NEW DELHI: India’s ruling Hindu nationalist-led government said Tuesday it was still weighing whether to roll out a nationwide citizenship registry, an exercise it says would weed out illegal foreign nationals, amid ongoing protests against a citizenship law that fast-tracks naturalization for some religious minorities from three neighboring countries but not Muslims.
The official statement, made by lawmaker Nityanand Rai in a written reply to a question in Parliament, is a departure from comments made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s senior party leaders, including the home minister, Amit Shah.
The BJP’s manifesto for the 2019 national elections, which the party won in a landslide victory, also promised the citizenship registry in India.
Modi, however, recently backed away from the exercise after public pressure mounted with the passage of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. Millions of people have demonstrated in India’s major cities since the law was passed in December.
Opponents of the law say it is discriminatory because it excludes Muslims and unconstitutional because it links faith to citizenship in a secular country.
Critics fear the registry coupled with the new law could leave millions stateless, a fear that government officials have dismissed.
Nearly 2 million people, about half Hindu and half Muslim, were excluded from a similar registry Modi’s party implemented in the northeastern state of Assam last year. They have been asked to prove their citizenship in quasi-legal tribunals or else risk being declared foreign and stripped of rights including to cast a vote.
India is building a detention center for foreigners in Assam.
Modi has publicly denied that there are any detention centers in the country and has downplayed the protests, saying they are orchestrated by his opponents.
India: No plans yet for national citizenship registry
https://arab.news/cdqzj
India: No plans yet for national citizenship registry
- The BJP’s manifesto for the 2019 national elections promised a citizenship registry in India
- Critics fear the registry coupled with the new law could leave millions stateless
Trump administration makes major cuts to Native American boarding school research projects
- The cuts are just a fraction of the grants canceled by the National Endowment for the Humanities in recent weeks as part of the Republican administration’s deep cost-cutting effort across the federal
- At least $1.6 million in federal funds for projects meant to capture and digitize stories of the systemic abuse of generations of Indigenous children in boarding schools
The cuts are just a fraction of the grants canceled by the National Endowment for the Humanities in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s deep cost-cutting effort across the federal government. But coming on the heels of a major federal boarding school investigation by the previous administration and an apology by then-President Joe Biden, they illustrate a seismic shift.
“If we’re looking to ‘Make America Great Again,’ then I think it should start with the truth about the true American history,” said Deborah Parker, CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
The coalition lost more than $282,000 as a result of the cuts, halting its work to digitize more than 100,000 pages of boarding school records for its database. Parker, a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington state, said Native Americans nationwide depend on the site to find loved ones who were taken or sent to these boarding schools.
Searching that database last year, Roberta “Birdie” Sam, a member of Tlingit & Haida, was able to confirm that her grandmother had been at a boarding school in Alaska. She also discovered that around a dozen cousins, aunts and uncles had also been at a boarding school in Oregon, including one who died there. She said the knowledge has helped her with healing.
“I understand why our relationship has been the way it has been. And that’s been a great relief for myself,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of years very disconnected from my family, wondering what happened. And now I know — some of it anyways.”
An April 2 letter to the healing coalition that was signed by Michael McDonald, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, says the “grant no longer effectuates the agency’s needs and priorities.”
The Associated Press left messages by phone and email for the National Endowment for the Humanities. White House officials and the Office of Management and Budget also did not respond Friday to an email requesting comment.
Indigenous children were sent to boarding schools
For 150 years the US removed Indigenous children from their homes and sent them away to the schools, where they were stripped of their cultures, histories and religions, and beaten for speaking their native languages.
At least 973 Native American children died at government-funded boarding schools, according to an Interior Department investigation launched by former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. Both the report and independent researchers say the actual number was much higher.
The forced assimilation policy officially ended with the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. But the government never fully investigated the boarding school system until the Biden administration.
In October, Biden apologized for the government’s creation of the schools and the policies that supported them.
Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo citizen who’s running for governor in New Mexico, described the recent cuts as the latest step in the Trump administration’s “pattern of hiding the full story of our country.” But she said they can’t erase the extensive work already done.
“They cannot undo the healing communities felt as they told their stories at our events to hear from survivors and descendants,” she said in a statement. “They cannot undo the investigation that brings this dark chapter of our history to light. They cannot undo the relief Native people felt when President Biden apologized on behalf of the United States.”
Boarding school research programs are feeling the strain
Among the grants terminated earlier this month was $30,000 for a project between the Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and Alaska Native Heritage Center to record and broadcast oral histories of elders in Alaska. Koahnic received an identical letter from McDonald.
Benjamin Jacuk, the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s director of Indigenous research, said the news came around the same time they lost about $100,000 through a Institute of Museum and Library Services grant for curating a boarding school exhibit.
“This is a story that for all of us, we weren’t able to really hear because it was so painful or for multitudes of reasons,” said Jacuk, a citizen of Kenaitze Indian Tribe. “And so it’s really important right now to be able to record these stories that our elders at this point are really opening up to being able to tell.”
Former Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Bryan Newland described the cuts as frustrating, especially given the size of the grants.
“It’s not even a drop in the ocean when it comes to the federal budget,” said Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community (Ojibwe). “And so it’s hard to argue that this is something that’s really promoting government efficiency or saving taxpayer funds.”
In April 2024, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced that it was awarding $411,000 to more than a dozen tribal nations and organizations working to illustrate the impact of these boarding schools. More than half of those awards have since been terminated.
The grant cuts were documented by the non-profit organization National Humanities Alliance.
John Campbell, a member of Tlingit and the Tulalip Tribes, said the coalition’s database helped him better understand his parents, who were both boarding school survivors and “passed on that tradition of being traumatized.”
When he was growing up, his mother used to put soap in his mouth when he said a bad word. He said he learned through the site that she experienced that punishment beginning when she was 6-years-old in a boarding school in Washington state when she would speak her language.
“She didn’t talk about it that much,” he said. “She didn’t want to talk about it either. It was too traumatic.”
How Trump backed away from promising to end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours
- He has changed his tone since becoming president again.
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday suggested the U.S. might soon back away from negotiations altogether without more progress.
DUBAI: During his campaign, Donald Trump said repeatedly that he would be able to end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in 24 hours” upon taking office. He has changed his tone since becoming president again.
As various US emissaries have held talks looking for an end to the war, both Trump and his top officials have become more reserved about the prospects of a peace deal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday suggested the US might soon back away from negotiations altogether without more progress, adding a comment that sounded like a repudiation of the president’s old comments.
“No one’s saying this can be done in 12 hours,” he told reporters.
The promises made by presidential candidates are often felled by the realities of governing. But Trump’s shift is noteworthy given his prior term as president and his long histories with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The White House on Friday did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Trump’s evolving deadline comments.
Here’s a look at Trump’s evolution on the way he talks about the Russia-Ukraine war:
‘A very easy negotiation’
MARCH 2023: “There’s a very easy negotiation to take place. But I don’t want to tell you what it is because then I can’t use that negotiation; it’ll never work,” Trump told Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, claiming that he could “solve” the war “in 24 hours” if he were back in the White House.
“But it’s a very easy negotiation to take place. I will have it solved within one day, a peace between them,” Trump said of the war, which at that point had been ongoing for more than a year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
MAY 2023: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours,” Trump said during a town hall on CNN.
JULY 2024: When asked to respond to Trump’s one-day claim, Russia’s United Nations Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters that “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.” Afterward, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that “a top priority in his second term will be to quickly negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.”
AUGUST 2024: “Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump told a National Guard Conference. “I’ll get it settled very fast. I don’t want you guys going over there. I don’t want you going over there.”
After Trump wins in November
DEC. 16, 2024: “I’m going to try,” Trump said during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club, asked if he thought he could still make a deal with Putin and Zelensky to end the war.
JAN. 8, 2025: In a Fox News Channel interview, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg — now serving as Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia — proposed a 100-day deadline to end the war. Friday marked 100 days since that interview. The 100th day of Trump’s presidency is April 30.
Trump becomes president and starts negotiations
JAN. 31: Trump says his new administration has already had “very serious” discussions with Russia and says he and Putin could soon take “significant” action toward ending the grinding conflict.
“We will be speaking, and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. “We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.”
FEB. 12: Trump and Putin speak for more than an hour and Trump speaks afterward with Zelensky. Trump says afterward, “I think we’re on the way to getting peace.”
FEB. 19: Trump posts on his Truth Social site that Zelensky is serving as a “dictator without elections.” He adds that “we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do.”
FEB. 28: Trump and Zelensky have a contentious Oval Office meeting. Trump berates Zelensky for being “disrespectful,” then abruptly calls off the signing of a minerals deal that Trump said would have moved Ukraine closer to ending the war.
Declaring himself “in the middle” and not on the side of either Ukraine or Russia in the conflict, Trump went on to deride Zelensky’s “hatred” for Putin as a roadblock to peace.
“You see the hatred he’s got for Putin,” Trump said. “That’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.”
The Ukrainian leader was asked to leave the White House by top Trump advisers shortly after Trump shouted at him. Trump later told reporters that he wanted an “immediate ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine but expressed doubt that Zelensky was ready to make peace.
MARCH 3: Trump temporarily pauses military aid to Ukraine to pressure Zelensky to seek peace.
Trump claims his 24-hour promise was ‘sarcastic’
MARCH 14: Trump says he was “being a little bit sarcastic” when he repeatedly claimed as a candidate that he would have the Russia-Ukraine war solved within 24 hours.
“Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that,” Trump says in a clip released from an interview for the “Full Measure” television program. “What I really mean is I’d like to get it settled and, I’ll, I think, I think I’ll be successful.”
MARCH 18-19: Trump speaks with both Zelensky and Putin on successive days.
In a March 18 call, Putin told Trump that he would agree not to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure but refused to back a full 30-day ceasefire that Trump had proposed. Afterward, Trump on social media heralded that move, which he said came “with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War between Russia and Ukraine.”
In their own call a day later, Trump suggested that Zelensky should consider giving the US ownership of Ukraine’s power plants to ensure their long-term security. Trump told Zelensky that the UScould be “very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise,” according to a White House statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz.
APRIL 14: Trump says “everybody” is to blame: Zelensky, Putin and Biden.
“That’s a war that should have never been allowed to start and Biden could have stopped it and Zelensky could have stopped it and Putin should have never started it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Talk of moving on
APRIL 18: Rubio says that the US may “move on” from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if there is no progress in the coming days.
He spoke in Paris after landmark talks among US, Ukrainian and European officials produced outlines for steps toward peace and appeared to make some long-awaited progress. A new meeting is expected next week in London, and Rubio suggested it could be decisive in determining whether the Trump administration continues its involvement.
“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not,” Rubio told reporters. “Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on. It’s not our war. We have other priorities to focus on.”
He said the US administration wants to decide “in a matter of days.”
Later that day, Trump told reporters at the White House that he agreed with Rubio that a Ukraine peace deal must be done “quickly.”
“I have no specific number of days but quickly. We want to get it done,” he said.
Saying “Marco is right” that the dynamic of the negotiations must change, Trump stopped short of saying he’s ready to walk away from peace negotiations.
“Well, I don’t want to say that,” Trump said. “But we want to see it end.”
Trump goes to war with the Fed in move feared to destabilize US financial markets
- Trump says he wants rate cuts now to help stimulate economic growth and has threatened to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell if he does not comply
- Powell has said he has no plans to step down early, adding that he considers the bank’s independence over monetary policy to be a “matter of law”
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s simmering discontent with the US Federal Reserve boiled over this week, with the president threatening to take the unprecedented step of ousting the head of the fiercely independent central bank.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants rate cuts now to help stimulate economic growth as he rolls out his tariff plans, and has threatened to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell if he does not comply, putting the bank and the White House on a collision course that analysts warn could destabilize US financial markets.
“If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me,” Trump said Thursday, referring to Powell, whose second four-year stint as Fed chair ends in May 2026.
Powell has said he has no plans to step down early, adding this week that he considers the bank’s independence over monetary policy to be a “matter of law.”
“Clearly, the fact that the Fed chairman feels that he has to address it means that they are serious,” KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk told AFP, referring to the White House.
Stephanie Roth, chief economist at Wolfe Research, said she thinks “they will come into conflict,” but does not think “that the Fed is going to succumb to the political pressure.”
Most economists agree that the administration’s tariff plans — which include a 10 percent “baseline” rate on imports from most countries — will put upward pressure on prices and cool economic growth, at least in the short term.
That would keep inflation well away from the Fed’s long-term target of two percent, and likely prevent policymakers from cutting rates in the next few months.
“They’re not going to react because Trump posted that they should be cutting,” Roth said in an interview, adding that doing so would be “a recipe for a disaster” for the US economy.
Many legal scholars say the US president does not have the power to fire the Fed chair or any of his colleagues on the bank’s 19-person rate-setting committee for any reason but cause.
The Fed system, created more than a century ago, is also designed to insulate the US central bank from political interference.
“Independence is absolutely critical for the Fed,” said Roth. “Countries that do not have independent central banks have currencies that are notably weaker and interest rates that are notably higher.”
Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi told AFP that “we’ve had strong evidence that impairing central bank independence is a really bad idea.”
One serious threat to the Fed’s independence comes from an ongoing case in which the Trump administration has indicated it will seek to challenge a 1935 Supreme Court decision denying the US president the right to fire the heads of independent government agencies.
The case could have serious ramifications for the Fed, given its status as an independent agency whose leadership believes they cannot currently be fired by the president for any reason but cause.
But even if the Trump administration succeeds in court, it may soon run into the ultimate guardrail of Fed independence: The bond markets.
During the recent market turbulence unleashed by Trump’s tariff plans, US government bond yields surged and the dollar fell, signaling that investors may not see the United States as the safe haven investment it once was.
Faced with the sharp rise in US Treasury yields, the Trump administration paused its plans for higher tariffs against dozens of countries, a move that helped calm the financial markets.
If investors believed the Fed’s independence to tackle inflation was compromised, that would likely push up the yields on long-dated government bonds on the assumption that long-term inflation would be higher, and put pressure on the administration.
“You can’t control the bond market. And that’s the moral of the story,” said Swonk.
“And that’s why you want an independent Fed.”
Plan for expanded Muslim community triggers hope, fear in Texas
- Texas governor and Trump ally Greg Abbott characterized the project as an attempt to install Islamic law
- Senator John Cornyn said the project could violate the constitutional rights of Jewish and Christian Texans
PLANO, United States: Threats to Muslims living in Texas are nothing new, but lately the vile phone calls to Imran Chaudhary have ramped up.
The cause?
Chaudhary’s early plans for construction of 1,000 new homes, a community center, school, hospital and — controversially — a mosque and Islamic private school to serve the growing Muslim community near East Plano, in a thinly populated corner of east Texas.
One anonymous caller says, in an expletive filled message, “I suggest you get the f*** out of America while it’s still an option.”
The conservative, white, and Christian authorities tied to President Donald Trump in this state aren’t exactly welcoming either, launching investigations into the project’s legality.
Chaudhary says the pressure is misguided.
“We’ve been trying to follow every single law that is out there, from the state perspective to the federal perspective,” he said.
But just this week, Senator John Cornyn called for an investigation into the constitutionality of Chaudhary’s project, an offshoot of an existing site called the East Plano Islamic Center or “EPIC.”
The center “could violate the constitutional rights of Jewish and Christian Texans,” he said.
Texas governor and Trump ally Greg Abbott characterized the project as an attempt to install Islamic law. “To be clear, Sharia law is not allowed in Texas. Nor are Sharia cities. Nor are ‘no go zones’ which this project seems to imply,” he wrote on social media.
Texas is one of more than a dozen states that have enacted “anti-Sharia law” bills, which anti-hate group Southern Poverty Law Center calls “one of the most successful far-right conspiracies to achieve mainstream viability.”
The conspiracy theory holds that Islamic law, known as sharia, is encroaching on the American legal system, a claim the American Civil Liberties Union and other legal experts refute.
Chaudhary denies that he envisions a Muslim-only town, saying that it’s “open to all, anybody can use our services, community center, our school.”
As president of Community Capital Partners, which develops EPIC properties, Chaudhary told AFP, “We never even discussed sharia. From day one we’ve consulted with our attorneys what is the best way for us to do this project, to make sure that we follow all the state laws, we follow all the federal laws.”
In a show of goodwill, Chaudhary invited the governor to a Texas-style barbeque over social media. Abbott didn’t respond.
The EPIC Islamic community settled in Plano north of Dallas some 20 years ago, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the new community they want to build near Josephine.
The Plano settlement of around 5,000 people now have their own mosque. Iman Yasir Qadhi leads prayers there.
Born in Houston to a Pakistani family, Qadhi said Muslims like Texas because of the warm weather, low taxes and good food.
“Organically, when the mosque was built, a lot of people began moving in here and we found that our space wasn’t sufficient for us,” he said. “Because of the influx of people we are looking to expand.”
Only 313,000 Muslims reside in Texas, which has a population of more than 31 million, according to World Population Review.
Prospective EPIC residents can reserve lots by putting down 20 percent, with single townhouse pads starting at $80,000 and 1-acre lots going for $250,000. Maps posted online indicate more than two dozen lots have already been sold.
But at an April town hall meeting in Collin County, an overflow crowd showed up to speak out against EPIC’s project. And the developers’ lawyer Dan Cogdell said all the negative publicity will slow approvals down.
“The lies and the misinformation that Abbott’s putting out is striking,” he said.
Qadhi said he is worried about hate crimes. He said he himself has been accused of terrorism but “they are the ones terrorizing us.”
Moitree Rahman, a 38-year-old mother of two from Bangladesh, says she remains optimistic and looks forward to the expanding EPIC community.
“All the rhetoric that we are seeing and hearing, it’s not true,” she said. “That’s why we felt very confident in investing.”
At least 143 dead in DR Congo boat fire
- Rescuers said packed wooden boat caught fire and capsized near Mbandaka, capital of Equateur Province, where the Ruki and the vast Congo river meet
KINSHASA, DR Congo: At least 143 people died and dozens more went missing after a boat carrying fuel caught fire and capsized in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials said Friday.
Hundreds of passengers were crowded onto a wooden boat on the Congo River in northwest DRC on Tuesday when the blaze broke out, according to Josephine-Pacifique Lokumu, head of a delegation of national deputies from the region.
The disaster occurred near Mbandaka, capital of Equateur Province, at the confluence of the Ruki and the vast Congo river — the world’s deepest.
“A first group of 131 bodies were found on Wednesday, with a further 12 fished out on Thursday and Friday. Several of them are charred,” Lokumu told AFP.
Joseph Lokondo, a local civil society leader who said he helped bury the bodies, put the “provisional death toll at 145: some burned, others drowned.”
Lokumu said the blaze was caused by a fuel explosion ignited by an onboard cooking fire.
“A woman lit the embers for cooking. The fuel, which was not far away, exploded, killing many children and women,” she said.
The total number of passengers on board the doomed vessel was not known but Lokumu said it was in the “hundreds.”
Some survivors were rescued and admitted to hospital, Lokondo said.
But on Friday, he added, “several families were still without news of their loved ones.”
A vast Central African nation, the Democratic Republic of Congo suffers from a lack of practicable roads.
As a result travel often occurs on lakes, the Congo River and its tributaries, where shipwrecks are frequent and the death tolls often heavy.
A chronic absence of passenger lists often complicates search operations.
In October 2023, at least 47 people died after a boat navigating the Congo sank in Equateur.
More than 20 people died in October last year when a boat capsized on Lake Kivu in eastern DRC, according to local authorities.
Another shipwreck on Lake Kivu claimed around 100 lives in 2019.
