Foreign News
Search of BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai ends after three days
The search of BBC offices in India by tax officials has ended after three days.
The authorities entered the offices in New Delhi and Mumbai on Tuesday, with staff facing lengthy questioning or told to stay at the office overnight.
The BBC said: “We will continue to co-operate with the authorities and hope matters are resolved as soon as possible.”
It said it “will continue to report without fear or favour”.
The investigation comes weeks after the BBC aired a documentary in the UK critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BBC statement continued: “We are supporting staff – some of whom have faced lengthy questioning or been required to stay overnight – and their welfare is our priority.”Our output is back to normal and we remain committed to serving our audiences in India and beyond.
“The BBC is a trusted, independent media organisation and we stand by our colleagues and journalists who will continue to report without fear or favour.”
The BBC’s documentary, India: The Modi Question, was broadcast on television only in the UK, but India’s government has attempted to block people sharing it, describing it as “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage” with a “colonial mindset”.The documentary focused on the prime minister’s role in anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, when he was chief minister of the state.
The BBC said last month the Indian government was offered a right to reply to the documentary, but it declined.
The Editors Guild of India – a non-profit group which promotes press freedom – said earlier this week it was “deeply concerned” about the searches.It said they were a “continuation of a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass press organisations that are critical of government policies or the ruling establishment”.
The US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a Maryland man, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s notorious mega-jail.
The Trump administration had conceded that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported by accident, but appealed against a federal court’s order to return him to the US.
On Thursday, in a 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court declined to block the lower court’s order.
The judge’s order “requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent”, the justices ruled.
(BBC)
A Russian-American citizen has been released in a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.
Amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina, a Los Angeles resident, had been in prison in Russia for over a year, after being arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg in early 2024.
She was found guilty of treason for donating money to a US-based charity providing humanitarian support to Ukraine and was sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony.
In exchange, the US reportedly freed Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023. He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the Russian military.
[BBC]
A nationwide general strike disrupted public services across Greece, with ferries tied up in port, flights grounded and public transport running only part-time as labour unions press for higher wages to cope with rising living costs.
The 24-hour strike on Wednesday was called by the two main umbrella unions covering the public and private sectors, seeking a full return of collective bargaining rights which were scrapped as part of international bailouts during Greece’s financial crisis.
Greece has emerged from a 2009-18 debt crisis, which saw rolling cuts in wages and pensions in turn for bailouts worth about 290 billion euros ($319bn) and economic growth seen at 2.3 percent this year, outpacing other eurozone economies.
Tapping on the country’s progress, the conservative government increased the monthly minimum wage by a cumulative 35 percent to 880 euros ($970). But many households still struggle to make ends meet amid rising food, power and housing costs, the labour unions say.
The country braces for further global financial turmoil triggered by US tariffs.
[Aljazeera]
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