Karnataka minister wants Siddaramaiah to extend free electricity scheme to temples

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India Today | India 

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.

President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday that Israel’s conflict with Hamas could spread well beyond the Middle East and said it was wrong that innocent women, children and old people in Gaza were being punished for other people’s crimes.

Putin, who made the comments in a Kremlin meeting with Russian religious leaders of different faiths, said bloodshed in the region had to stop. He said he told other world leaders in phone calls that if it did not, there was a risk of a much wider conflagration.

“Our task today, our main task, is to stop the bloodshed and violence,” said Putin, according to a Kremlin transcript of the meeting.

“Otherwise, further escalation of the crisis is fraught with grave and extremely dangerous and destructive consequences. And not only for the Middle East region. It could spill over far beyond the borders of the Middle East.”

In remarks that criticised the West, he said that certain unnamed forces were seeking to provoke further escalation and to draw as many other countries and peoples into the conflict as possible.

The aim, he said, was to “launch a real wave of chaos and mutual hatred not only in the Middle East but also far beyond its borders. For this purpose, among other things, they are trying to play on the national and religious feelings of millions of people.”

Putin conveyed his condolences to the families of Israelis and citizens of other countries who were killed or wounded by Hamas in its bloody Oct. 7 attack.

Moscow, he said, continued to advocate for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli issue, something he said was the only way to reach a long-term settlement.

He made it clear though that he thought Israel was wrong to keep bombing Gaza in retaliation for the slaughter and hostage-taking of Israeli citizens by Hamas.

“It is also clear to us that innocent people should not be held responsible for crimes committed by others,” said Putin.

“The fight against terrorism cannot be conducted according to the notorious principle of collective responsibility when old people, women, children, entire families and hundreds of thousands of people are left without shelter, food, water, electricity and medical care,” Putin further said.