Expresso Top National and International Headlines of the Week on 28 October 2023

In top national news: West Bengal Forest Minister Jyotipriya Mallick was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate early Friday morning after being questioned for over 20 hours in connection to the ‘ration scam’. Mallick, who was the former food minister of the state, was arrested at 3.23 a.m. on Friday. Mallick said while being escorted away by ED officials and CRPF jawans from his home in Salt Lake to the ED office in CGO complex: “I am the victim of a grave conspiracy.” The ED had raided eight residences including that of Mallick and his associates in connection with a case related to the alleged corruption in ration distribution when Mallick was the food minister.

In other news: Eight former Indian Navy personnel have been sentenced to death by a court in Qatar. They were arrested by Qatari authorities on August 30, 2022, and have since been under solitary confinement. Their trial began on March 29 this year. The Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday that it was “deeply shocked by the verdict of death penalty” and was “awaiting the detailed judgement”. The Ministry also said that it was “exploring all legal options”. The reasons for the veterans’ long custody in Qatar, and the awarding of the death penalty, are not in the public domain. The families of the veterans were not apprised of the formal charges under which the trial was being held.

The Ethics Committee of the Lok Sabha, following its first meeting on the cash-for-query allegations against Mahua Moitra, asked the Trinamool Congress MP to appear before it on October 31. After a meeting of the panel on Thursday, its head and BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar said they will seek assistance from the Ministries of Home Affairs and IT in probing the allegations. Moitra has been asked to appear before the panel on October 31, Sonkar said. BJP MP Nishikant Dubey in a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla earlier this month, had stated that Mahua Moitra accepted “bribes” from businessman Darshan Hiranandani to ask questions against the Adani conglomerate in Parliament.

Meanwhile: The Aundhi police in Chhattisgarh’s Mohla-Manpur-Ambagarh Chowki district said that they had found a letter signed by Maoists claiming responsibility for the murder on October 20 of a BJP functionary. The letter also called for a boycott of the upcoming polls, according to the police. The police, however, are also investigating the state BJP’s claim that the tribal man was shot dead for worshipping Durga by tribals who do not identify as Hindus. The murder reportedly took place around 7.30 pm, when Birjhu Taram (53) was heading to a Durga temple. Senior BJP leader and former chief minister Raman Singh said Taram’s “only crime is that he is a BJP worker and he supports worshipping of Durga idols”.

In top international news: China’s former Premier Li Keqiang died of a heart attack on Friday, aged 68, just 10 months after retiring from a decade of office during which his star had dimmed. Once viewed as a top Communist Party leadership contender, Li was sidelined in recent years by President Xi Jinping, who tightened his grip on power and steered the world’s second-largest economy in a more statist direction. The elite Peking University-educated economist was seen as a supporter of a more liberal market economy but had to bend to Xi’s preference for more state control. Li was premier and head of China’s cabinet under Xi for a decade until stepping down in March.

In news from the US: US President Joe Biden has said that he is convinced that one of the reasons why Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel was because of the recent announcement during the G20 Summit in New Delhi on the ambitious India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor that integrates the entire region with a network of railroad. Israel has launched a massive counter-offensive against Hamas after unprecedented attacks by the militant group on October 7 killed more than 1,400 people. Biden told reporters at a joint news conference with the visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that his analysis is based on his instinct and does not have any proof for this.

Amid uproar over his remarks that attacks by Hamas “did not happen in a vacuum”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday expressed shock at the “misinterpretations” of his comments and asserted it was necessary to set the record straight that he was not justifying acts of terror by Hamas. In remarks that angered Israel, Guterres had told the Security Council ministerial meeting on Tuesday on the Israel-Hamas conflict that it is “important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation."

Lastly: Japan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a law requiring transgender people to undergo sterilization surgery in order to officially change their gender is unconstitutional, a landmark verdict welcomed by advocates as a sign of growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights. The ruling by the top court’s 15-judge Grand Bench only applies to the sterilisation portion of the 2003 law. It does not address the constitutionality of requiring gender-transition surgery in general to obtain a state-sanctioned gender change — a requirement also criticised by international rights and medical groups. The decision comes at a time of heightened awareness of issues surrounding LGBTQ+ people in Japan and is a partial victory for that community.