The personal assistant to the man tipped to be the next chief minister of West Bengal from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party was shot dead in his car in violence that broke out after elections. Chandranath Rath was personal assistant to Suvendu Adhikari, who may become the state's first chief minister from Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, after it won the vote in a historic landslide. Rath was among at least three people killed in the eastern state since results were announced. Police said before Rath's death that they had arrested more than 400 people in connection with incidents of violence and intimidation.
Till 2016, the BJP hardly had any presence in West Bengal. After a decade of persistent courtship, it finally managed to end the 15-year-rule of Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress. Tensions have been high in West Bengal for weeks, with the elections having been conducted in the backdrop of a controversial exercise to clean up voter rolls that left millions of people off the list.
Two US Army soldiers went missing in southwestern Morocco after taking part in annual multinational military exercises in the North African country, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) said. They went missing while on a hike, a US defense official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the issue. "They were not actively taking part in any training. The day's exercises had concluded, and, from our understanding, they were out on a recreational hike," the official said.
AFRICOM said the US, Morocco and other countries participating in the African Lion exercise have launched a search and rescue operation. The incident happened on Saturday at about 9pm, the Moroccan military said, near the Cap Draa Training Area near Tan Tan, close to the Atlantic Ocean. The terrain is mountainous, a mix of desert and semidesert plains. The search team includes helicopters, ships, mountain rescue units and divers, the defense official told AP.
Elections in three US states - Indiana, Ohio and Michigan - this week reinforced a picture that's becoming increasingly clear - while President Donald Trump still dominates the Republican Party, Democrats seem to have the momentum ahead of November's midterm elections. The biggest test of Trump's power came in Indiana, where he backed primary challenges against seven Republican state senators who rejected his redistricting plan in December. Five of the president's candidates won with the help of an avalanche of cash.
Over in Ohio, primaries locked in candidates for two major races with national implications. Groups allied with the president spent more than $8.3 million on advertising in Indiana, an extraordinary surge of money into races that are typically low-profile. In the lone special election held in this round, which was in central Michigan, the Democrats won, as they have in most special elections during Trump's second term.
The Spanish government awarded the UN legal expert Francesca Albanese one of its highest civilian honours in recognition of what it termed her "extensive work in documenting and denouncing violations of international law in Gaza". Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer who serves as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, has been vocal in her criticisms of Israel's military operations in Gaza, which she has described as genocide.
She has also called out the international community over its failure to prevent and punish acts of torture, genocide and other serious human rights violations. Albanese has faced the prospect of arrest in Germany over her use of language and has been hit with sanctions by the US government for urging the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate American and Israeli companies and individuals over their alleged complicity in gross human rights violations.
