New Delhi Post - NDP

The United States and Iran have signed an initial memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at ending more than three months of war, reopening the Strait of Hormuz to shipping and launching a 60-day push for a permanent settlement, in a breakthrough that carries direct consequences for India's energy security. US President Donald Trump signed the document late on Wednesday, 17 June, at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, on the margins of this week's Group of Seven (G7) summit in France. Video released by French President Emmanuel Macron showed Trump signing the text. Asked by a reporter as he left Versailles, Trump confirmed it was signed and called the agreement hard-won. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed separately, according to Iranian state media. The Islamic Republic News Agency and the state broadcaster IRIB published an image early on Thursday showing Pezeshkian holding up a copy bearing his signature. The prime minister of Pakistan, which mediate...

On the morning of 15 May 2026, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant was presiding over what should have been a routine Supreme Court hearing on the designation of senior advocates. Referring to people without formal employment or professional standing, he said: "There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don't get any employment or have any place in a profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists and they start attacking everyone." By nightfall, the words had become the most talked-about phrase in India's digital public square. By the following morning, they had spawned a political party. The Remark and the Response A day after the comment went viral, Justice Surya Kant issued a clarification, saying his criticism was directed at individuals who had entered the legal profession using fraudulent degrees, not the country's youth in general. He called India's young people the "pillars of a developed I...

In the most dramatic rupture in the Aam Aadmi Party's parliamentary history, Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha on Friday announced his resignation from the party he says he devoted fifteen years of his life to, declaring himself and six fellow upper house lawmakers merged with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The move sent immediate shockwaves through India's political establishment, stripping AAP of a significant portion of its Rajya Sabha group in a single afternoon and handing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party a high-profile symbolic and numerical gain. The announcement came at a press conference in the Indian capital, where Chadha stood alongside fellow MPs Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Mittal and read out what amounted to a formal political obituary for his relationship with AAP founder Arvind Kejriwal and the party's current leadership. "The AAP, which I nurtured with my blood and sweat, and gave 15 years of my youth to, has deviated from its principle...

Religious freedom conditions in India deteriorated significantly throughout 2025, according to a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which is calling on Washington to formally designate India as one of the world's worst violators of religious rights. The report, which covers events across the year, documents attacks on Muslim and Christian communities by Hindu nationalist mobs, a wave of new anti-conversion legislation across multiple states, and the forced deportation of religious minorities whom officials have labelled illegal migrants. India's government has not publicly responded to the findings. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has consistently dismissed international criticism of its minority policies as interference in domestic affairs. Mob attacks and communal violence Hindu nationalist groups carried out a series of attacks on minority communities throughout the year, the report says, largely without po...

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been killed in a large-scale military operation by the United States and Israel, Iranian state media and multiple international sources confirmed, triggering a major escalation in a conflict that has spread across the Middle East. Iran’s state broadcasters announced early on Sunday that the 86-year-old leader died after an airstrike hit his compound in Tehran during an offensive launched late on Saturday. The joint Israeli–American campaign was presented by both capitals as a coordinated effort to target the country’s senior leadership and strategic military infrastructure, according to statements from Israeli and U.S. officials. Iran declared 40 days of national mourning following the announcement of Khamenei’s death. The strikes were among the most extensive on Iranian soil in decades, and state media reported that other senior military officials, including commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were also killed in the ...

A debut film from India's most troubled state just won one of cinema's highest honours. Its director prayed for peace on a London stage. Back home, tens of thousands are still living in camps. The Prime Minister took 864 days to visit. The Leader of Opposition visited three times and was stopped by police on his way in. On Sunday evening, inside the Royal Festival Hall in London, a filmmaker from Imphal walked up to a podium and accepted the Bafta award for Best Children's and Family Film. Lakshmipriya Devi's debut feature Boong, a quiet, tender Manipuri-language story about a boy searching for his missing father, had beaten Disney's Lilo and Stitch, the animated blockbuster Zootopia 2, and a French sci-fi film to take one of British cinema's most prestigious prizes. It was, by any measure, a remarkable moment. The first Indian film ever to win a Bafta in this category. A debut feature made in a language few outside the north-east have heard spoken, ...