Auto driver beaten up for questioning BJP state chief about fuel prices

The extremist Israeli finance minister has called for the occupation of the Gaza Strip and halving the population of the Palestinian territory that is reeling from almost 14 months of genocide.  

Bezalel Smotrich, who has a history of racist statements against Palestinians, made the controversial remarks during a conference of the Yesha Council settler group on Monday.

“We can occupy Gaza and thin the population by half within two years,” through encouraging the so-called “voluntary emigration," he said.

The racist minister also urged the Tel Aviv regime to use its favorable ties with the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump to implement the plan.

“Occupying Gaza is not a dirty word,” he further claimed.

Once the success of the “voluntary emigration" is proven in the besieged Gaza Strip, it can be replicated in the occupied West Bank, he added.

Last month, Smotrich urged the full annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, asserting that Israel should unequivocally declare there would be no Palestinian state.

Israel launched its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

However, nearly 14 months into the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives of finding captives held in Gaza and eliminating Hamas.

So far, the occupying regime has killed at least 44,235 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 104,638 others, in Gaza. 

It has been committing the war crimes of starvation and of intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population in the besieged territory.

New DelhiI: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Sambhal Shahi Jama Masjid committee to approach the Allahabad High Court and told the district court not to act until then upon a survey ordered on a claim of the mosque having built on a pre-existing temple.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Sanjay Kumar directed Uttar Pradesh to maintain peace and harmony in the area, where four protesters were killed during the heavy stone pelting. The court also ordered the survey report of the advocate commissioner's report should be kept in sealed cover.

"We don't want anything to happen in the meanwhile...Let them (Shahi Jama Masjid committee) exercise appropriate remedies. We will keep this pending," the bench said.

Advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, appearing for plaintiff Hari Shankar Jain and others submitted the next date of hearing has been fixed for January 8 before the civil judge (senior division).

Senior advocate Huzefa Ahmadi, appearing for the petitioner committee, contended the order is capable of great public mischief. He said as of 10 such suits are pending across the country where the survey is sought to be conducted.

"We hope and trust the trial court will not take any proceedings...We have not expressed any opinion on merits," the bench said, fixing the matter for consideration in the week commencing on January 6.

In case any revision application is filed, it should be heard within three days before the High Court, the bench ordered.

At the outset, the bench said it had some reservations with the order passed by the Civil Judge (senior division) on November 19.

The court told the Uttar Pradesh government represented by Additional Solicitor General K M Nataraj that the district administration has to remain neutral and maintain peace in the area.

The court directed the plaintiff not to file any papers.

It also ordered the advocate commissioner's report should be kept in a sealed cover.

The petitioner committee questioned the validity of the survey ordered within a short period, triggering violence in the area and leading to the death of four protestors.

The plea filed by the Committee of Management, Shahi Jama Masjid, Sambhal claimed "the hot haste" in which the survey was allowed and conducted all within a day and suddenly another survey was conducted after a couple of days with a notice of barely six hours that had given rise to widespread communal tensions and threatened the secular and democratic fabric of the nation.

The survey was ordered by a civil judge (senior division) on a suit filed by advocate Hari Shankar Jain and others.

According to the plaintiffs, Shahi Jama Masjid at Chandausi was built by Mughal emperor Babar in 1526 after demolishing the Shri Harihar temple.

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.