More than 80 people were killed and hundreds injured in a crush at a charity distribution event in war-torn Yemen on  Apr 20 , Huthi officials said, one of the deadliest stampedes in a decade.

The latest tragedy to strike the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country came days ahead of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook on Apr 19  met Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the iPhone manufacturer is looking to invest more in the world's second-largest smartphone market.

Cook, on his first trip to India in seven years, opened Apple's first retail store in the country in Mumbai on Apr 18 and will launch another in Delhi on Apr  20 .

Looking to replicate what China did to Apple's business in the last 15 years, the tech giant is eyeing India's massive market with an expanding middle class to power sales growth, and potentially make it a home base for the production of millions of Apple devices.

Cook had last visited India in 2016 when the tech giant was just beginning to scale up operations in the country. Apple, which launched its online store in India in 2020, has long wanted physical retail stores in the country. Its original plans for 2021 were derailed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The new stores in Mumbai and Delhi come at a time when Apple is trying to deepen its retail push in India, the world's second-largest smartphone market.

India is also home to factories that produce 5 per cent of total iPhones as Apple diversifies its supply chains away from China. The iPhone is still an aspirational product in the price-sensitive Indian market, where more than 95 per cent of smartphones run on rival Google's Android platform.

Cook had met Modi on the previous visit in 2016 as well.

The government has offered Apple to define the skill set and it will support them in facilitating it as it is doing for creating skills at Gatishakti Vishwavidyalaya in collaboration with Boeing and Siemens.

A manager in England’s lower soccer leagues had a ban for using discriminatory language toward his players increased to three years on Apr 19  following an appeal by the Football Association.

John Yems, the former manager of fourth-tier club Crawley Town, admitted to one charge and was found guilty of 11 others relating to comments made from 2019-22 that referenced ethnic origin, color, race, nationality, religion, belief or gender.

Among the evidence heard by a disciplinary panel set up by the FA, the 63-year-old Yems was found to have used anti-Muslim language, as well as racial slurs and stereotypes toward Black players.

He was handed a 15-month ban in January but the FA wanted a longer sanction

An appeal board more than doubled the length of the sanction, which means he is banned from all soccer-related activity until Jan. 5, 2026.

An FIR has been lodged against Rajasthan Cabinet Minister Mahesh Joshi and some others for allegedly abetting the suicide of a 38-year-old man.

Ramprasad hanged himself to death in a godown in the Subhash Chowk area on Apr 17 .

In a video recorded before ending his life, the man alleged that Cabinet Minister and local MLA Mahesh Joshi, Devendra Sharma, Lalit Sharma, Hotel Royal Sheraton owner Munj Tank, Dev Awasthi and Lalchand Devnani caused so much trouble to his family that he was forced to take the extreme step.

The Surat Crime Branch of Gujarat Police arrested Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) National Joint Secretary and Maharashtra co-incharge Gopal Italia. Italia had criticized state home minister Harsh Sanghvi on the problem of drugs during the Gujarat assembly elections. Gopal Italia had termed the minister as ‘drugs Sanghvi’. Following this, Surat resident Pratap Chodvadiya had filed a police report at Gujarat’s Surat city’s Umra police station.

After being released on bail, Italia said the police action was aimed at harassing him.

Punjab Police on Apr 17  arrested an Army jawan in connection with the murder of four soldiers at the Bathinda Military Station on April 12. Gunner Desai Mohan, the sole eyewitness in the case, had falsely stated that he had seen two masked men running into a nearby forest after killing the solders in their sleep.

“The motive is personal,” said Senior Superintendent of Police of Bathinda Gulneet Singh Khurana. He said further investigation will be conducted in the case after taking remand of the accused.

While Khurana refused to elaborate on why the accused committed the murders, sources said the arrested jawan was allegedly sexually harassed by the slain soldiers and the killing was an act of revenge.

According to an Army statement, Desai Mohan confessed to the crime after sustained interrogation. It added that he first stole an INSAS rifle on April 9 along with 20 bullets and four bullets of an LMG and hid the weapon. He recovered the weapon in the wee hours of April 12 and then killed four of his colleagues of the 80 Medium Regiment of Artillery while they were sleeping, it added. 

A multi-agency investigation has led to the arrest of 17 people, mostly members of the local Sikh community, in connection with 11 shootings, including one at a Gurdwara in Sacramento, and have seized assault weapons in a series of raids carried out over 20 places, authorities have announced.

Law enforcement officials in Northern California on April 17  said members of these groups were allegedly involved in a mass shooting at a Stockton Sikh temple where five men were shot outside the Gurdwara on August 27, 2022, and a shooting at a Sacramento Sikh temple on March 23, 2023, where two men were shot.

The 17 felony arrests, primarily members of the local Sikh community, were made during a large-scale operation with agents executing search warrants at 20 locations in Northern California on Apr 16  according to an announcement made by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Yuba City Police Chief Brian Baker, and Sutter County District Attorney Jennifer Dupre.

The arrested members, said California Attorney General, are part of rival criminal syndicates alleged to be responsible for numerous violent crimes and shootings, including five attempted murders, in Sutter, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Solano, Yolo, and Merced counties.

Throughout the investigation, known as Operation Broken Sword, 41 firearms were confiscated from suspects.

Yuba City, a city of nearly 70,000 people along the Feather River just north of Sacramento, has a large Sikh community.

Locals often refer to the area as "mini Punjab".

Each November, tens of thousands of people travel to the city for Nagar Kirtan, one of the largest Sikh gatherings in the US.

Sikhs also have a large presence throughout California's Central Valley.

As explosions and gunfire thundered outside, Sudanese in the capital Khartoum and other cities huddled in their homes for a third day on Apr 17 , while the army and a powerful rival force battled in the streets for control of the country.

More than 180 people have been killed and over 1,800 wounded since the fighting erupted, U.N. envoy Volker Perthes said. The two sides are using tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons in densely populated areas. Fighter jets swooped overhead and anti-aircraft fire lit up the skies as darkness fell.

The sudden explosion of violence over the weekend between the nation's two top generals, each backed by tens of thousands of fighters, trapped millions of people in their homes or wherever they could find shelter, with supplies running low in many areas.

The power struggle pits Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the armed forces, against Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group. The former allies jointly orchestrated an October 2021 military coup that derailed Sudan's transition to democracy. The violence now threatens to throw the country into a wider civil conflict just as Sudanese were trying to revive the drive for a democratic, civilian government after decades of military rule.

The U.S., the U.N. and others have called for a truce. Egypt, which backs Sudan's military, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — which forged close ties to the RSF in recent years as it sent thousands of fighters to support their war in Yemen — have also called for both sides to stand down. But both generals have thus far dug in, demanding the other's surrender and ruling out negotiations.

Dagalo, whose forces grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militias in Sudan's Darfur region, portrayed himself in a statement as a defender of democracy and branded Burhan as the aggressor and a "radical Islamist." Both generals have a long history of human rights abuses and have cracked down on pro-democracy activists.