Punjab-origin expert appointed trustee of history museum in UK

LONDON: Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson on Wednesday appointed Yadvinder Malhi, professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford, as a trustee of one of London’s most popular visitor attractions: the Natural History Museum.

A leading science research centre, the museum in south Kensington is host to around 80 million specimens spanning billions of years and welcomes more than five million visitors annually. Malhi, 52, has focused his research on the impact of climate change and other types of change on the biosphere.

LONDON:TWO Indian-origin men have been sentenced by the Birmingham Crown Court to over 15 years in jail each following one of Scotland Yard’s biggest drugs busts worth more than £20 million (Rs 18.60 crore), the police said on Thursday.

The two are Baldev Singh Sahota, 54, from Oldbury in the West Midlands and Shakti Gupta, 34, from Birmingham; they were jailed for 16 years and 18 years respectively following one of the largest land seizures of Class A drugs in the UK: 172 kg of cocaine.

The police said that on December 11, 2019, a team of specialist crime officers stopped a van, which was being driven by Sahota. On inspection, officers discovered a large quantity of cocaine mixed among pallets of frozen food; the total weight of the cocaine was 168 kg.

A further search was carried out at an address in Birmingham on the same day, when 4 kg of Class A drugs (cocaine and MDMA) and 1 kg of cutting agent were discovered. Gupta was arrested here. Both later pleaded guilty to offence of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.

Detective superintendent Neil Ballard said: “This operation has resulted in one of the largest land seizures of cocaine within the UK, ever. It is an extremely significant amount of Class A drugs that indicates the scale of this organised drug supply”.