An outdoor partial roof at Delhi airport collapsed early on Friday morning after heavy rainfall in the city, killing one person and injuring four others.
Videos online showed huge pillars erected to support the roof, smashing into cars parked along the airport’s main terminal.
Rescue operations are underway at the airport, and the injured are being treated in hospitals.
Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu rushed to the airport after the incident
India’s aviation regulator has advised airlines to accommodate passengers on alternate flights or offer them full refunds.
Federal Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu has announced a compensation of two million Indian Rupees to the deceased’s family and 300,000 rupees for the injured.
On social media, many users pointed out that the terminal had undergone a massive renovation at the cost of billions of rupees and had been inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March – a month before the recent general election began.
However, Kinjarapu later said the portion that collapsed was not part of the renovated section.
President of the United States (US) Joe Biden and Donald Trump had the first public debate of the 2024 US presidential race; however, Biden struggled to articulate his points at several moments, often fumbling his words.
Netizens did not spare Biden as memes ruled the social media with many Democrat supporters disappointed at Biden’s inability to articulate his words, his old age and infirmity shining through.
Thursday evening’s performance took place at the CNN news network’s studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It marked the first time since October 2020 that the two candidates met on the debate stage.
But from the moment Biden stepped on stage, the Democratic president seemed to wobble, muttering as he approached the podium.
At one moment during the speech, Biden talked about border control with slurred speech, to which Trump replied, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of his speech; I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
Local police in the Maldives have arrested two serving ministers for allegedly performing black magic on President Mohamed Muizzu. Ministers Shamnaz Saleem, Adam Rameez, and two others were apprehended, reported international media.
Maldives Minister Fathimath Shamnaz Ali Saleem is the state minister for Environment, Climate Change, and Energy in the Maldives. Her ex-husband, Adam Rameez, was a minister at the President’s Office. On June 23, they were arrested and remanded in custody for seven days on charges of allegedly performing black magic.
“Shamnaz, alongside two other individuals, was arrested on Sunday. All three of them have been remanded in custody for seven days. She was suspended from her post on Wednesday as per the Environment Ministry,” news portal Sun.mv reported, adding that Rameez was also suspended on Thursday.
“Rameez, during his time at Male City Council, was known as a close aide of Muizzu, who was the mayor at that time,” Sun.mv said. “However, he has been absent from the public light in the past five months or so,” the report added.
Shamnaz and Rameez worked with Muizzu as members of the Male City Council when he was mayor.
The Maldives government has yet to make an official statement on this situation.
Background
After Muizzu was elected President last year, Shamnaz resigned from the Male City Council and later transferred to the Environment Ministry. Her role is vital in a nation facing the brunt of the climate crisis.
A 62-year-old woman was stabbed to death by three neighbours in April 2023 after she was accused of conducting black magic, aalthough the police investigation found her to be innocent, according to a local Mihaaru news website.
In 2012, during a crackdown on an opposition political rally, the police accused the organizers of hurling a “cursed rooster” at officers who were raiding their offices
Tehran (AFP) – Polls in Iran opened on Friday for a presidential election following the death of ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.
Ultimate political power in Iran is held by Khamenei, the supreme leader.
Khamenei insisted this week that “the most qualified candidate” must be “the one who truly believes in the principles of the Islamic Revolution” of 1979 that overthrew the US-backed monarchy.
The next president, he said, must allow Iran “to move forward without being dependent on foreign countries”.
However, Khamenei also said that Iran should not “cut its relations with the world”.
During campaign debates, Jalili criticised the moderates for having signed the 2015 nuclear accord which promised Iran sanctions relief in return for curbs on the programme.
Jalili said the deal, which the United States withdrew from in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump, “did not benefit Iran at all”.
Pezeshkian has urged efforts to salvage the agreement and lift crippling sanctions on the Iranian economy.
“Are we supposed to be eternally hostile to America, or do we aspire to resolve our problems with this country?” he asked.
The contentious issue of the compulsory head covering for women also emerged during the campaign, almost two years since a vast protest movement swept the country after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22.
An Iranian Kurd, Amini had been arrested for an alleged violation of the country’s strict dress code for women.
In the televised debates, all candidates distanced themselves from the sometimes heavy-handed police arrests of women refusing to wear the hijab head covering in public.
Pourmohammadi, the only clerical candidate, said that “under no circumstances should we treat Iranian women with such cruelty.”
Israel launched air strikes on Gaza Thursday after warning Hezbollah, Hamas’s ally in Lebanon, to avoid a large-scale war that would send the neighbouring country “back to the Stone Age”.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant made the comment during a visit to Washington, where he discussed the Gaza war, long-running efforts toward a truce, and ways to avoid a wider regional conflagration.
As cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have risen, Gallant stressed that “we do not want war, but we are preparing for every scenario”.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during his visit to Washington this weekDrew ANGERER
“Hezbollah understands very well that we can inflict massive damage in Lebanon if a war is launched,” he said of the fighter group.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded near daily cross-border fire since October 7.
But tensions have surged since Israel said this month that its Lebanon war plans are ready, sparking threats from Hezbollah that, in the event of all-out war, none of Israel would be safe.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Gallant this week that a war with Hezbollah could have “terrible consequences for the Middle East” and urged a diplomatic solution.
A Palestinian boy sits on a war-damaged road at al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on June 26, 2024Eyad BABA
UN humanitarian coordinator Martin Griffiths warned that Lebanon was “the flashpoint beyond all flashpoints” and that a full war would be “potentially apocalyptic”.
Germany has joined Canada in advising its citizens in Lebanon to leave the country, reiterating warnings first issued shortly after October 7.
In the latest clashes on Wednesday, Lebanese media reported about 10 Israeli strikes near the border, while Hezbollah claimed six attacks against Israeli military positions.
A US official said Washington was engaged in “fairly intensive conversations” with Israel, Lebanon and other actors and believed that no side sought a “major escalation”.
Meanwhile, the Gaza war at the heart of regional tensions ground on, despite comments Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the “intense phase” of the assault on Gaza was nearing an end.
An Israeli Air Force F-16 Jet fighter aircraft flies over the border area between northern Israel and southern LebanonJACK GUEZ
Israeli air strikes overnight and early Thursday killed at least five people in Gaza City, said Gaza’s civil defence agency and Al-Mamdani hospital medics.
One person was killed when a warplane bombed a house in Beit Lahia, paramedics said.
Heavy fighting, artillery shelling and helicopter fire were reported Thursday around northern Gaza’s Shujayia market, as well as approaching Israeli ground vehicles.
Hamas’ press office in Gaza reported “a significant displacement of residents” there and said people “are fleeing to areas of refuge in Gaza City that are already overcrowded”.
An anonymous witness told AFP the situation was “very difficult and frightening in Shujayia after the arrival of occupation (Israeli) vehicles and air fire.”
“Residents are running through the streets in terror… a number of wounded and martyrs lie in the streets.”
A handout picture released by the Jordanian army shows humanitarian aid being airdropped from a military aircraft over southern Gaza on June 25, 2024-
Shelling also targeted Gaza City, sending plumes of smoke into the sky, and Israeli forces blew up several buildings in far-southern Rafah, witnesses said.
The Israeli military also said it had “attacked terrorists who were in a school complex in Khan Yunis” in the south, where the civil defence agency said it had recovered several bodies.
US officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have voiced hope a Gaza ceasefire could also lead to a reduction in hostilities on the Lebanese border.
However, months of talks towards a truce and hostage release deal have so far failed as Israel has rejected Hamas’ demands for a permanent end to fighting and full troop withdrawal.
Israel has killed at least 37,765 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from Gaza’s health ministry.
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on June 25, 2024 shows an Israeli army tracked vehicle during operations in the Gaza Strip-
The war and siege have triggered a dire humanitarian crisis, with Gaza hospitals struggling to function and food, drinking water and other essentials hard to come by.
USAID officials said Wednesday that just 1,000 of the 7,000 tonnes of aid shipped from Cyprus to Gaza had been distributed, blaming looting and security problems.
Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is intense, said US doctors and nurses returning from the territory, who reported patients in the few remaining hospitals were dying in large numbers.
Israeli tanks seen in central Gaza, gunfire heard
One of the volunteer medics, former US army combat surgeon Adam Hamawy, said he had worked in many war-torn and natural disaster-hit countries in the past 30 years.
“But the level of civilian casualties that I experienced was beyond anything I’d seen before,” the 54-year-old told AFP.
“Most of our patients were children under the age of 14,” he said. “This has nothing to do with your political views.”
A new German citizenship law has been enacted, requiring those seeking citizenship to acknowledge that Israel has a “Right to Exist.”
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Wednesday, “Anyone who shares our values and makes an effort can now get a German passport more quickly and no longer has to give up part of their identity by giving up their old nationality. But we have also made it just as clear: anyone who does not share our values cannot get a German passport.”
She confirmed that new questions on the topics of anti-Semitism, the right to the existence of an Israeli state and Jewish life in Germany have been added to the citizenship test.
German Chancellor Olaf Schulz made dual citizenship a key point of his election campaign and promised to reduce the time it takes for new citizens to obtain a German passport to five years in his election campaign of 2021.
The first generation of immigrants was not allowed to have dual citizenship. However, rising anti-Semitism, increasingly divisive debates about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the popularity of anti-immigrant, far-right politics led to a revision of the citizenship law.
In December last year, the East German state of Saxony-Anhalt made it mandatory for those who want to become German citizens to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
Bolivia’s army chief was arrested on Wednesday after sending soldiers and tanks to take up position in front of government buildings in what President Luis Arce called an attempted coup.
The troops and tanks entered Plaza Murillo, a historic square where the presidency and Congress are situated, in the afternoon, prompting global condemnation of an attack on democracy.
One of the tanks tried to break down a metal door of the presidential palace.
Surrounded by soldiers and eight tanks, the now-dismissed army chief General Juan Jose Zuniga said the “armed forces intend to restructure democracy, to make it a true democracy and not one run by the same few people for 30, 40 years”.
AFP reporters soon saw soldiers and tanks pulling back from the square. The uprising lasted about five hours.
Later Wednesday, Zuniga was captured and forced into a police car as he addressed reporters outside a military barracks, footage on state television showed.
“General, you are under arrest,” Deputy Interior Minister Jhonny Aguilera told Zuniga.
“No one can take away the democracy we have won,” Arce said from a balcony of the government palace in front of hundreds of supporters.
Military troops are deployed at the Plaza de Armas in La Paz on June 26, 2024. — AFP
Earlier he had urged “the Bolivian people to organise and mobilise against the coup d’etat in favour of democracy”, in a televised message to the country alongside his ministers inside the presidential palace.
He also swore in new military leaders, firing Zuniga.
Right before he was arrested, Zuniga told reporters that the president had told him to stage an uprising, thus triggering a crackdown that would make him look strong and boost his sagging approval rating.
At a meeting Sunday, the general said, Zuniga asked Arce “So we bring out armored vehicles?” He said the president answered, “Bring them out.”
Arce’s instructions were to “stage something to raise his popularity”, the general said.
Former president Evo Morales wrote on X that “a coup d’etat is brewing” and also urged a “national mobilisation to defend democracy”.
Zuniga’s anti-democratic remarks
Bolivia is deeply polarised after years of political instability and the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) is riven by internal conflict between supporters of Arce and his former mentor Morales.
A supporter of Bolivian President Luis Arce fires a bengal outside Quemado Palace at Plaza Murillo in La Paz on June 26. — AFP
Morales, who was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, was extremely popular until he tried to bypass the constitution and seek a fourth term in office in 2019.
The leftist and former coca union leader won that vote but was forced to resign amid deadly protests over alleged election fraud, and fled the country. He returned after Arce won the presidency in October 2020.
Since then a power struggle has grown between the two men, and Morales has increasingly criticised the government and accused it of corruption, tolerating drug trafficking, and sidelining him politically.
Six months ago, the Constitutional Court disqualified Morales from the 2025 elections, however, he is still seeking nomination as the MAS candidate. Arce has not said whether he will seek re-election.
Zuniga appeared on television on Monday and said he would arrest Morales if he insisted on running for office again in 2025. “Legally he is disqualified, that man cannot be president of this country again,” he said.
Since that interview, rumours have swirled that Zuniga was on the verge of being dismissed.
Calls for calm
In this handout picture released by Bolivian Presidency, Bolivian President Luis Arce (2nd R) attends a military event next to Gen. Juan Jose Zuniga (R) in La Paz on April 18, 2024. — AFP
The US administration of Joe Biden said it was keeping a close eye on events in Bolivia and “calls for calm”, according to a spokesperson for the National Security Council.
Condemnations of the troop movements also poured in from across Latin America, with leaders of Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela calling for democracy to be respected.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on X: “I am a lover of democracy and I want it to prevail throughout Latin America. We condemn any form of coup d’etat in Bolivia.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday called for “respect for democracy and the rule of law,” in a message on X.
The Organisation of American States (OAS) said the international community would “not tolerate any form of breach of the legitimate constitutional order in Bolivia”.
Once dismissed as an “empty suit”, perennial Indian premier-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi emerged from his third consecutive election defeat with his reputation enhanced and his party back from the political wilderness.
But analysts are divided on whether the 54-year-old — a scion of a dynasty that has already given India three prime ministers — is ready for the next battle he faces.
Already the leader of the opposition to Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi in all but name, Gandhi now takes on the formal position in India’s parliament.
Congress party general secretary K. C. Venugopal said Gandhi would be “a bold voice for the common people” and ensure the government “is held firmly accountable at all times”, he told reporters in a statement late Tuesday.
Gandhi’s ascension is significant because, for the previous decade, his once-mighty Congress party did not have enough seats in the legislature to qualify him for the post.
“It’s a huge thing what he has achieved in this election — he’s been able to get the masses to take him seriously,” Sugata Srinivasaraju, an author of a book on Gandhi, told AFP.
“But is that sufficient to be a good leader of the opposition inside the parliament? That is a big question.”
Coalition politics
Modi’s first two terms in office saw landslide wins for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), allowing his government to steamroll laws through parliament with only cursory debate.
Dozens of bills were pushed through the legislature hours after they were introduced, including a contentious and far-reaching overhaul of India’s criminal justice code last year.
Unable to stymie the government’s legislative programme, Gandhi and Congress were reduced to staging regular symbolic walkouts of the chamber and demonstrations outside parliament.
With the BJP now reliant on coalition allies to govern, and Congress nearly doubling its seats in parliament, the dynamics of Gandhi’s role will necessarily change.
His new post entitles him to take a role in the composition of parliamentary committees and sit on selection panels for appointing some of India’s most powerful civil servants.
But Srinivasraju said it remained to be seen if Gandhi could evolve from Modi’s chief gadfly outside parliament to an effective opponent within its walls.
“He has not been a great speaker inside parliament. He has not been able to sway the crowds,” he said.
“From that perspective, we don’t know if Rahul is really ready.”
‘Missed several opportunities’
Gandhi is the son, grandson and great-grandson of former prime ministers, beginning with Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru.
For that reason, he was seen as India’s leader-in-waiting when he first entered parliamentary politics in 2004, but he struggled for years to shed his image as an insubstantial and entitled princeling.
Leaked US embassy cables disparagingly referred to him as an “empty suit”, and Modi dismissed him as a dynast more interested in luxury and self-indulgence than fighting to helm the world’s biggest democracy.
For much of the past decade, many voters agreed with that sentiment.
His stewardship of Congress — once India’s dominant party with a proud role in ending British colonial rule — looked hapless against Modi’s seemingly unassailable rule.
“Gandhi missed several opportunities to shape up as an effective parliamentarian and politician,” political commentator Rasheed Kidwai told AFP.
‘Judging him with interest’
The seeds of his turnaround were sown in 2022 when he embarked on a cross-country walking tour inspired by his unrelated namesake, independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, to hear the concerns of ordinary people.
His journey gave him a gravitas that had previously eluded him, and his colleagues credited it with helping reinvigorate the party, delivering an election result that defied exit poll forecasts of another landslide BJP win.
Gandhi also stayed unruffled through the several ongoing criminal cases arrayed against him, which he and supporters accuse the government of orchestrating to eliminate him as a rival to Modi.
Last year, he was briefly disqualified from parliament after a conviction for criminal libel in a case brought by a BJP member, and weeks before this year’s election, Congress had its bank accounts frozen as part of a running income tax probe.
Having pierced Modi’s aura of invulnerability and shrugged off adversity, Kidwai said Gandhi’s new post would give him the opportunity to capitalise on his newfound public esteem and establish himself as an alternative prime minister.
“Taking up this position is going to do a lot of good for him,” he said.
“People who didn’t take him seriously will now start judging him with interest.”
A 42-year-old Texas woman has been charged with attempted murder after she tried to drown a three-year-old Palestinian girl, as per CNN.
The horrific incident took place on May 19 in Texas when the accused, identified as Elizabeth Wolf, attacked the girl playing in the swimming pool at her family’s apartment complex. The child’s mother and six-year-old brother were also present there.
“Mrs H, the mother, who wears hijab and modest swimwear, was watching her children in the shallow end of the pool when a white American woman entered the swimming pool area,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a press release on Friday.
“The alleged attacker reportedly approached the mother with racist interrogations then jumped into the swimming pool and grabbed the children to the deep end of the pool to allegedly drown them,” the statement added, after which the mother jumped in to rescue her children, with Wolf responding by ripping off her headscarf.
Local police arrived at the scene and arrested Wolf for public intoxication.
“We are American citizens, originally from Palestine, and I don’t know where to go to feel safe with my kids. My country is facing a war, and we are facing that hate here,” CAIR quoted the child’s mother as saying.
“My daughter is traumatised; whenever I open the apartment door, she runs away and hides, telling me she is afraid the lady will come and immerse her head in the water again.”
Texas House of Representatives member Salman Bhojani, from Euless, said he was “appalled” by the incident.
US President Joe Biden said he was “deeply hurt” by the incident.
The attack comes in the wake of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which at least 37,598 Palestinians have been killed.
In late November, three Palestinian men in their early 20s were shot near a university campus in Vermont in the US, injuring all three of them.
One month earlier, police in the US state of Illinois charged a 71-year-old man with murder and a hate crime for stabbing a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy to death and seriously injuring his mother.
According to the police, he targeted the victims as a response to the war in Gaza and their religion.
In its press release, CAIR said it had received 3,578 complaints of bias and discrimination in the last three months of last year.
A man named Guru from Jaipur, India, has sparked online outrage by posting a video of himself assigning rates to foreign women tourists visiting the state.
Unaware of Guru’s intentions, women tourists reacted normally and smiled in the reels. However, his derogatory tone in the name of generating content offended many people online.
He was detained on June 23 by the local police for harassing women tourists and posting their videos online.
Shared on the Instagram account @guru__brand0000, Guru can be seen saying in the videos, “Guys, you will get these women for Rs 150.” Pointing out to individual women, Guru assigns different rates and says, “She is available for Rs 150, she is for Rs 200, you can get her for Rs 500 and this one is for Rs 300.”
Since Guru was speaking in Hindi, none of the women tourists could decipher the offensive content of his video.
In another video, Guru went beyond limits by approaching a couple and saying that the woman tourist was his wife. He said, “Guys, she is my wife. He is my brother-in-law. How do you guys like him? My brother-in-law.”
Police have also found that the man forcibly made foreign tourists buy products from his shop in the Amer Market of Jaipur.
This is not the first time foreign tourists have been harassed in India. Recently, a Spanish woman who was out on a bike tour with her partner was gang-raped during her stay in Jharkhand state.
