THE END
📌 CONTEXT: Hollywood actor Johnny Depp sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for defaming him when she called herself “a public figure representing domestic abuse” in a Washington Post opinion piece. She countersued him for publicly calling her accusations a “hoax”.
📺 NOW: The widely-watched, almost live-streamed and explicit trial containing graphic images and testimony of physical, verbal and sexual abuse—has ended.
📣 A US Court has ruled that Heard defamed Depp and awarded him $15 million in damages from her. The also ruled in favor of Heard in some aspects of her counter-suit and awarded her $2 million in damages.
ON HUMANITARIAN GROUNDS
👉 WHAT: India has sent a team of senior diplomats to Afghanistan for the first time since August 2021, when India evacuated its embassy and the Taliban seized Kabul.
🌏 WHY: The agenda is humanitarian aid. A team of officials led by JPSingh, Joint Secretary of the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran division in the Ministry, will hold talks with the Taliban representatives regarding the humanitarian requirements on the ground, and meet NGOs who are distributing aid and visit places where Indian projects are on.
🎙 FYI: When asked at a press conference if this visit meant India is recognising the Taliban as heads of state, Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson for the External Affairs Ministry said, "You're reading too much into this visit. This visit is about the distribution of India's humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan."
💙 WHAT THE TALIBAN WANTS: Health & humanitarian aid. Resumption of stalled projects and consular services. Resumption of embassies.
🥀 WHAT: Vijay Kumar, a bank manager from Rajasthan, who had recently joined a new posting at the Areh branch of Elaqahi Dehati Bank in Kashmir's Kulgam, was shot dead by a terrorist earlier today. He died before he could be saved by doctors.
❗️A PATTERN: Two days ago, a Hindu teacher from Jammu, Rajni Bala, was killed by terrorists outside a school, also in Kulgam.
💣 On June 1, three soldiers were injured after an explosion in their vehicles and another civilian, Farooq Sheikh, was injured in Shopian, in targeted terror attacks.
🩸 Last month, Rahul Bhat, a Kashmir Pandit was shot dead inside the magistrate's office in Budgam, continuing a grim trend of attacks on migrant workers and local minorities in Kashmir. In October 2021, seven civilians were killed in five days—among them a Kashmiri Pandit, a Sikh and two non-local Hindus.
👉 About 4,000 Kashmir Pandits employed in the Valley under a Prime Minister's rehabilitation package have threatened mass migration as they no longer feel safe. They are demanding to be relocated to safer areas.
👉 WHAT: ExpressVPN, one of the major Virtual Private Network (VPN) servers globally, has become the first service provider to reject the government's new rules. The company announced that it is going to remove its India-based servers.
❗️ THE NEW RULES come into effect from June 27. They require VPN service providers to store users’ real name, IP addresses, usage patterns, and other identifying data, purportedly to fight cybercrime. But they are but inherently “incompatible with the purpose of VPNs, which are designed to keep users’ online activity private”, ExpressVPN said in a statement.
😒 BESIDES: ExpressVPN servers were designed NOT to store data. "Data centers are unlikely to be able to accommodate this policy and our server architecture under this new regulation."
🎙 ON THE RECORD: "We believe the damage done by potential misuse of this kind of law far outweighs any benefit that lawmakers claim would come from it."
📣 IMPORTANT: Minimal disruption to user experience. Users will still be able to connect to VPN servers that will give them Indian IP addresses and allow them to access the internet as if they were located in India. These “virtual” India servers will instead be physically located in Singapore and the UK.
🇳🇱 JOINING THE CHORUS: Netherlands-based virtual private network (VPN) provider Surfshark even said that it is exploring the possibility of legally challenging the new rules.
❤️ WHAT: Vadodara-based Kshama Bindu, 24, is set to get married in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony—to herself.
🍾 WHY: "I didn't want to get married, but I wanted to be a bride," @kshamachy told @timesofindia. She also says it's an act of self-love and self-acceptance.
☝🏾 IT'S A THING: Sologamy, or marrying yourself. It's not legal, it's a symbolic gesture of committing to yourself. The trend has been around since at least 1993, with more women taking a shine to it during Covid-19 lockdowns.
🌊 WHAT NEXT: A ceremony at a temple on June 11 for Kshama, complete with saat pheras and putting sindoor! She's then headed for a two-week honeymoon in Goa. Now, THAT, we can do.
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