United States reiterated its objection to New Delhi continuing business as usual with Russia

HT Daily News Wrap

United States reiterated its objection to New Delhi continuing business as usual with Russia, Officials in Mumbai announced that they detected a Covid-19 case caused by the Omicron variant’s lineage XE,CBI court on Wednesday remanded former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh to CBI custody till April 11 and other top news in today's bulletin.
The United States reiterated its objection to New Delhi continuing business as usual with Russia and said that it has clearly conveyed to India that the US does not think India should accelerate imports of Russian energy and other commodities even as they are only importing about 1-2% of their oil. The US stands ready to support India in its any efforts to diversify its imports, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. On the question of whether not having a confirmed ambassador in New Delhi is coming in the way of persuading India to not engage with Russia, Jen Psaki said sending deputy national security advisor Daleep Singh to India was an example of the various channels the United States has to engage. But US’s preference would be to have a confirmed ambassador on the ground. “It’s an incredibly important diplomatic position. We also engage with countries through a range of channels. And obviously, our deputy National Security Advisor was just in India recently in the last few weeks, conveying clearly what the consequences of violating sanctions would be and what the mechanisms are,” Jen Psaki said. Officials in Mumbai announced on Wednesday that they detected a Covid-19 case caused by the Omicron variant’s lineage XE a month ago. The announcement appeared to trigger some concern, although the timing of the discovery and clinical features of the particular case and studies in other countries show that there is little of note about the XE variant as of now. The confirmed Indian infection was in a 50-year-old woman who was asymptomatic and tested positive on March 2, before testing negative a day later. Union health ministry officials separately told HT that the variant sequenced in Mumbai is not XE and may have been misclassified. Whether or not the variant found is indeed XE, there are now several viruses that are a further mutation of the Omicron variant, which swept through most of the world over the last winter. The XE appears to be the result of a recombination of the BA.1 and BA.2, the first two Omicron variant lineages that spread widely. Such recombinations are common. The US and UK on Wednesday announced new sanctions targeting a combination of Russian institutions and elites in retaliation for “war crimes” in Ukraine. The measures come in the wake of what a senior US administration official on Wednesday called the “sickening brutality of Bucha” reflecting the “despicable nature of the Putin regime”, referring to the recent evidence of atrocities emerging in the wake of the retreat by Russian forces from the Ukrainian town. The European Union, separately, was considering a ban on coal imports from Russia in a bid to reduce its energy dependence and cut off a source of revenue for Moscow. The US on Wednesday imposed full blocking sanctions on Russia’s largest financial institution, Sberbank, which holds one-third of Russian banking assets, and the country’s largest private bank, Alfa Bank. Additionally, by prohibiting any investment from any Americans in Russia, the US also aimed to make the exit of over 600 private sector multinational companies from Russia in the wake of the war a more enduring phenomena. In addition to sanctions aimed at Putin’s adult daughters, Mariya Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, the US targeted Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin; the wife and children of Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov; and members of Russia’s Security Council, including Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister. Reacting to a video statement released by Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri on the hijab row praising Karnataka college student Muskan Khan, her father on Wednesday said the comments of the terror group leader were “wrong”, and he and his family are living peacefully in India. Mohammad Hussain Khan also said the police and Karnataka government can initiate any inquiry to ascertain the truth. “We don’t know anything about it (video), we don’t know who he is. I saw him today for the first time. He has said something in Arabic…..We are all living here with love and trust like brothers,” news agency PTI quoted Khan as saying. When asked about Zawahiri praising Muskan, Khan replied, “People say whatever they want….this is unnecessarily causing trouble. We are living peacefully in our country, we don’t want him to talk about us, as he is not related to us… it is wrong, it is an attempt to create division among us.” A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Wednesday remanded former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh to CBI custody till April 11 in connection with the corruption case registered against the 73-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader. The court also permitted the central agency to take Deshmukh to Delhi, subject to the opinion of an orthopedic surgeon.A CBI team took Deshmukh in custody from Arthur Road jail about 11 am on Wednesday after he underwent a medical examination and produced him before the court, where special public prosecutor Raj Mohan Chand sought 10-day custody of the former minister. Chand said Deshmukh’s custody was required as he was to be confronted with three others arrested in the case — the former minister’s personal secretary Sanjeev Palande, personal assistant Kundan Shinde and dismissed Mumbai police officer Sachin Waze — the alleged mastermind behind the Antilia explosives scare and the connected murder of Thane-based businessman Mansukh Hiran.