Terrorism

Two Iranian nationals have been charged with terror offences over an alleged plot to target the Jewish community in Manchester ahead of Yom Kippur, Counter Terrorism Policing has said.

Rahman Salehi, 35, and Salam Ahmadyan, 36, are accused of preparing to commit an act of terrorism or assisting another to commit an act of terrorism on or before 20 September.

The duo were arrested in the Northern Quarter area of the city, when thousands of British Jews were in synagogues.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the news two Iranian men have been charged over an alleged plot in the Manchester area would be “deeply distressing” to the Jewish community and added “both suspects arrived by small boat several years ago”.

The men are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Saturday.

New Delhi, India — Speaking at an event in New York this week, India’s Foreign Affairs Minister S Jaishankar offered a blunt assessment of Washington: It has been an insensitive partner to India’s concerns over “terrorism”; has warmed to its arch-rival Pakistan; and has pursued “self-centered” trade policies that have disproportionately hurt the Global South.

That tone marks a new edge in how New Delhi is dealing with US President Donald Trump’s administration in Washington, analysts say, on the back of rising bilateral tensions between the capitals.

For decades, India has dealt with divisive issues with otherwise friendly nations quietly behind the scenes, away from spectacle. That has especially been New Delhi’s approach with Washington, where the relationship has broadly enjoyed wide bipartisan support.

However, after months of tensions, New Delhi is adopting a more openly critical tone towards Washington to address the volatility and uncertainty that Trump brings to the White House.

The changing tune in New Delhi also comes at a critical time for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who faces mounting domestic pressure and criticism from the opposition for allegedly bowing down to US pressure, time and again. On Wednesday, Modi held a telephone call with Trump, which the Indian PM called “productive” — a cold and formal depiction far removed from his description of the US president as a “good friend” in previous years.

Chietigj Bajpaee, a senior research fellow for South Asia at the Chatham House think tank, said that Jaishankar’s remarks “offer a frank assessment” on the current state of the India-US relationship. “Clearly, the shine has come off the bilateral relationship after India was initially among the most optimistic about a second Trump term,” he said.

India’s pain points

Jaishankar addressed frictions between India and the US while speaking at an Asia Society event after the UN General Assembly in New York ended on Monday.

“If I stand back and look at the [India-US] relationship, I note that much of the world has had a more difficult relationship with the US,” he said. “I mean that may not be a consolation, but that’s a reality.”

Trade

Trade has been one of the flashpoints. Washington is India’s largest trading partner, with bilateral goods trade reaching $149.1 billion in 2025; but the relationship remains tilted towards India with a $58.4 billion goods surplus.

Jaishankar started by noting: “Countries should not be so self-centred that you’re in your own world and take your decision and say, ‘Well, it was not my intention to make your life difficult’.”

The minister was partly referring to the economic spillover of the wars in Iran and Ukraine, urging that “sound common sense” should ensure that the basic needs of countries were not neglected.

But then, he referred to the trade negotiations between India and the US, that have so far yielded a roadmap to a deal — but not a deal itself. “Apart from the per capita gap between India and the United States, the nature of production and the nature of society is very different,” he noted.

The agricultural sector has been among the most contested points between the two, where India has kept its market largely closed for decades to safeguard its farmers. “The expectation that it could rapidly move forward was tested against the ground reality, which was much more complex,” he said, adding that “there is more or less an understanding on the trade agreement.”

At one point, India was among the countries facing the worst tariff rates imposed by Trump. After the US Supreme Court struck down Trump’s sweeping tariffs in February, his administration swiftly turned to other tools, including a new 10 percent global tariff. Earlier this month, Trump signed a law under which the US can impose up to 100 percent tariffs on countries like India that purchase Russian oil.

Jaishankar pointed to these changes, noting that the negotiations created “bumps last year for the relationship,” and added that once the deal is closed, it “would contribute to a better relationship.”

Ajay Bisaria, a retired diplomat who served as high commissioner to Canada and Pakistan, and as ambassador to Poland, told Al Jazeera that with Washington, in particular, “India has decided to be more public because there has been a lot of public criticism and a sentiment that the US is bullying India and India has been silent.”

The new 100 percent tariff on India, due to come into effect in less than a month, “is sort of a deal breaker in the relationship right now,” said Bisaria. “If that becomes reality, then all Indian efforts [to reach out to the US] would come under scrutiny.”

‘Terrorism’

But trade isn’t the only challenge in the relationship. A major rupture emerged in May last year, when New Delhi engaged in a four-day war with its bitter neighbour, Pakistan, after an attack by armed fighters in Indian-administered Kashmir killed 26 civilians.

New Delhi was upstaged as President Trump announced a ceasefire, claiming that he threatened both countries with economic damage if they didn’t stop fighting. For India, any question on Kashmir is strictly bilateral with Pakistan, with no room for so-called third-party intervention.

Nevertheless, Trump has gone on to claim dozens of times that he brokered the crucial ceasefire — as recently as at the UNGA in New York — that halted the war between two nuclear-armed neighbours. India took offence to these claims.

On the other hand, Pakistan’s leaders cozied up to Trump, showered high praise, and nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, the relationship between Islamabad and Washington has bloomed, to New Delhi’s obvious irk.

For India, Jaishankar said, “particularly important is the issue of terrorism.”

“As a country, perhaps there are very few countries which have been subjected to the kind of terrorism that we have from a neighbour as part of a deliberate, conscious policy over many, many decades,” Jaishankar said, referring to Pakistan.

“Now, if something which matters so deeply to us, there isn’t enough understanding or appreciation or empathy of that, I think that creates a problem too,” he said, adding that India’s primary concerns are “not fully appreciated” by its partner, the US.

New Delhi’s changing tone while addressing Washington “is a lesson learnt from its experiences,” said Bisaria, the former diplomat. “After the ceasefire issue, the moods changed — and it all became worse.”

Harsh Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank, said that “the obsession with Pakistan in the Trump administration without taking India’s sensitivities into account contributed to the sense that, look, we need to start articulating it.”

“When at the top level, you don’t see reciprocity, then calculations change and decisions are taken to bring differences out in the open,” Pant told Al Jazeera, referring to Jaishankar’s comments.

Domestic Pressure

Indians have been the biggest beneficiaries of the US’s H1B programme which allows hiring of foreign workers with training in specialty fields. But that has come under fire from Trump, under whose watch Washington has raised barriers and fees for applicants, amid growing criticism of the scheme from supporters of his MAGA movement.

“For many years, mobility was seen as an economic gain. Today the economics of mobility and the politics of mobility are at odds with each other, at least in some quarters,” Jaishankar said, referring to Trump’s anti-immigration politics.

“That certainly in public perception is an issue,” the minister said.

Domestic pressure appears to be finally catching up in New Delhi. “Modi is feeling domestic pressure, with key state elections coming up next year, especially amid some anti-incumbency,” said Bisaria. “It dictates that the government’s posture should not be one of taking bullying from the US.”

Pant said issues like migration impact the general public in India, with the world’s largest population. For years, such connections made the US “an attractive partner for a large mass of Indians.” But today, he said,
”the same issues are becoming a negative drag on the relationship.”

“The public mood in India is also changing perceptibly towards the US. And I think the government is articulating that negative sentiment now publicly,” Pant said.

‘Waiting out Trump’

When Trump returned to the White House for his second presidential run, many in New Delhi’s strategic community were optimistic about bilateral relations, because of the US president’s warm personal relations with PM Modi during his first term.

But things unravelled in the coming months.

Still, Chatham House’s Bajpaee said that despite widening divisions between the US and India, “both have not given up on reviving their relationship”.

He pointed to Jaishankar’s remarks that India isn’t singled out in having a difficult relationship with the US. “Rather, the downturn in India-US relations is a reflection of the Trump administration’s transactional and often unpredictable or erratic foreign policy,” he told Al Jazeera.

“This offers a potential off-ramp for an eventual reset in relations. The conclusion of a bilateral trade agreement is a key watchpoint for this,” Bajpaee added.

For New Delhi, Pant said, “it is now just the question of waiting Mr. Trump out.” Though he added, with a laugh, that India is not alone in that queue.

“Everyone is waiting him out. President Trump has little respect for conventions and norms of inter-state behaviour. How do you just deal with that individual?” Pant said.

EXCLUSIVE: on his latest TV travelogue Michael Palin is in the Phillippines, but he draws the line at one recycled food type in a poverty stricken area and spoke to the Mirror about his experiences.

Michael Palin says he had to turn down a food dish in the Phillippines as it was a “bridge too far” for him. The former Monty Python star, 83, normally tries lots of the local cuisine on his travelogues.

But in new Channel 5 series Michael Palin In The Philippines he was surprised by one thing on the menu known as Pagpag. Michael was told that it was recycled chicken which they took after people ate it.

He explains in the programme: “I’ve never seen anything that illustrates poverty quite as clearly as half-eaten fried chicken, which has been taken from the bins of fast food restaurants and then re-cooked. So this is ultimate food recycling. Food that’s already been on someone’s plate has been left behind, and this nice lady goes and collects it. Seeing this, I’m starting to understand why so many people are angry about the inequalities here.”

Speaking to the Mirror about his experiences in the Philippines, Michael admitted he was intrigued by the snack, but not enough to try it.

He said: “It was a bridge too far for me, certainly. Yeah. But it was interesting. The lady who was selling it again, she wasn’t conning anybody. She wasn’t a gangster or something like that showing off. She was a middle-aged woman. She was obviously a pillar of the community. People trusted her, and she’d been recycling these food for years and years, and no one seems to have died.

“I’ve eaten everything on my journeys, but I couldn’t eat recycled food. I’m afraid at that time of the day.”

The food was for sale in an area of poverty called Tondo and on the morning he was there Michael learned that the seller and friends had gone to fast food outlets the night before.

He added: “Any meat that had been thrown away, they brought it back, scraped it off the bone, cleaned it all up, and reboiled it, so everything was sort of officially hygienic, and then sold it the next the next day as little sort of delicacies.”

Elsewhere on his trip Michael gets up to all sorts of other adventures, including travelling through underground rivers and swimming with thousands of sardines in Moalboal.

Under military escort, Michael explores the extraordinary and haunting remains of the destroyed city of Marawi, and on the island of Jolo he meets a member of the terrorist group, Abu Sayyaf.

He said the trip, filmed last year when he was still 82, made him feel young at heart and told the Mirror: “When I actually did the Philippines show. There’s no special sort of conditions because of my age or something like that. I just did it like I used to travel, and it’s extraordinary how your body or your mind can help your body to carry on. And physically, I didn’t feel the strain of the Philippines journey until I came home, and it was a long flight, 16 and a half hours to get to Manila from London, and that’s what really wears you out. It’s the airports and the long flights.

“Time in the Philippines was rejuvenating. I felt great, you know. And I thought to myself, I’ll check on my passport that I really am 82.”

* Michael Palin in the Philippines – starts Monday, September 28 at 9pm, Watch|stream on 5.

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