Two women, one of them carrying a baby in her arms, were on Tuesday beaten up in Dombivli in the district for allegedly saying “excuse me” instead of speaking in Marathi.

An Indian national allegedly urinated on a fellow passenger in a Delhi-Bangkok Air India flight today, sources said.

While Air India in a statement confirmed an incident of unruly passenger behaviour, it did not mention the nature of the incident.

The passenger on board flight AI 2336 was drunk and urinated on the managing director of a company, sources said.

The matter has been reported to the authorities, and Air India offered to help the “aggrieved passenger” in Bangkok, sources said, adding action may be taken against the unruly passenger.

The “aggrieved passenger” declined Air India’s offer to provide help in taking up the matter with the authorities after landing in Bangkok, the airline said in the statement.

Taking note of the incident, Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu told news agency ANI officials will speak to the airline.

“Whenever these kinds of incidents happen, the ministry takes note of them. They will speak to the airline, and if there is any wrongdoing, then we will take necessary action,” Mr Kinjarapu said.

Air India in the statement said the crew followed all laid down procedures.

“… In addition to warning the unruly passenger, our crew offered to assist an aggrieved passenger to take up a grievance with authorities in Bangkok, which was declined at the time. The standing independent committee will be convened to assess the incident and determine the action, if any, to be taken against the unruly passenger. Air India continues to follow the SOPs as laid out by DGCA in such matters,” the airline said, referring to standard operating procedure and the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

Multiple incidents of passengers urinating on co-flyers allegedly after consuming liquor have been reported in the last two years.

An Indian student at a US university, Arya Vohra, was banned by American Airlines after he allegedly urinated on a co-passenger in March 2023.

In November 2024, a drunk man allegedly urinated on an elderly woman in the business class of an Air India flight.

China’s finance ministry has announced to impose 84 per cent tariffs on all US goods starting Thursday, up from the 34 per cent announced previously. The ministry said these new charges will get into effect from 12:01 CST (04:00 BST) on 10th April.

The move comes after US President Donald Trump imposed 104 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods.

China had accused the US of ‘arrogant and bullying behaviour’ after Trump’s 104 per cent tariffs took effect.

Last Friday, China announced a 34 per cent tariff on all goods imported from the US, export controls on rare earths minerals apart from other measures in response to Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. After that Trump added a 50 per cent tariff on China, saying negotiations with them were terminated.

The US used to tariff China at 10 per cent till last month, which President Trump said, “robbed and ripped off” the US economy of billions and billions of dollars as “tariff abuser” Beijing levied a far higher tariff on US goods. Last week the US President announced his “reciprocal tariff” move – wherein the US would charge other countries roughly half the tariff that nation charged the US. For China this was an additional 34 per cent, taking Beijing’s tally to 44 per cent.

Minutes after President Trump’s reciprocal tariff announcement on April 2, the White House told reporters that due to a “national emergency” which has stemmed from security concerns due to persistent trade deficits, the US is imposing a “baseline” 10 per cent tariff on all countries. China’s basket of tariffs now stood at 54 per cent.

Now, with today’s “additional 50 per cent tariff” solely for China, Beijing now faces an unprecedented levy of 104 per cent – a near 100 per cent rise in less than a week.

President Trump however, still left the door ajar for Beijing to reconcile. In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, he wrote, “China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started. We are waiting for their call.”

However, China’s move to further take up the tariff from 34 per cent to 84 per cent, comes from a place of “fight to the end” against Trump’s tariffs.

The Chinese government had declined to mention if they would negotiate with the US government, like other countries are doing.

This back and forth and repeated escalation of tariffs between the world’s two biggest economies threatens to bring the trade between them to a standstill.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on Wednesday that, “I can tell you that this escalation is a loser for them.”

Per the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. exported $143.5 billion of goods to China in 2024, while importing $438.9 billion of goods.

Global markets slumped on Wednesday after Trump imposed his latest round of tariffs, which he said are aimed at countries that are “ripping off” the United States.

The tariffs have already hit dozens of economies, becoming the biggest disruption for global trade since the 1930s.

Bessent has responded to China’s additional tariffs on US goods and told Fox Business Network, “I think it’s unfortunate that the Chinese actually don’t want to come and negotiate, because they are the worst offenders in the international trading system.” When asked if Chinese stocks could be thrown off of US exchanges, he said everything is on the table.

As of now, the US stock market has taken another hit after the additional tariffs announced by China, with e-minis – small-sized stock index futures – were down more than 1 percent across major US indexes, including the Dow, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, as reported by Al Jazeera.