part of preparations for next year’s T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka.
Bethell is set to break the record held by Monty Bowden, who was 23 years and 144 days old when he captained England in a Test against South Africa in Cape Town in 1888/89.
Since his T20 debut in September last year, Bethell has played 13 T20 internationals, 12 one-day internationals and four Tests.
‘Leadership qualities’
"Jacob Bethell has impressed with his leadership qualities ever since he has been with the England squads and the series against Ireland will provide him with the opportunity to further develop those skills on the international stage," said England selector Luke Wright.
Bethell’s latest appearance came in the deciding Test against India at the Oval this month. Standing in for injured captain Ben Stokes, he scored six and five and went wicketless with his left-arm spin.
Former captain Michael Vaughan criticised the decision to play Bethell in such a match, calling it “diabolical” given his limited first-class cricket this season.
Bethell now leads England as regular white-ball captain Harry Brook takes a break following the South Africa series. Ben Duckett, Jamie Smith, Jofra Archer and Brydon Carse have also been rested ahead of the Ashes.
Fast bowlers Mark Wood and Gus Atkinson are absent from all three squads to prepare for the Australia tour, where the first Test begins in Perth on November 21. Uncapped fast bowler Sonny Baker has been included.
Wood underwent knee surgery in March and missed the India Test series.
England squads for South Africa and Ireland
ODI squad v South Africa: Harry Brook (capt), Rehan Ahmed, Jofra Archer, Sonny Baker, Tom Banton, Jacob Bethell, Jos Buttler (wkt), Brydon Carse, Ben Duckett, Will Jacks, Saqib Mahmood, Jamie Overton, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Jamie Smith (wkt)
T20 squad v South Africa: Brook (capt), Ahmed, Archer, Banton, Bethell, Carse, Liam Dawson, Duckett, Jacks, Mahmood, Overton, Rashid, Phil Salt (wkt), Smith (wkt), Luke Wood
T20 squad v Ireland: Bethell (capt), Ahmed, Baker, Banton, Buttler, Dawson, Tom Hartley, Jacks, Mahmood, Overton, Matthew Potts, Rashid, Salt (wkt), Wood
Fixtures
England v South Africa ODIs Sep 02: 1st ODI, Headingley, Leeds (1200 GMT) Sep 04: 2nd ODI, Lord's, London (1200 GMT) Sep 07: 3rd ODI, Rose Bowl, Southampton (1000 GMT)
England v South Africa T20s Sep 10: 1st T20, Sophia Gardens, Cardiff (1730 GMT) Sep 12: 2nd T20, Old Trafford, Manchester (1730 GMT) Sep 14: 3rd T20, Trent Bridge, Nottingham (1330 GMT)
Ireland v England T20s, Malahide, Dublin (1230 GMT) Sep 17: 1st T20 Sep 19: 2nd T20 Sep 21: 3rd T20
(With inputs from agencies)
Suggested tags: Jacob Bethell, England cricket, Ireland T20 series, England captaincy, England squads