A shooting at a rooftop party in Wisconsin left at least 10 people injured, including teenagers, police said.

Nine people were injured by gunfire and another was injured by broken glass at the party at a high-rise apartment in downtown Madison, Xinhua news agency reported.

All injured were taken to local hospitals, and none had injuries considered to be life-threatening. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 23, officials said.  AGENCIES

‘ONDC will become a formidable e-commerce player in near future’

The government-run Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is set to become a formidable e-commerce player in the near future, said ONDC MD and CEO T Koshy on Monday.

In an interview with IANS, Koshy said that the good traction the platform received in the last 15 months proves that ONDC has the potential to completely transform the e-commerce landscape.

“We definitely will become a formidable e-commerce player in the near future. We will have the complete transformational capability of commerce whether in supply chain or distribution channels, whether it is B2B or B2C,” said Koshy.

He said that ONDC will cover all segments, and not just focus on ecommerce. The diversity of the kind of participation can be seen with FinTech companies like Paytm (NS:PAYT), Phone Pay, and Ola.

“For example, a consumer might be able to order food, consumer products, fashion goods or hail a taxi. I see that e-commerce, as we know, will undergo significant change, with no more walled gardens, but a very, very democratic place,” Koshy said.

“The single objective of ONDC is democratisation of the e-commerce industry”, he said adding that “the idea is to give everybody a market share”.

The ONDC Chief said that a very broad array of enterprises from various segments are expected to join the network and it aims to “collectively work” to sustain both small and big enterprises.

The network currently has five and a half lakh merchants. Koshy said that the platform is getting traction from various ministries including the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), ministries of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Youth Affairs, etc.

He added that ONDC is also working with larger organisations like HUL and ITC, and even entities like SIDBI and NABARD, etc.

“There is a willingness from a large cross-section of people to participate from the government, the private sector to philanthropic organisations, CSR. I believe it will become like a movement, which spans across the country and domains,” Koshy said.

AGENCIES

 Australia will attend an international conference on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the government has confirmed.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong on Monday announced that Anne Aly, the minister for early childhood development and minister for youth, will represent Australia at the conference in Amman, Jordan, that has been convened by Jordan, Egypt and the United Nations (UN), Xinhua news agency reported.

Wong said that Egyptian-born Aly was chosen because of her lived experience and understanding of the conflict in the Middle East.

They said in a joint statement that Australia has been clear that Israel must comply with the orders of the International Court of Justice and allow the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance to Gaza and reiterated calls for the war to end.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic. Over 1 million Palestinians are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, and around 1.7 million people have been displaced, many several times over. Humanitarian access remains grossly inadequate,” Aly said.

Since the beginning of the conflict on October 7, 2023, the Australian government has committed 62.5 million Australian dollars (41.1 million US dollars) in humanitarian assistance to the region, including 41 million Australian dollars (27.0 million US dollars) to address urgent needs in Gaza.

AGENCIES

The death toll in the Israeli military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip late last week has risen to 274, with 698 injured, Hamas-run health authorities said in a press statement.The statement on Sunday noted that some victims remained under the rubble amid heavy bombardment and a lack of rescue crews, Xinhua news agency reported.

During the operation, Israeli forces rescued four hostages from the refugee camp, namely Noa Argamani, 25, Shlomi Ziv, 40, Almog Meir Jan, 21, and Andrey Kozlov, 27, all of them among the about 250 Israelis abducted last October by Hamas while attending the Nova festival, an outdoor music event, in a rural area near the Gaza-Israel fence.

After the Hamas rampage, which killed about 1,200 according to Israeli tallies, Israel launched a retaliatory large-scale offensive in Gaza, which so far has killed 37,084 and injured 84,494 others, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

AGENCIES

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he will dissolve the Parliament and hold snap elections, following his party’s clear defeat by the far-right National Rally in European Parliament elections earlier in the day.

Elections to the National Assembly are to take place in two rounds on June 30 and July 7, Macron added.

He said the challenges faced by France required clarity and the people deserved respect.

“At the end of this day, therefore, I cannot pretend that nothing has happened,” he added.

“The decision is serious and difficult, but it is above all an act of trust, trust in you, my dear compatriots,” the President said, adding that he trusted the French people to make the best decisions in their interest and that of future generations.

The National Rally in France is set to beat Macron’s Renaissance by a wide margin in the country’s European Parliament elections, according to broadcasters’ projections after voting had ended.

The populist, eurosceptic National Rally party, whose figurehead is Marine Le Pen, received 31.5 to 32.3 per cent of the vote, while Macron’s pro-European camp only received around 15.2 to 15.4 per cent, broadcasters France 2 and TF1 reported on Sunday after the polls concluded.

“Emmanuel Macron is a weakened President tonight,” National Rally leader Jordan Bardella said earlier on Sunday evening, calling for new elections.

“This unprecedented defeat for the ruling power marks the end of a cycle and the first day of the post-Macron era,” he added.

The Socialists came third with 14 to 14.2 per cent, just behind Macron’s centrist bloc, according to the projections.

The extreme right-wing Reconquete (Reconquest) party was at 5.3 to 5.5 per cent.

Voter turnout was higher than five years ago at around 52 per cent.

Sunday’s voting also sets the scene for presidential elections in 2027.

Macron, who won a run-off election against Le Pen twice, will not be able to run again after two terms in office.

It is unclear who the centre-right forces will send into the race and who will stand a chance against Le Pen.

Sunday’s results are a huge blow to Macron’s government, which has already lost its absolute majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower House of Parliament.

National Rally’s landslide victory entrenches a trend that already emerged in 2019 when the party came narrowly ahead of Macron’s camp in the last European elections.

Marine Le Pen, the daughter of the movement’s far-right founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has successfully rebranded the party initially known as the National Front, presenting a far more moderate image in recent years to increase its appeal to centre-right voters.

Elections to the European Parliament have taken place across the 27-country bloc over the past four days, with nearly 360 million people called upon to vote.

While the vote does not directly impact national politics, as it only determines who sits in the EU legislature, domestic political issues tend to dominate voters’ choices.  AGENCIES

 The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) has won the European Parliament elections with 184 seats, provisional results from the EU legislature show, with all polls closed on Sunday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen now stands a stronger chance of securing a second term with her EPP group, which she campaigned for, performing so well, despite far-right gains, and losses among liberal and green parties.

In a speech welcoming the result, von der Leyen said that she would work with political groups from the centre-left and liberals that originally backed her to win reappointment.

“This platform has worked well. It was constructive, it was effective,” von der Leyen said, in a signal that she would not immediately seek support from parties further to the right.

Earlier von der Leyen had said that, together with other parties, she wanted to form “a bulwark against the extremes from the left and the right,” adding: “We will stop them.”

During campaigning von der Leyen did not rule out cooperating with more extreme right-wing parties, in particular, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s nationalist Brothers of Italy (FdI) party.

Liberal parties fell from 102 seats to 80 seats while Green parties are also projected to lose a large number of European Parliament seats, down from 71 to 52, according to provisional results released by the EU at 2:45 a.m. on Monday.

The result, based on provisional figures from 23 EU countries and estimates and pre-electoral data for the remaining four, fends off a challenge from the far-right groups in the Parliament that polled an estimated 131 seats, a gain of some 13 seats compared to the last elections in 2019.

The centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) are projected to hold on to their 139 seats, while the more extreme The Left group is projected to lose one, going from 37 to 36.

There are 720 seats up for grabs in the EU legislature, meaning von der Leyen needs 361 seats for a majority. Together with the EPP, S&D and the liberals, von der Leyen is projected to have 403 votes supporting her.

Preliminary results show the far right made significant returns in Germany, France and Italy.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is set to win an estimated 14 seats despite a string of recent scandals and polled second to the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU).

The Social Democrats (SPD) of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were projected to gain a similar number of seats to the AfD despite gaining about 1.5 per cent less votes.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron decided to dissolve Parliament, announcing new national elections, after his party lost to the far-right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen.

The National Rally received about 31.5 per cent of votes, according to the provisional results, while Macron’s pro-European camp only received around 14.5 per cent.

Von der Leyen needs to gather together support from a range of political groups, extending from the centre left to the centre right, to have her appointment backed by the European Parliament.

A new avenue of cooperation opened with the Green parties when Bas Eickhout, a senior Dutch election candidate, signalled a willingness to cooperate with the victorious EPP in a speech in the European Parliament.

“What we need to do now is create a stable majority in the centre of the European Parliament,” he said.

In Hungary, a former ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Peter Magyar, caused a stir this year by resigning from Orban’s Fidesz party to take the helm of an obscure centre-right party called Respect and Freedom (TISZA).

Preliminary results suggest TISZA has won seven of Hungary’s 21 European Parliament seats; Fidesz is projected to have won 10, with its domestic coalition partner the Christian Democrats (KDNP) winning one.

EPP leader Manfred Weber has made explicit overtures for TISZA to join his group’s ranks. Fidesz was expelled from the EPP in 2021 — having been suspended since 2019 — but the KDNP remains a member of the group.

A potential kingmaker role for Italy’s Meloni is still also on the table after her party topped the poll with an estimated 28.6 per cent of the vote and secured about 23 seats, an influential bloc of votes.

Continent-wide elections for the European Parliament had their last day of voting on Sunday, with 360 million people across the 27 EU member states eligible to cast their ballots over four days.

AGENCIES

 Germany’s centre-right CDU/CSU alliance has won the European Parliament elections, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) coming in second, the national electoral authority confirmed early Monday after all votes were counted.

The preliminary results were in line with earlier projections.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition suffered at the polls, with his Social Democrats (SPD) and his primary coalition partners domestically, the Greens, both trailing the AfD.

The Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who are in opposition domestically, combined garnered 30 per cent, translating to 29 seats. That is the same seat tally as in the current outgoing European Parliament.

The anti-immigrant, eurosceptic AfD made significant gains, receiving 15.9 per cent of the vote, up from 11 per cent in the 2019 European elections, giving them 15 seats.

That put the far-right party ahead of Scholz’s SPD, which posted 13.9 per cent (14 seats) in what was the worst showing in a democratic nationwide election in more than a century for the centre-left party, which has historically been one of the dominant parties in German politics.

The Greens slipped to 11.9 per cent (12 seats), significantly down on their 2019 result of 20.5 per cent, while junior coalition partner FDP, known for its business-friendly stance, received 5.2 per cent (five seats).

The newly founded populist party Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) hit 6.2 per cent for six seats, while the far-left The Left party tumbled to just 2.7 per cent or three seats.

In the AfD strongholds of eastern Germany, the party led the field.

A record-high 64.8 per cent of those eligible to vote in Germany did so, the highest turnout in an EU vote since reunification, Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand said as provisional official results for the country were announced.

As in many other EU countries, observers had expected a significant boost in support for right-wing parties in the European Parliament elections in Germany. Some opinion polls had put support for the AfD at more than 20 per cent a few months ago, but those figures fell significantly in the wake of several recent scandals involving the party.

AGENICES

Iran has announced the names of six qualified candidates for the country’s early presidential election scheduled for June 28. 

The final nominees are Mostafa Pourmohammadi, Masoud Pezeshkian, Saeed Jalili, Alireza Zakani, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi.

Pourmohammadi, 64, used to serve as Iran’s Interior Minister and Justice Minister, Xinhua news agency reported.

Pezeshkian, 70, was Iran’s Health Minister during 2001-2005.

Jalili, 59, was a chief negotiator in the nuclear talks between Tehran and world powers and was a qualified candidate for the presidential race in 2013 and 2021. He withdrew his candidacy in 2021 in favour of the late President Ebrahim Raisi.

Zakani, 58, is the incumbent Mayor of the Iranian capital Tehran.

Qalibaf, 63, is the current Speaker of the Iranian Parliament and was among the qualified candidates in the presidential race in 2005, 2013 and 2017.

A former lawmaker, Ghazizadeh Hashemi, 53, is currently the country’s Vice-President.

After the announcement, the final candidates can start their electoral campaigns which can last until June 27.

A total of 80 candidates initially signed up from May 30 to June 3 to compete in the race for the country’s top executive position.

The 14th presidential election, originally scheduled for 2025, was brought forward due to the unexpected death of President Raisi in a helicopter crash on May 19 in the northwestern province of East Azerbaijan.

Mohammad Mokhber, the former first Vice-President, currently serves as the Acting President following Iran’s Constitution.

AGENCIES

 Israel’s centrist War Cabinet Minister, Benny Gantz, has announced his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government and called for new elections.

In response, Netanyahu released a statement on Sunday saying that “Israel is in an existential war on several fronts. Benny, this is not the time to abandon the campaign”.

In a televised press conference, Gantz accused Netanyahu of prioritising his political survival over a ceasefire deal that would secure the release of about 100 hostages held in Gaza, Xinhua news agency reported.

“Unfortunately, Netanyahu is preventing us from advancing toward the real victory,” said Gantz on Sunday.

“Strategic decisions are met with hesitation due to political considerations.”

Echoing increasing public protest against Netanyahu’s government, Gantz called for a new round of elections in the fall.

He urged Netanyahu to set an agreed date to hold them.

“Don’t let our people to be torn apart,” he said.

Gantz’s decision to withdraw his centrist party from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition left it with ultra-orthodox ministers, including Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who advocate for reoccupying the Gaza Strip and expanding Israeli settlements there.

Gantz’s resignation followed a May ultimatum he issued to the right-wing Prime Minister, demanding that Netanyahu develop a clear post-conflict strategy for Gaza, where Israel has been conducting a fatal assault, and agree to a hostage-ceasefire agreement.

“Unfortunately, Netanyahu is preventing us from advancing toward the real victory,” said Gantz on Sunday.

“Strategic decisions are met with hesitation due to political considerations.”

Echoing increasing public protest against Netanyahu’s government, Gantz called for a new round of elections in the fall.

He urged Netanyahu to set an agreed date to hold them.

“Don’t let our people to be torn apart,” he said.

Gantz’s decision to withdraw his centrist party from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition left it with ultra-orthodox ministers, including Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who advocate for reoccupying the Gaza Strip and expanding Israeli settlements there.

Gantz’s resignation followed a May ultimatum he issued to the right-wing Prime Minister, demanding that Netanyahu develop a clear post-conflict strategy for Gaza, where Israel has been conducting a fatal assault, and agree to a hostage-ceasefire agreement.

AGENCIES

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has warned that South Korea will face unspecified “new counteraction” by the North if it keeps sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and playing its loudspeaker broadcasts across the border.The statement by Kim Yo-jong came after the South resumed propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts toward the North for the first time in six years, in retaliation against the North’s repeated sending of trash-carrying balloons, reports Yonhap news agency.

“If the ROK simultaneously carries out the leaflet scattering and loudspeaker broadcasting provocation over the border, it will undoubtedly witness the new counteraction of the DPRK,” Kim said in the English statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency on Sunday, using the acronyms for the official names of the South and the North.

Kim claimed that the North had sent some 7.5 tonnes of “waste paper” in 1,400 balloons across the border over the weekend, arguing that they were just garbage that contained nothing related to political propaganda, unlike anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by North Korean defectors in the South.

“It is quite different from the provocative political agitation rubbish scattered by the scum of the ROK against the DPRK,” Kim said, adding that the South “will suffer a bitter embarrassment of picking up waste paper without rest, and it will be its daily work.”

Kim claimed that the North had planned to stop sending balloons, but the “situation has changed” as the South resumed loudspeaker broadcasting across the border.

“I sternly warn Seoul to stop at once the dangerous act of bringing the further confrontation crisis and discipline itself,” she said.

Seoul’s unification ministry said that the government will not permit any attempts by North Korea to incite anxiety and confusion within South Korean society.

“North Korea should not make the mistake of using our rightful response as an excuse for provocation,” said Koo Byoung-sam, the ministry spokesperson, during a press briefing.

AGENCIES

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen made her first remarks after a man attacked her in central Copenhagen and led her to be treated in hospital for a minor whiplash injury.

Frederiksen expressed her gratitude on Instagram for the many messages of support following Friday’s incident. “It’s incredibly touching,” she wrote on Saturday evening.

“I am saddened and shaken by the incident (on Friday), but otherwise I am fine. For once, I need peace and quiet. Both for body and soul. I need to be with my family, and I need to be myself for a while,” the post read.

Frederiksen cancelled her participation in several events on Saturday and was also not due to attend any public appointments on Sunday.

On Friday evening, the 46-year-old Prime Minister was punched by a man in the centre of Copenhagen. The police quickly arrested a suspect who had denied his guilt in court.

The man said that he had nothing against Frederiksen, saying she was “a really good Prime Minister” and that he had been surprised to run into her on the street.

Police investigating the assault do not believe that the attack was politically motivated.

The Danish news agency Ritzau reported that the man was drunk and under the influence of other drugs at the time and that he was a Polish citizen who had been resident in Denmark for a long time.

Condemnation from European leaders followed the attack on Frederiksen, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz among those denouncing the violence.

The incident comes as the European Union’s 27 countries elect more than 700 members of the European Parliament during four days of voting that began on Thursday. Voting in Denmark is underway on Sunday.

There have been at least two attacks on politicians in Germany in the immediate run-up to the elections. And on May 15, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and seriously injured.

AGENCIES