Sikkim: 6 dead, at least 2000 tourists stranded as heavy rain, landslides wreak havoc
Heavy rains triggered landslides at several locations in Mangan district, which covers north Sikkim and lies about 100 km (60 miles) north of the state capital Gangtok, the local government of the northeastern Indian state said.
NEET-UG 2024: SC issues notice to Centre, NTA on plea for CBI probe
A vacation bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta sought a response from the NTA within two weeks and tagged the cases with earlier petitions raising similar issues, which were listed on July 8
Gun rights groups call law used to convict Hunter Biden unconstitutional
Pundits say politics makes strange bedfellows, but what about a criminal conviction? After Hunter Biden was found guilty on all charges in special counsel David Weiss’ federal gun case against the first son, Second Amendment groups have called the law used to convict Biden unconstitutional. The same groups vigorously oppose his father, President Biden, and his position on gun control — though they are not necessarily leaping to Hunter’s defense. “Joe Biden has done everything in his power to weaponize his administration against guns, gun owners, and dealers, and it’s incredibly ironic to now see his own son caught up in these efforts,” said Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America. Prosecutors said Biden lied on a federal firearm form, known as ATF Form 4473, in October 2018 when he ticked a box labeled “No” when asked if he is an unlawful user of a firearm or addicted to controlled substances. Biden purchased the gun from a store called StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply in Wilmington, Delaware. A jury found him guilty after a weeklong trial. HUNTER BIDEN FOUND GUITY ON ALL COUNTS IN GUN TRIAL “Gun Owners of America believes the underlying law is unconstitutionally broad, but so long as it remains on the books, Hunter deserved no special treatment or mercy,” Pratt told Fox News Digital. Biden’s trial lasted about six and a half days and included emotional testimony from members of his family, including daughter Naomi Biden, ex-wife Kathleen Buhle and sister-in-law-turned-girlfriend Hallie Biden, who detailed his struggle with drug addiction at the time he purchased the gun. BIDEN REPORTEDLY BLAMES RE-ELECTION BID FOR HUNTER’S CONVICTION: ‘HE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THE PLEA DEAL’ Mike McCoy, a former federal prosecutor and Second Amendment attorney for the Mountain States Legal Foundation, said the evidence against Biden was “overwhelming.” “The prosecution was masterful in how they presented it to the jury — as evidenced by the fact that it only took three hours for them to reach a verdict,” McCoy told Fox News Digital. “While some might question the validity of the gun law used to prosecute Biden, given the current administration’s disdain for the Second Amendment and their efforts to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, I suspect most gun owners won’t lose any sleep over this particular conviction.” BIDEN RIPPED FOR GUN CONTROL SPEECH HOURS AFTER HUNTER’S FIREARM CONVICTION: ‘WE LIVE IN CLOWN WORLD’ However, at least one group has offered to assist Biden should he wish to challenge his conviction. The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) on Tuesday renewed an offer extended last year to represent Biden in a challenge to the law used to convict him on constitutional grounds. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “Countless lives are destroyed every year under the federal government’s unconstitutional and immoral regulations. We proudly work to eliminate these laws and create a free world. Just as we have in many other cases, we stand ready to assist Mr. Biden in his challenge of federal gun laws,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. An attorney for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Biden faces a total maximum prison time of 25 years for the three charges. Each count also carries a maximum fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release. Biden, however, is a first-time offender, making it unlikely he will face maximum penalties when he is sentenced at a later date. Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
Secret Service to brief Congress on clash between agents protecting VP Harris
Secret Service officials will give a bipartisan briefing to Congress to answer questions about training and recruiting issues regarding an agent on Vice President Kamala Harris’s protective detail who attacked her supervisor. The briefing will be on June 21, in response to a letter from House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. “In response to the letter received from Chairman James Comer, the U.S. Secret Service will comply with the House Oversight Committee’s request for a briefing on the topics outlined in the publicly available letter dated May 30, 2024,” a Secret Service spokesperson told Fox News Digital. Comer wrote to U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, an appointee of President Biden. I FIND IT PUZZLING, QUITE CONCERNING THAT RFK JR. DOES NOT HAVE SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION: NICOLE PARKER “It was recently reported that a Secret Service agent, tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris, physically attacked her superior (and the commanding agent in charge) and other agents trying to subdue her while on duty at Joint Base Andrews and assigned to the Vice President’s protective detail,” Comer wrote to Cheatle. The Secret Service has confirmed in other media accounts the altercation occurred at about 9 a.m. on April 22 at Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The agent, who was ultimately escorted away in handcuffs, has been removed from the vice president’s detail. The Secret Service has described the incident as a “medical matter.” IF TRUMP GOES TO PRISON AFTER GUILTY VERDICT, SECRET SERVICE WOULD HAVE TO GO WITH HIM There may have been a number of incidents, according to a petition circulated within the agency by Secret Service personnel seeking a congressional investigation, according to a Bloomberg reporter. The agents asserted problems with inadequate training and a double standard in disciplinary actions. “This incident raised concerns within the agency about the hiring and screening process for this agent: specifically, whether previous incidents in her work history were overlooked during the hiring process as years of staff shortages had led the agency to lower once stricter standards as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion effort,” Comer’s letter to Cheatle continues. Comer asked Cheatle for a briefing for committee staff on or before June 13, so the Secret Service briefing will be a few days later. The Secret Service provides protection to the president, the vice president, their spouses and children. The Washington Examiner first reported the incident. Real Clear Politics reported that the agent was acting “erratically” and punched him. Joint Base Andrews is where Air Force One and Air Force Two transport the president and vice president. Harris was still at the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory when the altercation happened, and the confrontation did not delay her travel.
House to vote on defense bill authorizing military pay raises, DEI crackdown
The House of Representatives is set to vote on a major piece of legislation on Friday outlining the U.S.’s defense policies for the next fiscal year. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is an annual must-pass bill that lays out certain priorities for the Pentagon and Department of Energy. This year’s bill authorizes $895.2 billion in military spending, a $9 billion increase from fiscal 2024. A main focus of this year’s NDAA is the improvement of quality of life for service members, which members of the Armed Services Committee found to be sorely lacking during a monthslong investigation into the issue. It also includes a provision to block Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin from establishing a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)-related committee or group for Pentagon-funded schools. MARATHON IN EVERY STATE: NAVY VET AND FORMER NYPD OFFICER RUNS ACROSS US TO HELP DESERVING NONPROFIT On the hardware front, the NDAA would mandate the establishment of a Drone Corps within the Army to help the military keep up with the rapid advancement of technological warfare. But the effort to boost quality of life for military families is the cornerstone of this year’s bill, as Reps. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., told Fox News Digital this week. “We heard from spouses … [in] high-cost areas that they’re having to go to food banks,” Bacon told Fox News Digital of the committee’s months of interviews with people whose partners are in the military. He said military parents stationed in high-cost-of-living areas like Washington, D.C., and parts of California often have to pay even more to live in areas that are safe and have good schools. MARATHON IN EVERY STATE: NAVY VET AND FORMER NYPD OFFICER RUNS ACROSS US TO HELP DESERVING NONPROFIT “So, then these folks are doing this to sacrifice for their family, but they’re sacrificing putting food on the table,” Bacon said. “Tons of families are struggling.” Houlahan said, “A very significant pay raise, particularly for our young enlisted, I think is really life-changing, and I hope will also be motivating for people to enlist and also to stay.” She said of the other issues the bill seeks to address for military members, “Maybe you have a family, maybe you have a spouse, maybe you are concerned about issues like child care, you want to make sure there’s a good roof over your head that is quality construction. You want to make sure that you can afford the housing in your community – all of those kinds of things.” The bill would authorize a 19.5% pay raise for junior enlisted service members and raise pay for all others by 4.5%. It would also authorize funds for new military housing construction and renovating existing units. CONGRESS FEELING HEAT FROM GROUPS DEMANDING BAN ON CONTRACTS WITH CHINESE FIRM TAKING AMERICANS’ DNA “People working at fast-food restaurants are making more than our junior enlisted,” Bacon said. However, both expressed wariness at the breadth of amendments that were offered to the bill in the last several days over concerns that amendments on sensitive culture war-related issues threaten the bill’s bipartisan success. “I’m not worried, but I’m frustrated … we’re going to go through the same exact dance that we went through last year,” Houlahan said. ‘We don’t have a ton of time. Why we would spin the same scenario that we saw last year over again when we resolved this is nonsensical to me.” Bacon said, “They’re going to put in their own poison pills with no intention to vote for it anyway. And then we lose Democratic support, which you’ve got to have. But in the end, by the time we get done with the Senate, we’ll have a good bill.”
‘He advised to…’: BJP leader Tamilisai on viral video of her interaction with Amit Shah
In the video clip from TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu’s swearing-in as Andhra Pradesh chief minister on Wednesday, Shah can be seen talking to Soundararajan in an animated manner while gesturing with his finger.
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 840
As the war enters its 840th day, these are the main developments. Here is the situation on Friday, June 14, 2024. Fighting The Ukrainian military said its forces were fighting fierce battles near Chasiv Yar, a strategic hilltop settlement in Donetsk, and the situation was “tense”. A civilian was killed further south on the front line near Pokrovsk, while another man was killed by Russian fire in the southern Kherson region. Russian journalist Valery Kozhin, who worked for Russia’s state-run NTV television channel, was killed in Ukrainian shelling of a Russian-occupied village in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russian news agencies reported, quoting the mayor of the town of Horlivka near where the incident took place. NTV reported earlier that three of its staff, including Kozhin, had been injured and taken to hospital. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Russia’s advance in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region was slowing and the front line was stabilising after some allies lifted restrictions on Kyiv’s use of donated weapons inside Russian territory. Politics and diplomacy Group of Seven (G7) nations meeting in Italy agreed to provide financial support of $50bn to Ukraine by the end of the year, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said. The deal will be funded from profits on frozen Russian assets. United States’ President Joe Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement aimed at bolstering Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion and moving Ukraine closer to NATO membership. Ukraine also signed a 10-year security agreement with Japan. “In 2024, Japan will provide Ukraine with $4.5 billion and will continue to support us throughout the agreement’s entire 10-year term,” Zelenskyy said on X. The deal, he added, envisages security and defence assistance, humanitarian aid, technical and financial cooperation. The United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR said in an annual report that about 750,000 people became newly displaced inside Ukraine last year as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with a total of 3.7 million internally displaced people registered by the end of 2023. The number of Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers increased by more than 275,000 to six million, it said. Human rights organisation Global Rights Compliance said in a report that Russian forces deliberately used starvation of civilians as a military tactic during the 85-day siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in 2022. The report found Russian forces “systematically attacked objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” such as food, water, energy and access to healthcare, and also cut off evacuation routes and blocked humanitarian aid from coming in. Russian prosecutors said they would send Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter detained in March 2023, for trial, accusing the 32-year-old of collecting information for the US CIA about a Russian tank factory. Gershkovich, who is being held in custody, has denied wrongdoing. His employer said the charge was “false and baseless” and built on lies. Biden called his detention “totally illegal”. Prosecutors did not say when the trial would start. The judge in the trial of director Zhenya Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, two leading figures in Russian theatre, agreed to a prosecution request to close the trial to the public and the media over unspecified “threats” to witnesses. The two were arrested in May last year and accused of “justifying terrorism” over their production of an award-winning play about Russian women who married Islamic State fighters. The women have pleaded not guilty and say the play was about preventing terrorism. German Moyzhes, a 39-year-old lawyer with dual Russian-German citizenship, was detained in Saint Petersburg with some Russian independent media reporting that he was suspected of treason. The German Federal Foreign Office told the Reuters news agency that its embassy in Moscow was in contact with Moyzhes’s family. There was no official word from Russia on the detention. Russia’s Admiral Gorshkov frigate and the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan, accompanied by a tug boat and a fuel ship, arrived in Cuba for a five-day visit seen as a show of force by Moscow amid rising tension over its invasion of Ukraine. Weaponry Zelenskyy told a news conference in Italy that Chinese President Xi Jinping had given him his assurance in a phone call that China would not sell weapons to Russia. Speaking in English, Zelenskyy said Xi had told him that “he will not sell any weapon to Russia”. Zelenskyy did not say when the conversation took place. The last publicly known phone call between Zelenskyy and Xi was in April 2023. The Dutch Ministry of Defence said Kyiv’s allies will send Ukraine about 350 million euros ($376.74m) worth of 152mm shells. Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair said the country would start sending a total of about 2,000 surplus unarmed rockets to Ukraine as well as a selection of other weapons. Adblock test (Why?)
Russia says US journalist Evan Gershkovich to face trial for ‘CIA work’
Wall Street Journal rejects ‘false and baseless’ charge against 32-year-old reporter who has been in custody since March 2023. Russian prosecutors have said US journalist Evan Gershkovich will face trial in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, where he was detained more than a year ago after he was accused of working for the CIA. Gershkovich, 32, is accused of “gathering secret information” on orders from the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a facility that produces and repairs military equipment, the prosecutor general’s office said in a statement, revealing for the first time the details of the accusations against him. The statement gave no date for the trial. Gershkovich, a journalist with the Wall Street Journal, has been in jail since he was arrested in Yekaterinburg, about 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) east of Moscow, on March 29, 2023, and was accused of spying. He denies any wrongdoing. Following the Russian announcement, the Journal said that Gershkovich was facing “a false and baseless charge”. A joint statement from Almar Latour, the newspaper’s publisher, and its editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, demanded Gershkovich’s immediate release. “Russia’s latest move toward a sham trial is, while expected, deeply disappointing and still no less outrageous,” the statement said. “Evan has spent 441 days wrongfully detained in a Russian prison for simply doing his job. Evan is a journalist. The Russian regime’s smearing of Evan is repugnant, disgusting and based on calculated and transparent lies.” Gershkovich at his appearance in a Moscow court on April 23 [Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo] The United States designated Gershkovich “wrongfully detained” in April 2023, and President Joe Biden has called his detention “totally illegal”. Latour and Tucker said they now expected the US government to step up efforts to secure his release. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington would continue to work to bring Gershkovich home. “Evan has done nothing wrong. He should never have been arrested in the first place. Journalism is not a crime,” Miller said. “The charges against him are false. And the Russian government knows that they’re false. He should be released immediately.” Potential prisoner swap Gershkovich was the first US journalist to be arrested on spying charges in Russia since the Cold War, as Moscow enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine. Washington has sought to negotiate his release, but Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Moscow would consider a prisoner swap only after a verdict in his trial. Asked last week by The Associated Press news agency about Gershkovich, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US was “taking energetic steps” to secure the journalist’s release. He told international news agencies in a rare news conference that any such releases “aren’t decided via mass media” but through a “discreet, calm and professional approach”. “And they certainly should be decided only on the basis of reciprocity,” he added, alluding to a potential prisoner swap. Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. The Uralvagonzavod factory, about 100km (60 miles) north of Yekaterinburg, has been sanctioned by Western countries. Based in the city of Nizhny Tagil in the Sverdlovsk region, it plays a crucial role in supplying tanks for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence. The factory, which is run by a state conglomerate controlled by one of Putin’s allies, has publicly spoken of producing T-90M battle tanks and modernising T-72B3M tanks. The number of tanks which Russia has lost in battle in Ukraine is a military secret in Russia, which says it has ramped up tank production. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank said in February that Russia had lost more than 3,000 tanks – the equivalent of its entire pre-war active inventory – but had enough lower-quality armoured vehicles in storage for years of replacements. Adblock test (Why?)
‘I love you guys!’: Elon Musk lands $44.9bn pay deal after Tesla vote
Musk hails ‘awesome shareholder base’ after vote to restore compensation deal rejected by US judge. Elon Musk has won back his $44.9bn pay package at electric carmaker Tesla after shareholders voted to restore the compensation deal in a ringing endorsement of his leadership. The vote at Tesla’s annual meeting on Thursday came after a judge in the US state of Delaware threw out the deal after finding that the company’s board was too close to Musk and had not protected shareholders’ interests. “I just want to start off by saying, hot damn, I love you guys!” a jubilant Musk said as he appeared on stage after the vote. “We have the most awesome shareholder base. I mean it’s just incredible.” Musk’s pay deal was valued at about $56bn at the peak of Tesla’s share price in late 2021 but has since declined in value by about one-quarter in tandem with a drop in the company’s stock price. The shareholders’ vote does not necessarily mean Musk will receive the pay package but could bolster Tesla’s appeal against the Delaware ruling against the deal. In her January decision, Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick described the pay package as “unfathomable”. “Swept up by the rhetoric of ‘all upside,’ or perhaps starry eyed by Musk’s superstar appeal, the board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?” McCormick wrote in her decision. Musk, who founded Tesla in 2003, does not receive a salary for leading the carmaker. Under the terms of his 2018 pay deal, Musk agreed to be paid stock worth about 1 percent of Tesla’s equity each time the company achieved one of its operational and financial goals. While Tesla’s business has soared under Musk’s leadership, at one point taking the company’s market value to $1.24 trillion, sales have slowed sharply amid growing competition from Chinese EV makers. Musk has also attracted controversy with his outspoken views on politics and battled perceptions that he is spread too thin due to his involvement in six companies, including rocket company SpaceX and social media platform X. Tesla shares rose 0.7 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday, after earlier gaining 2.9 percent following Musk’s announcement on social media that investors backed the deal. Prior to Thursday’s vote, Musk had expressed doubts about his future at Tesla. In January, Musk said in a post on X that he would prefer to build artificial intelligence and robotics products outside of Tesla if he could not have a 25 percent stake in the company. Musk is already by far Tesla’s largest shareholder, holding more than 20 percent of its equity. Tesla shareholders on Thursday also approved proposals to move the company’s incorporation from Delaware to Texas and reappoint Kimbal Musk and James Murdoch – Musk’s brother and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s son, respectively – to the company’s board. Tesla did not announce the vote tallies, but several large institutional investors had opposed the deal, including Norges Bank Investment Management, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. Adblock test (Why?)
IMD weather update: Delhi-NCR, UP to get respite from severe heatwave from…
The maximum temperature remained in the range of 45-47 degrees Celsius in parts of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Chandigarh, Jharkhand, Haryana and Rajasthan on Wednesday.