Foreign News
US thwarts plot to kill Sikh separatist on American soil – report
The US has raised an alleged plot to kill a Sikh separatist on American soil at the “senior-most” levels with India, the White House says.
According to the Financial Times, the target was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US-Canada dual national. Pannun is a vocal advocate for an independent Sikh homeland and has been designated a terrorist by India.
The report comes weeks after Canada said India may have been behind the murder of another Sikh separatist.
The Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources, that US authorities thwarted a conspiracy to kill Mr Pannun and have issued a warning to India over concerns it was involved in the plot.
The White House said Indian officials “expressed surprise and concern” when approached by the US about the allegations. “They stated that activity of this nature was not in their policy,” spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. “We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days.”
Ms Watson added that the US has “conveyed our expectations that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable”.
It is unclear whether the US protest to India resulted in the operation being called off, or whether it was disrupted by US authorities, the Financial Times reported.
Mr Pannun is the general counsel for Sikhs for Justice, an organisation based in the US that supports the broader Khalistan movement, which calls for an independent homeland for Sikhs in India.
In a statement to the BBC, Mr Pannun called the “foiled attempt” on his life “transnational terrorism which is a threat to the US sovereignty”. “I will let the U.S. government respond to this threat,” he said.
The Khalistan movement was at its peak in the 1980s in the Indian state of Punjab but it has lost steam over time. Politics in modern Punjab has shifted away from the movement and it is no longer a majority position.
But supporters in the Sikh diaspora have continued to advocate for a separate state, with calls for independence intensifying in recent years.
On Wednesday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said that the US had “shared some inputs pertaining to the nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others”. “India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well,” spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a statement.
The statement made no mention of Pannun.
The Sikhs for Justice group was labelled an “unlawful association” by Indian authorities in 2019, and Pannun was listed as an “individual terrorist” the following year.
Pannun most recently angered Indian officials with a video warning Sikhs not to fly on Air India on a day earlier this month because it could be “life threatening”.
India’s National Investigation Agency filed a case against him for those remarks this week. Pannun has since said that he was referring to a boycott of the airline and not making a threat.
US officials reportedly shared details of the alleged plot to kill Pannun with some of its allies after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September the country was investigating “credible allegations” that Indian agents may have been involved in the death of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
The 45-year-old was shot and killed by two gunmen outside a Sikh temple in a Vancouver suburb on a June summer evening this year.
India has repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder. Canadian authorities are still investigating his death.
Relations between Canada and India deteriorated sharply after Mr Trudeau’s allegation, with both countries expelling envoys in a tit-for-tat diplomatic row.
Canada has not publicly shared the evidence or intelligence that led it to believe India was involved.
(BBC)
Vampire horror film Sinners has broken the record for the most Oscar nominations received by a single film, after being nominated for 16 of Hollywood’s most coveted honours.
The film beat the previous record of 14 nominations, and emerged ahead of its nearest rival this year, Leonardo DiCaprio’s thriller One Battle After Another, which is up for 13 awards.
Sinners’ contenders include its star Michael B Jordan and his British co-stars Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo.
Other big names up for trophies include Timothée Chalamet, who is hoping for third time lucky after two previous nominations, and Irish actress Jessie Buckley, who is the frontrunner to win best actress for Hamnet.
However, there was no space for her co-star Paul Mescal, who starred opposite Buckley as William Shakespeare in Hamnet; while Wicked: For Good and its stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande missed out completely.
The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Hollywood on 15 March.
The leading films:
- Sinners – 16
- One Battle After Another – 13
- Marty Supreme – 9
- Frankenstein – 9
- Sentimental Value – 9
- Hamnet – 8
[BBC]
Two people have died and several are feared buried after landslides in New Zealand’s North Island.
The deaths were reported at Welcome Bay, while rescue workers are still searching through rubble at a different site in a popular campground on Mount Maunganui.
There are no “signs of life”, authorities said, adding that they have a “rough idea” of how many people are missing but are waiting for an exact figure. They provided no other details except that the group includes “at least one young girl”.
The landslides were triggered by heavy rains over the last few days, which led to flooding and power outages across the North Island. One minister said the east coast resembled “a war zone”.
New Zealand is “heavy with grief” after the “profound tragedy” caused by recent weather, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on X.
Footage from the campsite on Mount Maunganui, an extinct volcano, shows a huge slip near the base of the volcanic dome, as rescuers and sniffer dogs comb through crushed caravans and flattened tents.
Authorities said that the search would continue through the night. “This is a complex and high-risk environment, and our teams are working to achieve the best possible outcome while keeping everyone safe,” said Megan Stiffler, the deputy national commander for the Urban Search and Rescue team,
The extinct volcano is a sacred Māori site and one of the most popular campgrounds in New Zealand, with a local holiday website describing it as a “slice of paradise”. But it has been repeatedly hit by landslides in recent years.
“I heard this huge tree crack and all this dirt come off, and then I looked behind me and there’s this huge landslide coming down,” Australian tourist Sonny Worrall told local broadcaster TVNZ.
“I’m still shaking from it now… I turned around and had to jump out of my seat and just run,”he added. He saw it happen while swimming in a hot pool.
Hiker Mark Tangney told the New Zealand Herald he heard people screaming from under the rubble. “So I just parked up and ran to help… We could hear people screaming: ‘Help us, help us, get us out of here’,” he said.
Those calls persisted for about half an hour and then went silent, Tangney said.
A surf club in another part of Mount Maunganui has been evacuated following fears of more landslides.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Bay of Plenty where Mount Maunganui sits, and various parts of the North Island, including Northland, Coromandel, Tairāwhiti and Hauraki.
Several areas reported their wettest days on record on Thursday. Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, for example, received three months worth of rain within a day, according to local media.
Some 8,000 people were without power as of Thursday morning, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported.
The wife of a man who was swept away in the Mahurangi River is holding out hope that he will survive.
“I know his personality is strong, wise,” she told RNZ, adding that he was a fisherman back home in Kiribati and knew how to swim and dive.
The man, 47, was driving to work with their nephew when the car they were in fell into the river.
He had pushed the nephew towards a branch so the nephew could hoist himself onto land; but the older man did not manage get back up himself, according to the report.
“It’s been a very big event for us as a country, really hitting almost our entire eastern seaboard of the North Island,” said Minister for Emergency Management Mark Mitchell.
“The good news is that everyone responded really quickly, and there was time to get prepared. That helps to mitigate and create a very strong response,” he told RNZ.
December to February are typically the sunnier months in New Zealand but in recent years heavy rains and storms have become more frequent.
In February 2023, parts of the island were devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle, which is to date the costliest cyclone to hit the Southern Hemisphere, with damage amounting to NZ$13.5bn ($7.9bn; £5.9bn).
This week’s flooding has added to the toll for the local communities that are still rebuilding.
[BBC]
Usha Vance, the wife of Vice-President JD Vance, has announced she is pregnant with her fourth child.
In a post on X, the second lady said she is looking forward to welcoming a boy in late July.
“Usha and the baby are doing well,” a statement posted on Tuesday to the second lady’s social media account read.
Vance and his wife, Usha, 40, have three young children: Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.
Usha Vance (née Chilukuri) was born and raised in the working-class suburbs of San Diego, California, to a mechanical engineer father and a molecular biologist mother who had moved to the US from Andhra Pradesh, India.
She met JD Vance as a student at Yale Law School in 2010, when they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America”.
Before becoming second lady, Usha Vance had a legal career, including a job as a corporate litigator at firm Munger, Tolles & Olson in San Francisco. She also worked for conservative judges, Chief Justice John Roberts on the Supreme Court and appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh, before he was appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court.
Usha Vance is the first to have a baby as second lady, though other first ladies have had children while their husbands were in office.
First lady Frances Cleveland, wife of President Grover Cleveland, gave birth to daughter Esther in the White House in 1893, followed by a second child, Marion, who was born outside the White House.
JD Vance has been one of the most vocal members of the Trump administration in calling for higher birth rates in the US.
“Let me say very simply: I want more babies in the United States of America,” he said in 2025.
(BBC)
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