Rishi Sunak’s ascent to British prime minister has been described by some of his supporters as Britain’s “Obama moment,” comparing it to the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first Black U.S. president. 

Sunak, who is of Indian heritage, is Britain’s first non-white prime minister. The 42-year-old practicing Hindu was appointed to the role Tuesday, after winning the backing of a majority of Conservative Party members of parliament. He is also Britain’s youngest leader for more than 200 years.   

Milestone  

The milestone was welcomed by all sides of the chamber as Sunak arrived for his first Prime Minister’s Questions in parliament Wednesday.  

“The first British Asian prime minister is a significant moment in our national story, and it’s a reminder that for all the challenges we face as a country, Britain is a place where people of all races and all beliefs can fulfill their dreams,” opposition Labor Party leader Keir Starmer told MPs.  

U.S. President Joe Biden described Sunak’s appointment Monday as “pretty astounding” and “a ground-breaking milestone.” 

Obama moment?  

Anand Menon, a professor of politics at Kings College London, is skeptical of the comparison between Sunak’s appointment in Britain and Obama’s election in the United States. 

“Firstly, because, actually, race isn’t as big a dividing issue in our politics here in the U.K. as it is in the United States. But secondly, too, because of the way Sunak was elected. He was chosen by MPs as a leader of a party. Barack Obama gained a personal mandate from the American people by being elected president. So, the scale of that triumph was simply of a different order to that which we’ve seen here,” Menon told VOA. 

It is nevertheless a significant moment for Britain, said Menon, who is also of Indian heritage. 

“That you see someone of South Asian heritage who is a practicing Hindu having the highest office in the land — that matters,” Menon said. “And it matters in terms of the reputation of the country. But it also matters to all those young ethnic minority kids who are looking at this and thinking, ‘Actually, I can do that.'” 

Diwali  

Hindus are currently marking Diwali, or the festival of lights. Many in Britain say they have extra reason to celebrate this year.  

“It’s a proud feeling as an Indian,” said 25-year-old businessman Rishabh Sharma, who lives in West London. “I like him.” 

Others said they felt little connection with the new prime minister. Single mother Rita Patel from the city of Leicester said she would judge Sunak on his policies. 

“There are people out there that are really, really struggling, and obviously he’s had a bit of a privileged lifestyle. I think he needs to kind of be in touch. Yeah, he’s the first Asian prime minister, and he’s from a privileged background. But now, he really needs to be in touch with his public because we’re all now looking to him for results,” Patel told The Associated Press. 

Wealthiest MP  

Sunak is thought to be Britain’s richest MP. He attended Winchester College, an exclusive private school, then studied at the University of Oxford and became a hedge fund manager before entering parliament in 2015.   

Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murthy, is the daughter of an Indian tycoon. She only began paying U.K. taxes this year after political pressure following the revelation that she had been granted “non-domiciled” status, meaning her financial affairs were not subject to British tax laws. Their net worth is estimated at $830 million.   

“We shouldn’t forget that there are many aspects of diversity, and the one perhaps where governments are doing worse rather than better is where it comes to socio-economic diversity,” Menon said.

“There are fewer and fewer working-class members of parliament, fewer and fewer members of the government who didn’t go to private school,” he added. 

Questioned about his wealth on Wednesday, Sunak maintained that he would look after the most vulnerable people in society, despite the likelihood of public spending cuts or tax rises in the coming weeks as the government has pledged to reduce debt. 

Roots in India 

Sunak was born in Southampton on England’s south coast to parents of Indian heritage who moved to Britain from Kenya in the 1960s. 

This year, India is marking 75 years of independence from Britain. For some, Sunak’s appointment is significant.  

“If a person with Indian heritage becomes the prime minister of Britain, the same Britain which ruled us for so many years, then it is a moment of pride for the whole of India,” 54-year-old Manoj Garg, a Delhi businessman, told AP. 

Manpreet Singh, also a resident of Delhi, shared the elation. “The British ruled us for 200 years, and now I feel Indians will rule Britain for the next 200 years,” he said. 

 
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Rishi Sunak, who is of Indian heritage, has become Britain’s first non-white prime minister. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, some in Britain are comparing it to the election of Barack Obama as the first Black U.S. president.
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A judge on Wednesday ordered former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before a special grand jury that is investigating whether President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to sway Georgia’s results in the 2020 election. 

Meadows, a former GOP congressman, is a key figure in the investigation. He traveled to Georgia, sat in on Trump’s phone calls with state officials, and coordinated and communicated with outside influencers who were either encouraging or discouraging the pressure campaign. 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation last year into actions taken by Trump and others to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the state. Meadows is just one of several associates and advisers of the Republican former president whose testimony Willis has sought. 

Because Meadows doesn’t live in Georgia, Willis, a Democrat, had to use a process that involved getting a judge where he lives in South Carolina to order him to appear. First, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, signed off on a petition certifying that Meadows was a “necessary and material witness.” 

Now, Circuit Court Judge Edward Miller in Pickens County, South Carolina, has honored McBurney’s finding and ordered Meadows to testify, Willis spokesman Jeff DiSantis confirmed. 

Meadows’ attorney Jim Bannister told The Associated Press that his client was “weighing all options,” including appeals. 

“Nothing final until we see the order,” he said. 

Willis has been fighting similar battles — mostly with success — in courts around the country as she seeks to compel Trump allies to testify. But an appeals court in Texas has indicated it may not recognize the validity of the Georgia summonses, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a federal appeals court last week ordered him to testify. 

In the petition seeking Meadows’ testimony, Willis wrote that he attended a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House with Trump and others “to discuss allegations of voter fraud and certification of Electoral College votes from Georgia and other states.” 

The next day, Willis wrote, Meadows made a “surprise visit” to Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, where an audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes was being conducted. He asked to observe the audit but wasn’t allowed to because it wasn’t open to the public, the petition says. 

Meadows also sent emails to Justice Department officials after the election alleging voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere and requesting investigations, Willis wrote. And he took part in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump suggested that Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official and a Republican, could “find” enough votes to overturn the president’s narrow loss in the state. 

According to a transcript of the call with Raffensperger, Meadows said Trump’s team believed that “not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted. And that’s at odds with the representation from the secretary of state’s office.” He goes on to say he hopes they can agree on a way “to look at this a little bit more fully.” 

Raffensperger disputed the assertions, addressing Trump, “We don’t agree that you have won.” 

After the election, Meadows was widely seen in the White House as a chief instigator of Trump’s fixation on the election, passing along debunked conspiracies about fraud that other officials were forced to swat down. He pushed one theory that people in Italy had changed votes in the U.S. with satellite technology, a claim that former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue labeled “pure insanity.” 

On the legal front, in a court filing this week, Meadows’ lawyer Bannister argued that executive privilege and other rights shield his client from testifying. 

Bannister asserted in a filing that Meadows has been instructed by Trump “to preserve certain privileges and immunities attaching to his former office as White House Chief of Staff.” And Willis’ petition calls for him “to divulge the contents of executive privileged communications with the President,” Bannister wrote. 

Meadows previously invoked that privilege in a fight against subpoenas issued by the U.S. House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

Meadows has been fighting investigations into the violent 2021 insurrection since last year and has so far avoided having to testify about his role and his knowledge of the former president’s actions. He turned over thousands of texts to the House Jan. 6 committee before eventually refusing to do an interview. 

The House held Meadows in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute. 

Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments. Instead, they can gather evidence and compel testimony and then can recommend further action, including criminal charges, in a final report. It is ultimately up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury. 

Grand jury secrecy is “paramount” in South Carolina, Bannister wrote. Because the special grand jury is expected to ultimately issue a public report, ordering Meadows to testify would violate his state right to privacy, Bannister argued. 

McBurney, the Fulton County Superior Court judge, has made clear in rulings on other attempts by potential witnesses to avoid or delay testimony that he considers the special grand jury’s investigation to be a criminal proceeding. He has also stressed a need for secrecy for the panel’s workings. 

 
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The possibility of Russia launching a nuclear attack in Ukraine or beyond has some Americans on edge. Some are going online to see what that might mean. Anxiety is up, but experts say panic isn’t justified – at least not yet. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Italy’s coastguard said Wednesday it had rescued more than 1,000 migrants from two fishing boats in the Mediterranean overnight, while two bodies had been recovered.

The two “complex” operations off the coast of Syracuse in Sicily, involving boats from Libya, followed an alert on Tuesday from Alarm Phone, a group running a hotline for migrants needing rescue.

From the first boat, about 35 miles from the Sicilian coast, an Italian coastguard ship rescued 416 migrants while a Spanish patrol vessel working with EU border force Frontex rescued another 78.

From a second fishing boat, 60 miles from the coast, vessels from the coastguard and Italy’s financial crime police intervened to rescue 663 migrants and “two lifeless bodies” were recovered, it said.

Italy’s new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni vowed Tuesday to stop migrants crossing in boats from Africa, in her first speech to parliament since taking office at the weekend.

Meloni said her government, the country’s most far-right since World War II, wanted to “stop illegal departures and break up human trafficking”, notably by preventing departures from crisis-hit Libya.

She insisted it was time to stop traffickers “being the ones who decide who gets in.”

Italy has long been on the migration frontline, taking in tens of thousands of people who attempt the world’s deadliest crossing yearly.

Two charity ships currently operating in the Mediterranean, the SOS Humanity’s ship Humanity 1 and SOS Mediterranee’s Ocean Viking, were on Tuesday carrying around 300 people between them after multiple rescues.

But Meloni’s new interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, said the ships were “not in line with the spirit of European and Italian regulations” on border security, and that he was deliberating whether to ban their entry into Italian waters.

Piantedosi has close ties to Meloni’s coalition partner Matteo Salvini, who is currently on trial for blocking migrants at sea in 2019 during his stint as interior minister.
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President Joe Biden got his fourth COVID-19 shot Tuesday and urged all Americans to do the same, as White House officials urged Congress to approve their request for $22 billion to fund U.S. and global COVID response.

“We’re here with a simple message: Get vaccinated,” Biden said, before rolling up his left sleeve to receive his booster shot.

Biden also castigated members of Congress who, he said, “want to move beyond COVID, but they don’t want to spend the money to do it.”

“We can’t have it both ways,” he said. “The funding we seek is critical to continue the work to develop and purchase the most effective treatments and vaccines against COVID.”

Among those funds, requested in September, is $4 billion for global assistance in vaccination, therapeutics and diagnostics.

That money hangs in the balance in this deeply divided legislature, where Republicans have criticized and opposed Biden’s COVID funding requests.

Senate Republicans have signaled discontent about the amount being requested for the COVID funding. They contend that federal spending on the virus needs to be ending, not increasing. Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of the Republican leadership team, said people can pay for their own vaccines just as they do for parts of their health care.

And most GOP lawmakers are sticking with the view that dedicating more money to the country’s COVID response should be paid for by cutting spending elsewhere.

The White House’s top COVID-19 coordinator said global demand for vaccines has declined – and the White House told VOA that the U.S. has delivered about 600 million doses of its pledged donations. He urged Americans to support continued global assistance.

“Beyond self-interest, you know, America is a country that is deeply engaged in the world,” Dr. Ashish Jha said. “The president has restored American leadership on global health in a way that was very different than the previous president. And so, for a whole set of reasons it’s very, very important that America continue to lead. $4 billion is a small investment to make to better protect Americans and better protect the world.”

Health experts agree.

“The end is really palpable,” Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, told VOA via Skype. “But if we don’t take the right steps now, we’re really at risk of going backwards instead of forwards. We need to make sure that we’re still committing additional dollars, including the funding that’s been requested as supplemental aid to make sure that the global response can continue.”

Udayakumar added that the nature of the response needs to evolve along with the pandemic, which is in a different stage now than two years ago.

“There’s very little we need to do right now to purchase more vaccines, we actually have purchased more than is needed, we now need to make sure we’re turning vaccines into vaccinations to actually get shots in arms,” Udayakumar said.

“In addition, we do need to purchase more of the oral antivirals because very few of those have been purchased for use outside the U.S. And we also have to invest in building the capacity in the health systems that need it so that patients can actually get tested and get access to treatments that will hopefully prevent severe disease, prevent hospitalizations and prevent deaths.”

But whether that gets funded depends on elected officials. Voters head to the polls in coming weeks to fill all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, and 35 of the nation’s 100 Senate seats.

VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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Citizens in India have watched Rishi Sunak’s ascension to prime minister of Britain with a sense of admiration and triumph, hailing the rise of a person of Indian descent and a Hindu to the top job in a major Western country.

Although Sunak, whose parents migrated from East Africa to Britain in the 1960’s, has never lived in India, his heritage has made Indians proud.

Sunak’s grandparents hailed from Punjab state before the Indian subcontinent was divided into two countries, India and Pakistan, after British colonial rule ended in 1947. They had moved to East Africa in the 1930s. Sunak is married to Akshata Murty, the daughter of Indian technology billionaire N.R. Narayana Murthy, who founded one of India’s most successful software companies.  

Many Indians and the media, which gave prominent coverage to his elevation as prime minister, emphasized not just his Indian roots but also his faith;  – Sunak is a Hindu, the majority religion in India, and has spoken about its importance to him.

When news broke this week that Sunak was destined to be Britain’s new leader, Indians were celebrating the Hindu festival of lights known as Diwali. For many, like Mumbai resident Nikhil Shirodkar, the development added to the celebratory mood.

“It is indeed a very special moment that a person of Indian origin and a practicing Hindu is heading a government in Britain,” said Shirodkar, who heard the news as he got ready to perform Diwali rituals.  “I would have never thought it possible that the country has accepted a member of an ethnic minority as prime minister. It is really amazing,” he said, calling it a testament to multi-culturalism.

Similar sentiments echoed on social media while mainstream media ran triumphant headlines like the one in the Times of India newspaper that said “Rishi Sunak, a ‘proud Hindu’, is new UK PM.”

Since Sunak first bid for the leadership of the Conservative Party in July, television networks and newspapers have carried stories about how in 2019 he had taken his oath as a member of parliament on the Bhagavad Gita, a revered Hindu text, performed a cow worship, a Hindu ritual in August, and lit lamps at his Downing Street residence on Diwali two years ago when he was Chancellor.

Inevitably, India’s colonial legacy also became a talking point with many calling it ironic that Britain, which ruled India for 200 years, would now be led by a man who traced his descent to its former colony.

However, historians pointed out that Sunak’s rise to the top job was not really a case of history coming full circle as many would like to believe.

“At some point of time as historians we were expecting that a person of Indian origin would become prime minister of a country like Britain or Canada,” said Archana Ojha, professor of history at Delhi University. “That conclusion is derived from a study of future demographics. While there may not be a big increase in the number of Indians in these countries, they are a rich and influential community and hence poised to play a very important role in politics there.”

But she pointed out that Sunak has also benefited from being at the right place at the right time; his ascension came after two prime ministers quit in the face of political scandal and economic crisis.

“He became prime minister when no one else in the party was well placed to take the role. If his tenure goes well, it will be a triumph for him and others of ethnic descent,” Ojha said. “But if he fails, that will also reflect a failure of the policy of multiculturalism.”

From Indian heads of technology giants such as Google’s Sundar Pichai, to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, India has long cheered the achievements of people of Indian origin and the Indian diaspora overseas.

But even as they were gladdened by the latest and possibly the most significant such success, some opposition politicians questioned whether the same could happen in India, which critics say is sliding into majoritarianism under the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Veteran leader of the opposition Congress Party, P. Chidambaram tweeted, “First Kamala Harris, now Rishi Sunak. The people of the U.S. and the U.K have embraced the non-majority citizens of their countries and elected them to high office in government. I think there is a lesson to be learned by India and the parties that practice majoritarianism.”

Sunak’s rise is expected to have little direct impact on political ties between the two countries, which have been on the upswing in recent years.  – former Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited India in April this year.

The challenge in the coming months, however, will be to seal an ambitious free trade deal that India and Britain had hoped to wrap up by October, but which missed the deadline due to the recent political turbulence in the country.  While some hope that those talks will get momentum if Sunak can restore stability, others warn that Britain’s economic woes will make it hard to pursue the pact that aims to double bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2030.

“Trade deals happen when the going is good because they are about give and take,” said Biswajit Dhar, trade analyst and professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“The British economy is in doldrums and the first priority for Sunak will be to clear the economic mess,” he said. . “Also, India usually comes up with huge demands in the services sector and with the high unemployment rates that Britain is seeing, I doubt if they can accommodate those at this juncture.”
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The U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday it had reached an agreement with Alphabet Inc’s Google resolving a dispute with the search engine giant over the loss of data responsive to a 2016 search warrant.

The government said it was a “first-of-its-kind resolution” that would result in Google reforming “its legal process compliance program to ensure timely and complete responses to legal process such as subpoenas and search warrants.”

“The department is committed to ensuring that electronic communications providers comply with court orders to protect and facilitate criminal investigations,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite, who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

The settlement demonstrated the department’s “resolve in ensuring that technology companies, such as Google, provide prompt and complete responses to legal process to ensure public safety and bring offenders to justice,” he added.

Google said it had a “long track record of protecting our users” privacy, including pushing back against overbroad government demands for user data, and this agreement in no way changes our ability or our commitment to continue doing so.”

The company told a U.S. court it had spent more than $90 million “on additional resources, systems, and staffing to implement legal process compliance program improvements.”

The Justice Department said an independent compliance professional will be hired to serve as an outside third party related to Google’s compliance upgrades.

In 2016, the United States obtained a search warrant in California for data held at Google related to the investigation of the criminal cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, the department said.

Later the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled search warrants issued under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) did not cover data stored outside of the United States.

In 2018, Congress clarified the SCA did cover U.S. providers that chose to store data overseas, but the government said that “in the intervening time, data responsive to the warrant was lost,” the Justice Department said.

Google will assemble reports and updates regarding the compliance program that will go to the government, the Google Compliance Steering Committee and Alphabet board committees.
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