Today’s Top News Headlines and Latest News at 10:30 am on 21 June 2023

Let us begin with the top news: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in New York earlier today for the first leg of his landmark state visit to the United States, where he met with business and thought leaders like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nobel Prize winner Paul Romer and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Later, he will attend a state dinner at the White House, hold talks with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and participate in International Yoga Day celebrations at the UN in New York. The visit includes an address by Modi to the joint session of the US Congress on June 22.

In other news: Monday, nine Meitei MLAs – eight from the BJP and an Independent supporting the Manipur government – submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister’s Office, highlighting that the “public has lost complete faith in the present state government”. While this happened on the same day that a separate delegation of 30 Meitei MLAs – mostly from the BJP and one each from the NPP and JD(U) – met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Delhi, Nishikant Singh Sapam, one of the nine MLAs, told The Indian Express that “the BJP is not a divided party” and the separate actions were because of “miscommunication”.

Meanwhile, at the only government hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district, the in-patient department (IPD) is full. Around 200 patients occupy an equal number of beds. The two doctors attending to them have their hands full, but a slight drop in temperatures on Tuesday – 41°C from 43°C a day earlier – has brought them much-needed respite. The hospital has been in focus ever since it saw an uptick in the number of deaths attributed to the heat wave – between June 15 and 20, a total of 80 people admitted there died. Speaking to The Indian Express, Chief Medical Superintendent S K Yadav said most of those who died were senior citizens already suffering from ailments.

In political news: Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar Tuesday called off a trip to Tamil Nadu for the inauguration ceremony of a memorial in honour of DMK founder M Karunanidhi at the last minute, with the party later citing health reasons for it. The development comes three days before the grand Opposition meeting scheduled in Patna, where the DMK is one of the confirmed guests. In Nitish’s absence, Bihar Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav and Water Resources Minister Sanjay K Jha attended the event. Nearly 20 Opposition parties are scheduled to meet in Patna on June 23. Nitish’s presence at the Kalaignar event would have provided the right optics ahead of the gathering.

Moving on to top international news: A Palestinian attacker opened fire at a gas station near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding several others, Israeli medics said, as violence continued to roil the occupied territory. Israeli security forces said they shot the gunman and were still searching for other attackers near the Jewish settlement of Eli north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah. The condition of the attacker was not immediately clear. Photos circulated of a man lying face-down in the street beside what appeared to be an M16 rifle. The Israeli rescue service said it evacuated two seriously wounded men, ages 20 and 38, to nearby hospitals for treatment.

China on Tuesday blocked a proposal by India and the US at the United Nations to designate Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Sajid Mir, wanted for his involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, as a global terrorist. Beijing blocked the proposal that had been moved by the US and co-designated by India to blacklist Mir under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council as a global terrorist and subject him to assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo. In September last year, it was learnt that China had put a hold on the proposal to designate Mir at the UN.

In other news: Divisive social media personality Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, have been charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women, prosecutors in Romania said Tuesday. Romania’s anti-organized crime agency, DIICOT, said prosecutors filed the charges against the brothers, who are both British-U.S. dual citizens, along with two Romanian women in a court in the capital Bucharest. In a statement, the agency said the four defendants formed a criminal group in 2021 “in order to commit the crime of human trafficking” in Romania as well as the United States and Britain.

Lastly, Hamish Harding, a British businessman who collaborated with the Indian government to reintroduce eight wild cheetahs from Namibia to India, is among five people who went missing in the Atlantic Ocean aboard a tourist submersible on a mission to view the wreckage of the iconic ocean liner the Titanic. British-Pakistani billionaire businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were also on the sub, the BBC reported on Tuesday. Contact with the small sub was lost about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive in the mid-Atlantic on Sunday. OceanGate Expeditions, a company offering eight-day missions to see the Titanic debris for USD 250,000 per person, confirmed that its submarine was lost at sea with crew members on board.

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