You are here

  • Home
  • Released Indian opposition leader Kejriwal to resign as Delhi chief minister

Released Indian opposition leader Kejriwal to resign as Delhi chief minister

Arvind Kejriwal (C), Chief Minister of Delhi and leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), greets his supporters after Supreme Court granted him bail in New Delhi on September 13, 2024. (AFP)
Arvind Kejriwal (C), Chief Minister of Delhi and leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), greets his supporters after Supreme Court granted him bail in New Delhi on September 13, 2024. (AFP)
Short Url

https://arab.news/53vd8

Updated 15 September 2024
Reuters
Follow

Released Indian opposition leader Kejriwal to resign as Delhi chief minister

Arvind Kejriwal, Chief Minister of Delhi, greets his supporters after Supreme Court granted him bail in New Delhi.
  • Kejriwal is a fierce critic of Narendra Modi and a former anti-corruption crusader whose decade-old Aam Aadmi Party quickly rose to mainstream politics
Updated 15 September 2024
Reuters
Follow

NEW DELHI: Indian opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal said on Sunday he will resign as chief minister of the Delhi regional government, a day after he was released from prison on bail in a graft case. Kejriwal was granted bail on Friday by India’s Supreme Court and left prison on Saturday almost six months after being detained in relation to alleged irregularities in the capital city’s liquor policy.
Kejriwal is a fierce critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a former anti-corruption crusader whose decade-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) quickly rose to mainstream politics, although its clout is relatively small compared to older opposition parties.
AAP had expected that Kejriwal’s release from prison would allow him to campaign as a chief minister in regional elections next month in the northern state of Haryana, and in Delhi early next year.
Kejriwal, announcing his resignation as chief minister at a meeting with AAP workers, said he would only return to the post if people certify his honesty by voting for him in the upcoming Delhi election. He called on the Election Commission to bring forward the Delhi election to November, from February 2025.
“I demand elections be held in November with Maharashtra elections, I demand the elections be held immediately,” Kejriwal said.
He was first taken into custody in March by India’s financial crime-fighting agency, weeks before the country’s national elections, in relation to Delhi’s liquor policy.
Although he was granted bail in that case in July, he remained in detention due to his arrest the previous month by the federal police in another graft case related to the same policy.
Kejriwal, 55, and AAP deny the allegations and say the cases are “politically motivated.”

Topics: India Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal

Related

India’s Modi campaigns in Kashmir polls after latest soldier deaths
World
India’s Modi campaigns in Kashmir polls after latest soldier deaths
Unemployed youth cling to Indian-administered Kashmir elections for hope
World
Unemployed youth cling to Indian-administered Kashmir elections for hope

Trump set to name Marco Rubio secretary of state: NYT

Trump set to name Marco Rubio secretary of state: NYT
Updated 42 min 20 sec ago
AFP
Follow

Trump set to name Marco Rubio secretary of state: NYT

Trump set to name Marco Rubio secretary of state: NYT
  • In 2016, when they were competing for the Republican presidential nomination, Rubio called Trump a “con artist” and the “most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency”
Updated 42 min 20 sec ago
AFP

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Florida Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state, The New York Times reported Monday night.
It quoted three people as saying that the decision is not final, but that Trump appears to have settled on Rubio, a loyalist whom Trump passed over as his vice presidential running mate.
Rubio has been consistently named over the last week as one of the frontrunners to head US diplomacy, along with the abrasive former ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell.
Asked if he was destined for a senior cabinet job, Rubio told CNN last week, “I always am interested in serving this country.”
The nomination of the hawkish congressman, who has Cuban heritage, would cap a remarkable turnaround in his relations with Trump.
In 2016, when they were competing for the Republican presidential nomination, Rubio called Trump a “con artist” and the “most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.”
Born to Cuban immigrants in Miami, he graduated with a political science degree from the University of Florida in 1993.
He was elected to the US Senate in 2010 with his campaign buoyed by the Tea Party, a far-right contingent of Republicans that coalesced in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election as president.
 

Topics: Donald Trump Marco Rubio

Related

Trump selects Mike Waltz as national security adviser, sources say
World
Trump selects Mike Waltz as national security adviser, sources say
US climate action won’t end with Trump, envoy tells COP29
World
US climate action won’t end with Trump, envoy tells COP29

Trump selects Mike Waltz as national security adviser, sources say

Trump selects Mike Waltz as national security adviser, sources say
Updated 12 November 2024
Reuters
Follow

Trump selects Mike Waltz as national security adviser, sources say

Trump selects Mike Waltz as national security adviser, sources say
Updated 12 November 2024
Reuters

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump has picked Republican Representative Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday, tapping a retired Army Green Beret who has been a leading critic of China.
Waltz, a Trump loyalist who also served in the National Guard as a colonel, has criticized Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and has voiced the need for the United States to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.
The national security adviser is a powerful role, which does not require Senate confirmation. Waltz will be responsible for briefing Trump on key national security issues and coordinating with different agencies.
While slamming the Biden administration for a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Waltz has publicly praised Trump’s foreign policy views.
“Disruptors are often not nice ... frankly our national security establishment and certainly a lot of people that are dug into bad old habits in the Pentagon need that disruption,” Waltz said during an event earlier this year.
“Donald Trump is that disruptor,” he said.
Waltz has a long history in Washington’s political circles.
He was a defense policy director for defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates and was elected to Congress in 2018. He is the chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee overseeing military logistics and also on the select committee on intelligence.
Waltz is also on the Republican’s China Task Force and has argued the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be if there is conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.
In a book published earlier this year titled “Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret,” Waltz laid out a five part strategy to preventing war with China, including arming Taiwan faster, re-assuring allies in the Pacific, and modernizing planes and ships.
On Ukraine, Waltz has said his views have evolved. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he called for the Biden administration to provide more weapons to Kyiv to help them push back Russian forces.
But during an event last month, Waltz said there had to be a reassessment of the United States’ aims in Ukraine.
“Is it in America’s interest, are we going to put in the time, the treasure, the resources that we need in the Pacific right now badly?” Waltz asked.
Waltz has praised Trump for pushing NATO allies to spend more on defense, but unlike the president-elect has not suggested the United States pull out of the alliance.
“Look we can be allies and friends and have tough conversations,” Waltz said last month.

UN Security Council considers action on Sudan war

UN Security Council considers action on Sudan war
Updated 12 November 2024
Reuters
Follow

UN Security Council considers action on Sudan war

UN Security Council considers action on Sudan war
  • The UN says nearly 25 million people — half of Sudan’s population — need aid as famine has taken hold in displacement camps and 11 million people have fled their homes
Updated 12 November 2024
Reuters

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations Security Council is discussing a British-drafted resolution that demands Sudan’s warring parties cease hostilities and calls on them to allow safe, rapid and unhindered deliveries of aid across front lines and borders. War erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule, and triggered the world’s largest displacement crisis. It has produced waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on the RSF. The RSF has denied harming civilians in Sudan and attributed the activity to rogue actors. In the first UN sanctions imposed during the current conflict, a Security Council committee designated two RSF generals last week.
“Nineteen months in to the war, both sides are committing egregious human rights violations, including the widespread rape of women and girls,” Britain’s UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, told reporters at the start of this month as Britain assumed the Security Council’s presidency for November.
“More than half the Sudanese population are experiencing severe food insecurity,” she said. “Despite this, the SAF and the RSF remain focussed on fighting each other and not the famine and suffering facing their country.”
Britain wanted to put the draft resolution to a vote as quickly as possible, diplomats said. To be adopted, a resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the US, France, Britain, Russia or China.

AID ACROSS BORDERS
The UN says nearly 25 million people — half of Sudan’s population — need aid as famine has taken hold in displacement camps and 11 million people have fled their homes. Nearly 3 million of those people have left for other countries.
Britain’s draft text “demands that the Rapid Support Forces immediately halt its offensives” throughout Sudan, “and demands that the warring parties immediately cease hostilities.”
It also “calls on the parties to the conflict to allow and facilitate the full, safe, rapid, and unhindered crossline and cross-border humanitarian access into and throughout Sudan.” The draft also calls for the Adre border crossing with Chad to remain open for aid deliveries “and stresses the need to sustain humanitarian access through all border crossings, while humanitarian needs persist, and without impediments.”
A three-month approval given by Sudanese authorities for the UN and aid groups to use the Adre border crossing to reach Darfur is due to expire in mid-November. The Security Council has adopted two previous resolutions on Sudan: in March it called for an immediate cessation of hostilities for the holy month of Ramadan, then in June it specifically demanded a halt to a siege of a city of 1.8 million people in Sudan’s North Darfur region by the RSF.
Both resolutions — adopted with 14 votes in favor and a Russian abstention — also called for full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access.

Topics: Sudan war UN Security Council Rapid Support Forces Sudanese army

Related

Sudanese who fled the war in their country cool off on the banks of the Nile river in the Egyptian city of Aswan. (File/AFP)
Middle-East
Egypt hosts 1.2 million Sudanese, with ‘hundreds’ arriving daily: UN
UN sanctions two generals from Sudan’s paramilitary force
Middle-East
UN sanctions two generals from Sudan’s paramilitary force

US climate action won’t end with Trump, envoy tells COP29

US climate action won’t end with Trump, envoy tells COP29
Updated 12 November 2024
AFP
Follow

US climate action won’t end with Trump, envoy tells COP29

US climate action won’t end with Trump, envoy tells COP29
Updated 12 November 2024
AFP

BAKU: Washington’s top climate envoy sought to reassure countries at the COP29 talks Monday that Donald Trump’s re-election would not end US efforts to tackle global warming.
Trump’s sweep of the presidential vote has cast a long shadow over the crunch talks in Baku, with the incoming US leader pledging to withdraw Washington from the landmark Paris climate agreement.
The vote has left the US delegation somewhat hamstrung and stoked fears other countries could be less ambitious in a fractious debate on increasing climate funding for developing nations.
US envoy John Podesta acknowledged the next US administration would “try and take a U-turn” on climate action, but said that US cities, states and individual citizens would pick up the slack.
“While the United States federal government under Donald Trump may put climate change action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief,” he said.
“The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country.”
The Baku talks opened earlier Monday with UN climate chief Simon Stiell urging countries to “show that global cooperation is not down for the count.”
Things got off to a rocky start, with feuds over the official agenda delaying by hours the start of formal proceedings in the stadium venue near the Caspian Sea.
But in the evening, governments approved new UN standards for a global carbon market in a key step toward allowing countries to trade credits to meet their climate targets.
COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev hailed a “breakthrough” after years of complex discussions but more work is needed before a long-sought UN-backed market can be fully realized.
The main agenda item at COP29 is increasing a $100 billion-a-year target to help developing nations prepare for worsening climate impacts and wean their economies off fossil fuels.
How much will be on offer, who will pay, and who can access the funds are some of the major points of contention.
Babayev acknowledged the need was “in the trillions” but said a more “realistic goal” was somewhere in the hundreds of billions.
“These negotiations are complex and difficult,” the former executive of Azerbaijan’s national oil company said at the opening of the summit.
Developing countries warn that without adequate finance, they will struggle to offer ambitious updates to their climate goals, which countries are required to submit by early next year.
“The global North owes the global South a climate debt,” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network.
“We will not leave this COP if the ambition level on the finance... doesn’t match the scale at which finance must be delivered.”
Stiell warned rich countries to “dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity.”
“An ambitious new climate finance goal is entirely in the self-interest of every nation, including the largest and wealthiest,” he said.
The small group of developed countries that currently contributes the money wants the donor pool expanded to include other rich nations and top emitters.
Just a handful of leaders from the Group of 20, whose countries account for nearly 80 percent of global emissions, are attending. US President Joe Biden is staying away.
Afghanistan is however present for the first time since the Taliban took power, as guests of the host Azerbaijan but not party to the talks.
The meeting comes after fresh warnings that the world is far off track to meet the goals of the Paris agreement.
The UN said Monday that 2024 is likely to break new temperature records, and the Paris climate agreement’s goals were now “in great peril.”
The period from 2015 to 2024 will also be the warmest decade ever recorded, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said in a new report.
The climate deal commits to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, preferably below 1.5C.
If the world tops that level this year, it would not be an immediate breach of the Paris deal, which measures temperatures over decades.
But it suggests much greater climate action is needed.
Last month, the UN warned the world is on a path toward a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century based on current actions.
More than 51,000 people are expected at COP29 talks, which run from November 11 to 22.

Topics: COP29 US

Related

Special Bangladesh seeks crucial funding for 50 million climate-vulnerable citizens at COP29
World
Bangladesh seeks crucial funding for 50 million climate-vulnerable citizens at COP29
Global leaders rally for urgent climate action as COP29 opens in Baku
Business & Economy
Global leaders rally for urgent climate action as COP29 opens in Baku

New Haiti PM sworn in, promising to ‘restore security’

New Haiti PM sworn in, promising to ‘restore security’
Updated 12 November 2024
AFP
Follow

New Haiti PM sworn in, promising to ‘restore security’

New Haiti PM sworn in, promising to ‘restore security’
Updated 12 November 2024
AFP

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aime was sworn in as Haiti’s new prime minister on Monday, promising to restore security in the crisis-wracked country after his predecessor was ousted after just five months in office.
Fils-Aime replaces Garry Conille, who was appointed in late May, but has spent recent weeks locked in a power struggle with the country’s transitional council over ministerial appointments.
“We have a transition with lots of work to do: the first essential job, which is a condition for success, is restoring security,” he said in French.
He said he was aware of Haiti’s “difficult circumstances” but promised to put “all of my energy, my skills and my patriotism at the service of the national cause.”
The unelected prime minister and the nine-member transitional council are faced with rampant gang violence and tasked with preparing the path for presidential elections next year.
Outgoing premier Conille has questioned the authority of the council to sack him, and the row looks set to deepen a political crisis in Haiti, whose presidency has remained vacant since the assassination of Jovenel Moise in 2021.
There is no sitting parliament, either, and the last elections were held in 2016.
The Caribbean nation has long been saddled with political instability, grinding poverty, natural disasters and gang violence. But conditions sharply worsened at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince, saying they wanted to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
Unelected and unpopular, Henry stepped down amid the turmoil, handing power to the transitional council, which has US and regional backing.
Despite the arrival of a Kenyan-led police support mission, violence has continued to soar.
A recent United Nations report said more than 1,200 people were killed from July through September, with persistent kidnappings and sexual violence against women and girls.
Low-cost American carrier Spirit Airlines said one of its flights was hit by gunfire while trying to land at Port-au-Prince on Monday and had to be diverted to the Dominican Republic.
One flight attendant suffered minor injuries and was being evaluated by medical staff, the airline said in a statement. No passengers were injured.
Responding to the latest political instability, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged all sides in Haiti to “work constructively” together to ensure the integrity of the transition process, his spokesman said Monday.
“It’s not for the Secretary General to choose who will be the prime minister of Haiti,” said spokesman Stephane Dujarric. “What is important is that Haitian political leaders put the interests of Haiti first and foremost.”
Gangs in recent years have taken over about 80 percent of the capital Port-au-Prince as any semblance of governance evaporated.
The UN report said the gangs were digging trenches, using drones and stockpiling weapons as they change tactics to confront the Kenyan-led police force.
Gang leaders have strengthened defenses for the zones they control and placed gas cylinders and Molotov cocktail bombs ready to use against police operations.
More than 700,000 people — half of them children — have fled their homes because of the gang violence, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Topics: Haiti

Related

Violence still rising in Haiti despite support mission: UN
World
Violence still rising in Haiti despite support mission: UN
Haiti gangs are recruiting more child soldiers, human rights report says
World
Haiti gangs are recruiting more child soldiers, human rights report says

Latest updates

Trump set to name Marco Rubio secretary of state: NYT
Trump set to name Marco Rubio secretary of state: NYT
Trump selects Mike Waltz as national security adviser, sources say
Trump selects Mike Waltz as national security adviser, sources say
UN Security Council considers action on Sudan war
UN Security Council considers action on Sudan war
US climate action won’t end with Trump, envoy tells COP29
US climate action won’t end with Trump, envoy tells COP29
Turkiye mulls unifying telecom fiber infrastructure in one entity, official says
For years Ankara has demanded that telecom operators invest more to accelerate fiber network expansion. (REUTERS)

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2024 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.