Willing to share...: China as Iran eyes its 'Vigorous Dragon' jets after drubbing
With its 12-day conflict with Israel crippling its air defences, and exposing the vulnerability of its air force, Iran has reached out to China to modernise its ageing Cold War-era jets.The J-10C, a 4.5th-generation multirole aircraft, has only been sold to Pakistan by China so far. China has positioned the jet as an alternative to the French Rafale and the US F-16.While Iran, the largest oil supplier to China, has previously expressed interest in the J-10C jets, the conflict with Israel has acted as a catalyst to revamp its air force.This is so because, as Israel and the United States struck its nuclear facilities, Iran couldn't even scramble its jets, let alone intercept the airstrikes.Iran's move comes after a deal to purchase Russian Su-35 aircraft made no headway. Moreover, Iran's faith in Russia seems to have diminished, with Moscow offering little more than diplomatic support it during the conflict, which left over 600 dead.Days after Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Israel, its defence minister, Aziz Nasirzadeh, visited China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit and met defence officials on the sidelines.Reports said during the meeting with Chinese defence officials, Nasirzadeh explored the possibility of purchasing the J-10C jets.- Ends
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Indian Express
42 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Europe stresses need to protect Ukrainian interests ahead of Trump-Putin talks
European leaders welcomed on Saturday US President Donald Trump's plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on ending the war in Ukraine, while stressing the need to keep pressure on Moscow and protect Ukrainian and European security interests. Trump plans to meet Putin in Alaska on August 15, saying the parties, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were close to a deal that could resolve the three-and-a-half-year conflict. Details of the potential deal have yet to be announced, but Trump said it would involve 'some swapping of territories to the betterment of both'. It could require Ukraine to surrender significant parts of its territory, an outcome Zelenskyy and his European allies say would only encourage Russian aggression. US Vice President JD Vance met British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and representatives of Ukraine and European allies on Saturday at Chevening House, a country mansion southeast of London, to discuss Trump's push for peace. A joint statement from the French, Italian, German, Polish, British and Finnish leaders and the president of the European Commission welcomed Trump's efforts, while stressing the need to maintain support for Ukraine and pressure on Russia. 'We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine's and Europe's vital security interests,' they said. 'We agree that these vital interests include the need for robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,' the statement said, while adding: 'The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.' The leaders also said 'they remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force,' and added: 'The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations.' They said negotiations could only take place in the context of a ceasefire or reduction of hostilities. Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, who took part in the talks with European leaders and U.S. officials, said Ukraine was grateful for their constructive approach. 'A ceasefire is necessary – but the front line is not a border,' Yermak said on X, reiterating Kyiv's position that it will reject any territorial concessions to Russia. Yermak also thanked Vance for 'respecting all points of views' and his efforts toward a 'reliable peace.' A European official confirmed a counterproposal was put forward by European representatives at the Chevening meeting but declined to provide details. The Wall Street Journal said European officials had presented a counterproposal that included demands that a ceasefire must take place before any other steps are taken and that any territory exchange must be reciprocal, with firm security guarantees. 'You can't start a process by ceding territory in the middle of fighting,' it quoted one European negotiator as saying. A U.S. official said hours-long meetings at Chevening 'produced significant progress toward President Trump's goal of bringing an end to the war in Ukraine, ahead of President Trump and President Putin's upcoming meeting in Alaska.' The White House did not immediately respond when asked about the European counterproposals. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke and pledged to find a 'just and lasting peace' in Ukraine and 'unwavering support' for Zelenskyy while welcoming Trump's efforts to end the fighting, a Downing Street spokesperson said. It was not clear what, if anything, had been agreed at Chevening, but Zelenskyy earlier called the meeting constructive. 'The path to peace for Ukraine should be determined together and only together with Ukraine, this is key principle,' he said in his evening address to Ukrainians. NBC News cited an unnamed U.S. official as saying that the Trump administration was considering inviting Zelenskyy to join the U.S. and Russian presidents at their Alaska meeting. A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this, and Russian and Ukrainian officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Macron stressed the need for Ukraine to play a role in any negotiations. 'Ukraine's future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians, who have been fighting for their freedom and security for over three years now,' he wrote on X after what he said were calls with Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Starmer. 'Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake.' Zelenskiy has made a flurry of calls with Ukraine's allies since Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff's visit to Moscow on Wednesday which Trump described as having achieved 'great progress'. Ukraine and the European Union have pushed back on proposals that they view as ceding too much to Putin, whose troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, citing what Moscow called threats to Russia's security from a Ukrainian pivot towards the West. Kyiv and its Western allies say the invasion is an imperial-style land grab. Moscow has previously claimed four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014. Russian forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions and Russia has demanded that Ukraine pull out its troops from the parts that they still control. Ukraine says its troops still have a small foothold in Russia's Kursk region a year after they crossed the border to try to gain leverage in any negotiations. Russia said it had expelled Ukrainian troops from Kursk in April. Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the current peace push was the first 'more or less realistic' attempt to stop the war but she remained sceptical about the agreements being implemented. 'There is virtually no doubt that the new commitments could be devastating for Ukraine,' she said. Fierce fighting is raging along the more than 1,000-km (620-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian forces hold around a fifth of the country's territory. Russian troops are slowly advancing in Ukraine's east, but their summer offensive has so far failed to achieve a major breakthrough, Ukrainian military analysts say. 'Not a single serviceman will agree to cede territory, to pull out troops from Ukrainian territories,' Olesia Petritska, 51, told Reuters as she gestured to hundreds of small Ukrainian flags in the Kyiv central square commemorating fallen soldiers.
Economic Times
42 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Trump's tech shift opens the way for India to do a UPI on AI
TIL Creatives President Trump In the cacophony created by tariffs and Trump, a singular announcement by the US did not get even a fraction of the attention it deserves. The advance warning was in January, when Donald Trump penned his illegible scrawl on Executive Order 14179— Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI, which overturned Joe Biden's cautious AI months later on July 23, he followed it up with the main course by unveiling the AI Action Plan that outlined over 90 policy actions, heralding a no holds barred, full-throttle embrace of AI adventurism. It is a vision that prioritises computing power, private-sector leadership, and geopolitical dominance over the previous focus on ethical risks, AI safety, and algorithmic one fell stroke, the largest AI superpower has pivoted from caution to acceleration, replacing Biden-era guardrails with an innovation-first rests on three pillars: accelerating innovation, largely through deregulation; building national infrastructure, by streamlining permissions for data centres and AI research; and projecting US tech power globally, through export promotion and tighter control on announcement was accompanied by three executive orders. One of them was against 'woke AI', making the battle explicitly cultural; while the other slashed data centre red tape; and the third boosted exports of the American AI stack globally, pointing towards a strategy to create a global standard. The explosion of generative AI and ChatGPT had sparked a holy war between AI Boomers, who wanted unfettered expansion of AI, and the Doomers, who urged a careful, slower approach. With this order, it seems the former has scored a decisive this preference for breakneck speed has left many wondering: Where are the brakes? Even as there is something to be said for quickly building a technology which could have massive benefits for humanity across healthcare, education and climate, there is lots to worry about Noah Harari recently spoke about the trust paradox, where the AI superpowers do not trust one another and are racing to develop a powerful super intelligence before the other does, but are good to trust the AI the near term, this US move shifts AI's focus from how it affects society and humanity, to how it can dominate markets, create shareholder value, and pit one nation against is an explicit political aim to create bias, with its 'ideological neutrality' principle, and the US states are disincentivised to create their own guardrails with the threat to hold fast and breaking things is back in AI Action Plan is a tectonic event, and its reverberations will be spread from its Washington epicentre not only to Silicon Valley, but beyond to the rest of the world. The implications for India will be particularly interesting, not only as an emerging AI power but as a Global South leader, and the host of the next big global AI gathering – the AI Impact Summit in February 2026. These new policies might turbocharge Big TechAI development and their stock prices and accelerate startup and venture activity along with unbridled AI infrastructure the absence of regulatory guardrails could also expose society to increased misinformation, algorithmic harms and uncheckedcommercial surveillance. There is a very real risk that this economic acceleration could outpace ethical oversight, inviting public would also put the spotlight on Europe. There will be pressure on regulators to loosen up, with European startups threatening to decamp to the US. But then this is also a real, long-term opportunity for the EU to be the custodian of 'trustworthy AI'. China and its AI companies could be winners here. Countering the US' unilateral stance, China has started taking the position of AI inclusivity, by pushing open source AI models and announcing a global Shanghai Initiative to form a World AI Cooperation Organisation. DeepSeek and other models have already demonOrganisation. DeepSeek a models ready demonstrated that it is catching up on AI leadership with the US, and its open source, inclusive stance could win over more allies. However, the statist, centralised control exerted by the Chinese Communist Party, with a focus on surveillance and control will be a deterrent for many. For the rest of the world, particularly in the Global South, this divergence presents a dilemma on who to follow. It is here that there is a unique opportunity for India, to reject this binary choice, balance ambition with caution, and carve out a 'third way' that emphasises ethical innovation, inclusive infrastructure and co-created governance. India has many advantages here: the world's largest democ- racy and a leader of the Global South, a strong tech ecosystem, and a much admired model in its Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which has effectively balanced innovation and social equity. I have written about this third way, what I call coined 'JanAI', where India leads with a DPI-like initiative to make AI and its applications a public good in India. Many countries are keen to emulate the DPI initiative; they will likely flock to a similar AI initiative is also an opportune coincidence that India is hosting the AI Impact Summit in 2026, the largest such gathering of AI emerge as a third pole, however, India must clarify its own AI stance, create a comprehensive AI regulatory framework, and make AI a 'national mission' as it did with the Green Revolution, population control, and, indeed, the DPI/DPG on AI for Good and AI for All, with ethical innovation, inclusive infrastructure, universal AI literacy and co-created governance with industry, academia and civil society will help it carve out this elusive 'middle path' and give it a legitimate platform to lead the rest of the technology, it is often said the US innovates, Europe regulates, China replicates, and, often, India the game has changed. Trump's AI policy may indeed propel the US into a dominant position, but there it could be at a great social cost. As AI becomes the foundational infrastructure of this century, the rules we write today will shape everything from elections to employment to existential risk. India, with its demographic scale, digital backbone and convening power in 2026, has a once-in-a-generation chance to help the world write those rules—not in Washington, Shanghai or Brussels, but in New Delhi. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
European leaders urge more 'pressure' on Russia ahead of Trump-Putin summit
European leaders said on Sunday (August 10, 2025) that only "an approach that combines active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure" on Russia can bring the war in Ukraine to an end. "We welcome President Trump's work to stop the killing in Ukraine", said the statement signed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Germany's Friedrich Merz, Poland's Donald Tusk, the U.K.'s Keir Starmer, Finland's Alexander Stubb and EU President Ursula von der Leyen. "We stand ready to support this work diplomatically as well as by upholding our substantive military and financial support to Ukraine, including through the work of the Coalition of the Willing, and by upholding and imposing restrictive measures against the Russian Federation," said the statement.
