The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York fined the former US president $10,000 on Wednesday for violating an order not to criticize court staff.

Judge Arthur Engoron imposed the fine — Trump’s second — after determining that comments he made to reporters during a break in the trial violated a partial gag order issued three weeks ago.

Engoron slapped a limited gag order on Trump on October 3 after he insulted the judge’s principal law clerk in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The offending post was deleted from Truth Social but the judge fined Trump $5,000 last week for not promptly removing it from his 2024 presidential campaign website.

The latest fine came after Trump said Engoron is a “very partisan judge with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

Trump’s attorneys said the former president was referring to witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer turned bitter foe, and not to the judge’s clerk who sits near him in court.

The judge briefly called Trump to the witness stand to explain himself and the former president repeated that he was referring to Cohen.

After Trump spoke, the judge said “the defendant was not credible” and imposed the fine.

Trump abruptly left the courtroom shortly afterward.

The frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Trump and his two eldest sons are accused of inflating the value of the real estate assets of the Trump Organization to receive more favorable bank loans and insurance terms.

The former president has repeatedly attacked Engoron, calling him a “Trump-hating judge,” but the October 3 gag order only ordered a halt to attacks on court staff.

The federal judge set to preside over Trump’s March trial for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election also imposed a partial gag order on the former president but temporarily lifted it to give Trump’s legal team time to submit their objections.

Six people, including two women, have been arrested for allegedly raising pro-Pakistan slogans during a ‘jagran’, a programme dedicated to Goddess Durga, at a village in this district, police said on Wednesday.

A 15-year-old girl has also been detained in the incident which took place on Monday in Chauri village under the Parshurampur police station area, they said.

According to a complaint lodged by village head Ashish, the ‘jagran’ was being held on Monday evening when the girl came on the stage where idols of gods and goddesses were kept and started raising anti-India slogans.

“At around 11 pm, under a planned way, the girl (daughter of Suggan Ali) climbed the stage, threw a black cloth towards the idols, and started chanting slogans ‘Islam zindabad’, ‘Pakistan zindabad’ and ‘Hindustan murdabad’. Her sister Sahiba and three brothers supported her. Her father Suggan Ali, mother Sahabuddin Nisha, along with Mohd Shami and Mohd Zakir Ali, also supported her,” Ashish alleged in his complaint.

He further said that this act hurt the sentiments of the people who had gathered for the ‘jagran’ event. “When they were asked not to indulge in such acts, they threatened the Hindu community of dire consequences and also of riot,” the village head said.

Based on the complaint, police registered a case on Tuesday against the girl, her sister Sahiba (18), three brothers including Arman (19), parents Suggan Ali (48) and Sahabuddin Nisha (42), and Mohd Shami (55) and Mohd Zakir Ali (50) under sections 153B (imputation, assertions prejudicial to national-integration) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC, Basti Additional Superintendent of Police Deependra Nath Chaudhary said.

Police have detained the girl, while her two minor brothers aged 10 and 8 years were let off, he said, adding her parents, one sister, one brother and two others have been arrested.

Mr Chaudhary said that the CCTV footage of the programme is being examined, and a police team has been formed to probe the incident.

He added that a PAC unit has been deployed in the village.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that he would “have to give answers” for security lapses exposed in the deadly October 7 attacks by Hamas.

“We will examine in detail, we will get to the bottom of it,” said Netanyahu, who has faced a barrage of opposition and media criticism after Gaza militants breached Israeli border defences.

“The fault will be examined and everyone will have to give answers, including me. But all this will happen later,” the right-wing leader said in a televised address as the Israeli military prepares for a widely expected invasion of the Gaza Strip.

“As prime minister I am responsible for securing the future of the country,” he added.

Israel says 1,400 people, most of whom were civilians, died in the attacks.

Gaza’s Hamas government says that Israeli air and artillery bombing since October 7 have left more than 6,500 dead, including some 2,700 children.

With tens of thousands of Israeli troops massed at the Gaza border, Netanyahu said “we are raining down hellfire” with the air strikes and that “all Hamas terrorists are dead men walking — above ground, below ground, outside Gaza”.

“We are preparing the ground offensive,” Netanyahu said.

“I cannot say when, how or how many, nor all the elements that we are taking into account, of which most are not known to the public,” he added.

Netanyahu said Israel’s war cabinet, named after October 7, would “unanimously” decide the time of the offensive.

Israel has an army of about 165,000 and has called up 360,000 reservists, some on the Gaza border and others moved to the border with Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement has been staging daily artillery attacks.