‘ED summons are illegal, Court will decide…’: AAP legal head after court grants bail to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal
Aam Aadmi Party legal head Sanjeev Nasiar said that the party’s stand is clear that ED’s summons are illegal and it is up to the court to decide that.”The court had summoned CM (Arvind Kejriwal).
Trump faces off against GOP establishment as he parachutes into contentious Republican Senate primary
Donald Trump is aiming for a repeat performance. Two years ago, the former president backed JD Vance in Ohio’s crowded and combative Republican Senate nomination race, boosting Vance to victory in the GOP primary a couple weeks later. Fast-forward to the present and Trump is returning to Ohio this weekend to once again support the Republican Senate candidate he endorsed in the state’s increasingly contentious GOP primary. Trump, who earlier this week clinched the Republican presidential nomination and is now his party’s presumptive 2024 nominee, will headline a rally in Dayton, Ohio, Saturday or businessman Bernie Moreno. SIX KEY SENATE SEATS REPUBLICANS AIM TO FLIP IN NOVEMBER Trump’s trip will come three days before the state’s March 19 primary. The rally was announced Monday night by Buckeye Values PAC, a pro-Moreno group. The move came hours after state Sen. Matt Dolan, one of the two other major GOP Senate primary contenders, along with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, was endorsed by two-term Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a former longtime U.S. senator and state attorney general. WHY THE BIDEN-TRUMP 2024 REMATCH IS HISTORY IN THE MAKING Late last week, Dolan. a former top county prosecutor and Ohio assistant attorney general whose family owns Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians, also landed the backing of former Sen. Rob Portman. DeWine and Portman are considered top members of Ohio’s Republican old guard or establishment. “Matt Dolan has a vision for the future. He listens. He fights. And he knows how to get results for Ohio,” DeWine said in endorsing Dolan. And DeWine has said Dolan’s the strongest Republican candidate to defeat longtime Democrat Sherrod Brown in November. Dolan, who along with Moreno is making his second straight bid for the Senate in Ohio, has highlighted that he’s a supporter of Trump’s policies but not the former president’s personality. Dolan is the only one of the three major candidates not to seek Trump’s support. Moreno, an immigrant who arrived in the U.S. legally from Colombia and later became a successful Cleveland-based businessman and luxury auto dealership giant, was endorsed by Trump in December. Vance, who will campaign with Moreno across Ohio on Monday, last year backed him, which was seen as a prelude to the eventual Trump endorsement. Moreno also enjoys the support of two other Trump allies — Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a Buckeye State native. After DeWine endorsed Dolan, Moreno framed the race as a battle between “the America-First Republican Party” and the “RINO establishment.” And Andy Surabian, a senior Moreno campaign adviser who’s close to Trump’s political orbit, emphasized in a social media post that “the Ohio Senate race is officially Team America First vs Team RINO.” RINO is a term used to insult some in the GOP as “Republicans in name only.” There’s been a dearth of public polling in the Republican Senate primary, and the three major campaigns are treating the race as a dead heat ahead of next week’s primary. Millions have been spent by the campaigns and aligned super PACs to flood the airwaves with negative attack ads. And now Democrats are meddling in the primary. Duty and Country PAC, which is funded by Senate Majority PAC, the top super PAC supporting Senate Democrats, is dishing out nearly $3 million in the final days ahead of the primary to run ads boosting Moreno. The winner of the GOP primary will face off in November against Brown, who is the only Democrat to win statewide in Ohio over the past decade. Brown is being heavily targeted by Republicans in a state that was once a premiere battleground before shifting red. Democrats control the U.S. Senate with a 51-49 majority, but Republicans are looking at a favorable Senate map in 2024, with Democrats defending 23 of the 34 seats up for grabs. Three of those seats are in red states that Trump carried in 2020 — Ohio, Montana and West Virginia, where Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin is not running for re-election. Five others seats are in key swing states narrowly carried by President Biden in 2020 — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. As Trump locks up the GOP presidential nomination, he’s once again exerting increasing control over the Republican Party. A week ago, a top Trump ally and the former president’s daughter-in-law were installed as chair and co-chair of the Republican National Committee. On Monday, the new regime at the RNC pushed roughly 60 current staffers out the door. But Trump’s clout with congressional Republicans suffered a setback this week, as the GOP-controlled House went against Trump’s wishes. A few weeks after downing a bipartisan border deal in Congress, partially due to the former president’s wishes, most House Republicans supported the passage — over Trump’s objections — of a bill that could eventually ban TikTok in the U.S. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The showdown in Ohio is one of the few major down-ballot GOP primaries where the Trump-backed candidate is at risk of losing. “Trump’s got a lot invested in Bernie Moreno,” veteran Republican strategist Matt Gorman said. Longtime Ohio-based GOP consultant Mike Hartley, who remains neutral in this year’s primary, told Fox News “it’s important to Trump, evidenced by the fact that he’s coming into the state, just like he did for JD Vance.“ “President Trump wants to have allies in Congress to help him get his agenda passed. I think it’s as simple as that,” Hartley added. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
TSA now requires migrants with insufficient IDs to undergo facial recognition check before flying
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is now requiring migrants who do not have sufficient ID to submit to facial recognition technology in order to board domestic flights — amid continued concern about screening from Republicans and others. The agency told Fox News Digital in a statement that all adult travelers, “including noncitizens released after undergoing security vetting into the United States to await immigration proceedings, must present an acceptable form of ID to enter secure areas of an airport for onward travel.” “If a noncitizen released after undergoing security vetting into the United States does not have an acceptable form of ID, they must submit to additional screening and facial recognition technology to verify the traveler’s identity using DHS records,” a spokesperson said. KANSAS SENATOR AIMS TO BLOCK AIRLINES FROM LETTING MIGRANTS FLY VIA CONTROVERSIAL APP AT DC AIRPORT The agency says the procedure update was recent and not in response to a specific security threat. If such a person does not submit to the technology, or if TSA cannot match their identity to Department of Homeland Security records they will be denied boarding, the agency said. Individuals who also do not have a match with the CBP One app, used as an appointment and document upload system at the border and elsewhere, will also be denied access. The Associated Press, which first reported on the change in policy, said that advocacy groups had been told that migrants were turned away in South Texas. The issue of migrants boarding flights has been a regular source of controversy during the ongoing crisis at the southern border, where millions of migrants have been released or paroled into the U.S. HAWLEY DEMANDS ANSWERS FROM TSA ON MIGRANTS USING CONTROVERSIAL APP TO BOARD PLANES: ‘THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS’ The TSA had previously green-lit the use of civil arrest warrants and deportation orders to allow migrants — including those in the country illegally — to board planes. TSA and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have also been using CBP One to verify noncitizens’ identities to confirm they are who they say they are and that they have been vetted and processed by DHS. But images emerged earlier this year of signs at least one airport that said that individuals using CBP One may decline to have a photo taken. The app, which is used to process migrants through ports of entry, allows users to upload biographical information as well as a photograph and schedule an appointment at a port of entry. Officials have emphasized that anyone, including citizens, who do not have appropriate ID will also go through an extra vetting process and that it is not a special process for migrants. “The Department of Homeland Security works to detect and prevent individuals who pose national security or public safety risks from entering the secure areas of an airport to depart on a domestic flight or entering the United States upon arrival from another country,” a spokesman told Fox News Digital last month. “Recent reports that noncitizens have lower security bars for traveling on domestic flights are false. Noncitizens without acceptable forms of ID must undergo additional, more robust screenings to fly within the United States.” Officials have said that anyone who is identified as a public safety or national security threat it detained or turned over to another agency for investigation. But it has done little to stem the concerns of Republicans, who have said the practice “raises significant security concerns.” This week Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, introduced legislation that would strip airlines of their gate access at Reagan Washington National Airport if they “transport any alien using the CBP One Mobile Application for the purposes of identification.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Elite Afghan soldiers turn barbers, gym trainers in India to escape Taliban
New Delhi, India – It is almost 5:40 in the evening. A hair salon in New Delhi’s bustling New Friends Colony neighbourhood is alive with the sound of buzzing clippers and chattering customers. The air is thick with the scent of hair spray and aftershave. Zaki Marzai, 29, stands behind a barber’s brown chair, his hands moving with precision as he snips a customer’s hair. Wooden shelves on the walls bear colourful bottles of shampoo and styling products. The mirrors reflect Marzai, his eyes focused on the hair before him. His customer looks satisfied. Marzai, though, would rather be elsewhere – with a rifle in his hand, not a razor. Three years ago, Marzai was a soldier in the elite special force of Afghanistan’s army, fighting the Taliban in a war that started with the United States and NATO forces invading the country in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The Western-backed Afghan government had sided with the US in the 20-year war. Marzai joined the army in 2015 as a sergeant and was on track to become a commissioned officer. Everything changed on June 20, 2018. Zaki Marzai, 29, in his room in Bhogal, New Delhi [Luqmaan Zeerak/Al Jazeera] ‘Sitting ducks’ At about 2am that day, Marzai was stationed outside a camp in Ghazni province of Afghanistan when a barrage of bullets hit him and his fellow soldiers. Before Marzai and his comrades could realise what happened, 25 soldiers had died on the spot and six others had been injured. Bullets had pierced through Marzai’s chin and right leg. “The attack was so intense we couldn’t do anything. The bullets were coming from all four sides. We were sitting ducks. The Taliban wiped out the entire camp,” he recalls. According to the United States Institute of Peace, an estimated 70,000 Afghan military and police personnel lost their lives in two decades of war in Afghanistan. It was eight hours before any backup arrived to rescue the wounded. Marzai, who had lost a lot of blood, was first taken to a nearby hospital in Ghazni and soon transferred to a hospital in Kabul for further treatment on his jaw. After nearly a year of treatment, his jaw was still deformed, so the Afghan government sent him to India for better care. He left behind his parents, a sister and seven brothers. In 2019, Marzai arrived at a medical facility in Gurgaon, a city adjoining New Delhi. Later, he was also taken to two other public sector hospitals in the Indian capital. By August 2021, Marzai hoped to return to Afghanistan, his face finally fixed. But the Afghanistan he knew was about to be broken. Bullets had pierced through Marzai’s chin during the Taliban attack [Luqmaan Zeerak/Al Jazeera] ‘I cried all night’ As the Taliban grabbed control of province after province in Afghanistan in early August, Marzai was following the news on his phone, watching YouTube, tracking Twitter and waiting for Facebook updates. Then, on August 15, the Taliban stormed into Kabul and took power, forcing the US and NATO forces to flee the country in a chaotic exit. Marzai tried to reach his family and soldier colleagues on the phone, but couldn’t get through because mobile networks were down. He was stunned: Marzai had expected a fight, not a meek surrender from the country’s politicians, whom he accuses of looting Afghanistan and then escaping. “I cried all night when the Taliban took over the country,” says Marzai. “I was heartbroken. I was looking forward to returning to my family and rejoining the army, but now I am stuck here [in India].” Marzai is from Ghazni, an Afghan province dominated by the Shia Hazara community, which has been persecuted by the mainly Sunni Taliban for a long time. And he is a former soldier for a government that the Taliban viewed as the enemy. Since August 2021, despite a general amnesty announced by the Taliban after its takeover, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that at least 200 former Afghan soldiers and government officials have been killed extrajudicially by the new authority. Marzai is not the only Afghan soldier in India, unable to return home. Zaki Marzai displaying his picture when he was hospitalised after the Taliban attack [Luqmaan Zeerak/Al Jazeera] ‘We couldn’t return’ Khalil Shamas, a 27-year-old former lieutenant who now works as a waiter at a New Delhi restaurant, arrived in India in 2020 for training at the elite Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun, the hilly capital of India’s northern state of Uttarakhand. By the time he and his colleagues completed the course, the Afghan army had ceased to exist on the ground. He says there were about 200 Afghan soldiers training at the IMA. A few returned to Afghanistan. Many others migrated to Iran, Canada, the US and Europe. But at least 50 of them stayed back in India – unable to get visas to the West, and too scared to return to Afghanistan. Back in India, the difficulties for Afghan soldiers forced to stay in exile worsened after the Afghanistan embassy in New Delhi, their only source of contact and support, stopped funding their stay after the government in Kabul changed. The soldiers are reticent about sharing details of just how the embassy supported them financially. “Since 2021, we have not received any help from the embassy. We have been left on our own, to fend for ourselves,” says Marzai. After exhausting all of his savings and with no help coming, Marzai managed to enrol in a six-month haircutting course and started working in a salon. He lives in a two-room apartment with a damp odour, with three other Afghan men in the congested Bhogal area of South Delhi. The paint is peeling off the walls, and dirty quilts are strewn about. Zaki Marzai in his room in Bhogal, New Delhi [Luqmaan Zeerak/Al Jazeera] Not far from Bhogal, Shamas lives with seven Afghan friends in a small apartment in the city’s Malviya Nagar area. “It is challenging to live in a
Kim Jong Un takes ride in luxury Russian limo given to him by Putin
State media says car ride is ‘clear proof’ of the close and deepening relationship between the two countries. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took his first ride in the luxury car that was given to him as a gift by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Pyongyang and Moscow have forged closer ties since Kim met Putin in Russia last September, their first summit in four years. Putin also invited Kim to try out his high-end Aurus Senat limousine, and the vehicle arrived in Pyongyang in February. On Friday, Kim used the car for the first time, according to his sister and prominent government official Kim Yo Jong. The journey was “clear proof of the DPRK-Russia friendship, which is developing in a comprehensive way on a new high stage”, Kim Yo Jong was reported as saying by state-run KCNA, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. According to Russian state media, Aurus is Russia’s first luxury car brand and has been used in motorcades of top officials since Putin first used an Aurus limousine during his inauguration ceremony in 2018. Kim Jong Un, 40, has a collection of foreign-made luxury cars believed to have been smuggled into the country. During his Russia visit, he travelled between meeting sites in a Maybach limousine that he brought with him on his special train. Other limousines Kim has reportedly used include a Mercedes-Maybach S600 Pullman Guard and a Maybach S62. A 2021 United Nations report highlighted an attempted shipment of luxury vehicles worth more than $1m allegedly from the United Arab Emirates to Ningbo, China, for onward delivery to North Korea. North Korea and Russia have become increasingly close over the past year as North Korea advances its weapons and nuclear programmes and Moscow continues its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The United States and South Korea have raised concerns that North Korea is supplying Russia with weapons to use in its war in Ukraine in return for technological expertise. Kim also observed paratrooper drills with his daughter Kim Ju Ae [KCNA via KNS and AFP] Russia and China, North Korea’s oldest ally, have repeatedly blocked attempts to impose new UN sanctions on North Korea over its banned ballistic missile tests. South Korea’s Ministry of Unification said it had assessed that the gift of the Aurus was also a violation of UN sanctions. “We condemn North Korea for its brazen attitude of publicly disclosing violations of the UN sanctions,” a ministry official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Russia should also be aware of its responsibility as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and stop an act that undermines international norms,” the official added. State media said that Kim also monitored paratroop drills on Friday that were aimed at showing his soldiers’ ability to occupy an “enemy region at a stroke”. He was accompanied by his daughter. Adblock test (Why?)
‘This is a different India, seeks…’: EAM S Jaishankar on India’s perception on global stage
Jaishanakar mentioned the country’s potential to defend its consumer interests, energy choices, and national security, emphasising that “this is a different India today”.
Delhi excise policy case: CM Arvind Kejriwal physically appears before court, gets bail
Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, on Saturday, appeared before a court in the national capital in the Enforcement Directorate summonses case. The city’s Rouse Avenue Court later granted him bail.
For many Chinese, there are ‘more important things’ than Taiwan unification
“It is difficult to imagine that this used to be a warzone,” 23-year-old *Shao Hongtian told Al Jazeera as he wandered along a beach near the city of Xiamen on China’s southeast coast. Halting by the water’s edge where gentle waves lapped against the sand, Shao gestured beyond the shallows towards the sea and the Kinmen archipelago – now peaceful, but in the 1940s and 1950s, a battleground. The communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and the nationalists of the Kuomintang (KMT) fled Beijing for the island of Taiwan. It was on Kinmen, the main island of the archipelago of the same name, less than 10km (6.2 miles) from the coast of China, that the nationalists repulsed repeated communist invasion attempts, but not before the fighting had wreaked havoc on both Xiamen and Kinmen. Kinmen and its outlying islets – some of which lie even closer to the Chinese coast – have been a part of Taiwan’s territory ever since. Chinese citizens like Shao were once able to get tourist visas to visit the islands, but that ended with the pandemic. “Kinmen, China and Taiwan are all part of the same nation, so it should be possible to visit, and I hope I can visit one day,” Shao said over a video connection – his eyes fixed on Kinmen. Like Shao, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claim that Taiwan and its territory are part of China. Defences line the beaches of Kinmen where nationailsts beat back the communists in the wake of the 1949 civil war [File: Ann Wang/Reuters] Xi said in his New Year’s address that China’s unification with democratic Taiwan was an “historical inevitability“, and China has not ruled out the use of force to achieve unification. Last year Xi called on China’s armed forces to strengthen their combat readiness. In recent years the Chinese military has increased its pressure on Taiwan with almost daily airborne and maritime incursions close to Taiwan’s air and sea space. At times of particular tension, such as during the visit of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei, such manoeuvres have been accompanied by sabre-rattling rhetoric and large-scale military drills. Capsized boats, recriminations Recently, tensions have been rising near Kinmen as well. In February, two Chinese fishermen were killed when their speedboat capsized as they attempted to flee the Taiwanese coastguard when they were discovered fishing “within prohibited waters” about one nautical mile (1.8km) from the Kinmen archipelago. Since then, the Chinese coastguard has stepped up its activities around Kinmen. Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Chinese government’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said the February incident was “vicious” and stressed the waters were “traditional” fishing grounds for fishermen in China and Taiwan. There were no off-limits waters around Kinmen, she added. A second capsize was reported on Thursday, and on this occasion China asked for help from the Taiwan coastguard. Standing on the beach looking out towards Kinmen, Shao says hostilities are not the way to bring China and Taiwan together. “I want unification to happen peacefully,” he said. If that is not possible, he would prefer things to remain as they are. Soldiers pay tribute to the fallen during a 2023 ceremony commemorating the 65th anniversary of China’s attack on Kinmen island [File: Chiang Ying-ying/Reuters] He knows that many of his friends feel the same way. According to Shao, if they go to Kinmen and Taiwan, it should be as visitors, not as fighters. “The Taiwanese haven’t done anything bad to us, so why should we go there to fight them?” he said, convinced that any war between China and Taiwan would result in significant casualties on both sides. “Unification with Taiwan is not worth a war.” No appetite for war A study published by the University of California San Diego’s 21st Century China Center last year suggests that Shao and his friends are not alone in opposing a war over Taiwan. The study explored Chinese public support for different policy steps regarding unification with Taiwan and found that launching a full-scale war to achieve unification was viewed as unacceptable by a third of the Chinese respondents. Only one percent rejected all other options but war, challenging the Chinese government’s assertion that the Chinese people were willing to “go to any length and pay any price” to achieve unification. Mia Wei, a 26-year-old marketing specialist from Shanghai is not surprised by such results. “Ordinary Chinese people are not pushing the government to get unification,” she told Al Jazeera. “It is the government that pushes people to believe that there must be unification.” At the same time, support for a unification war turned out to be close to the same level found in similar studies from earlier years, indicating that despite the growing tension in the Taiwan Strait and renewed talk about taking control of Taiwan, there has not been a corresponding increase in support for more forceful measures. Wei believes that Chinese like herself are more concerned with developments inside their country. “First there was COVID, then the economy got bad and then the housing market got even worse,” she said. “I think Chinese people have their minds on more important things than unification with Taiwan.” According to Associate Professor Yao-Yuan Yeh who teaches Chinese Studies at the University of St Thomas in the United States, there is currently little reason for Chinese people to be more supportive of conflict with Taiwan. US President Joe Biden has on several occasions said the US will defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. At the same time, the US has been strengthening its military ties with countries such as Japan and the Philippines – Taiwan’s immediate neighbours to the north and the south. “There is no guarantee of a quick victory in a war over Taiwan,” Yeh told Al Jazeera. “Also, many people in China have business partners, friends and family in Taiwan, and therefore don’t want to see any harm come to the island
‘What about 1.5 lakh unlisted Muslims in Assam?’: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi questions implementation of CAA
Owaisi pointed out that Union Home Minister Amit Shah has time and again, mentioned that CAA will be followed by the NRC and the National Population Register (NPR)
‘Will go to people with track record of 10 years, agenda for…’: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on mission 400+ for NDA
Shah said he was ‘certain’ that the BJP will win more than 300 seats in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections while the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will sail past the targeted benchmark of more than 400 seats.