Captain Virat Kohli has called on his players to be "ruthless" after the crushing one-day series win over Australia took India top of the world one-day rankings to add to their number one Test status.
A five-wicket win in the third game of the five-match series on Sunday (24) gave India an unassailable 3-0 lead over Steve Smith's Australia.
It also stretched India's winning streak to a record 12 matches across all formats.
Kohli's side have been on a roll for the past year since regaining the number one Test spot with a 3-0 home whitewash of New Zealand.
The in-form captain has led from the front with 1,137 runs in 21 50-over matches this year, ahead South Africa's Faf du Plessis as the highest one-day scorer in 2017.
Kohli praised his team after the latest win against the once mighty Australians, who have been outplayed in India. Smith's team also lost a Test series 2-1 in India this year.
"Credit to the whole squad for the series win, but the journey stops only after the final game," said Kohli, the top ODI and T20 batsman in the International Cricket Council (ICC) ratings.
"We may give opportunities for people from now, but all 15 guys know that we got to be ruthless once we step onto the field," Kohli added.
The series has seen new Indian stars emerge, with all-rounder Hardik Pandya and left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav making an instant impact.
While Pandya's crucial 78 led the team's run chase in Indore, Yadav impressed with his maiden hat-trick in the second international.
However legendary spinner Bishan Singh Bedi believes India have not been tested by opposition teams, barring the Champions Trophy final in June against Pakistan which they lost by 180 runs.
India won 10 of their 13 Tests on home soil in the 2016-17 season and then went on to rout hosts Sri Lanka over nine games in all three formats.
"Realistically speaking Indians are not even fielding their best XI and beating the opposition hands down, whether it is Sri Lanka or Australia," Bedi said.
"We are loving the ratings, but if we are a little more pragmatic then you will realise that the Indian team in the last year or so haven't been stretched by the opposition.
"Just that one game in the Champions Trophy final against Pakistan, other than that we have not seen them in a tight situation.
"We will get to know the character of the team when they come out of a tight situation," Bedi added.
Left-arm spinner Axar Patel returns to the Indian squad in place of Ravindra Jadeja for the final two ODIs that will be played in Bangalore and Nagpur on Thursday (28) and Sunday (1).
Patel, who sprained his ankle at the start of the series, will join Chahal and Yadav as the third spinner in the 15-man squad.
Starmer dismissed Mandelson on Thursday after reading emails published by Bloomberg in which Mandelson defended Jeffrey Epstein following his 2008 conviction. (Photo: Getty Images)
A CABINET minister has said Peter Mandelson should not have been made UK ambassador to the US, as criticism mounted over prime minister Keir Starmer’s judgment in appointing him.
Douglas Alexander, the Scotland secretary, told the BBC that Mandelson’s appointment was seen as “high-risk, high-reward” but that newly revealed emails changed the situation.
“If Keir knew then what we know now, he would not have made that appointment,” he later told LBC.
Starmer dismissed Mandelson on Thursday after reading emails published by Bloomberg in which Mandelson defended Jeffrey Epstein following his 2008 conviction. Mandelson wrote to Epstein: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened … Your friends stay with you and love you.”
Stephen Doughty, the Foreign Office minister, told MPs the messages showed Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was “materially different from that known at the time of his appointment.”
Mandelson, who admitted during vetting that he had maintained links with Epstein and regretted doing so, is said to feel ill-treated.
Labour MPs criticised the handling of the affair. Paula Barker said the delay in removing Mandelson had “eroded trust,” Charlotte Nichols said he should “never have been appointed,” and Sadik Al-Hassan questioned the vetting process.
The episode has drawn wider scrutiny of Starmer’s decision-making. It comes after deputy prime minister Angela Rayner resigned last week over unpaid stamp duty. Some MPs turned attention to Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, who played a role in Mandelson’s appointment.
In a letter to staff, Mandelson said being ambassador was “the privilege of my life” and he regretted the circumstances of his departure. James Roscoe, his deputy, will serve as acting ambassador.
The Financial Times reported that Global Counsel, the lobbying firm co-founded by Mandelson, is preparing to cut ties with him.
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Finding romance today feels like trying to align stars in a night sky that refuses to stay still
When was the last time you stumbled into a conversation that made your heart skip? Or exchanged a sweet beginning to a love story - organically, without the buffer of screens, swipes, or curated profiles? In 2025, those moments feel rarer, swallowed up by the quickening pace of life.
We are living faster than ever before. Cities hum with noise and neon, people race between commitments, and ambition seems to be the rhythm we all march to. In the process, the simple art of connection - eye contact, lingering conversations, the gentle patience of getting to know someone - feels like it is slipping through our fingers.
Whether you’re single, searching, or settled, the landscape is shifting. Some turn to apps for convenience; others look for love in cafés, gyms, workplaces or community spaces. But the challenge remains the same: how do we connect deeply in a world designed to move at lightning speed?
We’ve become fluent in productivity, in chasing careers, in cultivating polished identities. Yet are we forgetting how to be fluent in intimacy? When was the last time you sat across from someone and truly listened - without checking your phone, without planning the next step, without treating time like a currency to be spent?
It’s a strange paradox: we have more access to people than ever before, yet many feel more isolated. Fun is always available - dinners, drinks, nights out, fleeting encounters - but fulfilment is harder to grasp. Are we mistaking access for intimacy? Are we human, or are we slowly adapting into versions of ourselves stripped of those raw, humanistic qualities - vulnerability, patience, tenderness - that once defined love?
Perhaps we’ve grown comfortable with the fast exit. It’s easier to ghost than to explain. Easier to keep moving than to pause. But what does that cost us? What do we lose when romance becomes a checkbox on an already overstuffed to-do list?
The truth is - the heart doesn’t move at the pace of technology or ambition. It moves slowly, awkwardly, with a rhythm that resists acceleration. Maybe that’s the point. Love has always lived in the messy spaces - hesitant pauses, nervous laughter, words spoken without rehearsal.
So the real question for 2025 is not “Have we gone too far?” but “Can we afford to slow down?” Can we still allow ourselves the sweetness of beginnings - the chance encounters, the unplanned moments, the quiet courage to be open?
Because in the end, connection is not about speed or access—it’s about presence. In a world that won’t stop moving, choosing to be present might be the bravest act of love we have left.
Instagram & TikTok: @Bombae.mix
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Shabana Mahmood, US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, Canada’s public safety minister Gary Anandasangaree, Australia’s home affairs minister Tony Burke and New Zealand’s attorney general Judith Collins at the Five Eyes security alliance summit on Monday (8)
PRIME MINISTER Keir Starmer’s government is not working. That is the public verdict, one year in. So, he used his deputy Angela Rayner’s resignation to hit the reset button.
It signals a shift in his own theory of change. Starmer wanted his mission-led government to avoid frequent shuffles of his pack, so that ministers knew their briefs. Such a dramatic reshuffle shows that the prime minister has had enough of subject expertise for now, gambling instead that fresh eyes may bring bold new energy to intractable challenges on welfare and asylum.
“Can Shabana Mahmood save Keir Starmer?” is the question being asked in Westminster. Small boats are increasingly talked about as an existential risk to the government. It will not be the only issue at the next general election – the economy and public services will matter, too – but Labour fear being unable to get heard on anything else without visible progress in the Channel.
The new home secretary has been asked to “think the unthinkable”. Ministers and MPs should be eager to try anything that might work – but might heed the lessons of six years of failure to stop the boats as they do. It is hardly as if former Conservative home secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman were unwilling to brainstorm the unthinkable, nor indeed to legislate the unworkable. If performative gestures – asylum seekers on barges – could stop the boats, it would have been all quiet in the Channel long ago.
As justice secretary, Mahmood’s voice was tough on crime, reflecting her communitarianism. Yet her policy involved a liberalism of necessity. With the prisons overflowing, shortening sentences and seeking public consent for alternative forms of punishment was unavoidable. Number 10 media briefings about being willing to make Labour MPs ‘queasy’ on asylum could – ironically – be a form of comfort zone politics; a distraction from tougher choices that might actually work. Hotel use for asylum could end in 2026 – not 2029 – if ministers both streamlined appeals and gave asylum seekers from high-risk countries limited leave to remain – with the right to work and the responsibility to house themselves. It could save billions, if the government can navigate the political risks. Labour’s challenge is to show how it can deliver an orderly and humane system by cooperating with allies, not ripping up treaties.
Migrants in a dinghy crossing the English Channel
As Mahmood becomes the most prominent British Asian and British Muslim in public life, others project contradictory ideas of what they imagine her politics, faith and personality mean. It is curious that Maurice Glasman could declare her the new leader of his Blue Labour faction (though Mahmood does not share the baron’s misplaced enthusiasm for US president Donald Trump) while Reform donor Aaron Banks declared that a Muslim lawyer as home secretary would immediately ‘open the floodgates’ to refugees from Gaza, exemplifying more about his presumptions and prejudices, than her politics.
There is no novelty in a British Asian home secretary now. Sajid Javid broke that ceiling in the Conservative government of 2018, yet Mahmood is already the fifth visible minority politician to hold that office. However, overt racism towards her goes unchecked on X/Twitter – where radicalised site owner and US businessman Elon Musk is infinitely more likely to retweet than to suspend racist voices who say no Muslim should ever be home secretary. That is Tommy Robinson’s view – yet Musk champions his London march on Saturday (13), where ex-soldier and minor TV celebrity Ant Middleton will pitch a London mayoral campaign founded on the absurdly racist proposition that Sadiq Khan, Mahmood and Conservatives opposition leader Kemi Badenoch should be barred from high office if their grandparents were not British-born.
This is the curious paradox of multi-ethnic Britain today: British Asian faces in high places have never been more common. Yet a vocal minority challenges the equal status of ethnic and faith minorities more aggressively than for a generation. It is not just the government that must show more leadership by speaking up to defend our multi-ethnic society. Every civic institution can contribute to how we respect differences and strengthen our common ground.
Knowing our history better is one vital foundation. Everyone is aware of this country’s pride in defeating fascism matters – but fewer know that the armies that won the war look more like our modern Britain of 2025 than that of 1945. Half of the public do know that Indian soldiers took part. Not so many understand that Hindu, Sikh and Muslim soldiers fought alongside British officers in the largest volunteer army the world has ever seen. The My Family Legacy campaign from British Future, the Royal British Legion and Eastern Eye will help British Asian families find and tell their stories. Writing this vital chapter fully into our national history remains work in progress – but can show why national symbols, like the poppy, belong to us all and can help to bring this diverse society together.
Sunder Katwala
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
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Army personnel patrol outside Nepal's President House during a curfew imposed to restore law and order in Kathmandu on September 12, 2025. (Photo: Getty Images)
Nepal’s president and army in talks to find an interim leader after deadly protests
At least 51 killed, the deadliest unrest since the end of the Maoist civil war
Curfew imposed in Kathmandu, army patrols continue
Gen Z protest leaders demand parliament’s dissolution
NEPAL’s president and army moved on Friday to find a consensus interim leader after anti-corruption protests forced the government out and parliament was set on fire.
The country of 30 million faced unrest this week after security forces clamped down on rallies by young anti-corruption protesters, leading to widespread violence on Tuesday.
At least 51 people were killed in the violence, the deadliest since the end of the Maoist civil war and the abolition of the monarchy in 2008.
The military took control of the streets on Wednesday, enforcing a curfew, as army chief General Ashok Raj Sigdel and president Ramchandra Paudel held talks with political leaders and representatives from the youth protest movement known as “Gen Z.”
Search for interim leader
Disagreements between factions remain, but 73-year-old Sushila Karki, Nepal’s first woman chief justice, has emerged as a key candidate.
"A meeting has been scheduled for this afternoon with the president, the army chief, former chief justice Sushila Karki, our representative Sudan Gurung and one legal expert," Nimesh Shrestha, who was part of the Gen Z protest, told AFP.
Karki told AFP that "experts need to come together to figure out the way forward", adding that "the parliament still stands."
However, Gurung, a youth activist, said on Thursday that their "first demand is the dissolution of parliament."
In an address to the nation, President Paudel said that "a solution to the problem is being sought, as soon as possible."
Curfew in Kathmandu
Army patrols continued for a third day in Kathmandu on Friday. The protests and unrest also triggered a mass jailbreak earlier in the week.
"I was very afraid and stayed locked inside my home with family and didn't leave," said Naveen Kumar Das, a painter-decorator in his mid-40s.
With a brief lifting of the curfew on Friday morning, residents went out to buy food and essentials.
"It was a really tense time and we just stayed indoors," said Laxmi Thapa, 32, who came out with her husband to refuel their motorbike. "We came out as things have improved."
Deadly crackdown
At least 21 protesters were among those killed, many during Monday’s police crackdown on demonstrations against corruption and governance problems, which began after a ban on social media.
On Tuesday, protesters set fire to parliament, government buildings and a Hilton Hotel. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, 73, resigned, and the army took over security in the streets.
The army said on Friday that more than 100 guns looted during the protests had been recovered.
Police spokesman Binod Ghimire told AFP that over 12,500 prisoners who escaped from jails across the country during the unrest "are still at large."
Call for change
Nepal’s economic challenges have fuelled discontent. More than 40 per cent of the population is aged between 16 and 40. A fifth of people aged 15-24 are unemployed, according to the World Bank, and GDP per capita is $1,447.
Gen Z protesters continue to debate the country’s political future.
"We started this movement so we could make a better Nepal," said James Karki, 24. "And I am positive that the army will listen."
(With inputs from agencies)
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Steven Spielberg revisits the turbulent shoot of Jaws five decades later
Director marks 50 years of Jaws with new exhibition in Los Angeles
Reveals how shooting at sea left crew seasick and production over budget
Says he feared being fired during delays caused by malfunctioning mechanical sharks
Jaws went on to earn £192 million (₹2,301 crore as of 12 Sep 2025) and redefine the summer blockbuster
As the 50th anniversary of Jaws is celebrated, director Steven Spielberg has reflected on the chaotic making of the thriller, describing how the troubled shoot pushed him to the brink of thinking his career was finished. Speaking at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, where a new exhibition is opening to mark the milestone, Spielberg said the filming of the mechanical shark epic left him convinced he would “never get hired again”.
Steven Spielberg revisits the turbulent shoot of Jaws five decades later Getty Images
Why did Steven Spielberg think his career was over during Jaws?
Spielberg, just 26 at the time, chose to film on location off Martha's Vineyard rather than in controlled water tanks. It was a decision that spiralled into months of production delays and escalating costs. “My hubris was thinking we could take a Hollywood crew 12 miles out to sea and make a movie with a mechanical shark,” he told journalists.
The ambitious plan quickly unravelled. Unpredictable tides and passing regattas repeatedly ruined takes, while crew members succumbed to seasickness. “I’ve never seen so much vomit in my life,” Spielberg joked. As schedules slipped and budgets soared, he feared the studio would shut down the film and end his career.
Steven Spielberg's Clapperboard from Jaws Getty Images
What challenges plagued the Jaws production at sea?
The centrepiece of the film, three full-sized animatronic sharks nicknamed “Bruce," proved the biggest obstacle. Built using pneumatic and hydraulic systems, they had never been tested in salt water before arriving at Martha’s Vineyard. Once submerged, salt corroded their mechanisms, pipes clogged, and controls frequently failed.
Because post-production tools in 1974 were limited, even minor background distractions became major setbacks. Boats from real regattas would drift into the background, forcing the crew to halt filming and wait for hours for clear ocean shots.
Steven Spielberg reflects on ‘Jaws’ at 50 as he recalls the chaos that made him fear being firedGetty Images
How did the crew keep the film alive despite setbacks?
Despite the relentless technical failures, Spielberg refused repeated offers to halt production entirely. Crucially, his team stood by him. Sound director John Carter once fell overboard while holding his recorder, and editor Verna Fields worked tirelessly to salvage suspense from the limited usable footage. Composer John Williams’s now-iconic two-note theme also played a vital role in heightening the tension where shark visuals were lacking.
What is featured in the new Jaws 50th anniversary exhibition?
The new exhibition at the Academy Museum is the first in its history dedicated to a single film. It showcases original storyboards, surviving shark models, and behind-the-scenes artefacts that illustrate the ingenuity and strain behind the production. Curator Jenny He said the display highlights how artistic problem-solving turned logistical disaster into cinematic history.
The film went on to earn £192m (₹2,301 crore as of 12 Sep 2025) at the US box office and became the first American “summer blockbuster,” launching Spielberg’s career as one of Hollywood’s most influential directors.