Top National and International Headlines of the Week transcript on 30 December 2023
In top national news: Hours, after a Qatar court of appeal commuted the death penalty handed to eight former Indian Navy personnel, their families and colleagues, reacted cautiously, saying the verdict Thursday is not yet a vindication or success. The families are moving the Court of Cassation, the highest court of appeal in Qatar, even as they await a copy of the detailed judgement Thursday — in New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs said sentences have been reduced for the eight men. Six appeal hearings have been held so far — three in the court of appeal and three in the lower court. The families are waiting to learn about the option of prisoner repatriation to India.
A forensic investigation by Amnesty International’s Security Lab in partnership with The Washington Post has claimed that two Indian journalists were among those “recently targeted with Pegasus spyware on their iPhones”. Pegasus is an invasive spyware developed by Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group. The NSO Group has always maintained it deals only with governments and that too after intense scrutiny. Calling the publication’s findings “half facts, fully embellished”, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “…it is for Apple to explain if their devices are vulnerable and what triggered these notifications… Apple was asked to join the enquiry with @IndianCERT and meetings have been held and enquiry is ongoing.”
The Financial Intelligence Unit India (FIU-IND) has issued show cause notices to nine offshore cryptocurrency and virtual digital assets service providers (VDA SPs) for not being compliant with the requisite provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and has asked the Union Information Technology ministry to block their web addresses, the Finance Ministry said late Thursday. The ministry termed the notices as “compliance action”. The nine VDA SPs include Binance, Kucoin, Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global and Bitfinex. FIU-IND is the national agency responsible for receiving, processing, analysing and disseminating information relating to suspect financial transactions to enforcement agencies and foreign FIUs. The agency is under the Finance Ministry.
The Centre on Thursday appointed Nina Singh as the Director General of CISF, making her the first woman to head this elite force. Apart from her, the Centre has also appointed ITBP chief Anish Dayal Singh as the Director General of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). Nina Singh was the first woman IPS officer allocated to the Rajasthan cadre where she served in many important assignments across the state. She also worked as Joint Director in the CBI during 2013-18 where she supervised many high-profile cases having national and international ramifications. She has been working in the CISF since 2021, first as ADG and then as Special DG, and DG in-charge since August 31, 2023.
In top international news: Maine on Thursday disqualified Donald Trump from the state ballot in next year’s U.S. presidential primary election, becoming the second state to bar the former president for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, concluded that Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, incited an insurrection when he spread false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and then urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote. The decision can be appealed to a state Superior Court, and Bellows suspended her ruling until the court rules on the matter.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was no different from Adolf Hitler and likened Israel’s attacks on Gaza to the treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis. NATO member Turkey, which supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has criticised Israel’s air and ground assault on Gaza, called it a “terror state” and said its leaders must be tried in international courts. Sharpening his rhetoric, Erdogan said Turkey would welcome academics and scientists facing persecution for their views on the conflict in Gaza, adding Western countries supporting Israel were complicit in what he called war crimes.
In news from Pakistan: Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party partially won a legal battle when the Peshawar High Court on Tuesday suspended an order of the election commission to deprive the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf of its electoral symbol of a cricket ‘bat’. The Election Commission of Pakistan last week in a verdict rejected the intra-party polls of Khan’s party and also stopped it from using ‘bat’ as the party’s electoral symbol. The party had challenged the verdict in the Peshawar High Court where after a detailed hearing, Justice Kamran Hayat Miankhel suspended the ECP ruling until the final adjudication of the petition.
Lastly: An emirate in the United Arab Emirates, one of few Arab states that has official ties with Israel, has banned New Year’s Eve fireworks this year as an expression of solidarity with the people of Gaza. The decision was announced in a Facebook post by Sharjah police, warning on Tuesday that legal measures would be taken against those found violating the ban. The ban is “a sincere expression of solidarity and humanitarian cooperation with our siblings in the Gaza Strip,” Sharjah police said in the post. Sharjah is the UAE’s third-largest emirate by size and population behind Abu Dhabi and Dubai. There are seven emirates.
