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Nobody actually asked whether metallic pellets should be banned. What came up instead was whether there's even a rule to challenge, and Vrinda Grover, arguing the case, admitted she couldn't find one. No standing order, no published regulation, just a BPRD advisory doing the work of binding law. The Court didn't ban anything or clear anything. It just asked the Centre to show its homework first. New Delhi, July 30: There is a particular kind of silence that shows up in courtrooms when a lawyer is asked to produce a document that everyone assumes must exist, and it doesn't. That silence arrived on Thursday, when senior advocate Vrinda Grover, arguing before the Supreme Court for a ban on metallic pellet guns used against NEET protesters, admitted she could not locate any standing order of the Delhi Police authorising their use. Not that the order was confidential, or under review, or buried in some annexure she hadn't yet accessed. It simply wasn't there to find. That admission, more than anything else in the hearing, is the story. The plea itself had come from Yashovardhan Azad, a retired IPS officer and former Central Information Commissioner, alongside two young men, Prashant Kumar and Sheikh Irshad Mansoori, who carried metallic pellets recovered from their own bodies as evidence of what happened at Jantar Mantar on July 20, when the Cockroach Janata Party's Sansad Chalo march met the Rapid Action Force's pump-action guns. The ask was straightforward: a nationwide ban on pellet ammunition for civilian crowd dispersal, on the ground that a weapon which scatters hundreds of projectiles indiscriminately cannot satisfy the constitutional tests of necessity and proportionality that any restriction on the right to peaceful assembly must clear. Chief Justice Surya Kant's bench, sitting with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, didn't reject that reasoning. What it did was harder to sit with. Justice Bagchi called the prayer "vague", not because the harm wasn't real, but because you cannot ask a court to strike down a ban you haven't shown to exist as a rule in the first place. Pellet guns, the bench noted, are permitted in exceptional situations under a Bureau of Police Research and Development advisory. An advisory. Not a statute, not a regulation gazetted and open to challenge, not even a standing order specific to how Delhi Police may deploy them against a crowd. Just guidance, sitting somewhere in the architecture of internal policing practice, doing the work that binding law is supposed to do when the state decides to use force capable of blinding someone. This is worth sitting with for a moment, because it inverts how these hearings usually get covered. The frame everyone will reach for is the ban-or-no-ban binary: did the Court say pellet guns are illegal, did it say they're fine, who won today. That frame doesn't fit what actually happened. What happened is that a constitutional court, asked to test a use of force against Article 19(1)(b), discovered that the object it was supposed to test, the rule authorising that force, may not exist in any form that a citizen, or for that matter a senior advocate with full access to public records, can locate and argue against. You cannot challenge what has no fixed shape. Grover said as much herself: she could not find such regulations in the public domain and asked the bench to direct the Centre to place them on record, which is a lawyer's polite way of saying that the state is being asked to first show its own homework. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta's response, that the government will do whatever is necessary to assist the bench, is the kind of sentence that sounds reassuring until you notice what it doesn't commit to. It doesn't say a standing order exists. It doesn't say one will be produced. It commits to cooperation with an investigation into an incident, which is a narrower thing than producing the governing rule for a category of state action. The Court's July 28 order, as Grover pointed out, had already directed preservation of CCTV footage, drone visuals, body camera recordings and wireless logs, the evidentiary record of what happened on July 20. Thursday's direction to preserve the RAF's ammunition log extends that evidentiary trail. But an evidentiary trail answers what happened in one incident. It does not answer under what rule it was allowed to happen at all, and that gap didn't close on Thursday, if anything, it became visible for the first time on the record. The bench's own language gestured toward an answer, and it's an answer worth watching closely as this case proceeds. Justice Bagchi spoke of examining pellet use "under a graded approach", the idea that a bona fide protest can turn violent, that anti-social elements may infiltrate a genuine assembly, and that law enforcement may need graded responses calibrated to how a situation evolves on the ground. Mehta echoed this: forces may have to take on-the-spot decisions based on the event. There is nothing constitutionally objectionable about graded response as a concept. Proportionality doctrine has long accommodated the idea that force should scale to threat. The difficulty is that "graded" implies gradations that are fixed in advance, known, and reviewable, a ladder of permissible responses that both the police and the public can see before the fact, not one improvised and rationalised after it. If the BPRD advisory is the only document doing that work, and if even a standing order specific to Delhi cannot be produced, then "graded approach" risks becoming a phrase courts and governments use to describe a process that exists mostly in retrospect, reconstructed to fit whatever force was actually used. Grover's own limiting move in the hearing is instructive here too. She was careful to confine her plea to metallic pellets specifically, not to pellet guns as a category or to the RAF's armoury as a whole. "I am not saying pellet guns should not be in the armoury of the RAF," she said. That is a narrower and, I'd argue, a more litigable claim than an outright ban, it concedes the state's general power to arm its forces with less-lethal options while isolating the specific choice to load them with metallic pellets, which the petition frames as creating a substantial risk of eye injuries and grave harm precisely because they cannot be targeted with precision. That distinction matters for where this case can actually go. A blanket ban plea invites exactly the "vague" objection the bench raised. A challenge to the absence of any published, binding rule governing metallic pellet deployment, read against the specific facts of July 20, where the petitioners allege force escalated to pump-action guns near Connaught Place without prior warning, is a plea a court can actually adjudicate, because it asks for a rule to be produced and then tested, rather than asking a court to imagine the rule's contents for itself. What the Court has actually done, then, is neither grant relief nor deny it. It has asked the state to produce its own justification in documentary form, the ammunition log, and implicitly, whatever standing order or regulation supposedly governs the choice to load that ammunition in the first place. Whether that document exists, and what it says if it does, is now the real question this case turns on. Everything else, the ban, the compensation, the medical treatment for Kumar and Mansoori that the bench has already directed the Delhi government to provide, sits downstream of that. You cannot rule on whether a rule is proportionate until someone shows you the rule.

Assam Flood News: Assam floods leave 78 dead as nearly 13,000 households remain without power, while rescue and restoration efforts continue across affected districts. By Pranjal Gupta New Delhi, July 30: Assam floods have claimed 78 lives and upended the lives of more than three lakh people. While the misery killed many citizens, the survivors continue to face the painful aftermath of the disaster. Nearly 13,000 households in flood-affected parts of the state are still without electricity, almost 11 days after flash floods and landslides devastated the region. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the administration is continuously assessing the flood situation in Upper Assam and taking decisions to restore power connections wherever it is safe to do so. "Consumers without electricity have declined by a further 30 per cent. As water levels recede, we are continuously assessing safety conditions and will restore more transformers to the grid wherever it is safe to do so," he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. Assam Flood News: An Army official rescues a baby from a waterlogged house as rescue operations continue in flood-hit areas. (Image Source: Indian Army) The flood impact and power supply status report for the Sivasagar Electrical Circle, prepared by Assam Power Distribution Company Ltd (APDCL) and shared by Sarma, showed that 12,756 consumers are still without electricity. The affected areas include Gaurisagar, Sivasagar, Nazira, Amguri and Demow. What Triggered the Assam Floods? Heavy rainfall in Nagaland and the Upper Assam districts triggered flash floods and landslides, causing widespread damage in three districts from the early hours of July 19. The flood situation in Assam remained grim on Thursday, although water levels receded in most parts of the state. The death toll rose to 78, while more than three lakh people continued to struggle with the impact of the floods. The India Meteorological Department (IMD), however, has forecast heavy to very heavy rainfall, accompanied by thunderstorms, at isolated places across Assam and neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland over the next three days. The forecast has raised concerns about fresh flooding in districts bordering the two states.

Iran Hits China Firm in Kuwait: An Iranian strike hit a Chinese firm's building in Kuwait, killing one worker, as the US launched fresh attacks on Iran, escalating regional tensions. By The Slate Staff Bureau Cairo, Jul 30 (AP) An Iranian strike hit a Chinese firm's building in northern Kuwait Thursday morning, severely damaging the structure and killing a worker, Kuwait's military said, hours after Jordan's air defences shot down five missiles launched from Iran. The attacks came after the US military said it had completed “a heavy wave of strikes against Iran,” conducted in response to an earlier Iranian missile attack on a US base in Jordan. Central Command said in a social media post that the US had struck “dozens” of targets belonging to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, including military command centres as well as missile and drone facilities, and coastal surveillance and defence sites. No casualties were reported from Jordan's interception of the missiles, Jordan's state-run Petra news agency said, quoting the spokesman for the country's armed forces. The flare-ups on multiple fronts after several days of relative calm raised the risk of a return to all-out war. It also underscored the difficulty of winding down a five-month conflict that has jolted the world economy and is unpopular among Americans. The fighting was likely to add to concerns that the US is further drawing down already diminished stockpiles of sophisticated munitions needed to defend its bases and allies. Iran Hits China Firm in Kuwait: Damaged Chinese company building in Kuwait after an Iranian strike, as renewed US-Iran military action fuels fears of wider conflict. US strikes Iran The US Central Command said in a social media post that the United States had struck “dozens” of targets belonging to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, including military command centres as well as missile and drone facilities, and coastal surveillance and defence sites. The new strikes came hours after US President Donald Trump vowed to hit Iran “very hard” after it targeted a base in Jordan that hosts US troops. Iran's official IRNA news agency said three people were killed and two were wounded in a strike on the island of Qeshm, which lies just off the Iranian mainland in the Strait of Hormuz. The latest barrage came after the US partnered with Saudi Arabia to strike Iran-backed militias in neighbouring Iraq, killing at least 20 fighters and six Iranian advisers on Wednesday. Fires reported on two natural gas vessels in Egyptian port Elsewhere, British maritime security firm Ambrey said drone strikes ignited fires on two natural gas vessels at the Egyptian port of Damietta on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the strikes on a US-owned floating storage facility and a Greek-owned tanker. No injuries were reported. The office of the Egyptian prime minister said initial investigations showed the fires on the two vessels had been caused by a drone. Egypt, a close US ally and regional mediator, is one of the only countries in the Middle East to have been spared direct military action during the war. A strike by Iran or its allies, if confirmed, would mark a significant widening of the conflict. Asked during an Oval Office event if Iran was responsible for the strikes on the natural gas vessels, Trump responded: “It's a little more of the same.” “In the meantime, we're going to be hitting them very hard because it's our turn to hit them,” he added. Saudi Arabia accuses Iraq militias of targeting its oil facilities Saudi Arabia had accused the Iraqi militias of firing drones against its oil facilities over the past days. An umbrella group of Iraqi militias initially denied the allegations, while another Iran-backed group — the Houthi rebels in Yemen — said they had attacked Saudi energy facilities as part of a separate but related conflict. Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman met separately on Wednesday with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorised to comment publicly about the private meetings. They said the Saudi decision to join the US attacks against the Iraqi militias was meant to send a message to Iran that it wouldn't tolerate Iran or its proxies targeting the Saudi oil industry and other critical infrastructure. At the same time, the defence minister underscored to Trump and Vance that the Saudis want to see a de-escalation in the war and for Washington and Tehran to return to negotiations. Before the latest eruption, mediators had expressed optimism about bringing the US and Iran back to the negotiating table. An interim agreement collapsed in recent weeks over renewed fighting in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy supplies that Iranian attacks have again effectively closed. A regional official said mediators are “still trying with both sides” to restore calm and get the ceasefire back on track. He gave no details on whether progress was being made and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door diplomacy. Attacks on Saudi oil facilities could worsen global energy crisis Saudi Arabia is also locked in a renewed conflict with the Houthis. The rebels have declared a blockade of Saudi shipping that could choke off another crucial Middle East trade route, the Bab el-Mandeb strait from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden. On Monday, the Houthis said they had launched drones targeting oil facilities used to transport oil across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, a key bypass for Saudi exports blocked by Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. The rebels said the attack was in response to a Saudi drone they said had breached Yemen's airspace. Planet Labs satellite imagery from Monday analysed by The Associated Press showed damage to Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq oil-processing facility. The massive facility is capable of processing approximately 7 million barrels of crude oil per day. (Except headline, the content is sourced from a syndicated feed).

India's 100% ethanol push aims to cut its $120-billion crude import bill and secure sugarcane farmers a steadier market, with blending already at 20% by December 2025. But food-versus-fuel land use, sugarcane's water footprint, and older-engine compatibility remain unresolved as the target climbs further. By Mahima Katal New Delhi, July 30: Every litre of petrol sold in India today carries a fifth of its volume as ethanol, fermented from sugarcane, rice, wheat or maize. That share has climbed faster than almost any other target the government has set for itself, and it isn't stopping at 20%. The stated destination is 100% ethanol-blended fuel, reached through intermediate stops at 30% and 85%. The reasons behind that ambition are more layered than the fuel-pump arithmetic suggests, and so are the costs. The starting point is a number that unsettles economists: roughly $120 billion, what India spends annually importing crude oil, with about 85% of the country's total requirement sourced from the Gulf and Russia. India is the world's third-largest oil consumer, and that dependency transmits directly into the domestic economy whenever crude prices move, a Gulf conflict or an OPEC supply decision inflates the import bill, which pushes up transport and goods costs, which weakens the rupee as dollar demand rises to cover the difference. Ethanol blending is the government's substitute for a portion of that exposure, replacing imported crude with a fuel grown domestically, with no dependency on a foreign supply chain. The government's own estimate puts the savings from increased ethanol use between 2014 and 2024 at ₹85,000 crores, though a separate official statement has cited a considerably higher figure of ₹1.4 lakh crores. There is a second constituency behind the push: India's roughly five crore sugarcane farmers, for whom ethanol blending creates an additional buyer in the oil companies, alongside the traditional sugar mills. That agricultural dimension sits alongside the energy-security rationale as a deliberate second objective of the policy, not an incidental byproduct of it. The pace at which India has moved has been unusual for a policy of this scale. Blending stood at roughly 1.53% in 2013–14, rose to about 8.1% by 2020–21, crossed the 10% mark five months ahead of schedule in 2022, and reached the 20% target, originally set for 2030, then advanced to 2025, by December 2025, according to the ministry's own ethanol-supply-year data. That momentum has fed directly into the case for going further, toward 30%, 85%, and eventually a full transition. On the vehicle side, the government's position is that the rollout has been backed by extensive validation before each stage of blending. An Inter-Ministerial Committee constituted under NITI Aayog in December 2020 examined vehicle compatibility and mileage impact, drawing on research from Indian Oil Corporation, the Automotive Research Association of India and the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, and its 2021 roadmap covered material compatibility, engine calibration and durability ahead of the E20 rollout. A joint study by IOCL, the Indian Institute of Petroleum Dehradun, SIAM and ARAI found that E20 vehicles continued to meet applicable emission norms and that legacy vehicles showed no abnormal wear, with the one caveat concerning certain BS-III vehicles manufactured before 2016, where some rubber components may need replacement during routine servicing. In a Rajya Sabha answer given on 29 July 2026, in response to a question on E20's impact on vehicle performance, the Road Transport and Highways Ministry went further, stating that no widespread issues of engine failure or breakdown attributable to blending have been reported to it, and that the concerns in circulation have arisen largely through public commentary and social media discourse rather than through documented complaints. That confidence, however, sits against a set of trade-offs that grow more difficult to manage as the blend percentage rises. Ethanol production competes directly with food production for land and water. Kharif sowing data for 2025–26 shows maize acreage up 10.5% year-on-year and sugarcane acreage rising as well, gains that have come substantially at the expense of pulses and oilseeds, a substitution that risks deepening India's reliance on imported staples and edible oils even as it reduces reliance on imported crude. The government has directed that only damaged foodgrain and surplus sugarcane be diverted to ethanol, not food-grade crops, but that boundary has proven difficult to enforce whenever ethanol procurement prices run ahead of sugar prices, as briefly occurred in 2023 when a weak harvest forced mills to halt diversion altogether. Water is a second constraint. Sugarcane, which accounts for roughly 30–35% of India's ethanol feedstock, requires about 3,000 litres of water for every litre of ethanol produced, a ratio that carries real weight in a country already under acute water stress. A NITI Aayog assessment has attributed a substantial share of Uttar Pradesh's water pollution to unsustainable sugarcane cultivation and untreated mill effluent discharged into rivers. Land-use pressure compounds both problems: expanding cultivation for biofuel feedstocks risks encroaching on forest cover, which would work against the very climate case ethanol is meant to serve. The engine-compatibility question, while smaller in scale, is not fully closed either. Ethanol is mildly corrosive to rubber seals, fuel lines and certain plastics in older engines not designed for higher blends, and while the government's studies report negligible average effects, a 2014–15 ARAI-IIP-IOCL study did find a fuel-economy drop of up to 6% in some vehicle categories under E20, alongside inferior elastomer performance. How the public receives these findings may matter as much as the findings themselves, research cited in international reporting has found that perceived unfairness in how a policy's costs are distributed erodes public trust in it more than either its cost or its practical effectiveness, a dynamic likely to intensify as blending moves toward 30% and beyond, and a larger share of India's vehicle fleet and agricultural land is drawn into the transition. India's ethanol push, then, is best understood as a bet with two well-defined payoffs, reduced import dependency and a steadier market for millions of farmers, set against three underdeveloped ledgers: food security, water stress and vehicle compatibility, each of which grows heavier as the blend ratio climbs from a fifth of every tank toward all of it.

CRPF chief backs personnel amid criticism over pellet gun use, as RAF review identifies lapses in handling the July 20 protest. By Pranjal Gupta New Delhi, July 30: As national security forces are under severe criticism for using pellet guns on unarmed students protesting on July 20, the chief of the CRPF has encouraged its personnel to work "fearlessly" and promised to back such decisions in the future if the action be taken in the bona fide. The incident was widely condemned across the nation, with Parliament being disrupted over the issue this week. The remarks were reportedly made by CRPF Director General Gyanendra Pratap Singh on Monday at the force's investiture ceremony. He said, "As the Director-General of the CRPF, I want to assure each one of you that whether it is an operational battalion or a law-and-order unit, whatever decisions you take and whatever actions you carry out in the bona fide discharge of your duties, I take responsibility for all those decisions and actions. Continue to perform your duties fearlessly. Wherever responsibility or accountability needs to be taken, I will take it as the Director-General." The CRPF's Rapid Action Force (RAF) has come under scrutiny over its handling of the Cockroach Janta Party's (CJP) July 20 march to Parliament against paper leaks. The protest took place at Jantar Mantar and other parts of central Delhi. The RAF is a specialised unit of the CRPF that was created in 1992 to deal with riots and maintain public order during large gatherings and disturbances. CRPF Director General Gyanendra Pratap Singh addresses personnel as the force faces scrutiny over its handling of the July 20 protest. (Image Source: Viral on Social Media) Parliament Disrupted As assured by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a bill introducing strict punishment was introduced in the Lok Sabha by Union Minister Jitendra Singh. The bill was passed on Wednesday. Before that, the proceedings were disrupted after Opposition leaders demanded that Amit Shah be present and address the pellet gun row, as the forces come under his jurisdiction. Earlier this month, RAF Inspector General Seema Dhundhia is learnt to have told personnel that the "force gradient" used during the Parliament march did not follow the force's standard operating procedures or its training. A force gradient refers to the different levels of force police can use depending on the level of threat or resistance they face. The remarks came after an internal review found serious operational lapses during the protest, in which three people suffered pellet gun injuries. According to sources, Dhundhia said officers failed to conduct proper and timely briefings before personnel were deployed around Jantar Mantar and Parliament. She reportedly stressed that briefing teams before deployment is essential because it helps personnel understand the situation, their responsibilities, and the level of force that may be required. Sources also said the RAF chief instructed officers not to assign personnel who had recently returned from special operations areas, such as Jammu and Kashmir, directly to crowd-control duties in Delhi. She reportedly explained that personnel serving in conflict or counter-insurgency areas work in a very different operational environment. Their training and experience are designed for high-risk security situations, whereas crowd management in places such as Delhi, Bihar, Assam, and Maharashtra requires a more restrained, balanced, and people-focused approach. "She emphasised that personnel transferred from special operations zones such as Jammu and Kashmir, or other operational areas, have a different operational perspective. However, crowd-control duties in states such as Delhi, Bihar, Assam, and Maharashtra require a distinct and balanced approach to maintaining public order," a source said. According to the sources, Dhundhia reminded officers that force should only be used when absolutely necessary and only to the extent required to control the situation. She directed personnel to act in a fair, balanced, and sensitive manner. Before using force, officers should issue clear warnings to the crowd and follow a graded response. This includes using methods such as a lathi charge, tear smoke, or other approved crowd-control measures only when the situation demands them. Senior officers said the RAF's work had been appreciated at the sector level. However, an internal assessment also found several serious shortcomings in the planning and execution of the deployment. The review concluded that these weaknesses needed immediate correction to ensure future crowd-control operations follow established procedures and minimise the risk of unnecessary injuries.

Anti-Paper Leak Amendment Bill Passed in Lok Sabha: Lok Sabha approves tougher anti-paper leak law, mandating fast-track trials, quicker investigations, and harsher penalties for examination fraud nationwide. By Pranjal Gupta New Delhi, July 29: Amid an uproar in the Lok Sabha, the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, was passed on Wednesday. Under the new changes, anyone responsible for question paper leaks or using unfair means in exams will face up to 10 years in jail and a Rs 50 lakh fine. The bill was introduced in the Lower House by Union Minister Jitendra Singh on July 27 after nationwide protests over the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak, which originated at Delhi's Jantar Mantar. Before the bill was passed, Opposition leaders raised questions over the use of pellet guns on protesting students on July 20 during the 'Chalo Sansad' march in Delhi. The House was adjourned twice after the situation escalated due to the absence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah during the discussion. The Opposition demanded that Shah address the firing incident, saying the RAF (Rapid Action Force) comes under the jurisdiction of his ministry. In the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, Jitendra Singh stated that the government acted swiftly in the NEET paper leak case, and that as many as 52 FIRs have been lodged since the anti-paper leak law came into force in 2024. Anti-Paper Leak Amendment Bill Passed in Lok Sabha: Stricter penalties and faster investigations into public examination fraud included. (File Image) Immediately after the passage of the bill, the Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day. Anti-Paper Leak Amendment Bill Here is what bill that amends a 2024 law says: Empowers all state governments and Union Territory (UT) administrations to designate any Sessions Court as a Special Fast Track Court to try offences under the proposed law. Provides that proceedings in such Special Fast Track Courts be conducted on a day-to-day basis, and that trials be completed within three months from the date of filing of the chargesheet. Empowers the central government to constitute a Special Task Force to investigate any offence. Provides that investigations into offences under the legislation be completed within two months. Empowers all state governments and UT administrations to appoint one or more Special Public Prosecutors to conduct cases under the legislation. Provides an appeal mechanism against any judgment, sentence, or order before a bench of two High Court judges, with disposal of the appeal within three months from the date of its admission. Under the new law, individuals involved in paper leaks or unfair means in exams will face a minimum jail term of five years and a maximum of 10 years, along with a fine of up to Rs 50 lakh. For organised crimes, the bill proposes a minimum sentence of seven years and a fine of up to Rs 10 crore. The 2024 law was enacted after the government faced widespread controversy over paper leaks. Before this legislation, there was no specific substantive law to deal with unfair means adopted or offences committed by various entities involved in conducting public examinations by the central government and its agencies. The law aims to prevent unfair means in public examinations conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), the Staff Selection Commission (SSC), the Railways, banking recruitment examinations, and the National Testing Agency (NTA), among others. Having been passed by the Lok Sabha, the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill will now be introduced in the Rajya Sabha (the Upper House) for debate and voting. (With PTI Inputs)

By The Slate Bureau Staff Moscow, Jul 29 (AP) Russia's main domestic security agency said Wednesday that Pavel Durov, founder and owner of the messaging app Telegram, has been charged with aiding terrorism and put on an international wanted list. The charges against Durov, who was born and began his career in Russia but later moved abroad, came as the Russian authorities restricted Telegram, one of the most popular messaging apps in the country. It is part of a long-term effort to bring the internet under the Kremlin's full control that has intensified since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, accused Telegram's administration in a statement of failing to remove “numerous channels, chats and bots” that are “actively used by Ukrainian intelligence agencies, terrorists, and extremist organisations to prepare and coordinate acts of sabotage and terrorism, mass murder, and cyberfraud" in Russia, which resulted in “numerous human casualties.” The agency accused Ukrainian security services of using a popular dating chatbot on Telegram to lure and recruit Russians for “sabotage and terrorist activities,” and said 46 users of the chatbot, from 12 to 22 years old, have been detained across Russia since July 2025 for assaulting law enforcement officers, arson and other acts. Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been placed on his birth country's wanted list over alleged legal violations linked to the messaging app. (AI-Generated Image) Durov earlier this year announced that the Russian authorities opened a criminal investigation against him and accused them of fabricating pretexts to restrict access to Telegram as part of an attempt to “suppress the right to privacy and free speech.” If convicted, the entrepreneur could face up to life in prison in Russia. Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its official website says that the company is based in Dubai and that Durov, who holds dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates, lives there, too. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russian authorities have engaged in multipronged efforts to rein in the internet. They have adopted restrictive laws and banned websites and platforms that don't comply, and focused on improving technology to monitor and manipulate online traffic. Multiple popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and X, have been banned in Russia; YouTube has been throttled; popular messaging apps, such as Signal and Viber, have been blocked, and the most popular ones — WhatsApp and Telegram — have been restricted. Russia's popular Facebook-like social media platform VK, founded by Durov long before he launched the Telegram messaging app, had come under the control of Kremlin-friendly companies. Russia tried to block Telegram between 2018 20 but failed. While it's still possible to circumvent some of the restrictions by using virtual private network services, many of them are routinely blocked, too. At the same time, Russia actively promotes the “national” messaging app known as MAX, which critics say could be used for surveillance. The platform is touted by developers and officials as a one-stop shop for messaging, online government services, making payments and more. It openly declares it will share user data with authorities upon request, and experts also say it doesn't use end-to-end encryption. Durov has faced criminal investigations elsewhere. In 2024, he was arrested in Paris over allegations that his platform was being used for illicit activity, including drug trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse images. Durov said in March 2025 that he returned to Dubai after spending “several months” in France. The Kremlin at the time criticised the French authorities for their move against Durov as “selective.” “I know that many countries have raised concerns about the platform being used in certain ways by certain individuals and entities whose activities could harm the economy or security of certain countries. I think the Russian government might also have had some questions," Putin said in September 2024, after Durov's arrest. “But all platforms of this kind are guilty of this. If this is what they're doing to Durov, then others should probably be arrested,” the Russian leader said, adding that the French government's “actions are not entirely clear to me, as they are selective.” (Except headline, the contents is sourced from a syndicated feed).

The Supreme Court has accepted CBI's closure report against late former PM Manmohan Singh in the Talabira-II coal block case, setting aside the summoning order and formally closing the matter. The bench found the trial court had no valid grounds to reject CBI's closure report and compel further proceedings, a ruling on procedural standard rather than a verdict on guilt. New Delhi, July 29: The Supreme Court's decision to accept the CBI's closure report against former prime minister Manmohan Singh formally ends a criminal proceeding that had already been rendered largely academic by his death in December 2024, but the bench's reasoning does something more precise than simply disposing of a moot appeal, it engages directly with the standard a trial court must apply when deciding whether to accept or reject a closure report filed by an investigating agency, and finds that the special court judge who took cognisance and summoned Singh had no basis to depart from that standard. A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana was explicit that it could have disposed of the appeal as infructuous given Singh's death, which would have closed the matter without addressing whether the original summoning order was correct on its own terms. It chose not to take that route. Instead, the bench examined both closure reports filed by the CBI and applied what it described as the parameters this court has consistently laid down governing acceptance of an investigating agency's closure report, concluding that Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar had no reason to reject those reports and proceed to summon the six accused. This distinction matters because a closure report accepted on these grounds is not equivalent to an acquittal following trial on merits, it is a judicial finding that the investigating agency's conclusion not to prosecute was itself sound, evaluated against settled criteria for when a court may override that conclusion. The result for Singh is a formal, final closure of the case, but the legal architecture behind it concerns the limits of a trial court's discretion to second-guess an investigating agency, not a determination of guilt or innocence tested through evidence. The case's procedural history illustrates why that discretion became contested in the first place. The CBI's original FIR named former coal secretary P C Parakh, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and Hindalco Industries in connection with the 2005 allocation of the Talabira-II coal block in Odisha, invoking criminal conspiracy provisions under the IPC alongside the Prevention of Corruption Act. When the agency later filed a closure report recommending no prosecution, the special court declined to accept it and instead directed the CBI to examine Singh, who held the coal portfolio at the time of the allocation, along with senior PMO officials including his then principal secretary T K A Nair and then private secretary B V R Subramanyam. That directive to examine Singh was itself stayed by the Supreme Court, and it was only after further investigation that the summoning order which forms the subject of this appeal was passed, prompting Singh to challenge it on the ground that no sanction for prosecuting a public official had been obtained, while denying any criminality in the coal block decision. What the Supreme Court's order resolves, then, is not merely Singh's individual liability but the narrower and procedurally more consequential question of whether a special court can reject an investigating agency's closure report and compel further proceedings against a former holder of high constitutional office absent a stronger evidentiary basis than existed here. The bench's finding, that there was no reason for the special judge to have taken cognisance over CBI's closure reports, operates as a check on trial court discretion in exactly this category of case, where a court substitutes its own view for the investigating agency's closure recommendation. Coming as it does after Singh's death, the ruling settles that question for the historical record rather than for any live prosecution, but the standard it reaffirms will bear on how closure reports in other public-servant corruption matters, including in the coal allocation cases still pending against other accused, are evaluated going forward.

Lok Sabha Adjourned: The Lower House disrupted twice as the Opposition demanded Union Home Minister Amit Shah's presence over the NEET protest and RAF action. By Pranjal Gupta New Delhi, July 29: Within minutes of Lok Sabha beginning the proceedings on Wednesday, it was adjourned till 2 pm due to the absence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The Opposition leaders argued that Shah must remain present in the Lower House to address the incident of firing at students during the NEET-UG protest at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. With slogans of "where is home minister," a wave of chaos took over the Parliament, leading to a pause till 2 pm. The Rapid Action Force (RAF) fired multiple non-lethal munitions, including two rounds of plastic pellets, under permission from a Delhi Police officer while controlling a mob near Jantar Mantar during the July 20 'Sansad Chalo' march by protesters on the NEET paper leak issue, officials said on Tuesday, citing official police records. The RAF is a specialised anti-riot wing of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). The CRPF is a Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) that falls entirely under the command and authority of the Union Home Ministry. Therefore, the Opposition pressed for Amit Shah's presence in the Parliament. What Opposition Said Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury questioned about the home minister, and was joined by other Opposition leaders in demanding his presence in the House. "Where is the Home Minister? Call him here," Chowdhury said. "You fire at students..." she said, as slogans were raised demanding Shah to come to the House. Opposition members protest in Lok Sabha, demanding Amit Shah's presence as repeated disruptions force the House to adjourn twice in one day. (File Image) Following this, Chairman C P Radhakrishnan adjourned the House till 2 pm. Adjourned Twice on Single Day Earlier, the House was adjourned for about 40 minutes till 12 noon amid uproar by Opposition members over the entry of Delhi Police at the CPI(M) office in the national capital to arrest former JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh. The incident took place on Tuesday. Soon after listed papers were laid, CPI (M) Member John Brittas raised the issue, saying a Delhi Police team, in plain clothes, entered the party office to arrest Ghosh in the 2021 protest case in JNU. Brittas sought to relate the police action to the recent students' protest, saying Ghosh's only mistake was that she participated in the Jantar Mantar protest. Supporting him, Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge said democracy was under threat. Responding to the charges, Leader of the House J P Nadda said it was a normal law and order case. He said the police had to act accordingly, and the "police has acted accordingly". The Union minister also said that any student who indulges in activism faces such actions. The Rajya Sabha has been witnessing repeated disruptions since the beginning of the monsoon session on July 20. (With inputs from news agency PTI)

UN reform talks have failed for the 18th straight year, with the process rolled over yet again to 2027. India says the real problem isn't slow progress but design, any reform that adds seats without touching the five permanent members' veto power changes nothing. By Mahima Katal New Delhi, July 29: Seventeen rounds of negotiations on reforming the United Nations Security Council have produced no structural change to the body's decision-making architecture, and India's latest intervention at the UN General Assembly suggests this is not simply a failure of process but a reflection of what the Intergovernmental Negotiations were designed to avoid resolving. The General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a decision to roll over the IGN on Security Council reform to its 81st session, an annual procedural step that has now recurred for eighteen consecutive years without a concrete outcome or an end-date attached to the process. India joined the consensus to adopt the rollover but used the occasion to draw a sharper distinction than procedural frustration alone would suggest. Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, told the Assembly that the 80th IGN session, like those preceding it, had not produced outcomes capable of translating into actual reform, with cluster debates largely restating positions member states have held for years. The more consequential part of India's statement, however, concerned what reform would need to include to qualify as reform at all: an expansion of both the permanent and non-permanent categories of Council membership, with greater representation for the Global South. India has previously cautioned, and reiterated in substance here, that any outcome confined to expanding the non-permanent category alone would amount to a structural failure, since it would leave the decision-making power concentrated among the five permanent members unchanged regardless of how many additional seats are added around the table. This is the fault line that separates the reform debate from the diplomatic language typically used to describe it. The Uniting for Consensus group, comprising Canada, Pakistan, Türkiye and Italy, has proposed a 27-member Security Council expanded exclusively through additional non-permanent seats, leaving the permanent five and their veto authority untouched. India's position, aligned with the broader G4 push for permanent-seat expansion, treats this model as the version of reform that changes appearance without changing power. The distinction matters because the annual rollover itself does not indicate disagreement over whether reform is needed; every member state involved in the IGN process has, at some point, endorsed reform in principle. What the repeated rollovers indicate is disagreement over whether reform should touch the veto-holding core of the Council or leave it structurally intact while redistributing seats elsewhere. Harish's statement invoked the idea of successive cycles without resolution, framing the IGN's seventeen rounds as cycles that have not yet produced the intended outcome, and asked how much longer the process should be allowed to continue in its current form. He argued that the path to an actual outcome exists and is not mysterious: text-based negotiations conducted with defined timelines and milestones, rather than the recurring cluster debates that have characterised the IGN to date. India described the current arrangement as one in which member states restate known positions from within the UN's own institutional setting while the practical case for a Security Council capable of intervening meaningfully in ongoing conflicts grows harder to sustain outside it. The reform question intersects with India's own institutional interest in Council membership, though the two are procedurally distinct. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar formally launched India's campaign for a non-permanent Security Council seat for the 2028-29 term earlier this month, with elections for that single Asia-Pacific Group seat scheduled for June next year, where India will compete against Tajikistan. India has held a Council seat eight times since 1950, most recently in 2021-22. That contest, however, concerns the allocation of a seat within the Council's existing structure and does not bear on the separate, unresolved question of whether the structure itself will change. The rollover to the 81st session ensures that question remains open, with no indication from Tuesday's proceedings of what would need to shift for the eighteenth year of negotiations to produce a different result than the previous seventeen.

Jerusalem, Jul 28 (AP) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday is the first since the two leaders launched a joint war against Iran and marks a chance for Netanyahu to smooth out strains in their relationship. The meeting comes as both face growing pressures at home. Netanyahu is up for reelection and is embattled in part because of his deteriorating relationship with Trump. Trump is under pressure to end an unpopular war that has wreaked economic havoc and driven prices higher ahead of midterm elections this November. Trump revealed some tension with Netanyahu ahead of their meeting, complaining Tuesday about reports that the Israeli leader plans to discuss intelligence on Iranian activities at Pickaxe Mountain, a potential nuclear site that the US president has threatened repeatedly to bomb. “I know exactly what's going on at Pickaxe,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.” He insisted that whatever Iran is doing is “not a big problem” and that “Bibi's telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.” US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House amid emerging differences over Iran, Gaza and regional diplomacy. “Why do you have to announce to the world?” Trump added, flashing his frustrations with his ally. The two leaders also plan to discuss the framework agreement the US and Israel signed with Lebanon over the Israel-Hezbollah war and the expansion of the Abraham Accords, according to a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the meeting. “We have a little difference,” Trump said Monday when asked by reporters if he and the Israeli prime minister were on the same page with Iran. “But pretty close, yeah.” Trump and Netanyahu's relationship has ebbed before Trump has had a hot-and-cold history with Netanyahu over the years, but upon his return to the White House last year, their alliance seemed stronger than ever. When they started the war together in February, it was with a united front, touting their respective militaries as acting in lockstep to take out Iran's leadership and pave the way for a government more friendly to the West. But as Iran fought back — sending drones and missiles slamming into US bases and high-rises in cities in the Gulf, and choking off the Strait of Hormuz — Trump came under immense pressure both at home and by allies in the region to end the conflict. Since then, Netanyahu, who wanted to continue the fighting in Iran and against its ally, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, has been sidelined as Trump sought a deal with Tehran. His visit to the White House this week comes as the disagreements with Trump and Vice President JD Vance have burst into the open over the war in Iran and more. “The Americans are making it clear to the Israelis they are the ones who are running the war,” Israeli journalist and political analyst Amit Segal wrote Monday in the daily newspaper, Israel Hayom. “It is clear to everyone that Israel has been put in the back seat.” Netanyahu keeping focus on Iran's nuclear programme With US-Iran tensions flaring again in recent weeks, Netanyahu plans to share with Trump Israeli intelligence on Tehran's nuclear programme, according to a person familiar with Netanyahu's visit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media. On Fox News Channel's “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo, Netanyahu said he hoped to sit down with Trump “to hear what he has in mind” for Iran. “Because I think, in many ways, it's his decision” on how to move forward, Netanyahu said. “If he can do so without returning to intense military fighting, that's fine. Why not? "But one way or the other, they have to end their nuclear programme,” he said of Iran. Netanyahu also used the interview to warn Iran against attacking his country, saying Israel's response would be “very forceful.” (Except headline, the content is sourced from news agency AP) Steps to allow other forces in Gaza and in Lebanon ----------------------------------------------------------- But even as Netanyahu sees an opportunity, he also needs to persuade Trump that he won't play spoiler to US diplomatic and reconstruction efforts in Gaza and in Lebanon, where the president has previously complained that “too many people are being killed” by Israeli strikes. Israel has taken recent steps in both places. In Lebanon, where the Israeli military occupies much of the south, Israel agreed to allow the Lebanese army to deploy to some villages as part of a “pilot programme” testing their ability to secure areas where Hezbollah once operated. The US State Department said Monday that the next round of talks between Israel and Lebanon will take place next week in Rome with a focus on expanding the programme. On Gaza, Israel's security cabinet green-lit on Sunday a measure that would, in theory, grant entry to the first members of an international stabilisation force outlined last year in a US-backed ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Few countries have pledged troops for the force, however, and Israel would approve their entry into Gaza on a case-by-case basis. The troops — including from Morocco and Uganda — would only be allowed to operate in a small, desolate area in Rafah in the south, where the plan is to vet and house some displaced Palestinians. The Israeli military continues to carry out strikes it says target militants but that have also killed civilians. Support for Israel has eroded ---------------------------------- Israel has lost a significant amount of bipartisan support in the United States, particularly over its conduct in Gaza. In June, Vance warned Israeli officials that Trump was their only friend among world leaders. Vance is expected to attend the meeting with Netanyahu, according to a person familiar with the plan who was not authorised to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. An AP-NORC poll published earlier this month found a dramatic erosion of support among American adults for Israel. “We've lost America. Thank you, Bibi,” wrote Ben Caspit, a political commentator for Israel's Maariv newspaper.

By Ajay Haldar New Delhi, July 28: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday lashed out against the government in Parliament over the anti-paper leak bill. She questioned why pellet guns were used against students, asking if they were terrorists. Speaking in support of the students, she remarked that one should not mock anyone's suffering. She also questioned why the government fears the country's youth, alleging that the education system has been filled with RSS members. Addressing the Lok Sabha, Priyanka Gandhi stated that this system is crushing the future of children. She asked if the demand for action against paper leaks was not legitimate. She further noted that while the students were protesting peacefully, they were subjected to a lathi-charge. She demanded to know who had ordered the use of pellet guns against the students. Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi speaks in Lok Sabha, questioning pellet gun use against students during the debate on the anti-paper leak bill. (Representative Image) Priyanka Gandhi expressed regret that, despite all this, the Prime Minister and his associates still believe they can sail through by relying on PR and other such tactics. Accusing the government, she pointed out that while the country's education budget stands at ₹1.4 lakh crore, ₹1.32 lakh crore is collected from NEET aspirants. She remarked that the former Education Minister was being felicitated just a day after a family in Maharashtra was mourning the death of their daughter. She questioned what exactly they were proud of and what kind of arrogance this was—honoring someone when there ought to be shame.