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What White House picks tell us about Trump 2.0

A week after Donald Trump won a second-term in the White House, the contours of his new presidency have started taking shape.

The president-elect has announced nearly a dozen appointees, the first steps toward filling out his White House staff and key government departments. He also made comments to the media and on social media that highlight what his priorities will be upon taking office in January, with a special focus on immigration and foreign policy.

After a sometimes chaotic start to his first term, Trump is laying the groundwork for his next administration with a more clearly defined plan – and personnel ready to enact it.

Here’s a look at what we’ve learned so far.

A hard-line immigration team in place

Some of Trump’s newly revealed appointments suggest that the president-elect’s campaign promise to deport millions of undocumented migrants living in the US is no exaggeration.

Stephen Miller, who has been Trump’s close adviser and speechwriter since 2015, is Trump’s choice for White House deputy chief of staff for policy. He will likely shape any plans for mass deportations – and pare back both undocumented and legal immigration. During Trump’s first term, Miller was involved in developing some of the administration’s strictest immigration policies.

Thomas Homan, acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in Trump’s first term, supported the president’s policy of separating undocumented families detained at the US-Mexico border. Now he’s back with an even broader portfolio, as Trump’s “immigration tsar”.

“I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Homan said at a conservative conference in July.

Critics have warned that Trump’s mass deportation plan could cost upwards of $300b. In an interview with NBC News last week, however, the president-elect said cost was not an issue.

“When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here,” he said. “There is no price tag.”

China hawks take flight

Many conservatives believe that China poses the single greatest threat to continued US global dominance, both economically and militarily. While Trump has been more circumspect, limiting most of his China critiques to the realm of trade, he is filling his foreign policy team with vocal China critics.

The president-elect picked Florida Congressman Mike Waltz, a retired Army colonel, as his national security adviser – a key foreign policy post within the White House. Waltz has said the US is in a “cold war” with China and was one of the first members of Congress to call for a US boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

In October, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for US ambassador to the UN, accused China of “blatant and malicious election interference” amid reports that China-backed hackers attempted to gather information from the former president’s phones.

While Trump has yet to officially name his choice for secretary of state, Florida Senator Marco Rubio – another China hawk – appears to be the leading contender for the top diplomatic job. In 2020, Rubio was sanctioned by the Chinese government after he pushed measures to punish the nation for its crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong.

US-China relations were often rocky during Trump’s first term, amidst trade disputes and the Covid pandemic. The Biden administration, which kept many of Trump’s China tariffs and imposed some new ones, only somewhat calmed the waters. Now it looks like the next Trump administration will pick up where the last one left off.

Musk’s new role

While the list of Trump’s political appointees grows, there’s another group that stays small – and exceedingly influential.

Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, has been a full-time presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago transition headquarters. According to media reports, he is advising the president-elect on cabinet nominees and even joined a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week.

On Tuesday night, Trump announced that he was assigning Musk to work with tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in a “department of government efficiency” tasked with identifying new budget cuts.

Musk has regularly offered his political opinions on his social media platform X, including endorsing Florida Senator Rick Scott’s bid to be the next Senate majority leader.

Musk’s political action committee spent around $200m to help Trump’s presidential campaign, and he promises to continue to fund the group’s efforts to advance the president-elect’s agenda and help Republican candidates in upcoming congressional elections.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen where Robert F Kennedy Jr, another key figure, lands. Trump has said that he plans to give the former Democrat and vaccine sceptic, who abandoned his independent bid and endorsed the Republican, a role in making America “healthy” again.

“He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump said in his election victory speech.

Prioritising presidential power over Congress

As Trump takes office, Republicans have control of the Senate and could still take the House, albeit by a slim margin. However, the president-elect’s early actions suggest he is more concerned with exercising his presidential power than working with the legislative branch.

Last week, he posted on social media that the Senate’s Republican leadership should smooth the way for more presidential “recess appointments” – allowing him to fill top administration jobs without Senate approval when Congress is not in session. The move would strengthen presidential power by undercutting the chamber’s constitutional role to “advise and consent” on political appointees.

Meanwhile, the president-elect keeps chipping away at those narrow congressional majorities. Senators who move to administration roles can quickly be replaced by appointment from the governor of their home state. But any House vacancies – such as ones created by Stefanik and Waltz’s departures – require special elections that can take months to schedule.

Some of Trump’s advisers, including Musk, have warned that the president-elect could be endangering his legislative agenda if he plucks too many more Republicans from the chambers.

Even in the best of circumstances, congressional legislation takes time, effort and compromise. Executive action, such as new immigration enforcement, can be done with the stroke of a presidential pen.

Trump’s actions indicate he is, at least at the moment, more focused on the latter.

Rewarding loyalists

Trump has only just begun filling out the thousands of jobs that open up with a new presidential administration, not including the senior-level career bureaucrats he has said he will replace.

In 2016, as a political newcomer, he had to rely on more establishment Republicans for key roles. This time, he has a wealth of prospective candidates with proven track records of supporting him and after eight years, Trump loyalists are the Republican establishment.

On Tuesday, Trump named South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary, and Fox News host and conservative author Pete Hegseth as defence secretary. Both have been fierce Trump defenders from the start.

Others, like Rubio and Stefanik, were critics of Trump early in his first presidential bid, but they have now spent years demonstrating that their harsh words are a thing of the past.

Rubio, who ran for president against Trump in 2016, may still have White House ambitions, however. Trump often soured on appointees who seemed drawn to the limelight during his first term, and even the warmest of relationships could go bad.

Trump may be placing a premium on loyalty with his early staff announcements, but the pressures of governing ultimately will reveal whether his second four years in office end up different from his first.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of US politics in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

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Qatar was praised at the United Nations’ top human rights body on Tuesday (November 12, 2024) for improving labour laws before the 2022 World Cup, though it was urged to fully abolish its employment system for migrant workers.

Qatar returned to the Human Rights Council in Geneva for its five-yearly review for the first time since the football tournament that needed hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to build stadiums and other essential projects.

Data | Qatar, third-worst World Cup host in terms of human rights

Football governing body FIFA is set to confirm Saudi Arabia in December as host of the 2034 World Cup — setting up another decade of scrutiny on how human rights are respected while preparing for more teams playing more games in more stadiums.

In Qatar, better labour law protections have been passed in recent years relating to a minimum wage, freedom to change employers and combating forced labour and trafficking, according to the emirate’s senior diplomat in Geneva.

Qatar “highly appreciated” the contribution of migrant workers who are “true partners,” said Hend Abdulrahman Al Muftah, its permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, in translated comments.

Qatar was urged — or “recommended,” in the formal diplomatic language of the UN rights body — by French delegate Claire Thuaudet to “pursue the implementation of the labour laws” linked to the 2022 World Cup.

Sierra Leone said Qatar should “consider abolishing all vestiges” of the labour law system known as kafala.

“We commend Qatar for its notable reforms in labour migrant legislation,” the Netherlands delegation said. “These are significant but more effective enforcement and implementations are needed.”

FIFA World Cup 2022 | Qatar’s migrant workers wary of life after World Cup

Qatar also was asked to abolish the death penalty by states including Brazil, Ireland, Italy and New Zealand, and decriminalise consenting same-sex relations by Brazil, Mexico and Spain.

Anticipating criticism of Qatar’s record on women’s rights, Al Muftah said Qatar now had 120 women in diplomatic roles after the number was just three several years ago.

Sweden later recommended Qatar review its laws relating to women’s rights in divorce, custody of children and inheritance while Iceland called for abolition of the male guardianship system. Iceland also urged decriminalising abortion and ensure access to reproductive health services without needing the permission of a male guardian or showing a marriage certificate.

Qatar’s delegation pointed to the country rising from outside the top 100 to now rank No. 84 in the global index of press freedom. Top-ranked Norway said Qatar should ensure “civil society, human rights defenders and journalists can operate freely without fear of reprisals.”

Qatar is widely expected to be a strong contender in bidding to host the 2036 Olympics, and concluded its presentation Tuesday with sports ministry official Nasser Ali Al-Khater hailing sports as “an important platform to enhance cooperation between peoples.

“This is what we achieved during the World Cup,” he said. “Qatar shall continue its efforts in the field of sport and empowerment.”

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Russia’s lower house of parliament voted unanimously on November 12 to ban what authorities cast as pernicious propaganda for a child-free way of life, hoping to boost a faltering birth rate.

Official data released in September put the birth rate at its lowest in a quarter of a century while mortality rates are up as Moscow’s war in Ukraine rages on. The Kremlin called the figures “catastrophic for the future of the nation”.

President Vladimir Putin, who has cast Russia as a bastion of “traditional values” locked in an existential struggle with a decadent West, has encouraged women to have at least three children, saying that will help secure the future of Russians. There are already financial and other incentives.

The law, expected to be swiftly approved by the upper house of parliament and Putin, joins other restrictions on free expression including a ban on content deemed to promote “non-traditional lifestyles” such as same-sex relationships or gender fluidity, as well as on dissenting accounts of the conflict in Ukraine.

Authors of “child-free propaganda” will be subject to fines of up to 400,000 roubles ($4,100) for individuals, twice that amount for officials, and up to 5 million roubles ($51,000) for legal entities.

Some 599,600 children were born in Russia in the first half of 2024, which is 16,000 fewer than in the first half of 2023 and the lowest since 1999. The number of deaths jumped by 49,000. However, immigration jumped by 20%.

Estimates in the CIA’s World Factbook put Russia among the 40 countries with the lowest birth rate in 2023 at around 9.22 per 1,000 population, slightly ahead of Germany on 9.02 but well behind China on 9.7 and the United States on 12.21.

“We are talking about protecting citizens, primarily the younger generation, from information disseminated in the media space that has a negative impact on the formation of people’s personality,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the lower house and a senior Putin ally.

“Everything must be done to ensure that new generations of our citizens grow up centred on traditional family values.”

But some women were sceptical.

Alina Rzhanova, a 33-year-old who lives in Yaroslavl, 250 km northeast of Moscow, was once determined not to have children but now has an eight-month-old son.

“People want children, but there’s no money,” she said. “That’s why people are not having children. Not because someone somewhere wrote something.”

In Moscow, Yana, a 40-year-old woman who said she did not want children and declined to give her surname because of the subject’s sensitivity, said she too felt that ensuring decent living standards, particularly beyond the big cities, could help reverse the declining birth rate.

“People have children when they are confident in tomorrow. But when mortgage rates reach 20% a year, I don’t think it’s a good time to have unlimited children,” she said.

“A child-free community is where people on the same wavelength discuss why they don’t want children. Do they have the right to discuss it? They do.

“It’s unlikely that a lot of young people will read it and say ‘I don’t want children either’.”

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French MPs on Tuesday (November 12, 2024) rejected a draft government budget that had been massively amended with new taxes by the opposition, as the heavily indebted country is under pressure to balance the books.

With the cobbled-together revenue bill’s swingeing tax increases failing to pass the National Assembly, Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s minority government now has a largely free hand in submitting a cleaned-up text to the Senate upper house, before the two chambers come together to seek a compromise.

“A majority of MPs rejects both fiscal battering and the impossibility of France living up to its European commitments,” budget minister Laurent Saint-Martin said after the 362-192 vote against the text.

The lower house is divided into three similarly-sized blocs: the NFP left alliance, centrists and conservatives supporting the government, and the far-right National Rally (RN).

Over the weeks of debate, lawmakers transformed Barnier’s original 60-billion-euro ($64 billion) plan to right the public finances, made up of 40 billion in spending cuts and 20 billion in new tax receipts.

Appointed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Mr. Barnier is looking to restore confidence as global rating agencies eye downgrades to France’s creditworthiness.

Downgrades could increase the interest burden from France’s massive debt pile still higher than its present 50 billion euros annually — the second-largest line item in government spending behind education.

Rejecting spending cuts, scores of new taxes were added by the left alliance of hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), Socialists, Greens and Communists.

On Tuesday, “Macronists and the far right have rejected the budget for greater social and environmental justice that the NFP managed to build,” LFI leader Mathilde Panot wrote on X.

Receipts under the left’s amendments would have totalled 75 billion euros, according to Eric Coquerel, a LFI lawmaker who heads the lower house’s Finance Committee.

But Charles de Courson, a centrist charged with shepherding the budget law through parliament, estimated the new revenues would likely total 12 billion once measures “incompatible with European Union membership, or that are unconstitutional” were eliminated.

Lawmakers had approved measures including ending France’s contribution to the EU Budget, a change initiated by the anti-Brussels RN.

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Archbishop of Canterbury resigns over Church abuse scandal

The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced he will step down from his role following a damning report into a prolific child abuser associated with the Church of England.

The review found that Justin Welby, 68, “could and should” have reported John Smyth’s abuse of boys and young men to police in 2013.

In a statement, Mr Welby said that “it is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility” for his response after he was first told about the abuse.

“I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England.”

“I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church.

“As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse,” he added.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he “respects the decision that has been taken and his thoughts remain first and foremost with all the victims”.

It was not immediately clear when the archbishop would leave his post but the process of finding a replacement is likely to take at least six months.

Last week, an independent report found inaction from the Church was a “missed opportunity” to bring Smyth to justice before his 2018 death.

In his resignation statement, Mr Welby said he was “told that police had been notified” at the time and that he “believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow”.

He also spoke of his “profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures” of the Church over the days since the report was published.

“For nearly 12 years I have struggled to introduce improvements. It is for others to judge what has been done,” he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Church of England and leads 85 million Anglicans in 165 countries around the world.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said the Church had made “real progress” in safeguarding under Mr Welby’s leadership but added: “There is much further to go.”

The Church’s lead safeguarding bishop, Joanne Grenfell, said the archbishop’s resignation “does not absolve any of us from bringing about the wholesale changes in culture and leadership that are essential”.

Former vicar Mark Stibbe, a survivor of Smyth’s abuse, said Mr Welby had “done the right thing” in resigning.

“What I think the survivor group would like is more resignations because that means more accountability,” he told Channel 4 News.

The archbishop had been facing mounting pressure to resign in the days since the report’s publication.

A member of the Church’s parliament, the General Synod, who had started a petition calling for Mr Welby’s resignation, said: “I think it’s sad that it’s taken so long for meaningful action to take place.”

The Rev Dr Ian Paul added that he hoped that Mr Welby’s decision would be the first step towards “cultural change in [the Church’s] senior leadership”.

Clare MacLaren, Canon Provost of Sunderland Minster, told the BBC Mr Welby’s resignation was “not before time”.

“It’s something that’s been brewing for the last 24 hours at least,” she said. “It would have been good if he’d done it immediately.”

The independent report into the Church’s handling of John Smyth’s abuse published last week found that from July 2013, “the Church of England knew, at the highest level, about the abuse that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” naming Mr Welby specifically.

It found that “several opportunities were missed” to formally report the abuse to police.

One survivor of Smyth’s abuse told the BBC the archbishop and the Church had effectively been involved in a “cover-up”.

The archbishop said in his statement that the report had exposed a “conspiracy of silence” about the abuse.

Smyth was a prominent barrister as well as a lay preacher – a member of the congregation who delivers sermons but is not ordained – who ran summer camps for young Christians.

The report accused him of attacking up to 30 boys he had met at the summer camps during the 1970s and 1980s with a “clearly sexually motivated, sadistic regime” of beatings.

He singled out boys attending the camps and in sessions at leading public schools, including Winchester College, before taking them to his home and beating them with a garden cane in his shed.

Smyth then relocated in the 1980s to Zimbabwe, and later South Africa, where he is alleged to have abused a further 85 to 100 “young male children aged 13 to 17”.

Smyth is believed to have continued his abuse in South Africa until he died in Cape Town in 2018, aged 75.

Mr Welby was educated at Eton and the University of Cambridge. He spent 11 years in the oil industry before retraining as a priest.

He was ordained in 1992 and became a vicar in Warwickshire, a Canon of Coventry Cathedral, the Dean of Liverpool, and the Bishop of Durham before being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013.

Mr Welby will be remembered as a political archbishop.

He spoke frequently in the House of Lords, attacked the payday lender Wonga, openly backed Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and heavily criticised the Conservative government over its immigration and welfare policies.

He tried to move the Church away from focusing on its internal debates. But he leaves a national church that is smaller, and as divided as ever.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell told the BBC the ordination of women as bishops and his work in racial justice were key parts of Mr Welby’s legacy.

BBC Action Line: If you have been affected by issues in this story, find out what support is available here.

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British writer Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday (November 12, 2024) with “Orbital”, a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International Space Station.

Ms. Harvey was awarded the 50,000-pound (₹64,000) prize for what she has called a “space pastoral” about six astronauts circling the Earth, which she began writing during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The confined characters loop through 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over the course of a day, trapped in one another’s company and transfixed by the globe’s fragile beauty.

Booker Prize 2024 shortlist features most women in its history

Writer and artist Edmund de Waal, who chaired the five-member judging panel, called it a “miraculous novel” that “makes our world strange and new for us”.

Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, noted that “in a year of geopolitical crisis, likely to be the warmest year in recorded history,” the winning book was “hopeful, timely and timeless”.

Ms. Harvey, who has written four previous novels and a memoir about insomnia, is the first British writer since 2020 to win the Booker. The prize is open to English-language writers of any nationality and has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers. Previous winners include Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Hilary Mantel.

The Hindu on Books | The International Booker Prize 2024 longlist, the world of Theyyam, Palestinian poetry and more

Mr. De Waal praised the “crystalline” writing and “capaciousness” of Harvey’s succinct novel – at 136 pages in its U.K. paperback edition, one of the shortest-ever Booker winners.

“This is a book that repays slow reading,” he said.

He said the judges spent a full day picking their winner and came to a unanimous conclusion. Ms. Harvey beat five other finalists from Canada, the United States, Australia and the Netherlands, chosen from among 156 novels submitted by publishers.

The International Booker Prize 2024

American writer Percival Everett had been the bookies’ favorite to win with “James,” which reimagines Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” from the point of view of its main Black character, the enslaved man Jim.

The other finalists were American writer Rachel Kushner’s spy story “Creation Lake”; Canadian Anne Michaels’ poetic novel “Held”; Charlotte Wood’s Australian saga “Stone Yard Devotional”; and “The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden, the first Dutch author to be shortlisted for the Booker.

Ms. Harvey is the first female Booker winner since 2019, though one of five women on this year’s shortlist, the largest number in the prize’s 55-year history. Mr. De Waal said issues such as the gender or nationality of the authors were “background noise” that did not influence the judges.

Love in the shadow of the Holocaust | Review of 2024 Booker Prize-shortlisted ‘The Safekeep’ by Yael van der Wouden

“There was absolutely no question of box ticking or of agendas or of anything else. It was simply about the novel,” he said before the awards ceremony at Old Billingsgate, a grand former Victorian fish market in central London.

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is open to novels originally written in English and published in the U.K. or Ireland. Last year’s winner was Irish writer Paul Lynch for post-democratic dystopia “Prophet Song”.

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Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted two U.S. Navy warships with multiple drones and missiles as they were travelling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but the attacks were not successful, the Defense Department said Tuesday (November 12, 2024).

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said the Iranian-backed Houthis launched at least eight drones, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and three anti-ship cruise missiles at the USS Stockdale and the USS Spruance, both Navy destroyers, on Monday (November 11, 2024). He said there was no damage and no one was injured.

Soldier with Yemen’s exiled government opens fire, killing two Saudi troops, wounding another

The incoming fires “were successfully engaged,” Mr. Ryder said.

The strait is a narrow waterway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, which typically sees $1 trillion in goods pass through it a year. The rebels have been targeting shipping through the strait for months over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon.

In response, U.S. and partner forces have launched multiple rounds of coordinated airstrikes against Houthi launch sites and weapons storage sites, and the U.S. organized an international coalition to help protect commercial vessels as they transited — but it has not stopped the Houthi attacks.

The Houthis have insisted that the attacks will continue as long as the wars go on, and the assaults already have halved shipping through the region. Meanwhile, a U.N. panel of experts now alleges that the Houthis may be shaking down some shippers for about $180 million a month for safe passage through the area.

Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree in a prerecorded statement earlier Tuesday (November 12, 2024) had claimed the rebels attacked two American destroyers in the Red Sea with ballistic missiles and drones.

Drone targets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house as strikes in Gaza kills 50

There were also reports of a commercial ship being attacked. A vessel in the southern reaches of the Red Sea, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of the rebel-held port city of Hodeida, reported the attack, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.

No one was wounded on board in the blasts, and the ship was continuing on its journey, the UKMTO added.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the UKMTO report was directly linked to the attacks on the U.S. destroyers, but similar incidents of rebel fire coming near other ships have happened before.

The Houthis have targeted more than 90 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October 2023. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign, which also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.

The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the U.K. to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

The Houthis have shot down multiple American MQ-9 Reaper drones as well.

The last Houthi maritime attack came on October 28 and targeted the Liberian-flagged bulk tanker Motaro. Before that, an October 10 attack targeted the Liberian-flagged chemical tanker Olympic Spirit.

Yemen’s Houthis say they targeted ship in Arabian sea with drones

It’s unclear why the Houthis’ attacks have dropped, though they have launched multiple missiles toward Israel as well. On Oct. 17, the U.S. military unleashed B-2 stealth bombers to target underground bunkers used by the rebels. U.S. airstrikes also have been targeting Houthi positions in recent days as well.

Meanwhile, a report by U.N. experts from October says “the Houthis allegedly collected illegal fees from a few shipping agencies to allow their ships to sail through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden without being attacked.” It put the money generated a month at around $180 million, though it stressed it hadn’t been able to corroborate the information provided by sources to the panel.

The Houthis haven’t directly responded to the allegation. However, the report did include two threatening emails the Houthis sent to shippers, with one of those vessels later coming under attack by the rebels.

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday (November 12, 2024) that he had picked former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to serve as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Ratcliffe, a close ally of Mr. Trump, served as director of national intelligence at the end of his first term.

Trump picks former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be Ambassador to Israel

Mr. Ratcliffe was confirmed as the nation’s top spy in May 2020, eight months before Mr. Trump left office. A former member of the House of Representatives and U.S. attorney for Texas, he received no support from Senate Democrats during his confirmation.

As DNI, Mr. Ratcliffe was accused by Democrats and former intelligence officials of declassifying intelligence for use by Mr. Trump and his Republican allies to attack political opponents, including Joe Biden, then Mr. Trump’s rival for the presidency, a charge Mr. Ratcliffe’s office has denied.

News outlets, including Reuters, also reported on concerns that Mr. Ratcliffe exaggerated his counter-terrorism experience as a federal prosecutor in Texas.

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Oil and gas are a ‘gift of god’, says COP29 host

The president of COP29’s host country has told the UN climate conference that oil and gas are a “gift of god”.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev criticised “Western fake news” about the country’s emissions and said nations “should not be blamed” for having fossil fuel reserves.

The country plans to expand gas production by up to a third over the next decade.

Shortly afterwards, UN chief António Guterres told the conference that doubling down on the use of fossil fuels was “absurd”.

He said the “clean energy revolution” had arrived and that no government could stop it.

Some observers had expressed concerns about the world’s largest climate conference taking place in Azerbaijan.

Its minister for ecology and natural resources – a former oil executive that spent 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar – is the conference’s chairman.

There are also concerns that Azerbaijani officials are using COP29 to boost investment in the country’s national oil and gas company.

But addressing the conference on its second day, President Aliyev said Azerbaijan had been subject to “slander and blackmail” ahead of COP29.

He said it had been as if “Western fake news media”, charities and politicians were “competing in spreading disinformation… about our country”.

Aliyev said the country’s share in global gas emissions was “only 0.1%”.

“Oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all… are natural resources and countries should not be blamed for having them, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market, because the market needs them.”

Oil and gas are a major cause of climate change because they release planet-warming greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide when burned for energy.

The US is also under the spotlight at the conference, following the election victory of Donald Trump – a known climate sceptic.

On Monday, US President Joe Biden’s envoy John Podesta called out president-elect Trump’s view that climate change was a hoax and said the US team would continue to work on the deal passed at COP28 in 2023.

He added that Washington was also working on a deal passed last year in Dubai to triple renewable power by 2030.

Addressing the conference in Baku on Tuesday, UN Secretary General Guterres decried “doubling down on fossil fuels”.

“The sound you hear is the ticking clock,” he said.

“We are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and time is not on our side.”

He called 2024 a “masterclass in climate destruction” with disasters being “supercharged by human-made climate change”.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization previously said that 2024 is on track to be the world’s warmest year on record.

Guterres said “a new finance goal” was needed, with wealthiest countries paying the most.

“They are the largest emitters, with the greatest capacities and responsibilities,” he said.

“Developing countries must not leave Baku empty-handed.”

The Azerbaijani president’s comments are unlikely to derail talks behind the scenes, which are largely about getting more cash for poorer countries to help implement their climate plans.

Developing nations are calling for richer countries to agree together on a fund that could add up to $1 trillion, using public and private money.

Leaders of most of the world’s biggest polluters were not present in Baku, including Biden, France’s leader Emmanuel Macron and India’s Narendra Modi.

The environment minister for Burkino Faso, a central African country among the poorest in the world, told the BBC that more cash was essential.

Roger Baro said it would help his nation deal with the current impacts of climate change in the country, which is experiencing widespread drought, flash floods and disease outbreaks.

The disasters occurred in the Sahel region, which saw temperatures of 45C this year in a heatwave that scientists said would have been impossible to reach without climate change.

Among other world leaders to take to the stage on Tuesday was Spain’s prime minister, who called for “drastic measures” after floods killed more than 200 people in the country.

Experts say that climate change contributed to the heavy rainfall that caused the floods.

“We need to undergo decarbonisation, adapt our towns and infrastructure,” said Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

COP29 is scheduled to last until 22 November, but there are already fears that the tricky issues on the table could make a final agreement very difficult.

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Girl, 17, dies on M5 after leaving police vehicle

A 17-year-old girl died after being hit by a car on the M5 shortly after getting out of a stationary police vehicle, the police watchdog has said.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said the teenager was being transported to custody by Avon and Somerset Police before the incident, which happened between junctions 24 for Bridgwater and 25 for Taunton, Somerset.

Police said the girl left the vehicle after officers stopped on the northbound carriageway and was later hit by another vehicle on the opposite side, at about 23:00 GMT on Monday.

An IOPC spokesperson said an investigation had begun, adding: “Our sympathies are with the girl’s loved ones and everyone affected by her death.”

The spokesperson added: “We were advised by Avon and Somerset Police that the girl was being transported to custody in a police vehicle and had got out of the vehicle shortly before the collision.”

IOPC investigators were later sent to the scene to gather evidence.

Police said the ambulance service was on the scene within minutes but the girl was pronounced dead at the scene.

No-one else was injured.

Det Ch Supt Rachel Shields said the force’s thoughts were “first and foremost with the girl’s family”, who were being supported by specially trained officers “at what is an incredibly difficult time following the tragic loss of such a young life”.

“A critical incident was declared and our Professional Standards Department notified overnight. A mandatory referral has been made to the IOPC,” she said.

“We recognise this incident has had a significant effect on the devastated officers, plus members of the public, who witnessed what happened, as well as other officers and staff involved in our response.

“We will ensure staff are able to access any welfare support they may benefit from following this tragedy.”

The M5 was closed in both directions following the crash while inquiries were carried out and repairs were made to make the motorway safe.

National Highways confirmed at 10.20 GMT on Tuesday the northbound carriageway had reopened between junctions 24 and 25, and the southbound carriageway reopened shortly afterwards.

The site of the collision is near Creech Heathfield, close to Taunton.

There are long delays on local roads, especially the A38 near North Petherton and Bridgwater.

Motorists travelling southbound on the M5 have been experiencing delays of 90 minutes, with seven miles of congestion.

There have been delays of 30 minutes and congestion for two miles northbound.

Anyone who witnessed the collision or may have dashcam footage which could help the investigation is urged to contact police.

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The abuse scandal that led to the archbishop’s resignation

Justin Welby has resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury after facing increasing pressure to stand down over his failure to report prolific child abuser John Smyth.

Here are the events that led up to Mr Welby’s resignation after 11 years in the post.

Why did Welby resign now?

A damning independent review published last week found Mr Welby – the most senior bishop within the Church of England – and other church officers should have formally reported Smyth in 2013 to police in the UK and authorities in South Africa.

Smyth was accused of attacking dozens of boys, including those he met at Christian camps, in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s.

The barrister and senior member of a Christian charity then moved to Zimbabwe and later South Africa, where he abused up to 100 boys aged 13 to 17, the Makin review added.

By 2013, the Church of England “knew, at the highest level” about Smyth’s abuse, including Mr Welby who took up the Church’s top job that year.

If he and other Church officers had reported this to police in the UK and authorities in South Africa at that time, “John Smyth could have [been] brought to justice at a much earlier point”, the independent report said.

Mr Welby had previously resisted calls to step aside over his response to the case since 2013.

But amid mounting pressure, he said in a statement on Tuesday he must take “personal and institutional responsibility”.

When did the abuse allegations first surface?

Smyth’s abuse was first reported to the charity Iwerne Trust, where he had been chairman, in the early 1980s.

A report detailing his “horrific” beatings of teenaged boys was presented to some Church leaders in 1982. But the recipients of that report “participated in an active cover-up” to prevent its findings, including that crimes had been committed, coming to light, the Makin review said.

Smyth’s abuse in the UK re-emerged in 2012, when a church officer in Cambridgeshire received a letter “out of the blue” from a fellow survivor.

The review stated that five police forces were told of the abuse between 2013 and 2016. Church leaders however did not lodge a formal report.

It was not until 2017, after a Channel 4 documentary revealed details about Smyth’s abuse to the public, that police launched a full investigation.

Smyth is believed to have continued his abuse in South Africa until his death in 2018.

How much did Welby know about Smyth?

Mr Welby worked at summer camps in Dorset where Smyth met some of his victims, but the archbishop said he was unaware of the nature of the allegations until 2013.

A member of the clergy warned Mr Welby about Smyth in the 1980s, but the archbishop told the review this had been “vague” and “there was no indication given of the abuses which later came to light”.

After the Channel 4 documentary was broadcast in 2017, Mr Welby apologised “unreservedly” to Smyth’s victims but did not resign.

Following the Makin review this month, the archbishop said he had considered resigning over its findings and repeated his apology.

Mr Welby acknowledged that the review made clear he had “personally failed to ensure it was energetically investigated”.

But on Tuesday, following a petition set up by members of the Church’s parliament – the General Synod – and mounting pressure to go, Mr Welby resigned.

What did his critics say?

Critics included Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley, who said Mr Welby’s resignation would “be a very clear indication that a line has been drawn, and that we must move towards independence of safeguarding”.

A survivor of Smyth’s abuse also called for Mr Welby to go, saying that he felt the archbishop’s admission that he had not done enough in response to the reports meant that both he and the Church of England had effectively been involved in a “cover-up”.

The petition calling for his resignation, which accused the archbishop of “allowing abuse to continue” and said his position was “no longer tenable”, was signed by more than 14,000 people.

Who will replace Welby and how are they chosen?

It is not known how long the archbishop will remain in post but the process of finding a replacement is likely to take at least six months.

A consultation, which is expected to last several months, will ask people in and outside the Church of England what they want from the next archbishop.

The information will help form the basis of a longlist of suitable candidates.

While candidates cannot apply for the role, those chosen to be interviewed do not have to be from the Church of England and they do not have to be bishops, although they are likely to be.

The candidates will then be interviewed by a committee, with a chair appointed by the prime minister.

Members will include representatives from around the global Anglican Communion, the General Synod, as well as at least one bishop.

At least two-thirds of the committee members must agree before a decision is made.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is also the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican community.

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Eleven people were injured when a Lufthansa flight from hit severe turbulence while travelling over the Atlantic, the airline said on Tuesday (November 12, 2024).

“Unfortunately, five passengers and six crew members suffered mostly minor injuries,” a Lufthansa spokesperson told Reuters in an email, confirming a report by the DPA news agency.

Also read: Boeing | Turbulence in the skies

“The safety of the flight was not in jeopardy at any time,” the spokesperson added.

The injured received medical treatment immediately after the aircraft landed safely at its planned destination on Tuesday at 10:53 am (0953 GMT), according to the airline.

The Boeing 747-8 had been carrying 329 passengers and 19 crew members. The turbulence was brief and occurred in an intertropical convergence zone, the company said.

In May, a passenger died of a suspected heart attack and 30 were injured when a Singapore Airlines passenger plane was severely jolted by an air pocket over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar.

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Senior Russian official Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday (November 12, 2024) told China’s foreign minister Wang Yi their two countries’ most urgent task should be countering “containment” by the United States, as they met for security talks in Beijing.

Moscow and Beijing have expanded military and defence ties since Russia ordered troops into Ukraine nearly three years ago, with Chinese President Xi Jinping one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most important allies on the world stage.

But Beijing has also found itself increasingly stuck between a burgeoning alliance of Russia and North Korea, which has sent soldiers to Ukraine and this week ratified a landmark defence pact with Moscow.

Speaking to Mr. Wang in Beijing, Mr. Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, stressed the need for China and Russia to “counter the ‘dual containment’ policy directed against Russia and China by the United States and its satellites”.

“The comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation (between China and Russia) represent a model of collaboration between two powers in today’s world,” Mr. Shoigu told China’s top diplomat.

“Although it is not a military-political alliance like those formed during the Cold War, the relations between our countries surpass this form of interstate relations,” he said, quoted in Russian news agencies.

Mr. Wang affirmed the strength of Beijing’s relationship with Moscow, saying China-Russia ties have “withstood the test of (changing) international circumstances and have always maintained a momentum of healthy and stable development”.

“The more complex the international situation and the more external challenges there are, the more important it is for both sides to solidify unity and cooperate to defend common interests,” Mr. Wang told Mr. Shoigu, according to China’s foreign ministry.

– Russia at Airshow China –

Shoigu was Russia’s defence minister for the first two years of its offensive on Ukraine, before being moved to the Security Council by Putin after a string of military setbacks and criticism from the country’s influential military correspondents.

Mr. Shoigu is also expected to attend this week’s Airshow China, which showcases Beijing’s civil and military aerospace sector every two years in the southern city of Zhuhai.

Russia’s most advanced jet, the Su-57 stealth fighter, made a display flight at the show.

China presents itself as a neutral party in the Ukraine war and says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the United States and other Western nations.

But it remains a close political and economic ally of Russia and NATO members have branded Beijing a “decisive enabler” of the war, which it has never condemned.

Last month, the two countries’ defence ministers pledged to deepen bilateral military cooperation.

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The world’s top multilateral banks pledged to ramp up climate finance to low and middle income countries to $120 billion a year by 2030 as part of efforts at global talks in Azerbaijan on Tuesday (November 12, 2024) to agree an ambitious annual target.

Reaffirming a goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average by 2050, the new figure is a more than 60% increase on what the group of 10 multilateral development banks (MDBs) had funnelled to poorer nations last year, according to a statement released during the U.N. climate summit in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku.

Also read | COP29 day 2 updates

The new figure includes $42 billion to help adapt to the impacts of extreme weather, a 70% increase over the 2023 number.

With the U.S. government under Donald Trump expected to pull back from global efforts to fight climate change and many other countries cutting development aid, more emphasis is being placed on helping the private sector increase its funding for climate.

“MDB finance is most needed for the poorer countries, as wealthier governments can typically access cheap debt more easily,” said Clare Shakya, global managing director of climate from the Nature Conservancy.

Going forward, the group of MDBs, including the World Bank, European Investment Bank and Asian Development Bank, said they would aim for their lending to bring in an additional $65 billion in private sector cash. “While the scale of MDBs’ financial commitments is essential, MDBs’ most significant impact comes from our ability to drive transformative change,” the group said in a statement.

However, the group warned their ability to do more largely depended on the commitment of banks’ shareholders from both developed and developing countries, who needed to show “greater ambition”.

“Provision of climate finance at scale also depends on increased MDB internal resources; a larger pool of grant and concessional funds to support enhanced policy dialogue, finance public goods and mobilize private finance; and additional capital to unlock more MDB financing,” the statement said.

“We welcome the ambition set out today by the multilateral development banks, which played a key role in scaling up climate finance to exceed the $100 billion goal,” a U.S. official, who declined to be named, said on the sidelines of the gathering.

“The MDBs are a key part of the climate finance architecture.”

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A colossus cannot be captured in a portrait, for he carries the landscape with him. Ratan Naval Tata could not only see into the distance but also attain to the wingspan required to reach there. He was also one who dared to compose dreams on an epic scale but knew how to symphonise all the nuances to turn them into material reality. Yet he always cloaked his greatness with a rare humility and compassion. “I would like to be remembered as a person who was responsible for some change in the way we look at things,” he said in a rare interaction with the media in 2021. And then he added, “As the innovator of something that people thought was unviable and not possible.”

Ratan Tata, 86, who died late evening on October 9 in Mumbai following age-related illness, was all that and much, much more. He had big shoes to fill when he took over the reins of the Tata Group from the illustrious J.R.D. Tata in 1991. Ratan was in awe of JRD and shared his interests in flying and electronics. He would say later, “Jeh (JRD) was an epitome of humility. He would stand in line to check in, drive his own car. What I learnt from him and have carried with me is a sense of justice that is always prevalent. He always did the right thing irrespective of how difficult it was and stood up for principles and stood by people.”

Ratan Tata wasn’t clear why JRD would pick him for the top job. He was not a direct relative (Ratan was born to Naval Tata, who was adopted into the Tata family as a child, and Sooni Tata, the niece of Tata Group founder Jamsetji Tata) and was an aspiring architect after having schooled in New York’s Cornell University. He returned to India only because his grandmother, Lady Navajbai Tata, wanted him back. She was the one who brought him and his brother Jimmy up ever since their parents had separated, and she was getting old.

Two weeks after returning to India, he was sent to the Jamshedpur plant of Telco (now Tata Motors ) as an apprentice and later to Tisco (now Tata Steel) to hone his skills. He seemed to have forged his own work ethic then, rolling up his sleeves on the shop floor and sharing meals with the workers in the canteen. In retrospect, it would seem some of that steel rubbed off on him—along with the simplicity and lack of humbug from his mates.

When Ratan Tata took over from JRD, it was the dawn of liberalisation in India and there were conflicting currents of enterprise and protectionism. Tata’s instinct was to venture outward, towards the global stage, rather than inward. The Tata Group was then still a loose confederation of companies, but bound by common synergies with the centre (read, Tata Sons) giving it strategic leadership. In his early years as helmsman, he laid down his motto: that the group was more important than individual companies. That meant, to unify the command structure and attain coherence of purpose, he had to sack an array of Tata satraps like Russi Mody, Ajit Kerkar and Darbari Seth who ran their own “fiefdoms”.

It was also necessary to make the group nimble-footed and competitive. So, Tata sold off underperforming sectors like textiles, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and cement, and accorded a big push to software and steel and other new-age businesses. Of that phase, reminiscing to india today, Tata had these wry words to offer: “People say I am soft but yet I get accused of pushing older people out, having dark sides, selling companies and doing all those things which are not soft.”

Once the group consolidation was in place, Tata executed a massive phase of expansion, straddling several key sectors. On the domestic front, he executed some audacious business plans that included the forays into telecom, retail and finance, the creation of the first indigenous car Indica, the launch of the cheapest car Nano and the re-entry of the group into aviation through tie-ups with Singapore Airlines and Malaysia’s Air Asia, among others.

On the international front, Tata aggressively acquired prized companies willing to spend big money and take huge risks. These included purchases of the UK’s Tetley Tea in 2000 for $450 million, Daewoo Commercial Vehicles in 2004 for $102 million, Singapore’s NatSteel the same year for $486 million, British steelmaker Corus in 2007 for $13 billion and the Jaguar-Land Rover from Ford Motor Company in 2008 for $2.3 billion. Some moves were more successful than the others, but what stood out consistently was the derring-do. By the time Tata stepped down in 2012, the group’s turnover that was $4 billion when he took over in 1991 had grown by 25 times and crossed $100 billion. (It now stands at $165 billion.)

The protracted legal battle with his immediate successor Cyrus Mistry, who was sacked in 2016 following a boardroom coup, and the public battle with the Shapoorji Pallonji family, which owns 18 per cent in Tata Sons, probably was the sourest episode in his business life. Following the showdown, Tata came out of retirement to be interim chairman for a brief period before anointing Tata veteran and close confidant N. Chandrasekaran as group chairman. The Singur controversy where Tata Motors’ Nano plant had to shift its factory from West Bengal to Gujarat in 2008 following farmers’ resistance had been another tough episode. Tata then famously said, “If somebody puts a gun to my head, you either pull the trigger or you take your gun away because I will not move my head.”

Despite his age, Ratan Tata remained in step with the 21st century avant-garde of business. Even a few weeks ago before his death, he was devoting a lot of his time to foster innovation at start-ups, most recently Goodfellows. In the past decade, Tata has mentored over 50 start-ups, including Lenskart, Zivame, Urban Company and Ola Electric. He continued to be chairman of Tata Trusts, the philanthropic arm of the Tatas, which holds 66 per cent stake in Tata Sons. Of late, in the winter of his life, he had also taken to sharing his past, via retro pics on Instagram. You see those same eyes, on a handsome face and rugged frame that would not have been out of place on stage in Parsi theatre—except that he never threw his voice. For, even as he strode the world of business as a titan, he dignified it with a quiet grace.

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In February 2024, Colonel Anuj Antal, the adm­inistrative commandant of the army cantonment in the border town of Ferozepur, Punjab, wrote to then governor Banwarilal Purohit, seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry and the registration of an FIR against dis­trict revenue officials for forging records pertaining to 15 acres of land belonging to the military. His allegation: that the piece of land outside the cantonment known as Jahaz Ground—once an emergency airfield for the Indian Air Force (IAF) used as camouflaging ground for weaponry during the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars—had been sold off to private individuals, compromising security near the India-Pakistan border. This is not an iso­lated incident, across India, land owned by the armed for­­­ces—spread across prime locations and worth crores of rupees—has been gra­bbed by real estate mafias with the alleged involvement of local officials, military personnel and bureaucrats within the min­istry of defence (MoD). Indeed, the situation is dire: according to the Centre, an estimated 10,354 acres of defence land is being illegally encroached upon or sold off in fraudulent deals.

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In what is proving to be a major embarrassment for the Indian intell­i­gence establishment, an officer once serving in one of its agencies has been caught with the proverbial smoking gun in the plot to kill the Khalistani separatist and Sikhs For Justice founder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York in June 2023. A superseding indictment filed by the US Department of Justice (USDoJ) in a US District Court in New York on October 18 charged Vikash Yadav a.k.a. Vikas a.k.a. Amanat and his associate Nikhil Gupta a.k.a. Nick with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering in the Pannun case. Yadav, a former officer of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), is said to have been working with RAW, or the Research and Analysis Wing, at the time. To make matters worse, the 18-page indictment draws a possible link between the plot to assassinate Pannun and the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Khalistani sympathiser, in Canada the same month.

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Baba Siddique, 66, was shot dead by three gunmen in Mumbai on October 12.

New Delhi:

Shiv Kumar Gautam, the main accused in the murder case of Maharashtra politician Baba Siddique, has said that he was ordered to kill either the 66-year-old leader or his MLA son, Zeeshan Siddique, police sources said. The 20-year-old was arrested along with his four aides from Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich on Sunday while he was trying to flee to Nepal.

Shiv Kumar is among the three shooters — Gurnail Singh, a resident of Haryana and Dhramraj Kashyap of Uttar Pradesh — who shot dead Mr Siddique outside Zeeshan Siddique’s office in Mumbai on October 12. While Singh and Kashyap were arrested after the incident, Shiv Kumar managed to flee.

During interrogation, Shiv Kumar told the police that Anmol Bishnoi, the brother of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, had told him to shoot whoever he saw first.

Before the murder, Anmol Bishnoi, who is believed to be in Canada and is also on the most-wanted list of the National Investigation Agency, had given a pep talk to Shiv Kumar.

Mumbai police crime branch sources said Anmol told him what he was going to do was for “God and the society.”

A picture of Zeeshan Siddique, 32, was reportedly found on a cell phone seized from one of the three men who shot his father.

Shiv Kumar Gautam Changed Clothes After Baba Siddique Murder

After killing Baba Siddique, Shiv Kumar Gautam immediately changed his shirt and disappeared into the crowd so that no one could identify him, Mumbai police crime branch sources.

He then stayed near the crime scene to avoid any confrontation.

The 20-year-old then initially travelled from the crime scene to Kurla in an auto and then boarded a local train to Thane, sources said.

From Thane, he took a train to Pune and dumped his mobile phone during the journey.

Shiv Kumar stayed in Pune for about seven days and then went to Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi by train. He then stayed there for five days and went to the state capital Lucknow.

In Lucknow, he bought a new mobile and contacted his aides. After spending 11 days there, he travelled to his native Bahraich and met his aides, who had arranged a safehouse for him in a nearby village.

Shiv Kumar also said that after killing Baba Siddique, he first planned to go to Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain and then to Vaishno Devi in Jammu before fleeing the country.

How Cops Caught Shiv Kumar Gautam

The police traced about 45 people, including Shiv Kumar Gautam’s family members and his close aides, and tracked their movements after Baba Siddique’s murder.

During the investigation, they zeroed down to four people who were constantly in contact with Shiv Kumar, police sources said.

The police then laid a trap and waited for those four accused to meet Shiv Kumar. They then caught him from the Nanpara area of Bahraich on Sunday.

He was arrested in a joint operation by the police officials of Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai.

Anurag Kashyap, Gyan Prakash Tripathi, Akash Srivastava and Akhileshendra Pratap Singh were also arrested for giving shelter to Shiv Kumar and helping him escape to Nepal.

The police have so far arrested 20 in the case.

Baba Siddique was murdered apparently because of his close relationship with actor Salman Khan. Lawrence Bishnoi’s associates have hinted that the grouse against Mr Khan is about the blackbucks he killed 20 years ago. Blackbucks are sacred to the Bishnoi community.

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N Prashanth is an IAS officer of the 2007 batch

Thiruvanathapuram:

The Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala has suspended two officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) on disciplinary grounds. K Gopalakrishnan, director of Industries and Commerce, faced the action over a religion-based WhatsApp group for government officials. N Prashanth, Agriculture Development and Farmers’ Welfare department’s special secretary, was suspended after he criticised and made serious allegations against a senior officer.

According to officials, the Chief Minister has taken action against the officers following a report by Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan.

Mr Gopalakrishnan, a 2013-batch officer, has been suspended for creating a WhatsApp group named “Mallu Hindu Officers” last month. Following a row, the IAS officer had claimed that his phone was hacked. According to officials, a forensic examination of the phone did not establish that it was hacked and found that the phone was formatted amid the row.

Thiruvananthapuram City Police Commissioner Sparjan Kumar stated that it is unclear whether the device was compromised because it had been “reset”.

In the case of 2007-batch officer N Prashanth, the action followed his outburst against Additional Chief Secretary A Jayathilak in a Facebook post. He accused the senior officer of orchestrating baseless news reports against him. Mr Prashanth alleged that Mr Jayathilak was working to undermine him by spreading unfounded allegations. He described the senior officer as a “psychopath”.

The outburst followed a media report that claimed several files of ‘Unnathi’ — an initiative aimed at the welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes — went missing during Mr Prashanth’s tenure as its CEO. Mr Prashanth has earlier worked as Kozhikode District Collector, among other roles. He is quite active on social media and is popularly known as ‘Collector Bro’.

Mr Prashanth has told a news channel that he had not received the details regarding the action against him. “This is a new experience for me. Criticising the government or its policies is wrong and action can be taken. I don’t think anyone will be of the opinion that I have done anything like that. My criticism was aimed at certain individuals’ inappropriate tendencies, particularly regarding fabricated reports. Evidence has also come to light regarding this. I trust that creating fake reports is not a government policy, but if criticising such actions leads to consequences, that’s news to me,” said the officer, who has called himself a “whistleblower”.

He said the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression to all citizens. “I am unaware of any boundary I may have crossed within this right. Let’s see the order, and then I will consider my next step. I was not born with a sole ambition of being an IAS officer. I have other interests and pursuits,” he added.

Earlier, Kerala Revenue Minister K Rajan had said government officers should follow discipline while in service and anyone violating it them would face tough action.

The action against N Prashanth is also playing out against a political backdrop. Former state fisheries minister Mercykutty Amma has accused the IAS officer of working with leaders of the Opposition UDF in a conspiracy to bring corruption charges against her.

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Mumbai:

A man has been arrested for issuing a death threat to Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, police said today. Mohammad Faizan Khan, a lawyer, was arrested from his residence in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur for making the threat call to the 59-year-old actor and demanding Rs 50 lakh.

He was arrested after he failed to appear before the Mumbai Police.

Faizan had earlier said his mobile phone – which was used to make the threatening call last week – was stolen. He also said that he filed a police case on November 2.

A case against him was registered by the police under sections 308(4) (extortion involving threats of death or serious injury) and 351(3)(4) (criminal intimidation) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) as the threat call was made from a phone number registered in his name.

Shah Rukh Khan – called ‘King Khan’ by his fans – received a death threat last October; this was after the success of two movies – ‘Pathaan’ and ‘Jawan’.

Mumbai Police had then upped the actor’s protective cover, giving him a Y+ security blanket. This ensures he is accompanied by six armed personnel around the clock; earlier he had two security personnel, also armed, accompanying him.

The threat to Mr Khan follows a series of threats issued to his fellow actor Salman Khan, allegedly from the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.

Last week, a 32-year-old man from Rajasthan was arrested in Karnataka after issuing a death threat to Salman Khan. This was a day after he received a threat from jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who demanded he apologise at a temple (for the killing of a blackbuck, an endangered deer sacred to the Bishnoi community) or pay Rs 5 crore.

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