Author: India BBC News Correspondent

Melania Trump issued a statement on Monday pushing back sharply against claims — published in a new book — that she is herself a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, specifically that she was trafficked or coerced into her relationship with Donald Trump through Epstein’s network. “I am not Jeffrey Epstein’s victim. I am not anyone’s victim,” the statement read. “These claims are false, defamatory, and designed to demean me by those who are threatened by the work I do.” The Claims She’s Responding To The book in question, written by a journalist who has covered the Epstein case extensively, includes sourced…

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz for the second time in six weeks on Wednesday — a decision that sent oil prices up by more than twelve percent in early trading and that has made Lebanon, of all places, a central point of contention in the ceasefire negotiations. The connection between Hormuz and Lebanon is less obvious than it might seem, but it runs through the same question that has dominated the US-Iran ceasefire talks: what does Iran get in exchange for reducing its regional activity? And Lebanon — specifically, Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon — is the bargaining…

The question of whether the FIFA World Cup 2026 will be broadcast in India — specifically whether audiences can watch it on free-to-air or affordable cable rather than only on expensive streaming platforms — has become a live issue following the announcement of broadcasting rights arrangements that multiple consumer advocacy groups have called exclusionary. FIFA’s broadcasting rights for India were acquired by a streaming platform in an arrangement that, as currently constituted, would make live matches available only behind a subscription paywall. For a country where hundreds of millions of football fans follow international matches on television, that’s a significant…

Review of the Mercedes-Benz G450d AMG Line: The G-Class, now with diesel, makes sense for India. There aren’t many cars in the world that fit into more than one category. One of these is the Mercedes-Benz G-Class. It’s more than just an SUV. It’s more than just a fancy car. It shows that you’re there, that you’re important, and that the design has stayed almost the same for more than 40 years. And now, with the new-generation G450d AMG Line, Mercedes-Benz has done something very cool for India. It has added a diesel engine to the modern G-Class lineup, which…

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi has declined to testify before the congressional committee examining the Epstein files, invoking executive privilege in a manner that the committee’s Democratic members have described as “unprecedented for a former official in a post-departure context.” The committee is examining what DOJ and the FBI knew about Epstein’s network, when they knew it, and what decisions were made about prosecution and about the protection or disclosure of information about his associates. Bondi served as Florida’s Attorney General during the period when the 2008 non-prosecution agreement was negotiated, before her subsequent federal roles. The Privilege Claim The…

Nigeria has commenced mass trial proceedings for approximately 500 individuals accused of terrorism-related offences — primarily membership in Boko Haram and its breakaway faction ISWAP — in a process that the Nigerian government describes as a landmark step toward accountability but that human rights organisations have raised significant concerns about. The trials are being conducted in a specially constituted court in Abuja. The scale is, by most measures, extraordinary: 500 simultaneous defendants, charges ranging from membership in a proscribed organisation to specific acts of violence, and a legal process that defence advocates say has not had adequate preparation time. Why…

Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon on Monday killed more than 100 people, according to Lebanese health ministry figures, in what officials described as the largest single-day casualty toll from Israeli operations since the current conflict phase began. The strikes targeted what the Israeli military said were Hezbollah weapons storage sites, command infrastructure, and financial network facilities. The scale of the strikes appears connected to a specific intelligence assessment — Israeli officials, speaking in background briefings, said the operations were responding to information about an imminent Hezbollah offensive planned for the following week. What Was Targeted The Israeli military’s target list, as…

Two weeks after the US-Iran ceasefire was announced, here is what is confirmed and what remains unclear about the agreement that paused what had been the most direct US-Iran military confrontation since the 1988 tanker war. What Is Confirmed Both governments have confirmed that a ceasefire is in place. Iranian state media and the White House both described the ceasefire as covering direct US-Iran military operations. The specific trigger for the ceasefire was a US communication, delivered through Oman, that specified conditions under which operations would pause. Iranian supreme leadership accepted those conditions through a response to the Omani intermediary.…

A video from a temple area in Mathura, circulating widely on social media, shows a group of men pressuring a minor girl and her family. The girl, identified in subsequent police reports as a 15-year-old, alleges that local strongmen — she used the Hindi term “gunde,” local toughs — had been threatening her family over a land dispute and had made threats that she found threatening to her personally. The video prompted immediate police action. A team from the local police station visited the family and registered a complaint. The UP Police Crime Branch has been asked to investigate the…

The Sensex added ₹17 lakh crore in market capitalisation across a single session — a figure that is approximately the annual GDP of Portugal — after the announcement of the US-Iran ceasefire removed the most acute risk premium that had been built into Indian equities over the previous three weeks. The session wasn’t just a recovery. Several indices closed at or near record highs. The relief across markets was visible in every asset class simultaneously: equities up, rupee strengthening, government bond yields easing, gold slightly lower as the safe-haven premium reversed. Why India’s Markets Were So Sensitive to Iran Risk…