"2019 will see Repeat Of 1996": HD Kumaraswamy After Meeting Chandrababu Naidu
Bengaluru, Nov 8: TDP supremo and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who is trying to unite opposition parties to take on the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections next year, Thursday met his counterpart H D Kumaraswamy and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda.
Setting the stage for the revival of an united front against the BJP, Naidu claimed the mood of the nation was against the BJP-led NDA and soon an alliance would be formed with various regional parties.
Speaking to reporters after meeting Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy, Naidu said the initial steps for the formation of the alliance were yet to be finalised.
Once the modalities were fixed, programmes would be chalked out later, he said.
"I have spoken to Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav. I have met everybody. Tomorrow I am meeting Stalin (DMK president). We will decide how to take forward the alliance with consensus.
It is an initial exercise. After that we will work together," he said.
Naidu, who had been a staunch critic of Congress, was not averse to taking it along for the "grand alliance."
However, he ducked questions on their prime ministerial candidate.
"Congress is a major opposition party," he said, pointing out that Deve Gowda became prime minister with support of the Congress from outside in 1996.
"Congress is a main anchor," Naidu added.
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Trump suspends green card lottery programme that let Brown University, MIT shootings suspect into US
Washington (AP): President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery programme on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump's direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the programme.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit.
It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa programme makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the US, many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem's announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump's administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on US soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
