Current Affairs

In an extraordinary order, the Supreme Court on Friday directed deployment of serving and former district judges to assist the Election Commission in the controversy-ridden special intensive revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal. Ruing the "unfortunate blame game" between the EC and the TMC-led government, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi passed a slew of fresh directions to ensure completion of the special intensive revision (SIR) process in the state. The bench ordered deputation of judicial officers for adjudication of claims and objections of persons put under logical discrepancy list.

What if the next war over Arunachal Pradesh is not fought on a mountain, but on a motherboard? The signs are on the wall. At the recently concluded India AI Summit, Lt. Gen. Dinesh Singh Rana, commander-in-chief, Strategic Forces Command, spoke of India using AI to anticipate and foil a Chinese incursion into the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Black comedy thriller. A student at University finds himself drawn into the world of a charming, aristocratic classmate. More

Mumbai, The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court on Friday raised concerns over a "disturbing pattern" in recent times, where matrimonial prosecutions are initiated by women against their spouse and family members as a "pressure tactic". A single bench of Justice Pravin Patil, while quashing an FIR filed by the Wardha police against a man, his parents and relatives based on the complaint of his estranged wife alleging cruelty and harassment, noted that the provisions of section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code are being misused nowadays and cases are registered over trivial issues. The court, in its order, said most matrimonial cases nowadays are initiated with oblique or collateral motives.

UK ex-prince leaves police station after arrest related to Epstein files The UK’s former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was filmed leaving a police station on Thursday night, following his arrest related to the Epstein files.

The United States and Iran are once again on the brink, with a calibrated military build‑up and fragile back‑channel diplomacy unfolding in parallel. In a wide‑ranging conversation on Hindustan Times’ Point Blank, Executive Editor Shishir Gupta and Senior Anchor Aayesha Varma unpack how close the region is to a potential strike, why this moment is uniquely dangerous, and where India fits into the rapidly shifting equation. US President Donald Trump has publicly declared that the world will know within 10 days whether Washington reaches a deal with Tehran or “takes things further” – a deliberately ambiguous formulation that keeps both diplomacy and force on the table.

Experts say there are already sufficient US military assets in the Middle East to begin an aerial bombing campaign against Iran, potentially in conjunction with Israel, though it is less clear what this would achieve. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and other warships in a strike group have been in the Arabian Sea for nearly a month, with nine squadrons of aircraft including F-35 Lightning IIs and F/A-18 Super Hornets. A second carrier strike group, led by the USS Gerald R Ford, was last confirmed to be in the Atlantic west of Morocco on Tuesday.

Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK. Find out how to listen to other BBC stations Who are the people shaping MAGA ideology in the US? Tucker Carlson’s story tells a larger one about just how much conservative media has changed in the United States, and the direction of conservatism itself.

United States President Donald Trump's announcement of releasing government files on “aliens” and unidentified flying objects (UFO) did not sit well with a Congressman of his own party, who sought to remind that even with this new release, the Epstein files “are not going away”. Thomas Massie, a Republican member of the House of Representatives, quoted the White House's post on X (formerly Twitter) about the alien files statement by Trump, and wrote: “They’ve deployed the ultimate weapon of mass distraction, but the Epstein files aren’t going away… even for aliens.” Thomas Massie is a Republican politician who represents Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, which stretches across Northern Kentucky and 280 miles of the Ohio River, in the US House of Representatives of the US Congress. Also read: Trump orders UFO, alien files released, faces backlash over Epstein documents; ‘distracting from mess’ He was elected to the Congress in November 2012 before which, he served as Lewis County Judge Executive.

Agreement across continent that Mountbatten-Windsor €™s detention has put monarchy in unprecedented danger Neither the shock nor the historical significance of the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was lost on the European press. And if there was one thing that correspondents and leader writers around the continent could agree on, it was that the former prince €™s detention had plunged the British monarchy into a place of unprecedented danger and vulnerability. €œDespite all the scandals that have shaken the British royal family over the decades, it €™s no exaggeration to say that the arrest of King Charles III €™s brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor represents a momentous watershed for the Windsor monarchy, € El País said in a leader on Friday.

Guardian review of US justice department files reveals Epstein interacted with six CBP officers. Plus, how anxiety over AI could fuel a new workers’ movement Federal investigators examined Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer who worked at the St Thomas airport to which the late convicted sex offender flew regularly by private plane before traveling by boat or helicopter to his private island, newly released documents reveal. As part of that investigation, which did not result in any charges, investigators also issued subpoenas related to three additional CBP officers working at the Cyril E King airport (STT) on St Thomas, documents show.

Canada on Wednesday revised immigration priority categories to bring skilled workers in a variety of fields, including certain military recruitments. The new categories mirror Prime Minister Mark Carney's aim of broadly reducing the number of permanent residents in Canada. A press release cited returning immigration "to sustainable levels" as the reason for the change in immigration categories.

Conservative United States podcaster Tucker Carlson has claimed Israeli authorities briefly took his passport and interrogated one of his crew members at the airport after the presenter conducted an interview with US ambassador Mike Huckabee, according to media reports. In The Daily Mail and The New York Post, published on Wednesday, Carlson said that shortly after the interview with the diplomat, Israeli officials confiscated his passport and took one of his colleagues off to an interrogation room. “Men who identified themselves as airport security took our passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room and then demanded to know what we spoke to Ambassador Huckabee about,” Carlson reportedly said.

Gloria Allred says allegations involving sharing of state trade secrets were prioritised over sexual assault claims against trade envoy A lawyer representing several victims of Jeffrey Epstein has said she does not believe there will be €œany real justice € for those trafficked and abused by him and his high-profile associates, despite the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Gloria Allred, who has worked as a women €™s rights lawyer for five decades, said that while the UK had acted quickly on the allegation that the former prince had shared confidential documents with the disgraced financier while he was a trade envoy, there appeared to be far less progress on sexual assault allegations against him. Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 €™s Today programme, she said: €œThe state has acted quickly to make this arrest but there still has not been any action on the part of the police on allegations that Andrew has committed crimes against women.

Police in Chhattisgarh Raipur arrested two men after one of them was seen torching their motorcycle at a petrol pump with a lighter he was using to light up a cigarette and was asked not to. The two men reportedly reached the Sangita Fuels petrol pump near Karma Chowk in the Urla area at around 7:40 pm on February 18 to refuel their two-wheeler. Police Commissionerate Raipur shared a CCTV footage of the incident along with the update of their arrest and wrote on X, “कानून के साथ खेल, तो जाओगे सीधा जेल [Whoever plays with law and order, will land in jail]”.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has reacted strongly to the shirtless protest by the workers of the Indian Youth Congress at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi on Friday. A group of Youth Congress workers on day 5 of the AI Summit entered the venue at Bharat Mandapam and were seen carrying or wearing T-shirts with slogans against the PM, India-US trade deal and Epstein files. Follow AI summit updates The BJP termed the incident as ‘national shame’ and said that the Congress party's ‘topless’ protest under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi is an act designed to embarrass India on the world stage.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, explained his jiu-jitsu martial arts analogy used in Parliament while criticising the India-US trade deal. The Congress leader, in a video on his social media handles on Friday, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is "trapped" in political "grips" and a "choke" that are not visible to the public. "A lot of people have asked me why I used a Jiu-Jitsu analogy in my Parliament speech.

City of Catania calls ruse to avoid CCTV cameras installed to stop fly-tipping ‘as cunning as it is doubly wrong’ A man in Catania, Sicily, trained his dog to dump bags of rubbish by the roadside in an attempt to evade cameras installed by local authorities to combat fly-tipping, municipal police have said. The episode was detailed in a Facebook post on the city of Catania’s official page. Accompanying a video of the dog was a remark from the police that “inventiveness can never become an alibi for incivility”.

A week after the Supreme Court nudged music composer AR Rahman to consider formally recognising the Dagarwani lineage behind the song Veera Raja Veera, Rahman on Friday agreed to acknowledge the rendition of the Junior Dagar Brothers in the credits of the track from the film Ponniyin Selvan II. Recording the concession, a bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi directed that the modified credit line be reflected across all social media and OTT platforms within five weeks. The additional credit will read: “Composition inspired by the Dagarwani tradition Dhrupad, first recorded as ‘Shiv Stuti’ by late Ustad Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar and Ustad Nasir Zahiruddin Dagar, popularly known as Junior Dagar Brothers.” The statement was made by senior counsel Abhishek Singhvi, on behalf of Rahman, without prejudice to the copyright infringement suit pending before the Delhi high court, filed by Dhrupad vocalist Faiyaz Wasifuddin Dagar, who is a successor of the Junior Dagar Brothers.

Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin €™s plans to invade, and why most of Europe €“ including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy €“ dismissed them. As the fourth anniversary of the invasion approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe €™s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022 William Burns had travelled halfway around the world to speak with Vladimir Putin, but in the end he had to make do with a phone call. It was November 2021, and US intelligence agencies had been picking up signals in the preceding weeks that Putin could be planning to invade Ukraine.