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Business Standard
2 days ago
- Sport
- Business Standard
ICC set to enforce new rules for ODI cricket starting next month: Report
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is all set to implement a fresh set of playing conditions across all formats of international cricket, with One Day Internationals (ODIs) seeing some of the most notable changes, according to a media report from Cricbuzz. The report states that starting July 2025, ODIs will return to using a single ball by the end of each innings—a move aimed at reintroducing some reverse swing and restoring balance between bat and ball in the latter overs. The ICC conveyed these changes in a recent communication to its member boards, stating that the revised Playing Conditions (PCs) will take effect immediately for Tests in June and for limited-overs games from July. Adjustments to the concussion substitute policy, Decision Review System (DRS), and boundary catch regulations are also part of the overhaul. ODIs to revert to single-ball format One of the most impactful changes is the ICC's decision to move away from the two-ball rule that has been in place in ODIs for over a decade. According to the updated guidelines, teams will now start with two new balls—one from each end—but only one of them will be used for the final phase of the innings. The ICC has informed members that overs 1 to 34 will be played with two balls. Before the start of the 35th over, the fielding side will select one of the two balls to be used for the remainder of the innings. This chosen ball will then be bowled from both ends through to the 50th over, unless a replacement is required. In matches reduced to 25 overs or fewer before the start, only one new ball will be used per innings. The unused ball will be added to the reserve supply for potential replacements. Concussion protocols tightened Another important change pertains to concussion replacements. Teams will now be required to name five designated substitutes—specifically, one each from the categories of wicketkeeper, batter, seam bowler, spinner, and all-rounder—prior to the match. In rare cases where a replacement player is also concussed, the match referee will have the authority to approve an additional substitute outside of the original five, provided it aligns with existing like-for-like replacement rules. Other rule updates on the way The ICC also noted that changes to rules regarding boundary catches and DRS protocols are in progress, with further details to be shared soon. While the current rules will apply during the World Test Championship (WTC) final between Australia and South Africa at Lord's starting June 11, the new Test playing conditions will begin with the Sri Lanka vs Bangladesh Test in Galle on June 17. ODI changes will kick in with the Sri Lanka-Bangladesh ODI series opener in Colombo on July 2, while the T20I updates will be in place from July 10. These amendments were approved by the ICC Chief Executives Committee and not referred to the working group, which will instead look into future formats for youth cricket.
Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
NDP-Tories spar as interprovincial trade bill up in the air
A game of political chicken playing out at the Manitoba legislature could see the premier go to a first ministers' meeting Monday in Saskatoon without an interprovincial trade bill and MLAs' summer recess delayed three weeks. 'If (the Progressive Conservatives) want to sit here throughout the month of June, we are very happy to do so,' Premier Wab Kinew said during question period Thursday. The NDP want the Tories' co-operation in fast-tracking the Fair Trade in Canada (Internal Trade Mutual Recognition) Act and the Buy Manitoba, Buy Canadian Day Act. It was introduced May 22, long past the deadline for bills to be guaranteed passage before the house rises on Monday. The opposition has said it won't pass the bill unless the NDP agree to fast track four of their bills. On Thursday, Kinew tabled a letter from Nova Scotia's PC Premier Tim Houston saying that Manitoba's fair trade bill meets his province's criteria for reciprocal free trade. Kinew wanted Bill 47 passed before he meets with Prime Minister Mark Carney and his fellow premiers in Saskatoon. Internal trade is expected to be a key part of the discussions. Carney has said he wants a Canada-wide interprovincial free trade deal signed by July 1. The federal government's speech from the throne delivered Tuesday by King Charles called for free trade across Canada. 'It is crucial that Manitoba's interprovincial trade legislation is passed without further delay,' the premier said in a news release Thursday. It pointed to support for the elimination of interprovincial trade barriers from business and labour leaders — including Keystone Agricultural Producers president Jill Verwey, Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce president Loren Remillard and the United Steelworkers Manitoba co-ordinator Mike Pulak. The news release said the legislative sitting will be extended into the summer if the passage of the bill is delayed. 'We will pass Bill 47 within a few days and then we can spend the rest of the month talking about Sio (Silica),' the premier told the chamber Thursday. He was referring to Ethics Commissioner Jeffrey Schnoor's report last week that found former premier Heather Stefanson, then-deputy premier Cliff Cullen and former economic development minister Jeff Wharton — the MLA for Red River North — acted improperly by trying to get a controversial sand mine licensed after the PCs lost the election and before the NDP government was sworn in. Schnoor recommended fines of $18,000, $12,000 and $10,000 respectively that the Manitoba Legislative Assembly must vote on within 10 sitting days of the tabling of his report. The PCs refused to fast-track the bill Thursday and said it's the NDP government's own fault for missing the deadline to get the bill passed before the summer recess and for refusing to work with the opposition. 'We have clearly laid out a pathway for passing this bill,' PC leader Obby Khan told reporters Thursday. 'It is unfortunate that the government house leader refuses to negotiate, refuses to be reasonable, refuses to put Manitobans first.' Government house leader Nahanni Fontaine said the bill is in the best interests of the province and the country as it faces U.S. president Donald Trump's threats of tariffs and making Canada the 51st state. 'It's incredibly disappointing to see the Manitoba PCs choose to play games rather than do the job that they're elected to do, which I remind folks is to do what's in the best interest of Manitobans,' Fontaine said. Management of the legislative agenda is the responsibility of the government house leader, said veteran political observer Paul Thomas. 'Even in a majority government situation, making progress on moving bills forward depends somewhat on the co-operation of the opposition,' the University of Manitoba political studies professor emeritus said. 'Achieving that co-operation involves negotiation within meetings between the two house leaders. In addition to the clash of their respective political goals, the interpersonal styles and the level of respect between the house leaders affect how constructive such meeting are.' Sometimes bills just aren't ready on time, he added. 'Unforeseen events can occur which prevent the government from completing its legislative agenda based on a possible plan starting the session. There have been more than a few unforeseen, disruptive events this spring.' Members return to the chamber Monday and will sit for an additional three weeks if the government requests an extension from the speaker. Carol SandersLegislature reporter Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol. Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Forbes
5 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
AI PCs Will Dominate By 2027, Says Asus Executive
So-called AI PCs will account for more than half of PC shipments by 2027, according to a senior Asus executive. Demand for AI PCs – which ship with a neural processing unit (NPU) to assist with AI tasks – has been relatively modest so far. The market share of AI PCs is 'still single digit', Eric Chen, Asus's senior corporate vice president told me in a briefing to coincide with last week's Computex trade show. 'It's not that big,' he admitted. However, he said that growth over the next couple of years will mean that by 2027 'over 50%' of total PC shipments will be AI PCs. Asus's predictions are roughly in line with that of major analysts such as Gartner, IDC and Canalys, all of which have predicted steep growth in AI-capable PCs over the next few years. The big challenge for PC makers is giving businesses and consumers a solid reason to pay a premium for an AI PC. Popular AI services such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Anthropic's Claude are cloud based and don't directly benefit from the presence of an NPU. Meanwhile, Microsoft has struggled to deliver compelling AI features in Windows, with the highly controversial and much delayed Recall feature only arriving on Copilot+ machines at the end of last month. Microsoft was forced to pull an early test version of the all-seeing Recall after serious security flaws were discovered by testers, which have now been fixed. Chen said 'the big bottleneck" right now is that users don't fully understand how AI can help them. He gave an example of how Asus is deploying AI within its own business to check the paperwork that comes with business transactions. Previously that task was done by hand, but now the company is using AI to process the paperwork. 'They used to spend 200 hours to do the checks,' said Chen. 'Now, three hours. That's a big, big difference.' It's those kinds of tasks involving sensitive customer data that companies might not want uploaded to cloud services that will really take advantage of the local processing power offered by AI PCs, Chen claimed. 'A lot of companies and people, they don't want their data to upload to the cloud,' he said. Although Asus has been developing a suite of its own applications, such as Muse Tree, which offers AI image generation without relying on expensive, resource-hungry cloud services, Chen concedes that professionals will still turn to the cloud when they need the optimal quality. He said that 'local is already good enough" for many lightweight tasks, however, and that cloud AI services will eventually start tapping the power available to AI PCs. 'The cloud and the local, they will work together. That is one of the trends that will happen,' Chen added. AI PCs may well hold more appeal to businesses than consumers right now, and that's perhaps one of the reasons that Asus has decided to ramp up its commercial offering, pitting the company into even stronger competition with rivals such as Dell and Lenovo. 'In the past 35 years, we are more focused on the consumer PC business,' said Chen. 'In the coming years, Asus will develop our commercial business as well.' IDC's figures for 2024 worldwide PC shipments put Asus in fifth position, with a market share of around 7%. But Chen said the company had 'very aggressive' plans to attack the commercial market in a bid to close the gap to market leader Lenovo, which shipped more than three times as many PCs as Asus did in 2024, according to IDC's figures.
Winnipeg Free Press
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Khan faces a difficult fight — with his own base
Opinion The political aspirations of Wally Daudrich have fizzled out for the moment — but the ghost of it will remain something with which PC Leader Obby Khan must contend. Daudrich, who lost to Khan by a hair in a leadership contest which concluded in late April, ran a campaign promising to be a 'pro-freedom, pro-life and true conservative' leader. That embrace of social conservatism took him almost all the way to the head of the Progressive Conservative table — he actually garnered more votes than Khan, only to lose on a percentage basis under a new system for tabulating points awarded to candidates. (Under this system, Khan won 50.4 per cent of total points, and Daudrich 49.6 per cent). But the final nail in the coffin — barring any political resurrections down the line — was Khan's refusal to put Daudrich in as the party's candidate for a byelection for the constituency of Spruce Woods. Daudrich has said he won't apply to contest the nomination. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Leader of the Opposition Obby Khan Denying Daudrich the byelection spot was prudent of Khan. He has a tall order ahead, running the PCs in the wake of a deeply unpopular re-election campaign under former premier Heather Stefanson, and reshaping the party's image in the public eye. (A task made more difficult by recent findings of ethics violations by that outgoing government.) As leader, Khan has promised a change in tone, in its political rhetoric and its Question Period behaviour. 'A new day has begun,' he told the chamber in early May. In trying to build back trust after the party's anti-landfill-search campaign plank registered with voters as callous, he would not have been served well by appointing a candidate who joked about sending polar bears into downtown Winnipeg as a solution to the city's homelessness problem. But while Daudrich is out of the running, it remains the case that in terms of sheer number of voters, a majority of Progressive Conservative members — however slim the majority — wanted Daudrich in, and not Khan. And so he must try to create a kinder, gentler, more moderate image for the PCs, even as much of his base advocates taking the party further to the right. It will make for an interesting test of whether or not a leader steers their party, or the other way around. Will Khan, the party leader who has apologized for the landfill rhetoric, insist on tamping down the further-right elements of his party? Or will their influence ultimately force him to take the ship in the direction they want it to go? Wednesdays A weekly dispatch from the head of the Free Press newsroom. It's a problem faced by small-c conservatives and their parties the world over — small-government, pro-business people trying to continue their usual work in the shadow of a rising tidal wave with MAGA stamped either literally or spiritually upon it. The far-right political element, embodied by Trumpism stateside and the 'Freedom Convoy' in Canada, is loud and proud about its grievances. This movement also found a voice in Daudrich, who credited U.S. President Donald Trump with helping to 'change the mood' among conservatives. Earlier this year in this space, this paper wondered whether Khan was actually all that ideologically different from Daudrich, or if he was simply better at concealing his more risible positions beneath a veneer of rhetorical discretion and decent retail politics. If he means what he says, he will have to steel himself for battles both within and without, as he tries to inspire the party's base to follow him to a more moderate place. But if the PCs continue to be swept up in an increasingly right-wing tide, it will be strong evidence he didn't.
Winnipeg Free Press
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
A story of breathless insouciance and sheer persistence
Opinion 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!' So wrote Sir Walter Scott two centuries ago in his epic English poem, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field. Writing in today's colloquial English, one would simply say, 'When lying liars lie about their lies.' Both are fitting characterizations of the stunning ethics and conflict of interest report released this week by ethics commissioner Jeffrey Schnoor into the attempted breach of the caretaker convention by a defeated government after the 2023 Manitoba election. He found that former premier Heather Stefanson, deputy premier Cliff Cullen, and Jeff Wharton, minister of economic development, investment, and trade, attempted to approve an environmental licence for the controversial Sio Silica mine during the caretaker period, despite having no political authority or legitimacy to do so. In doing so, Schnoor found that they had first, breached the caretaker convention which governs the behaviour of governments during and after an election, and second, in doing so, they had sought to 'further another person's private interests' — Sio Silica. An ethical and conflict of interest breach of a decisive and unprecedented nature. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Former premier Heather Stefanson and some members of her government tried to push through a controversial mining permit — after the PCs were defeated in the last election, an investigation has found. The caretaker convention is a bedrock political convention of Canada's system of responsible government and democracy. Simply put, an outgoing government cannot take decisions on any matters that are not routine, urgent, or administrative in nature only. Sio Silica's licence approval was anything but. It was anti-democratic in the extreme. To read the report is to be struck by both the breathless insouciance and the sheer persistence of the main protagonists in their actions. They simply didn't give up. Despite saying to the Commissioner in testimony that they understood the caretaker convention, each of them sent written submissions to him insisting it actually didn't matter. Schnoor wasn't having any of it, writing of Stefanson: 'Her efforts to have the project licence issued during the transition period were themselves a breach of the caretaker convention.' This was no shortage of attempts by the deputy premier to advance the Sio Silica licence through the bureaucracy during the election period from Sept. 5 to Oct. 3, 2023. A draft licence was in fact prepared and shared with the company. These efforts accelerated following the PC government's loss during the transition period. Not able to issue the licence themselves, or unwilling to shoulder that controversial responsibility, Cullen and Wharton sought to entwine officials in their machinations, from the clerk of the executive council to the deputy minister of environment, desiring they find a way to do so. That 'way' was to concoct a scheme, led by Wharton in this instance, to get the defeated minister of environment, Kevin Klein, to issue it on his own authority, under Section 11.1 and 11.2 of the Environment Act, a never-before used power that allows the minister to issue a licence on his own. He refused, so they moved on to pressure Rochelle Squires, also defeated, to do so in a highly irregular move in her formal capacity as 'acting minister of environment,' under the Executive Council Act. This spurious ploy would have required a just-defeated acting minister to act in place of a just-defeated minister who had refused to act on his own accord. A legal fig leaf to cover up an illegitimate act. Unsurprisingly, each of the respondents sought to minimize their knowledge and actions throughout this sordid exercise. 'No harm, no foul' became their default excuse. Since no licence was ever issued, they cannot retroactively be found to have done wrong. Schnoor disagreed, writing: 'A private interest does not actually have to be furthered; it is sufficient that there is an opportunity to do so.' He went on to call Stefanson's repeated dismissal of the caretaker convention as 'disheartening.' That is an understatement. The former premier has evidently learned nothing from the whole affair, continuing to dissemble about her actions while dismissing the report and its findings. Her statement on the report says, 'I had no obligation to do so but reached out to the incoming government and fully considered their views before deciding on what to do,' Any actions she took, were 'to further and protect the public interest.' Wednesdays A weekly dispatch from the head of the Free Press newsroom. No obligation? This means she believed she could have issued the licence but deigned not to, not because of the caretaker convention but because out of some unknown principle known only unto her. How striving to ignore that same caretaker convention furthers and protects the public interest is breathtaking in its impertinence. Out of politics now, Stefanson's primordial interest in her defence seemed to be how this would affect her future job prospects. This was revealed via a final representation from her legal counsel who wrote the commissioner, asserting: 'with respect to whether any of your potential findings would impact Ms. Stefanson's capacity to serve as a director of any publicly traded Canadian companies. He opined that they would not…' Schnoor recommended stiff fines for each of Stefanson, Cullen, and Wharton. These are the first-ever such recommended by the ethics commissioner. Why, because it was Stefanson's predecessor as premier, Brian Pallister, who toughened up the Conflict of Interest Act in 2021 to allow for such fines. Sir Walter Scott might call that poetic justice. David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.
