The Justice Department announced criminal charges Thursday against an Indian government employee who specialized in intelligence in connection with a foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.

Vikash Yadav, 39, faces murder-for-hire charges in a planned killing that prosecutors first disclosed last year and have said was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada.

Yadav remains at large, but in charging him and releasing his name, the Biden administration sought to call out the Indian government for criminal activity that has emerged as a significant point of tension between India and the West over the last year — culminating this week with a diplomatic flare-up with Canada and the expulsion of diplomats.

“The FBI will not tolerate acts of violence or other efforts to retaliate against those residing in the U.S. for exercising their constitutionally protected rights,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

The criminal case against Yadav was announced the same week as two members of an Indian inquiry committee investigating the plot were in Washington to meet with U.S. officials about the investigation.

“They did inform us that the individual who was named in the Justice Department indictment is no longer an employee of the Indian government,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters before the case against Yadav was unsealed. “We are satisfied with cooperation. It continues to be an ongoing process.

Book: McConnell called Trump ‘despicable’

Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” according to excerpts from a new biography of the Senate Republican leader that will be released this month.

McConnell made the remarks in private as part of a series of personal oral histories that he made available to Michael Tackett, deputy Washington bureau chief of the Associated Press. Tackett’s book, “The Price of Power,” draws from almost three decades of McConnell’s recorded diaries and from years of interviews with the normally reticent Kentucky Republican.

The animosity between Trump and McConnell is well known — Trump once called McConnell “ a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.” But McConnell’s private comments are by far his most brutal assessment of the former president and could be seized on by Democrats before the Nov. 5 election. The biography will be released Oct. 29, one week before Election Day that will decide if Trump returns to the White House.

Despite the strong words, McConnell has endorsed Trump’s 2024 run.

Texas sues doctor over care for trans youths

Texas has sued a Dallas doctor over accusations of providing gender-affirming care to youths, marking one of the first times a state has sought to enforce recent bans driven by Republicans.

The lawsuit announced by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday alleges that Dr. May Lau, a physician in the Dallas area, provided hormones to over 20 minors in violation of a Texas ban that took effect last year.

It is the first time Texas has tried to enforce the law, said Harper Seldin, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. He also said he was not aware of other states that have tried to enforce similar bans.

The law prevents transgender people under 18 from accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and transition surgeries, though surgical procedures are rarely performed on children.

Seldin said that while he couldn’t comment on the facts of this case, he said the lawsuit is the “predictable and terrifying result” of the law, which his organization tried to prevent by challenging it.

Tenn. court: Docs have shield in crisis abortions

A three-judge panel on Thursday ruled that Tennessee doctors who provide emergency abortions to protect the life of the mother cannot have their medical licenses revoked or face other disciplinary actions while a lawsuit challenging the state’s sweeping abortion ban continues.

The ruling also outlined specific pregnancy-related conditions that would now qualify as “medical necessity exceptions” under the ban, which currently does not include exceptions for fetal anomalies or for victims of rape or incest.

“This lack of clarity is evidenced by the confusion and lack of consensus within the Tennessee medical community on the circumstances requiring necessary health- and life-saving abortion care,” the ruling stated. “The evidence presented underscores how serious, difficult, and complex these issues are and raises significant questions as to whether the medical necessity exception is sufficiently narrow to serve a compelling state interest.”

U.N. says 1 billion living in acute poverty

More than 1 billion people in the world live in acute poverty, over half are children and nearly 40% live in conflict-torn and fragile countries, according to a report released Thursday.

The report by the U.N. Development Program and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford also said that more than 83% of poor people live in rural areas — and the same percentage live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The U.N. Development Program and Oxford have been publishing the Multidimensional Poverty Index, known as the MPI, since 2010 using 10 indicators including health, education and standard of living. This year’s index included data from 112 countries with a combined population of 6.3 billion people.

Nelson Rockefeller figure dies at 70

Megan Marshack, an aide to Nelson Rockefeller who was with the former New York governor and vice president when he died under circumstances that spurred intense speculation, has died in California at age 70.

Marshack died on Oct. 2 of liver and kidney failure, according to a self-penned obituary posted by a funeral home in Sacramento, Calif.

Marshack, who had a long and varied career in journalism, suddenly gained national attention after the four-time Republican governor collapsed and died of a heart attack on the night of Jan. 26, 1979. Shifting explanations regarding the details of that night fanned conjecture about the death of the 70-year-old member of the wealthy Rockefeller family and the nature of his relationship with his 25-year-old researcher.

Suit challenges Okla. school Bible mandate

A group of Oklahoma parents of public school students, teachers and ministers filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to stop the state’s top education official from forcing schools to incorporate the Bible into lesson plans for students in grades 5 through 12.

The lawsuit filed with the Oklahoma Supreme Court also asks the court to stop Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters from spending $3 million to purchase Bibles in support of his mandate.

The suit alleges that the mandate violates the Oklahoma Constitution because it involves spending public money to support religion and favors one religion over another by requiring the use of a Protestant version of the Bible. It also alleges that Walters and the state Board of Education don’t have the authority to require the use of instructional materials.

Republicans appeal Georgia election ruling

National and state Republicans on Thursday appealed a judge’s ruling that said seven election rules recently passed by Georgia’s State Election Board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”

The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party are appealing a ruling from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox, who ruled Wednesday that the State Election Board did not have the authority to pass the rules and ordered it to immediately inform all state and local election officials that the rules are void and not to be followed.

The rules that Cox invalidated include three that had gotten a lot of attention — one that requires that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.

3 killed during work to raze Mississippi bridge

A construction company said Thursday that it is cooperating with local authorities’ investigation of how a bridge in rural Mississippi collapsed while some of its employees were preparing the structure for demolition.

Three employees of T.L. Wallace Construction were killed and four were injured Wednesday when the bridge collapsed over the Strong River in central Mississippi’s Simpson County, Sheriff Paul Mullins said.

The company said in a statement that the three workers who died were “cherished members of our community and our team.”

One of the injured workers was treated at the scene Wednesday and the other three remained hospitalized in critical condition.

Father-son indicted in Ga. school shooting

A grand jury indicted both a father and son on murder charges Thursday in a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga.

A Barrow County grand jury indicted 14-year-old Colt Gray on a total of 55 counts, including murder in the deaths of four people and 25 counts of aggravated assault. Grand jurors formally charged his father, Colin Gray, with 29 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Both also face multiple counts of cruelty to children.

Both are scheduled to appear for arraignment on Nov. 21, when each would formally enter a plea.

Rare U.S. Constitution copy sells for $9M

A rare copy of the U.S. Constitution printed 237 years ago and sent to the states to be ratified was sold for $9 million at an auction Thursday evening in North Carolina.

Brunk Auctions sold the document, the only copy of its type thought to be privately owned, at a private auction. The name of the buyer was not immediately released.

The copy was printed after the Constitutional Convention finished drafting the proposed framework of the nation’s government in 1787 and sent it to the Congress of the ineffective first American government under the Articles of Confederation, requesting it be sent to the states to be ratified by the people.

— News service reports