For the sixth-straight day, thousands of protesters have rallied in the Albanian cital against a proposed luxury beach development linked to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Environmental groups accuse authorities of lacking transparency and allowing for the destruction of protected biodiversity on the country’s Adriatic Coast.

CJP’s newly named spokesperson Saurav Das took to X to post a ‘thank you’ message for the police for extending support to the democratic protest and for detaining “anti-social elements.”

The political outfit, that emerged from an online campaign last month, organised a protest led by its founder Abhijeet Dipke at the Jantar Mantar demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s removal. The outfit warned that the agitation would expand across the country if he is not sacked or does not resign voluntarily.

In a statement earlier, it said thousands of young people from across the country gathered at Jantar Mantar in a peaceful demonstration demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Thanking the Delhi Police for their cooperation, the CJP said that the outfit’s priority was a peaceful demonstration, adding that the agitation remained peaceful throughout.

The CJP began as an online campaign as a result of an outrage against Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s remarks. Within few weeks, the outfit garnered over 22 million followers on Instagram.

The group has now warned of bigger protests if no action is taken within seven days.

“This is the beginning of a movement. If no action is taken within seven days, this movement will spread across the country,” the statement read.

“Certain social media posts and news reports are claiming that Delhi Police has registered an FIR against the protesters at Jantar Mantar. It is clarified that no such FIR has been registered,” a social post of Delhi Police read, warning people against circulating unverified information.

Dipke, who called for the protest, arrived in Delhi from the United States on Saturday morning. He headed to Jantar Mantar after receiving permission from the Delhi Police.

“This is not just the fear of my mother, this is the fear of the parents of any youngster who speaks on politics…. How long will we live in fear? Tell them, we are not scared,” he said.

“My friends, this is a long struggle. It has been a month since we started demanding Pradhan’s resignation on social media, but these individuals are so shameless that instead of taking action, they have been focussed on other distractions, like hacking our accounts and getting our posts deleted. You may be able to delete our posts, but you cannot erase us from this space,” he added.

The impasse in the US-Israel war on Iran has turned Lebanon into the conflict’s most active front. Israeli forces are entrenched in the country’s south, a de facto occupation, and have reduced entire neighbourhoods to rubble. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump seeks to preserve delicate negotiations with Iran, but, as Israeli support for the war continues to grow, Lebanon remains a key point of contention.

Lead contributors:

Nicholas Noe – Senior fellow, Refugees International
Maya Rosen – Editor, Jewish Currents
Randa Slim – Middle East programme director, Stimson Centre

On our radar:

This week, two prominent American commentators, Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, had their UK visas revoked before scheduled speaking events in London. Both are outspoken critics of Israel, its occupation, its wars and the US policy towards it. The action by the UK authorities has called into question the right to free speech and political expression in the country. Meenakshi Ravi reports.

AfrofeminasGPT: AI through a Black feminist lens

Artificial intelligence systems are often trained on data shed by human bias. As a result, discrimination can spread through the systems that increasingly she our lives. In Spain, one woman is trying to change that with AfrofeminasGPT – a chatbot trained on Black feminist and decolonial thought, designed to challenge racism in AI. But can an alternative, built on the same model that it seeks to reform, ever truly be independent?

Feature contributor:

Mutale Nkonde – AI Researcher, Cambridge University
Safiya Noble – Professor, UCLA
Antoinette Torres Soler – Founder, Afrofemin

They were being taken on a tour of the labyrinthine building in between meetings with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and their pointment at Downing Street with the prime minister. They’d climbed the steep steps to the crammed public gallery to take a peek at the Commons Chamber when, by chance, the leader of the Commons, Alan Campbell, and his opposite number, Jesse Norman, both paid tribute to their son, and the dignity of the family.

The vertical loyalty of officers runs not toward the Constitution but toward the ruling dispensation. Field officers, acutely conscious of the transfer-posting economy, calibrate their conduct to satisfy political superiors, Justice Vinod Diwakar said in his 31-page judgement in ‘Rajendra Tyagi and 2 Others vs State of UP and another’.

The bench made these observations while quashing a criminal case against three members of a family in Ghaziabad charged under the UP Gangsters Act.

Flagging misuse of the act, the court in its findings stated that the stringent law had been invoked over a commercial dispute.

Also Read | Allahabad HC grants bail to re-murder accused, slams poor forensic infra

The bench highlighted police overreach in the arrest of 35-year-old Lalita Tyagi, a homemaker, who the court said had been arrested the very next day after the FIR was lodged without there being any incriminating evidence against her.

It flagged encounter killings and selective crackdowns, saying the state was still driven by the feudal mindset of politicians and bureaucrats. Encounter killings, selective crackdowns, and targeted use of the Gangsters Act against inconvenient individuals have periodically attracted judicial notice, the bench stated.

Uttar Pradesh, by virtue of its demogrhic magnitude and political significance, has historically been a crucible of political hegemony, driven by the feudal mindset of politicians and bureaucrats, Justice Diwakar said in the judgement.

The court further highlighted that officers seen as loyalists receive favourable postings in the state, while those acting independently are punished.

Officers perceived as loyalists are rewarded with preferred postings- urban Commissionerates, lucrative districts- while those demonstrating independence are transferred punitively to inconsequential assignments, the court said, adding that this is a well-known fact.

Also Read | Time has come to make top bureaucrats criminally liable: Allahabad HC to UP govt

The bench backing its judgement highlighted arrests without following the due process of law, FIRs being registered or suppressed with ulterior motives, and provisions pertaining to preventive detentions being invoked arbitrarily.

The procedural safeguards under the Code of Criminal Procedure, and now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, are routinely bypassed. Judicial orders are complied with in form but defeated in substance, the court said in a sharp rebuke. Justice Diwakar expressed deep concern regarding the role of the Home Secretary, who is the senior-most bureaucratic authority in the state’s law enforcement system and the administrative head of the home department.

Rather than functioning as an independent constitutional authority charged with implementing the government’s vision, policies, and programmes through impartial executive action. Certain officers who rose to the post of Home Secretary have, in practice, served as conduits for self-serving interests, the bench stated.