Vandita Sharma appointed Karnataka's new Chief Secretary
Bengaluru, May 27: The Karnataka government on Friday appointed senior IAS officer Vandita Sharma as the state's new Chief Secretary.
Sharma, a 1986-batch IAS officer, is currently Additional Chief Secretary and Development Commissioner.
She will succeed P Ravi Kumar who will retire on May 31.
The senior IAS officer will be in office till November 2023. The state goes to assembly polls next year.
Sharma will be Karnataka's 39th chief secretary, and will be the fourth woman to occupy the post, after Teresa Bhattacharya in 2000, Malathi Das in 2006, and K Ratna Prabha in 2017.
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US VP JD Vance says Lebanon not part of ceasefire, calls it ‘misunderstanding’
Budapest/Washington: US Vice President J D Vance has said that Lebanon was never included in the ceasefire understanding with Iran, describing the confusion as a “legitimate misunderstanding”.
Speaking to reporters before departing from Hungary, Vance said, “I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn’t. We never made that promise.”
He stressed that the United States had not included Lebanon in the scope of the ceasefire at any stage.
His remarks come amid continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon, where more than 200 people were reported killed, even as ceasefire talks between Iran and the US move forward.
Vance said Israel had “offered … to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon because they want to make sure that our negotiation is successful”.
He warned that if Iran allows the situation in Lebanon to affect the negotiations, it could derail the talks.
“If Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice,” he said.
