Live news updates: Amid the ongoing political crisis in Maharashtra, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said that he had “suspected” the rebellion and revealed that Eknath Shinde who turned rebel, had raised the issue in front of him of the MLAs willing to go with the BJP. However, Thackeray said that such a question “does not even arise”. “BJP, that defamed our party, my family, is the one you are talking about going with. Such a question doesn’t even arise. If MLAs want to go there they can, all of them can. I won’t. If someone wants to go – be it an MLA or someone else – come and tell us and then go,” Thackeray added.
The end of constitutional protection for abortions in the United States on Friday polarised activists around the world, emboldening abortion opponents even as advocates of abortion rights worried it could threaten recent moves toward legalization in their countries. The US Supreme Court’s overturning of the landmark Roe vs Wade decision “shows that these types of rights are always at risk of being steamrolled, said Ruth Zurbriggen, an Argentinian activist and member of the Companion Network of Latin America and the Caribbean, a group favouring abortion rights.
The European Union agreed to put Ukraine on a path toward EU membership, acting with uncharacteristic speed and unity to pull the embattled country further away from Russia’s influence and bind it more closely to the West. Meeting at a summit in Brussels, leaders of the EU’s 27 nations on Thursday mustered the required unanimous approval to grant Ukraine candidate status. That sets in motion a membership process that could take years or even decades.
