A passenger recently had such a harrowing experience.

It was on an Alaska Airlines flight, travelling from Seattle to Las Vegas, that a man attempted to kill a fellow passenger with a makeshift weapon after a violent altercation mid air.

Julio Alvarez Lopez, the accused, was arrested at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on January 24, a report in the New York Post said.

Lopez was charged with one count of assault with a dangerous weapon.

So what was his modus operandi?

Lopez was “fidgety” throughout the flight, and kept on putting and removing his gloves, using the bathroom for a long period during the flight’s descent.

“He sat down, got up a second time, and went to the restroom, where he was reportedly gone for ‘a while’,” Fox News reported.

After Lopez returned to his seat, he began “punching and hitting” the man seated across the aisle, and tried to stab him in the eye.

“During the altercation, the victim’s wife was screaming at the defendant to stop hitting her husband. A witness unbuckled her seatbelt and yelled at the defendant to stop,” an FBI agent wrote in court documents.

Lopez also struck the woman, who was trying to protect their seven-year-old son.

He told investigators that he was seeking asylum in the US, and added that he believed the co-passenger was with ‘the Cartel’ and was following him, as per Fox News.

The passenger who was attacked is alive, but he was severely injured.

The Qatar court on Monday released all eight former Indian Navy personnel in its custody, out of which seven have returned to India, said a statement by the MEA.

The MEA said in a statement, “The Government of India welcomes the release of eight Indian nationals working for the Dahra Global company who were detained in Qatar. Seven out of the eight of them have returned to India. We appreciate the decision by the Amir of the State of Qatar to enable the release and home-coming of these nationals.”

Earlier, the capital punishment for the jailed Indian Navy veterans was commuted to an extended prison term after diplomatic talks between Qatar and India.

Out of the total eight former Indian Navy officers imprisoned in Qatar, seven have returned to India, said MEA in its statement. Arrangements are being made to bring the last released veteran home.

The eight Indian nationals, formerly Indian Navy personnel, were imprisoned in Qatar in October 2022 after being accused of allegedly spying on a submarine programme. The Indian nationals were deemed guilty of espionage by the Qatari court, and were sentenced to death on charges not yet made public.

The MEA expressed that the ruling of the court was “deeply shocking”, and said that they would explore all legal options to get the charges against the former Indian Navy personnel dropped.

The Dahra Global case saw a major development last year when the court in Qatar commuted the death sentence of the Indian nationals after intervention by the Indian government. The sentence was reduced to jail terms.

Notably, the verdict comes a day after Khan was given a prison sentence of 10 years in a case related to leaking state secrets.

“Another sad day in our judicial system history, which is being dismantled,” a spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party told media.

It was not immediately clear if Khan’s sentences were to run consecutively or concurrently following a trial held inside the jail where he has been detained for much of the time since his arrest in August. But Khan’s lawyer Salman Safdar confirmed to AFP he had been sentenced alongside his wife, Bushra Bibi, who had been on remand throughout the trial.

“Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi have been sentenced. Bushra Bibi has not been arrested as yet,” Safdar said.

The pair married in 2018, months before Khan was elected prime minister. Bibi, a faith healer who met Khan when he approached her for spiritual guidance, is rarely seen in public.

Khan, nephew of legendary Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, also slapped the individual as he walked out of the room to look for the bottle. In another scene, some people were seen attempting to intervene and trying to pull the singer away to save the student.

As this video went viral, the internet started criticising the singer.

Later he posted a video, featuring his student as well as his father, and it described the incident as a personal matter between a teacher (ustad) and his disciple (shagird). “He is like my son. This is how the relation is between a teacher and his disciple. If a disciple does something good, I shower my love on him. If he does something wrong, he is punished,” he said.

Khan further said that he had apologised to him after the incident.

The individual also admitted to misplacing a bottle containing holy water, leading to the incident, but clarified that there was no ill-intention behind his actions. “He’s like my father. He loves us a lot. Whoever spread this video is trying to defame my ustad,” he added.

Khan’s father also supported him, highlighting the relation between the ‘ustad and shagird‘ in the field of Qawwali.

Macron late Monday accepted the resignation of Elisabeth Borne, 62, after serving less than two years in office, ahead of a widely expected cabinet reshuffle that seeks to breathe new life into the final three years of his mandate.

“Now the focus is on dismantling Hamas in the centre of the Gaza Strip and in the south of the Gaza Strip,” he said, while acknowledging that the task will take time.

About military efforts to dismantle Hamas in the central and southern Gaza Strip, Hagari said “we will do it in a different way” without elaborating.

According to him, the refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip are crowded and full of terrorists, while in the south, the large urban landscape of Khan Yunis has an elaborate underground network of tunnels. “It takes time,” he was quoted as saying.

Earlier on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government had directed the army to “eliminate Hamas”, return all the hostages and ensure that Gaza will “never again be a threat to Israel”. The war must not be stopped until we achieve all of the goals,” he said in a statement.

Khan was jailed in August this year, in the cipher case, which involved an alleged violation of the Official Secret Act. It was alleged that the cricketer-turned-politician disclosed a secret diplomatic cable sent by Pakistan’s Washington Embassy in March.

The 71-year-old former cricket star has been embroiled in a string of political and legal battles ever since he was ousted as prime minister in April 2022.

The Supreme Court judges, in a written court order, said they could not find “sufficient incriminating material” which could establish that Khan leaked state secrets to benefit a foreign power.

The order said Khan’s release on bail “during the period of elections would ensure ‘genuine elections’ and thus enable the people to exercise the right to express their will effectively and meaningfully. There are no exceptional circumstances to decline the concession of bail.”

However, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said he remains incarcerated over numerous separate graft cases, with a scant chance that he will be released from prison to contest elections.

The SUV was positioned in a nearby intersection about 40 meters (130 feet) from Biden. “Both the president and first lady are fine,” a White House official told AFP.

According to reports, secret Service agents encircled the silver car with Delaware license plates and ordered the driver to raise his hands. They then secured the area and guided Biden to his vehicle, where his wife was already seated, ensuring safe return to their Wilmington residence.

The incident took place when President Biden and his spouse departed following a pasta with tomato sauce dinner at his campaign office with his re-election staff.

The Secret Service did not immediately comment on the incident, according to the AP.

The man arrested was a French citizen previously known to intelligence services, CNN reported.

A German tourist born in the Philippines was killed in the attack and two others sustained injuries. One of the police officers responding to the scene used a taser to neutralize the attacker, Darmanin said. The suspect’s life is not at risk, he added

Addressing reporters, Darmanin said that the suspect was born in France in 1997 and had been sentenced to four years in prison back in 2016 for planning “violent action.”

The suspect was known to intelligence services for having “serious psychiatric disorders,” Darmanin added.

The incident came days after Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi on November 22 said that US shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others and these inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow up action.

The incident took place at Hicksville Gurdwara in New York where a person could be heard shouting at the Sandhu with accusations over the killing of Nijjar, who was shot dead in Canada in June this year.

BJP spokesperson RP Singh Khalsa on Monday shared a video which showed Sandhu being surrounded by people amid continuous shouting.

“Khalistanies tried to heckle Indian Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu with basless Questions for his role in the failed plot to assassinate Gurpatwant, (SFJ) and Khalistan Referendum campaign,” he said on X.

“Himmat Singh who led the pro Khalistanies at Hicksville Gurdwara in New York also accused ambassador Sandhu for India’s role in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was President of Surrey Gurdwara and the coordinator for Canadian Chapter of the Khalistan Referendum.”

In a similar incident in September this year, Indian High Commissioner to the UK Vikram Doraiswami was not allowed to enter a gurdwara in Scotland’s Glasgow by a few Khalistani radicals.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had on November 20 registered a fresh case against ‘listed individual terrorist’ Pannun over his latest viral video threatening the passengers flying on Air India with a global blockade and closure of the operations of the airline from November 19.

In his statement on November 22, Bagchi had also said that issues in the context of US inputs were already being examined by relevant departments. In a statement on reports of discussions between India and US on security matters.

“During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others.”

He said the inputs were a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow up action and added that on its part, India takes such inputs “seriously” since it impinges on our own national security interests as well.

“Issues in the context of US inputs are already being examined by relevant departments,” the MEA spokesperson added.