Motorcycles weave through traffic before pulling up beside clusters of volunteers, ferrying donations from supporters across India and abroad unable to join a rare display of public dissent against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government

International News via Reuters:

A steady stream of food delivery riders carrying meals, snacks and bottled water is helping sustain a youth-led protest movement that has sprung up in the heart of India’s capital.

Motorcycles weave through traffic before pulling up beside clusters of volunteers, ferrying donations from supporters across India and abroad unable to join a rare display of public dissent against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

“From Kerala to the USA, orders are coming from everywhere,” said rider Suraj Kumar, 25, sitting atop his motorcycle with a bag of kachoris, a popular deep-fried snack, as some volunteers climbed over police barricades to take delivery of the packages.

A volunteer took the packet and passed it hand-to-hand towards the centre of the protest site a few hundred metres away around Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory, where hundreds of people gathered around a raised platform.

There, leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a movement that began as online satire in May, demanded the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over repeated test paper leaks. They have been there since last month but the protest gained momentum only in recent days after a prominent activist began an indefinite hunger strike in support.

PROTEST SUSTAINED BY ‘PEOPLE’S KINDNESS’, SAYS STUDENT

The encampment has endured despite a major police crackdown on Monday, when tens of thousands of mostly young people tried to march on parliament. Indians under 30 are estimated to make up more than half of the country’s 1.42 billion population, and many have long complained that years of strong economic growth have failed to create enough jobs.

“People are angry, especially after the police started beating innocent students. But not everyone can come here so they are sending food,” said Raj Rathore, 25, a volunteer who has spent the past few days unloading and distributing deliveries including water bottles, fruit and biscuits.

Those contributions, along with volunteer-run support networks, have helped keep the protest running around the clock, students said.

“This protest is running purely because of people’s kindness, and the fact that we are all united,” said Rina Rawat, a Delhi University student herding people into queues inside the protest site.

Rawat, 20, was struck on her left leg by police batons on Monday but returned the next day to “do her duty”, she said.

PROTEST FEATURES RARE OPEN CRITICISM OF MODI

Modi has not directly commented on the protests, though a minister said after a meeting of the ruling coalition that the premier had told them the “strongest possible steps are being taken to protect the interest of the students”. Pradhan promised “answers, reforms and accountability”.

At the protest site, the number of protesters swelled to 5,000 by late afternoon on Wednesday despite intermittent monsoon showers. Most were Gen Z students carrying placards, blasting patriotic Bollywood songs and chanting slogans.

“Modi, we won’t tolerate your autocracy,” shouted a protester as the crowd cheered, a rare sight under a leader who has dominated Indian politics since taking power in 2014.

“I was a Modi supporter until 10 days ago,” said Mukesh, who declined to give his second name. “But when I saw the police brutality, I was shocked.”

YOUNG DOCTORS, MEDICAL STUDENTS PROVIDE FIRST AID, MEDICINES

Volunteers cleared puddles and collected garbage while others used hand-held fans to keep protesters cool in the humidity.

A medical stall staffed by volunteer doctors and medical students has operated at the site for about a month. Volunteers said they had been especially busy over the past two days.

“We are providing first aid and medicines for dizziness and nausea,” said Bhavna, 23, who did not want to share her last name. “We too have suffered because of paper leaks, the anxiety that gives you is enormous.”

Many protesters drew inspiration from India’s independence movement, carrying portraits of revolutionary Bhagat Singh, holding copies of the Constitution and handing out roses. Others donned Spider-Man masks and held slogans describing themselves as “baddies”.

Nearby, 19-year-old Arpita Verma said “there’s been too much Hindu-Muslim politics in India”, referring to sharper religious divisions under Modi’s party that draws support mainly from the Hindu majority.

“But we have no space for that here — now we are united by a common cause, and we are not afraid at all.”

Editing by Krishna N. Das, Editing by William Maclean

The outage also hit the prime minister’s office and various ministerial offices, along with many businesses, media said

International News via Reuters:

Malta’s capital Valletta was without power on Wednesday, a day after the island’s prime minister issued an “unconditional” apology for a wave of power cuts across the country over several days.

“I want to apologise to all those who were without electricity in the last hours. That apology is unconditional,” Prime Minister Robert Abela said on Tuesday as people in several localities reported having spent the night without a fan or air-conditioning.

The outage also hit the prime minister’s office and various ministerial offices, along with many businesses, media said. Restaurants said they had to throw away food.

Wednesday’s power cut briefly interrupted the trial of a businessman accused of association in the car bomb murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017.

The Mediterranean island is at the end of a five-day heat wave which has seen temperatures reach 42 degrees. A July record of 43.3 degrees centigrade was reached on Saturday.

State energy company Enemalta said the power cuts have been caused by faults in the distribution network owing to the extreme temperatures and record demand for electricity.

“While we have done a lot, the challenges are big. The effects of climate change are showing, and temperatures are constantly rising and lasting longer,” Abela said.

The opposition Nationalist Party demanded compensation for damages to families and businesses.

Reporting by Christopher Scicluna, Editing by Louise Heavens

The two longtime foes have held more than three months of face-to-face talks, billed as a way to put a permanent end to hostilities since a new war erupted on March 2 between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, triggered by the wider regional conflict

International News via Reuters:

Lebanon and Israel are scheduled to hold their next round of U.S.-brokered talks on August 4 in Italy, a Lebanese official told Reuters on Wednesday, as the two countries begin implementing a plan for Israeli withdrawals and Lebanese army deployments in southern Lebanon.

The two longtime foes have held more than three months of face-to-face talks, billed as a way to put a permanent end to hostilities since a new war erupted on March 2 between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, triggered by the wider regional conflict.

The ambassador-level direct meetings are unusual for countries that remain formally at war and have had no normal diplomatic relations through decades of invasion, military occupation and cross-border conflict.

Five meetings hosted by the United States produced a framework deal late last month which foresees the disarmament of Hezbollah, the progressive withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon and the deployment of Lebanese troops. 

The ambassador-level talks have since moved to the Italian capital so delegations could discuss the technical details and guidelines of the pilot zones — the term for the geographical areas where that phased process would be implemented. 

LEBANON PRESSES FOR FULL ISRAELI PULL-OUT

The first Israeli withdrawal under the pilot zone programme took place this week. 

Israeli forces pulled out of the southern Lebanese town of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh and the Lebanese army began deploying troops there, but asked residents to delay their return until the town was cleared of unexploded ordnance. 

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam visited Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh on Wednesday and planted a Lebanese flag there, saying the state would work to reopen roads, clear rubble and restore public services so that residents could return.

Salam said Israel’s withdrawal was a significant first step but that Lebanon wanted a full Israeli withdrawal from all Lebanese territory. 

Israel continues to occupy what it describes as a buffer zone about 10 km (6 miles) inside Lebanon along the length of the border, where Israeli troops have ordered the local populations to leave and razed villages. Israeli officials say the zone is necessary to protect northern Israeli communities from attacks by Hezbollah.

Despite a ceasefire that came into force last month, controlled demolitions have continued, Lebanese security sources said. 

Tens of thousands of Lebanese people remain displaced, unable to return home because their villages remain occupied by Israeli troops or have been destroyed. 

Israeli officials have said they will remain in southern Lebanon as long as Hezbollah remains armed. The group has rejected the Lebanese government’s direct talks with Israel and has refused to disarm in full. 

During his first official trip to Washington, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon could remove “the root cause that Hezbollah has long cited as its justification”.

Only then could Hezbollah be disarmed, Aoun told guests at a reception at the Lebanese embassy in Washington, according to comments shared by his office. 

Reporting by Maya Gebeily and Tala Ramadan, Editing by William Maclean

Petra Hielkema, chair of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), said private equity (PE) ownership could bring capital, expertise and competition

International News via Reuters:

Private equity firms seeking to buy European insurers must show they can support policyholders for the long term rather than pursuing a quick profit, Europe’s insurance watchdog said.

Petra Hielkema, chair of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), said private equity (PE) ownership could bring capital, expertise and competition.

“If you say you’re long term, you should be long term and long term is not five years,” she told Reuters.

Alternative asset managers have been expanding into insurance, attracted by predictable income streams and the large pools of assets insurers manage on behalf of customers.

Such deals have caught the attention of regulators and investors, heightened by some recent stress in the market for private, or unlisted, investments.

Supervisors want to ensure new owners do not channel policyholder money into riskier affiliated investments or leave insurers financially weaker when they exit, Hielkema said.

“The question you would then need to ask is: what is your post-acquisition strategy?” she said, adding: “You need a convincing answer to that, that also satisfies the need for prudence, consumer protection, and stability”.

EIOPA, which coordinates the European Union’s 27 national insurance watchdogs, is due to finalise a “supervisory statement” to help them assess takeovers by private equity firms, which typically aim to sell after around five years.

Prospective buyers will be asked how long they expect to stay invested as insurers have obligations to customers stretching across decades.

Regulators will also examine ownership structures, transactions within the group and investment strategies that could expose policyholders to new risks.

They are also paying close attention to insurers’ growing exposure to private credit and increasingly complex reinsurance arrangements that transfer risks to affiliated entities, sometimes in offshore jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands.

In Britain, regulators plan to tighten the capital treatment of so-called funded reinsurance.

‘TOO MUCH’ IN SOME COUNTRIES

Although private equity ownership remains relatively low in the EU, the average masks higher concentrations in some countries. Around 20% of Greece’s insurance market is linked to PE, Portugal and Luxembourg about 16% and the Netherlands 13%.

Private equity investors took control of 37 EU insurers between 2014 and 2024 and exited 11, leaving 26 PE-owned insurance groups with about €260 billion ($303 billion) of assets under management, or 2.4% of the market, EIOPA said.

The number of PE-owned U.S. insurers rose from 90 in 2018 to 137 in 2024, with $704 billion in cash and invested assets, or 7.8% of the industry total, U.S. supervisor NAIC said.    

“In some individual cases there is a point where the supervisor will say: this is too much,” said Hielkema, adding that regulators could act when an insurer became overly dependent on one investor or on transactions with affiliated companies, creating concentration risks.

Hielkema said some investors may overestimate how easily business models that proved successful in the United States and Britain can be transplanted into continental Europe, where insurance products, customer behaviour and regulation differ.

She highlighted Eurovita, an Italian insurer owned by private equity group Cinven, which had to be rescued in 2023. 

Reporting by Francesco Canepa; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Alexander Smith