New York (AP): Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read as cheering from the street below could be heard in the hallway on the courthouse’s 15th floor where the decision was revealed after more than nine hours of deliberations. “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial,” an angry Trump

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI, May 30 (Reuters): Monsoon rains hit India’s southernmost Kerala coast a few days earlier than expected on Thursday, the national weather office said, boosting prospects for bumper harvests that could spur farm and economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy. Summer rains usually begin to lash coastal Kerala state around June 1 and spread across the whole country by mid-July, triggering the planting of crops such as rice, corn, cotton, soybeans and sugarcane. The monsoon, the lifeblood of the country’s nearly $3.5 trillion economy, delivers nearly 70% of the rain that India needs to water farms and recharge reservoirs

The Jharkhand High Court on Tuesday directed the ED to file a response to the bail petition moved by former chief minister Hemant Soren. Soren, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on January 31 in connection with a money-laundering case linked to an alleged land scam, filed the petition before the high court on Monday and requested an early hearing of the matter. Appearing on behalf of Soren before a bench of Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay, senior advocate Kapil Sibal pleaded that the JMM leader was a victim of political conspiracy. Sibal said that Soren had been trapped in the