Lai Ching-te of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was sworn in as the self-governing island’s new President today. According to Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry, more than 500 foreign guests from 51 delegations attended the inauguration ceremony and related activities, including the national leaders of eight countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan. A trained physician Lai succeeds Tsai Ing-wen to lead the democracy amid increasing threats from China, which claims the self-governing island as its territory. Taiwan has had an independent government since 1949. Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim, was also officially sworn in. She was Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the US from 2020 to 2023 and formerly served as a DPP lawmaker for several terms.

Twenty-year old Deepthi Jeevanji smashed the world record in the women’s 400m T20 and grabbed her first gold at the World Para Athletics Championships at Kobe in Japan today. Deepthi clocked 55.07 seconds, breaking American Breanna Clark’s earlier world record of 55.12 seconds, which she had set during last year’s edition of the championships in Paris. The T20 classification is for athletes who have intellectual impairment. Aysel Onder of Turkey finished second with 55.19 seconds followed by Lizanshela Angulo of Ecuador on third with 56.68 seconds. Later, Yogesh Kathuniya won the silver in the Men’s Discus Throw F56 Final with a season’s best mark of 41.80 meter. On Day three, Preethi Pal won a bronze medal in the Women’s 200m T35 final while Nishad Kumar bagged silver in Men’s High Jump T47 with an impressive season-best mark of 1.99 meters. India has won four medals so far- one gold, two silver and a bronze.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the voters who are voting today to cast their votes and create a new record of voting. In a social media post, Mr. Modi specifically urged women and young voters to exercise their constitutional rights in the festival of democracy. In the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha Election 2024 today, polling is underway in 49 Lok Sabha constituencies spread over six states and two union territories.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address two rallies in Haryana today in favour of BJ P candidates. He will address a rally at Ambala around 2.45 PM and at Gohana in Sonipat around 4.45 PM. In view of his visits to Ambala and Sonipat, section 144 has been imposed and security has been tightened. Mrs. Banto Kataria wife of former Union Minister late Rattan Kal Kataria is a BJP candidate from Ambala while Mohan Lal Badoli is contesting from Sonipat. The polling in Haryana will be held on May 25. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will campaign on the Barabanki Loksabha seat in Uttar Pradesh.

Senior BJP leader and Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today slammed AAP Chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for his silence on the issue of alleged assault on AAP MP Swati Maliwal. Briefing media in New Delhi, Ms. Sitharaman demanded Mr. Kejriwal to apologise on the issue. She said, even a woman MP in not safe in the CM residence. Ms Sitharaman citing charges of attack on women against several AAP leaders, including its New Delhi Lok Sabha candidate Somnath Bharti, Ms. Sitharaman claimed that AAP is an anti-women party.

Indian football legend Sunil Chhetri has announced his retirement after a distinguished career with the national team. In a social media post, Chhetri revealed that the upcoming match against Kuwait on June 6, this year at the Salt Lake stadium in Kolkata will be his final appearance in the national colours. Chhetri, the current captain of the Indian national team, made his debut on 12th June, 2005 against Pakistan. He leaves behind an extra ordinary legacy as India’s all time top scorer, with 94 goals in 150 international matches. He is also the third-highest active international goal-scorer, behind only Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and Lionel Messi of Argentina. Chhetri’s retirement marks the end of an era for Indian football, celebrating a career filled with passion, leadership and remarkable achievements.

Sonoma State University, a public school in northern California, has said that it will not enter partnerships with Israeli universities, heeding a call from pro-Palestine student groups pushing to boycott Israeli companies and institutions amid the war in Gaza. The decision, announced on Tuesday, comes after a recent wave of campus protests spread across the United States, with encampments and demonstrations cropping up at schools like Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As part of their demands, student activists aimed to sever school ties with academic bodies and companies perceived as complicit in Israel’s war and decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territory.  In an email to students on Tuesday, Sonoma State’s president, Mike Lee, said the school had reached an agreement with the protesters, who set up an on-campus encampment three weeks ago. Sonoma State would do more to disclose its contracts and seek “divestment strategies”, Lee wrote. It would also not pursue partnerships that are “sponsored by, or represent, the Israeli state academic and research institutions”. In exchange for the concessions, student activists agreed to dismantle the cluster of tents on campus by Wednesday evening. Many universities have responded to the demands of antiwar activists with police crackdowns on encampments. But those efforts have done little to dim calls for divestment, and campus activists have likened their efforts to historic student protests against the Vietnam War and apartheid South Africa. Several pro-Palestine university encampments have disbanded after negotiations over divestment demands with administrators. In late April, for instance, protesters took down their tents at Brown University in Rhode Island, after the Ivy League school’s board of governors agreed to consider divestment in a vote this October. However, calls for divestment can be controversial in the US, where Israel enjoys strong political backing. Israel receives $3.8bn in military aid from the US every year, and US lawmakers have, with the encouragement of pro-Israel groups, moved to penalise and even criminalise calls to boycott Israel. In Texas, for instance, Republican Governor Greg Abbott responded to students’ divestment demands directly, saying earlier this month, “This will NEVER happen.” Under his leadership, the state passed a law that prohibits government entities from contracting with firms that boycott Israel. Backlash to Sonoma State decision Jewish groups and a handful of state politicians have likewise condemned Sonoma State’s decision, saying that it represents an attack on Israel and the Jewish community. Some tied the university’s decision to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which seeks to pressure Israel into protecting Palestinian rights through nonviolent means. It also aims to draw attention to companies seen as complicit in rights abuses in the Palestinian territory. BDS’s critics, however, consider the movement anti-Semitic for its targeting of Israeli companies and groups. “Yesterday the President of Sonoma State University aligned the campus with BDS, a movement whose goal is the destruction of Israel, home to 7M Jews,” California state Senator Scott Wiener said in a social media post on Wednesday. In another post, the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said the decision by Sonoma State was in “clear violation” of California’s 2016 anti-BDS law. It called on the chancellor of the California State University system — of which Sonoma State is a member — to “rectify” the situation. However, free speech advocacy groups say that anti-BDS laws suppress criticism of Israel and conflate scrutiny over Israel’s alleged human rights abuses with anti-Semitism. Protecting students and free speech The campus protests like the one at Sonoma State have fuelled debate over the distinction between criticism of Israel and anti-Jewish hate. It also has raised concerns about how to protect free speech rights on campus, while addressing the discomfort some students have expressed towards the protests. Student protesters have sought to shine a light on the plight facing Palestinian civilians, particularly since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza on October 7. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive in the intervening months, with approximately 1.5 million people internally displaced.The war has also pushed parts of the Palestinian territory into a state of “full-blown famine“. United Nations experts have warned of a “risk of genocide” in the enclave. But even before the start of the current war, rights groups like Amnesty International have concluded that Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territory constitute the crime of apartheid. Still, while the vast majority of pro-Palestine campus protests have been peaceful, fears of anti-Semitism at universities have been running high. Shortly after the war began in October, for instance, a report emerged that a 24-year-old Jewish student had been assaulted with a stick at the Columbia University campus in New York. Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, was called before a congressional committee last month to answer questions about the alleged instances of anti-Semitism on her campus, though several US representatives questioned the narrow focus of the hearing. “Anti-Semitism is not the only form of hatred rising in our schools,” Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat, told the committee. “Islamophobia and hate crimes against LGBTQ students have also recently spiked. They’ve led to deaths by suicide, harassment. But this committee has not held a single hearing on these issues.” Indeed, advocates say pro-Palestine protesters have also been subject to a spike in harassment since the war began. At UCLA, for instance, counter-protesters attacked an antiwar encampment, and observers later reported that campus police waited to intervene. The episode led critics to question which students were being protected — and why.

In men’s javelin throw, Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra won the gold medal in Federation Cup 2024 in Bhubaneswar yesterday. The 26-year-old superstar struggled in the initial rounds of competition as he was second after three rounds. He took the lead in the fourth round with an effort of 82.27m. Neeraj Chopra last took part in a domestic competition at the same event in 2021, when he won a gold with a throw of 87.80m. Since then, he has won a historic gold in the Tokyo Olympics, became Diamond League champion in 2022, world champion in 2023 and defended Asian Games gold in China.

In Mumbai, the death toll in the Ghatkopar billboard collapse tragedy rose to 16 yesterday as the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) officials recovered two more bodies from a car stuck at the accident site. A 120 x 120-foot hoarding had fallen on a petrol pump at Chheda Nagar in Ghatkopar on Monday evening due to gusty winds and unseasonal rains. Around 75 people got injured in the incident.

Star campaigners of different political parties are using all their might to woo the voters for the next phase of elections. Prime Minister and Senior BJP leader, Narendra Modi will campaign in Uttar Pradesh for the next 2 days. Two days ,seven rallies covering eleven lok sabha constituencies and high octane campaigning from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He will embark on an aggressive campaign in state today and will be addressing back-to-back rallies for two days. He will be holding public gatherings in Jaunpur, Bhadohi, Pratapgarh and Azamgarh today. He is scheduled to stay in governor house Lucknow tonight and will address 3 more rallies in Barabanki, Fatehpur and Hamirpur constituencies tomorrow. These rallies are being held in the constituencies which will go for poll in 5th and 6th phase. On the other hand another political battleground will be in Fatehpur where senior BJP leader Yogi Adityanath and opposition leaders including Samajwadi party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj party supremo Mayawati will campaign today. Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will campaign for his brother Rahul Gandhi in Raebareli constituency while Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka and senior Congress leader DK Shivkumar will also hold the press conference in Lucknow. Meanwhile, Aam Aadami Party Supremo Arvind kejariwal reached State capital Lucknow yesterday night. He will hold a press conference at Samajwadi Party office today.

In Uttar Pradesh, INDI alliance parties held a joint press conference in the state capital Lucknow today. In this press conference, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Samajwadi party Chief Akhilesh Yadav along with all the prominent leaders of both the parties were present. The Congress President said that the 2024 elections are very important to save the Constitution and democracy. Mr Kharge alleged that despite education, the youth are not getting jobs. He said government posts are available, but recruitment is not being done. Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav said that it is in his party’s vision document and also in the manifesto of INDI alliance that if they come to power all the vacant government posts will be filled and jobs will be given to educated youth.