‘Incessant attacks on my character’: Swati Maliwal writes to INDIA Bloc leaders, seeks time to discuss assault case
Swati Maliwal complained she was subjected to “victim shaming and character assassination” for speaking up against the abuse.
Incumbent wins three-way primary battle for Oklahoma’s 3rd Congressional District
Frank Lucas won the battle for Oklahoma’s Third Congressional District, beating out two challengers in the race. The Associated Press made the call. INSIDERS PREDICT RUST BELT REPUBLICAN, POSSIBLE TRUMP VP PICK, COULD FLIP BIDEN VOTERS IN KEY SWING STATES The battle for Oklahoma’s Third Congressional District was a three-way race between incumbent Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., entrepreneur Robin Carder, and satellite engineer Darren Hamilton. Lucas, the longest-tenured incumbent in the Oklahoma’s House delegation, has served the district since 2003. The incumbent has been the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology since 2023 and enjoyed high-profile endorsements from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the National Rifle Association (NRA), according to VoteSmart. DEMOCRATS ‘FEAR’ THIS POSSIBLE TRUMP VP PICK WHO ‘COULD SPELL THE END FOR BIDEN’: INSIDERS The race did not garner as much attention and fundraising as the high-profile battle for the state’s Fourth Congressional District, with Lucas raising $1.2 million, according to Federal Election Commission data. Carder and Hamilton, meanwhile, failed to surpass $20,000 in funding. Oklahoma’s Third Congressional District has been dominated by Republicans, who have won every election in the district since 1996. It is the only district in the state that the Republican nominee will not have to face a Democratic challenger in November.
Woman dies while reversing car falls into 300-ft gorge in Maharashtra, video surfaces
During the incident, the woman’s friend was shooting a video while the former was reversing the car.
Texas National Guard is shooting pepper balls to deter migrants at the border
Migrants in Mexico said they’ve been shot by the rounds, which leave bruises and disperse a chemical irritant. The state says Guard members are trained not to aim directly at people.
Judge halts Iowa attempt to take action against illegal immigrants
A federal judge in Iowa halted the state’s effort to enforce its own immigration laws on Monday. The Iowa law would have allowed the state to file criminal charges against illegal immigrants who have outstanding deportation orders or who previously had been denied entry to the U.S. U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher’s block on enforcement is only temporary as the Iowa legislation is further litigated. Locher said he nevertheless believes the law will fail because federal immigration law supersedes that of states. “As a matter of politics, the new legislation might be defensible. As a matter of constitutional law, it is not,” Locher’s ruling read. “Under binding Supreme Court precedent, Senate File 2340 is preempted in its entirety by federal law and thus is invalid under the Supremacy Clause.” FOX EXCLUSIVE: MIGRANTS GREED UNDER ICE PROGRAM EXPLODED TO OVER 7.4 MILLION Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the “illegal re-entry” bill into law earlier this year. It followed similar legislation in Texas. Officials in both states have heavily criticized President Biden’s handling of border policies. Reynolds and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said the state plans to appeal the ruling. FBI DIRECTOR WRAY WARNED OF TERROR THREAT POSED BY OPEN BORDER DAYS BEFORE 8 ISIS SUSPECTS ARRESTED ACROSS US “Iowa never would have had to pass this law to begin with if it weren’t for Biden’s open borders,” Bird said in a statement after the ruling. “Rather than suing Iowa for enforcing immigration laws, he should do his duty to secure the border.” Reynolds, meanwhile, argued that the Biden administration has left states “defenseless” against the “ongoing crisis at our southern border.” FORMER ASSISTANT FBI DIRECTOR WARNS AGAINST ‘HUGE VULNERABILITY’ ASSOCIATED WITH BORDER SURGE “Plainly, the Biden administration is failing to do their job and enforce federal immigration laws allowing millions to enter and re-enter without any consequence or delay,” she added. Iowa’s law was due to take effect on July 1. The Justice Department has announced plans to go after a similar piece of legislation in Oklahoma in the coming weeks. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Jayson Tatum, Celtics defeat Mavericks to win record 18th NBA championship
The Boston Celtics beat the Dallas Mavericks 4-1 in the NBA Finals to win their first championship since 2008. Jayson Tatum recorded 31 points and 11 assists as the Boston Celtics locked up their league-record 18th championship with a 106-88 blowout of the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Tatum also had eight rebounds while Jaylen Brown added 21 points, eight boards and six assists for Boston, which celebrated the 16th anniversary of its most recent title by completing a 16-3 playoff run. The Celtics knocked off the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2008 Finals, and those two teams shared the league record with 17 championships apiece before Monday’s result. Jrue Holiday had 15 points and 11 rebounds and Derrick White chipped in 14 points as Boston wrapped up the best-of-seven series on its second opportunity. Brown was selected as the Finals MVP (most valuable player) after averaging 20.8 points, 5.4 rebounds and five assists. Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown (7) was named NBA Finals’ most valuable player (MVP) [Peter Casey/USA TODAY Sports] Luka Doncic paced the Mavericks with 28 points and 12 boards, but he committed seven turnovers. Kyrie Irving finished with 15 points and nine assists for Dallas, and Josh Green netted 14 points. After Dallas called a timeout with 3:11 left in the second quarter, trailing by 11 points, Boston completely broke the game open. The Celtics scored 17 of the next 24 points, six of which came from Brown. Payton Pritchard capped the outburst in jaw-dropping fashion, canning a 49-foot heave from half-court at the buzzer to send Boston into the break with a 67-46 cushion. Holiday’s layup pushed the Celtics’ lead to 78-52 with 9:10 to go in the third quarter. Green then converted a putback and knocked down a 3-pointer as part of a 10-2 run that got the Mavericks within 80-62. Dallas later got the deficit down to 17, but Boston took an 86-67 lead into the fourth. The Celtics were on top by at least 18 the rest of the way. A three-point play from Tatum put the Celtics up 46-31 with 7:08 remaining in the first half, but Dallas then took over down low. The Mavericks scored all of their points in the paint during an 8-2 spurt to get within nine before Al Horford stemmed the tide with a hard-nosed layup. Horford’s bucket came just before the Mavericks’ timeout that preceded Boston’s game-changing run. Boston came to life in the final 1:39 of the first quarter, ripping off nine unanswered points to take a 28-18 lead into the second. The Celtics wound up shooting 42.7 percent from the floor. Dallas shot 44.9 percent overall but was outscored by 10 points at the foul line and committed 13 turnovers to Boston’s nine. It was Boston’s first NBA championship in 16 years. Boston Celtics centre Kristaps Porzingis (centre) and forward Jayson Tatum (right) celebrate after winning the 2024 NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks [Elsa/Pool Photo/USA TODAY Sports] Adblock test (Why?)
‘Week of disruption’: Arrests, injuries in Israel antigovernment protests
Thousands more to participate in nationwide demonstrations over Gaza war and the failure to negotiate the release of captives. Al Jazeera is reporting from outside Israel because it has been banned by the Israeli government. At least nine people have been arrested during antigovernment protests in Jerusalem, with more demonstrations expected in the coming days amid Israel’s war on Gaza and fighting with Hezbollah. Police clashed with protesters near the residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday night, with Israeli media reports indicating one of the detainees was a family member of an Israeli captive held in Gaza. The demonstrators have been calling for new elections, a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as a deal for the release of captives being held in the Palestinian enclave. “Because of you we are dying, get out of our lives,” read one sign carried by protesters, with a photo of Netanyahu and bloody handprints. Police used water cannon against demonstrators, with three people reportedly sent to hospital for treatment, including a medic wearing a vest who was injured in the eye. Israelis have been gathering in Tel Aviv every Saturday night since the start of the current conflict in October, but this week tens of thousands descended on Jerusalem. Demonstrators in front of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, were joined by opposition leader Yair Lapid. Police forcibly removed several people from the protest [Saeed Qaq/Anadolu Images] Organisers of the antigovernment protests called for a “week of disruption”. They also called on local authorities and business leaders to join the protests, with the aim of holding elections before the first anniversary of the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on October 7. Earlier on Monday, families of Israeli captives participated in one of the committees inside parliament, saying they are fed up with the absence of leadership and decision-making. Pressure is building on Netanyahu, who dissolved the war cabinet on Monday after his rival Benny Gantz left it along with former army chief Gadi Eisenkot over the lack of a future plan for Gaza. Reporting from Amman, Jordan, Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said protesters are also demonstrating against the prolonged conflict with Hezbollah in the north, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of Israelis for months. “Both sides have picked up the rate of their attacks in the last few weeks. The Israelis say they’re not afraid to enter a full-blown conflict with Hezbollah. However, evacuated people who live in northern Israel have now had their date of return pushed back to the end of August,” she said. “Demonstrations from those people against the government are now happening with protesters saying there’s no plan to deal with the relentless border fire,” Salhut said. A man holds a sign that reads in Hebrew ‘passport control’, and below him a sign depicting a Lebanese national flag, protesting against the expansion of conflict to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, during an antigovernment demonstration in Tel Aviv [File: Jack Guez/AFP] Amir Oren, a columnist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said anger against the government is increasing from Israelis displaced in the north because of eight months of cross-border fighting with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. “Public sentiment is now against the Netanyahu government, some three-quarters of the public has had enough of Netanyahu. They want him out. But there’s no way to convert it into parliamentary power because he still has his 64-seat member coalition intact,” Oren told Al Jazeera. “Until such time there are fissures in this coalition, the cries of the hostage families and [northern Israel] dislocated will have no effect.” Adblock test (Why?)
Nothing ‘out of the box’ about Italy’s asylum offshoring deal with Albania
Imagine for a moment that you are a racist Western government plagued by an influx of asylum seekers, many of them dark-skinned. Wouldn’t you dream of packing them off to a distant land to be dealt with out of sight and out of mind? Well, that dream is now becoming a reality for Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is overseeing an agreement with the Balkan nation of Albania to open two processing centres for seaborne asylum seekers intercepted en route to Italian shores. Located in the northern Albanian towns of Shengjin and Gjader, the centres are expected to hold up to 36,000 people per year. The scheme will cost Italy at least 670 million euros ($720m) for the initial five-year period – but the price tag is apparently worth it in terms of racking up xenophobic nationalist points for the government. Meloni, who rode to power on an array of fascist-friendly promises including a pledge to curb immigration, travelled to Albania on June 5 to visit the migrant penal colonies – pardon, asylum processing centres – which she says will be up and running by August. The visit was timed to coincide with the eve of European Union elections, in which Fratelli d’Italia fared spectacularly. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has praised the Italy-Albania agreement as an “important initiative” that constitutes an “example of out-of-the-box thinking, based on fair sharing of responsibilities with third countries in line with obligations under EU and international law”. Never mind that the deal is in fact a violation of international law governing rescues at sea as well as a breach of the prohibition on automatic detention. It is also not clear why Albania, a country that was itself a short-lived colony of Italy and played no role in the catastrophic European colonial enterprise that set the stage for current migration patterns, should be responsible for “sharing” the burden of dealing with refugees. Recall that Italy’s 20th century exploits in Africa entailed conducting genocide in Libya and terrorising Ethiopia. But heaven forbid any present-day Africans think themselves entitled to, you know, come look for work or a better life in Italy. Nor, to be sure, is the practice of offshoring asylum processing quite as novel and “out of the box” as von der Leyen suggests. On and off since 2001, for example, Australia has deflected incoming asylum seekers onto the Pacific island nation of Nauru as well as Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island – an arrangement that has proved physically and psychologically destructive and has resulted in numerous suicides and suicide attempts by refugees among other forms of self-harm. Rendering the panorama all the more sadistic is the obscene expense of Australia’s offshore operations. In 2022, Human Rights Watch reported that detaining a single asylum seeker on Nauru or Manus Island cost about 1.8 million British pounds ($2.3m) per year. Britain, meanwhile, is threatening to finally implement in July its long-awaited plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda thousands of kilometres away – which despite its dismal human rights record has been determined to be just the place for United Kingdom-bound refugees. Then, of course, there is the United States’s preferred approach to asylum, which is to dismantle the concept altogether. Offshore precedents notwithstanding, the Italy-Albania agreement is unique in one respect: The processing centres in Shengjin and Gjader will be under Italian rather than Albanian jurisdiction. Sounds sort of colonial. In a January report on the deal, Amnesty International noted that Italy has been a “trailblazer for the externalisation of border control”, having collaborated for the past two decades with Libya – another former Italian colony – in thwarting the movement of asylum seekers. Over the years, Italian contributions to the partnership have included facilitating Libya’s interception at sea of thousands upon thousands of refugees who were then returned to Libyan detention centres to face an assortment of perils, ranging from enforced disappearances to torture and killing. Tunisia, too, has received an Italian helping hand in cracking down on migration, an arrangement that has fuelled human rights abuses but has solidly failed to deter Europe-bound asylum seekers. And while Meloni has advertised the Albania scheme as an “extraordinary deterrent against illegal migrants trying to reach Italy and Europe”, it will no doubt prove to be just another costly forum for politically expedient human rights violations. As Amnesty International pointed out, Shengjin is located more than 500 nautical miles (926km) from the area in the central Mediterranean Sea where most refugees are rescued, meaning it would take two or three days to transport shipwreck survivors there – as opposed to more proximate locations in Italy or Malta. These are people who are “often traumatised” for various reasons, from having experienced torture in captivity to having witnessed loved ones drown. The report determined: “In such situations, unnecessarily forcing them to spend days onboard rescue ships, where crews cannot fully cater to their needs, constitutes a violation of international standards on search and rescue, and may in itself amount to illtreatment.” Once on Albanian soil – or is it Italian soil again? – these same people will be indefinitely swallowed up by a neocolonial detention apparatus, safely out of sight and out of mind. According to Meloni, the Italy-Albania agreement is a “model” that could be “replicated in many countries” and could even “become part of the structural solution” of the EU. But if this is “out-of-the-box thinking”, it’s time to get back in the box. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Adblock test (Why?)
Biden to unveil new protections for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, DACA recipients
Texas has more than 95,000 DACA recipients and about 1.6 million undocumented residents overall.
Biden announces sweeping protections for migrant spouses of US citizens
President Biden on Tuesday is announcing new rules aimed to protect the migrant spouses of U.S. citizens from deportation. The Department of Homeland Security will implement a new policy to allow some migrants to apply for lawful permanent resident status, including the non-citizen spouses and children of lawful U.S. permanent residents or citizens, the administration explained. The White House said it expected the policy to offer protection to about half a million American families, which would include roughly 50,000 under the age of 21 who are married to or children of a U.S. citizen. FBI DIRECTOR WRAY WARNED OF TERROR THREAT POSED BY OPEN BORDER DAYS BEFORE 8 ISIS SUSPECTS ARRESTED ACROSS US A White House fact sheet provided to Fox News Digital on the plan laid out the eligibility requirements for the new rules, including that spouses of Americans must have resided in the U.S. for 10 years or more and be legally married to a U.S. citizen while satisfying other immigration requirements. Those who are approved under the program would be able to apply for permanent U.S. residency after a three-year period while also being eligible for work authorization in the U.S. for up to three years. The president’s new rules also would ease the visa process for U.S. college graduates, including recipients of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), to stay in the U.S. if they received a degree from a U.S. educational institution and have an offer of employment from a U.S.-based company. FORMER ASSISTANT FBI DIRECTOR WARNS AGAINST ‘HUGE VULNERABILITY’ ASSOCIATED WITH BORDER SURGE Asked if the new polices would apply to those who have entered the U.S. illegally, a White House spokesperson said the rules would apply to “individuals who are, eligible under existing U.S law to, be able to adjust their status. “What we are announcing are essentially streamlined processes,” the spokesperson said, adding that the administration was attempting to create a “streamlined processes” that would “ensure some predictability” for those that are eligible for permanent resident status. Biden will also continue to respond to the current crisis at the border, where the administration plans to “surge resources” and work with international partners to reduce the flow of arrivals into the United States, the White House said. The White House also made clear that migrants posing a threat to national security or public safety would not be eligible for protection under the new rules, noting that DHS would remove such individuals or refer them to other agencies for further vetting. “President Biden believes that securing the border is essential,” a White House spokesperson said of the announcement. “He also belies in expanding lawful pathways and keeping families together, and that immigrants who have been in the United States for decades, paying taxes and contributing to their communities, are part of the social fabric of our country.”