India elections: Modi party defeated in West Bengal battleground
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party has failed to win a key state in elections held amid record Covid-19 deaths and cases.
The BJP targeted West Bengal heavily during campaigning but the state was comfortably held by the incumbent, Mamata Banerjee, a fierce Modi critic.
Her win came as a surprise to political observers, who noted how much time and money the BJP invested in the state.
Mr Modi was even accused of focusing on polls rather than the pandemic.
German police shut one of world’s biggest darknet child abuse images sites
Boystown platform had membership of more than 400,000 international subscribers
An online platform said to be one of the largest websites for child sexual abuse images in the world has been closed down by German police after a lengthy investigation.
The Boystown platform, which had a membership of more than 400,000 international subscribers and was active for almost two years, was accessible only via the darknet, a component of the wider internet for which special software is needed. It was used for the swapping and sharing of images and films, mainly of boys, according to investigators from Germany’s federal investigative police force (BKA).
Four German men including the site’s administrators have been arrested and police also raided seven properties linked to the site in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Hamburg.
A path back to a deal: US and Iran make serious headway on nuclear talks
As two crunch dates approach, hopes of a genuine breakthrough in the Iran nuclear negotiations currently taking place in Vienna are growing, reports Borzou Daragahi
F
or months, the United States was humming and hawing about how and on what terms it would return to the nuclear deal with Iran, as doubts were percolating in world capitals about whether the administration of Joe Biden even wanted to revive the deal.
But during indirect talks between Iran and the US over the last couple weeks in Vienna, Washington startled just about everyone involved when it suddenly presented plans detailing how it would remove sanctions on Iran if it were to roll back its nuclear programme for both countries to back come into compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Denmark drops Johnson & Johnson shot from national vaccine rollout
Denmark said Monday it would not include the Covid-19 vaccine from US drugmaker Johnson & Johnson in its national vaccination campaign, citing worries over serious side effects involving blood clots.
"The Danish Health Authority has concluded that the benefits of using the Covid-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson do not outweigh the risk of causing the possible adverse effect... in those who receive the vaccine," the authority said in a statement.
"Therefore, the Danish Health Authority will continue the Danish mass vaccination programme against Covid-19 without the Covid-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson," it added.
‘If there were 10,000 Australians with white skin would they have done the same thing? No’
Furious community leaders have accused the federal government of imposing “racist” jail terms on Australians who return from India amid a wider row over the secrecy involved in the emergency controls on citizen rights.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is also facing growing unrest among government MPs who want the sanctions eased as soon as possible out of concern that the “extreme” measures impose great hardship on the community.
Indian leaders said they were “blindsided” by the government announcement at midnight on Friday night when they had been in meetings with federal ministers earlier that day and heard no suggestion of the coming move.
Israel’s ‘shadow war’ and plans to scupper Iran’s nuclear deal
US President Joe Biden is pushing to reinstate Iran’s nuclear deal and weeks of talks in Austria appear to be bearing fruit.
Israel, however, continues to see its security jeopardised by a potentially nuclear Iran and is trying to thwart negotiations any way possible.
The Mossad spy agency chief Yossi Cohen – a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – met Biden on Friday and, according to one media report, pressed the US president not to sign back on to the nuclear accord unless “improvements” were made.
No comments:
Post a Comment