Moscow:

Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov and his US counterpart Lloyd Austin held a telephone call where they discussed lowering the risk of “possible escalation”, the Russian defence ministry said on Friday.

The call, which was initiated by Moscow, comes as tensions between the two sides flare over Washington’s plan to deploy long-range missiles in Germany, a decision the Kremlin warned could spell a return to Cold War-style confrontation.

“The issue of preventing security threats and reducing the risk of possible escalation was discussed,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement on the talks.

According to Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, Austin “emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication” during the conversation.

The two sides have managed to organise sporadic phone calls despite raging tensions over the conflict in Ukraine, including a recent call at the end of June where Moscow chided Washington’s arms supplies to Kyiv.

The White House announced on Wednesday during a NATO summit that it would station long-range weapons including Tomahawk cruise missiles in Germany as a deterrent.

The Kremlin criticised the move, accusing Washington of taking a step towards a new “Cold War” and of directly participating in the conflict in Ukraine.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A 22-year-old university student in the United States was found beaten to death and wrapped in a sheet in the back seat of her car – days after her boyfriend was let out of jail. According to the New York Post, Lauren Johansen’s body was discovered wrapped in trash bags and a sheet on July 3 at a cemetery in Mississippi. Her father said he pleaded with a judge not to release her ex-boyfriend from jail, warning he would “kill her” if he did. However, the judge didn’t heed his warnings and five days later, the body of the 22-year-old was found mutilated in her own car and police say her boyfriend was responsible. 

According to the Post, Ms Johansen’s former partner, 23-year-old Bricen Rivers, has been arrested and charged with her murder. He had been released on a bond just five days before the 22-year-old’s death. He was previously held for aggravated kidnapping for brutally beating Ms Johansen and holding her hostage during a December trip to Nashville. 

Ms Johansen was on track to get her nursing degree. She was first reported missing on July 2 when her sister woke up alone in their shared apartment with the front door wide open and their security camera smashed. The same morning, her father said he woke up to a notification that her location-tracking app had been turned off. He then reported her missing, and the next day, officers informed him that they had located her car in a nearby cemetery. 

Ms Johansen was found dead in her car which was parked in the middle of a cemetery in Harrison County, Mississippi. Her mutilated body was wrapped up in trash bags over the back seats.

“She was basically beaten to death. Her face was smashed in, her head was smashed in, she was brutally beaten to the point she couldn’t see out of either eye when she finally died and there was multiple holes in her head,” Ms Johansen’s father said. 

“I helped the coroner lift her body out of the car. It was just mutilated,” he continued. 

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The father also said that he had warned the judge that if her boyfriend was let out of jail, he would kill her. He alleged that Rivers had held his daughter hostage in December and beat her while the couple were on vacation in Nashville. He also added that in the moments leading to Rivers’ December arrest, police officers found Lauren Johansen badly beaten and trying to escape a rental vehicle as Rivers reached for a firearm.

The heartbroken father slammed the criminal justice system in Tennessee for failing his family. “I think the criminal justice system in Nashville, Tennessee, failed my daughter and our family. The world shouldn’t work this way,” he said. “She was really beautiful, super, super smart. She had dreams and hopes that were larger than life. Everything she did, everything she touched,” he added. 

Now, Rivers, who was arrested following a six-hour manhunt, faces a murder charge and is being held on a $1 million bond.
 

Politics around the world is evolving in ways that both leaders and analysts are finding difficult to assess and respond to. Politicians are scrambling to sustain support as new entrants make inroads into constituencies that have lost faith in the established order. It is in this melee of the old and the new that the grammar of today’s politics is charting a course of its own. Globally, the political elites have never seemed so out of touch as they seem today, unable to respond to the challenge from their streets.

In just the last few days, US President Joe Biden’s credibility saw a free fall, while the UK booted out an accidental, out-of-touch Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and ushered in the Labour Raj at a time when the rest of Europe is moving to the right. The French have given a mandate to the Far Right. Nine months after the terror attacks of October 7, Israel is facing a civil war-like situation, with people demanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation even as the nation remains in a state of war on multiple fronts. In Iran, Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian found himself elected as the nation’s new president, beating his hardline conservative rival Saeed Jalili by securing around 53.3% of votes, nine percentage points more than Jalili.

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A Reformist In Iran, ‘Changemaker’ In UK

Different nations, different challenges, different political arcs, but all facing a moment of political reckoning. Ironically, it is Iran where the recent change of leadership holds the most promise. This is not the first time a reformist has come to power in Iran in a system that has been dominated by the “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei since 1989. The conservatives have controlled all the levers of power and have managed to scuttle earlier reformists like Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani. However, there has been a growing disillusionment with the ruling elites. By criticising Iran’s morality police and promising “unity and cohesion”  as well as an end to Iran’s “isolation” from the world, Pezeshkian talked in a language that appealed to those who want normalcy in a nation that has been on the edge of a precipice for years now.

Rishi Sunak, on the other hand, was not only bogged down by the legacy of his predecessors who had made a mockery of public mandates, but he was also unable to soothe the British public struggling with rising costs of living and a crumbling public services infrastructure. The Conservative Party imploded, and Sunak’s leadership never managed to rise to match the needs of today’s Britain. And so, the Labour Party ended up getting a landslide even without increasing its vote share, thereby taking the United Kingdom in a direction opposite to the rest of Europe, where the Right is ascending.

Close Shave For Macron

In France, President Emmanuel Macron had to call a snap election fearing the resurgence of the nation’s far-right party, the National Rally (RN). Only a last-minute, left-wing tactical adjustment could prevent an outright landslide for the RN. But this should be seen as just a consolation prize, as the RN has greatly increased its representation in Parliament. 

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Separately, last month, the European Union elections saw a resurgence of the right in ways few had anticipated, and the triumph of Eurosceptic parties will have serious long-term consequences for the ability of the 27-member bloc to work cohesively.

Concerns About Biden

The world’s eyes, however, are now on the leadership contest in the US, where two old white men are busy damaging the brand of American democracy. Donald Trump, under whose presidency the foundations of the American democratic institutional fabric came close to collapsing, continues to be ahead in the presidential race, as the base of the Republican Party continues to move to the right. Trump’s supporters still view him as an anti-establishment candidate and despite facing a number of charges in the courts, he is hailed as a victim. His greatest advantage is that he has his primary opponent in President Joe Biden, who, after a disastrous debate performance, is having a difficult time convincing his own party about his candidacy. 

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Old templates no longer apply to the new political climate, where fast-evolving aspirations demand a change in the status quo. Back home in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third consecutive victory and Indian democracy’s continuing resilience underscores the Indian electorate’s ability to make nuanced choices even as the world around it undergoes a dramatic shift. Even so, this global churn has a lesson for Indian political leaders and the larger system.

(Harsh V Pant is Vice President for Studies and Foreign Policy at ORF.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

Washington:

US aircraft manufacturer Boeing said Monday it had reached a “definitive deal” to buy its subcontractor Spirit, which has faced scrutiny over production quality control in recent months.

“The merger is an all-stock transaction at an equity value of approximately $4.7 billion, or $37.25 per share,” the company said in a statement.

Boeing disclosed in March that it was in talks to potentially reacquire Spirit, which it spun off in 2005 to lower costs.

“We believe this deal is in the best interest of the flying public, our airline customers, the employees of Spirit and Boeing, our shareholders and the country more broadly,” said Boeing president and CEO Dave Calhoun.

He said by reintegrating Spirit, “we can fully align our commercial production systems”, including safety and quality management systems, and “our workforce to the same priorities, incentives and outcomes — centered on safety and quality”.

Spirit AeroSystems builds fuselages and other significant parts for both Airbus and Boeing.

Boeing is by far Spirit’s biggest customer, with around 70 per cent of its revenue coming from the American plane maker in 2023.

The two companies have faced intense scrutiny since a near-catastrophic incident in January when a fuselage panel blew off a 737 MAX mid-flight.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

India received $120 billion in remittances in 2023, almost twice the $66 billion received by Mexico in the same period, the World Bank said in a report released on Wednesday.

China ($50 billion), the Philippines ($39 billion), and Pakistan ($27 billion) figure among the top five nations in the list released by the World Bank. The list showed remittances in 2023 after a period of strong growth during 2021-2022. The total was an estimated $656 billion.

“Growing at 7.5 per cent, remittance flows to India touched $120 billion in 2023, reflecting the benefits of a deceleration in inflation and strong labour markets in the United States, the largest destination for India’s skilled migrants, and other OECD destinations, as well as positive demand for skilled and less-skilled workers in the GCC countries (which, together, are the second largest destination for Indian migrants),” the World Bank said.

While the same external demand conditions could have favoured remittance flows to Pakistan, weak internal conditions due to a balance of payments crisis and economic difficulties caused remittances to plummet 12 per cent to $27 billion in 2023, compared with more than $30 billion in 2022, it said.

According to the World Bank, remittance flows to India from the United Arab Emirates, which account for 18 per cent and are the second largest source of India’s remittances after the United States, benefited from the February 2023 agreement.

The latter established a framework to promote the use of local currencies for cross-border transactions and cooperation for interlinking payment and messaging systems between India and the United Arab Emirates.

The use of dirhams and rupees in cross-border transactions is instrumental in channelling more remittances through formal channels. In addition to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar account for 11 per cent of India’s total remittances, it said.

The World Bank said remittances to India are expected to grow 3.7 per cent to $124 billion in 2024, and at four per cent to $129 billion in 2025.

India’s efforts to link its Unified Payments Interface with source countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Singapore are expected to reduce costs and speed up remittances, it said.

“Most importantly, the diversification of India’s migrant pool between a large share of highly skilled migrants employed mostly in high-income OECD markets and the less-skilled migrants employed in the GCC markets is likely to lend stability to migrants’ remittances in the event of external shocks,” the bank said.

“Migration and resulting remittances are essential drivers of economic and human development,” said Iffath Sharif, Global Director of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank.

“Many countries are interested in managed migration in the face of global demographic imbalances and labour deficits on the one hand, and high levels of unemployment and skill gaps on the other… The resilience of remittances underscores their importance for millions of people,” said Dilip Ratha, lead economist and lead author of the report.

“Leveraging remittances for financial inclusion and capital market access can enhance the development prospects of recipient countries. The World Bank aims to reduce remittance costs and facilitate formal flows by mitigating political and commercial risks to promote private investment in this sector,” he said.

An 18-year-old woman in the United States has been arrested for calling 911 to avoid going on a date with a man she met on a dating app. According to The Independent, the woman, identified as Sumaya Thomas, was arrested after cops said she told a dispatcher that her abusive ex-boyfriend of two years was outside her home and sending her threatening text messages. She told the police that the man told her that he wanted to hit, kick, punch and stab her. 

Ms Thomas was arrested on June 16 on two false reporting charges, both of which were misdemeanour crimes, The Independent reported. The 18-year-old even told the police that she was pregnant with her ex-boyfriend’s baby. The majority of their conversations took place over Snapchat, she said. 

However, upon arriving at the scene, the cops spotted the man leaving the residence. He reportedly told the officers that he started speaking to the woman a week ago on a dating app. The two then moved their conversations off the platform and started to text. The man also showed the cops the text and dating app conversations, following which the officers confirmed that the messages were sent to the woman’s phone number. 

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The man was detained for over an hour due to the false accusations. It was during a third interview that Ms Thomas admitted to making the false report because she got “cold feet on meeting him and no longer wanted to”. 

“She advised she didn’t think officers would help so she made up this call and the events that she described,” the police complaint stated. 

Ms Thomas was arrested last week and later released from the Johnson County Jail in Iowa. 
 

Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was freed by a court on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan on Wednesday after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law, in a deal that will see him return home to Australia.

During the three-hour hearing, Assange pled guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents but said he had believed the Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.

“Working as a journalist I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information,” he told the court.

“I believed the First Amendment protected that activity but I accept that it was … a violation of the espionage statute.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Ramona V. Manglona accepted his guilty plea and released him due to time already served in a British jail.

Assange, 52, has left Saipan on a private jet accompanied by Australia’s ambassadors to the US and UK, according to flight logs. They will then travel to Canberra, landing just before 7 pm (0900 GMT).

Assange had agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.

The U.S. territory in the western Pacific was chosen due to his opposition to travelling to the mainland U.S. and for its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.

Dozens of media from around the world attended the hearing, with more gathered outside the courtroom to cover the proceedings. Media were not allowed inside the courtroom to film the hearing.

“I watch this and think how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory depravation and the four walls of his high-security Belmarsh prison cell,” Stella Assange, the wife of WikiLeaks founder said on social media platform X.

LONG SAGA

Australian-born Assange spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London as he fought accusations of sex crimes in Sweden and battled extradition to the U.S., where he faced 18 criminal charges.

Assange’s supporters view him as a victim because he exposed U.S. wrongdoing and potential crimes, including in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington has said the release of the secret documents put lives in danger.

The Australian government has been advocating for his release and has raised the issue with the United States several times.

“This isn’t something that has happened in the last 24 hours,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a news conference on Wednesday.

“This is something that has been considered, patient, worked through in a calibrated way, which is how Australia conducts ourselves.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Houston:

The governor of Louisiana signed a bill Wednesday requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom in the conservative US state, reigniting the debate over separation of church and state.

The legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, mandates that the biblical text be on display starting in 2025 in all public school classrooms from kindergarten through state-funded universities.

“If you want to respect the rule of law, you gotta start from the original law given — which was Moses,” Jeff Landry, Republican governor of the southern state, said at the bill’s signing ceremony.

The law requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed as a poster or framed document “and shall be printed in a large, easily readable font,” the bill’s text reads.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) responded to the legislation by indicating it would take the case to court.

“The law violates the separation of church and state and is blatantly unconstitutional,” the organization said in a statement.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution forbids the establishment of a national religion or the preference of one religion over another.

The bill, HB 71, is the first of its kind to be signed into law, though similar bills have been drafted and put forth in other southern states within the US “Bible Belt.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

Families of Boeing 737 MAX crash victims on Wednesday asked US authorities to impose a fine of up to $24.8 billion on the aviation giant and proceed with criminal prosecution.

The move comes a day after Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun acknowledged the “gravity” of the company’s safety problems and assured a US congressional panel that it was making progress on the issue.

Sitting behind him in the audience were relatives of victims of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019, who held up victims’ photos.

“Because Boeing’s crime is the deadliest corporate crime in US history, a maximum fine of more than $24 billion is legally justified and clearly appropriate,” Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, wrote in a letter to the US Department of Justice.

The 32-page document explains the calculations behind the amount sought, saying Boeing “should be fined the maximum — $24,780,000,000 — with perhaps $14,000,000,000 to $22,000,0000,000 of the fine suspended on the condition that Boeing devote those suspended funds to an independent corporate monitor and related improvements in compliance and safety programs as identified below.”

It added: “And Boeing’s Board of Directors should be ordered to meet with the families.”

The families also believe the government should promptly “launch criminal prosecutions of the responsible corporate officials at Boeing at the time of the two crashes.”

The case relates to crashes in 2018 and 2019 in Indonesia and Ethiopia that together claimed 346 lives and comes as Boeing faces intensifying scrutiny following recent manufacturing and safety problems.

The aviation giant has again been in the public spotlight since a January 5 incident in which a 737 MAX operated by Alaska Airlines was forced to make an emergency landing after a fuselage panel blew out mid-flight.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A 41-year-old plastic surgeon in the United States has been arrested over the death of his wife who went into cardiac arrest on his operating table in November last year. The doctor, identified as Benjamin Brown, was taken into custody on Monday and charged with one count of second-degree felony homicide for alleged manslaughter by culpable negligence in the death of his wife Hillary Ellington Brown. According to The Independent, he turned himself in to the police after a warrant was put out for his arrest on Friday. 

In a press note, the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to the 41-year-old’s practice, Restore Plastic Surgery, in Florida, for a medical emergency on November 21. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders located a female victim – later identified as Hillary Brown – suffering from cardiac arrest. She was taken to a hospital, where she was put on life support before she was pronounced dead. An autopsy into her death is pending. 

“The autopsy protocol typically takes several months as it usually is dependent on extensive laboratory and toxicology tests as well as the information gathered by our Major Crimes detectives concerning the circumstances of the death,” the police department said in a statement. 

Benjamin Brown is being held in the county’s jail pending his bond hearing, the statement added. 

According to The Independent, on the day Ms Hillary went into cardiac arrest, she was scheduled to undergo miniature muscle plication/abdominal scar revision, bilateral arm liposuction, lip injections, and ear adjustment procedures. She reportedly prepared her own anaesthesia before the surgeries. She also ingested a handful of multicoloured pills, including Valium. 

Shortly before the procedures, she began experiencing symptoms relating to sedation. When she went into the operating room, her husband administered additional anaesthesia without being able to verify what his wife took. He subsequently did not record his wife’s medication and dosage. At one point, his wife told him that her vision was becoming blurry and she saw “orange”. Moreover, she experienced restlessness, muscle twitching and blurred vision which are common symptoms of toxicity. The 41-year-old, however, continued injecting drugs into her face, following which she became unresponsive and started to seize.

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At this point, a medical assistant asked the doctor if they should call emergency services and he said “no”. In the next 20 minutes, the assistant asked again and he said “no” or “wait,” the outlet reported. 

The plastic surgeon began to panic and requested his assistants to bring him supplies, including an oxygen tank and stethoscope. However, as the medical assistant was new, they found it difficult to find the items. Meanwhile, instead of calling an ambulance, Brown allegedly “shouted” at the staff, asking “What medication did she take?” 

About 10 to 20 minutes after Hillary Brown suffered a seizure, Brown instructed an assistant to call 911, but his wife never regained consciousness. 

The medical board determined that Brown’s treatment of his wife was “careless and haphazard”. Moreover, in May, Florida’s Department of Health issued an emergency order restricting the doctor’s medical license to only perform procedures or surgeries in a licensed hospital while under the supervision of a licensed physician. The department is pursuing disciplinary action in the case. Ben Brown, on the other hand, has chosen to challenge the allegations made against him and the case will be heard by the Division for Administrative Hearings.