Express News Quiz: Down's Syndrome, doomsday fish & quirky dolls
Welcome to The Indian Express' weekly news quiz. You know the drill — there are 10 quiz questions below, woven around major events from India and the world. Your job is to sniff out the answers while being mindful of the timer. Any score above 80 will be commendable. Good luck, and see you on the other side!
Before you try our other games, a look at the rich stories that couldn't make it into the quiz this week: Nationalist history presents India as Bharat Varsha, but British were conquering territories based on economic sense: Sam Dalrymple | 'Earliest Indians were migrants…India has been connected to the world from the very beginning,' says historian Audrey Truschke | Why India doesn't need to worry about the Trump-Munir lunch
More from Express Puzzles & Games
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Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics.
She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks.
She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year.
She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home.
Write to her at aishwaryakhosla.ak@gmail.com or aishwarya.khosla@indianexpress.com. You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
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Hindustan Times
7 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Flight carrying 290 Indian students from Iran lands in Delhi, two more expected later today
A special evacuation flight carrying 290 Indian students stranded in conflict-hit Iran landed safely in Delhi late Friday night, marking the first phase of India's Operation Sindhu. Two more chartered flights, including one from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, are expected to land later on Saturday. Indian students returning from Iran via Armenia, under an evacuation operation facilitated by the Government of India, react as they meet their relatives while exiting from the Indira Gandhi International Airport, in New Delhi, Thursday, June 19, 2025.(PTI ) In a key gesture to support India's evacuation efforts, Iran opened its airspace despite ongoing regional hostilities. 'Iran's airspace is currently closed, but we're facilitating limited access for the safe evacuation of Indian nationals,' said Mohammad Javad Hosseini, deputy chief of mission at the Iranian embassy in Delhi. He added that additional flights may be planned in the coming days and confirmed close coordination with the Indian government. Evacuees recall uncertainty, horror in Iran Chants of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' and 'Hindustan Zindabad' rang out at Delhi Airport as soon as a special evacuation flight touched down in Indian territory. Students arriving in Delhi recounted harrowing days of uncertainty and praised Indian authorities for swift action. 'The Indian government has done a lot for us. I can't express how peaceful you feel when you reach your own country,' news agency PTI quoted one evacuee as she arrived from Mashhad. Sehrish Rafique, an MBBS student at Iran University of Medical Sciences, told ANI, 'The situation in Iran was quite devastating. At first, we didn't expect that it would escalate so much. All Kashmiris are really thankful to the Indian government.' Tazkiya Fatima, a resident of Noida, said, 'There is a situation of war over there. We were not sure how we would make it out…But the Government of India made the whole process very smooth,' reported ANI. The news agency talked to another evacuee, Mir Mohammad Musharraf, who said, 'I am from Pulwama, Kashmir. Operation Sindhu is amazing and really helpful. The services were excellent. We contacted our embassy. We were stuck in Tehran, unaware of what to do. Our landlords also left and were left behind. It was only our embassy that helped us reach here.' Several evacuees also expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for facilitating their safe return. According to the ministry of external affairs, 'Out of the 290 Indians who landed today, 190 are from Jammu and Kashmir." The MEA further expressed happiness that Iran opened its airspace to facilitate this operation. "It reflects the strong ties between India and Iran,' said Arun Kumar Chatterjee, secretary (consular, passport and visa), MEA. Approx. 10,000 Indians living in Iran As the Israel-Iran war enters its second week, India has stepped up efforts to bring home its citizens from the region. Around 10,000 Indians—primarily students—were residing in Iran when the hostilities escalated. Most had been relocated from Tehran to safer cities like Qom and Mashhad before being evacuated. Indian authorities have not issued a formal evacuation advisory but have urged citizens in both Iran and Israel to remain vigilant and restrict movement. 'We are arranging for the safe passage of Indians who want to leave via air or via road through third countries, or directly from Iran,' Hosseini reiterated.
Time of India
24 minutes ago
- Time of India
Butterfly effect: Flutter of jobs, migration & oil
By: Prem Udayabhanu A Kerala migrant's inside view of Pittsburgh's steel legacy, shifting politics and how oil prices and job shifts echo across oceans The lingering aura of home and the picture-postcard texture of the professed land differentiate Patoor from Pittsburgh. Much like the seemingly narrow differentiators that set Pittsburgh apart from its northeastern US cradle state of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, in the swing state of Pennsylvania, did not sway to the Red cauldron in 2025, though Pennsylvania did—as Trump triumphed. P ittsburgh has never elected a Republican mayor in a century. The last time a Republican won a mayoral election was in 1925. Polls are due this November. The scent of red color, though, is wafting across the boulevards that crisscross Meadowridge in Harrison City as Trump squeezed Democratic margins. Notice how the 'U' goes for a toss once you cross the oceanic swathes of the Pacific. Did we hear the linguistic echoes accompanying migration? Perhaps, yes. Just came across the lingering effability of Malabari slang in Patel's Indian store at Mall Plaza Boulevard, Monroeville. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Trading CFD dengan Teknologi dan Kecepatan Lebih Baik IC Markets Mendaftar Undo We also stumbled upon a Tamil family. Telugu and Hindi whispers passed by—speaking loudly is not commonplace here. Official stats about Pittsburgh's scattered Indian demographic are scarce. These were real people, original migrant stories thinly spread across the demographic spectrum of Pittsburgh's so-called Rust Belt terrain. The Brussels-based Migration Policy Institute offered details of diaspora culled from the US Census Bureau's 2019–2023 American Community Survey. Of the 2.4 million residents of Pittsburgh, 16,000 were of Indian origin. Pittsburgh's population has since crossed three million (a size comparable to Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, among Kerala's largest districts). But Pittsburgh's Indian count likely remains the same. STEM of knowledge Stumbled upon a finance graduate—a Mallu-Mumbaikar keen to chase the American dream at Penn State Behrend, Erie. The lanky teen is pursuing finance and business economics at the undergraduate level, sharing a hostel room with a White peer. First-year students are invariably paired with American students in hostels, rarely with another international student. Few Indians pursue finance, he says. Most flock to their national fixation—science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM), especially computer science or computer engineering. That's a broad indicator of Indian students' academic leanings. Nearly 70% of Indian students abroad pursue STEM courses. Employability is the gamble they dabble in when jobs are the sweepstakes. Conveyor belt of jobs Jobs and factories were poll issues at the core of Trump's presidential surge. Trump mocked conventional political wisdom by borrowing generously from the Democrats' playbook and reinforcing the Rust Belt imagery to lord over them. Rust Belt states—the US Midwest and Northeast—were once manufacturing hubs, especially for steel and autos. These include Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan—with Pittsburgh, a key steel hub, located in the Northeast per US Census definitions. Rust Belt was a contrasting play on Sun Belt states, used to describe booming economies in the South and Southwest. The term Rust Bowl was first coined by Ronald Reagan's presidential opponent Walter Mondale. Mondale failed miserably, and Reagan won in a landslide. Trump romped home convincingly, sweeping the Rust Belt states. It is another story that the Rust Bowl coinage itself was a play on the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when severe dust storms colluded with economic misery to evoke the desolation and rusted factories. Mondale's insinuation was that Reagan's trade policies were turning the industrial US Midwest into a Rust Bowl. The term later morphed into Rust Belt, thanks to imaginative scribes who vouched for Mondale's theory. Golden avenues of dealmaking The new dispensation is eager to follow up on Rust Bowl, as is evident from efforts to bolster Nippon Steel's $14.9 billion bid to run Pittsburgh-based US Steel, and a golden share announced for the US to checkmate the yet unclear foreign, or Japanese, ownership issue. The golden share reportedly includes a clause allowing a presidential veto if the Japanese were to consider shifting US Steel's HQ from Pittsburgh. That should make the Rust Belt happy, but may worry foreign investors. As Trump zooms past the golden avenues of deal-making, invoking the magic wand wielded by the US President, by relentlessly escalating and backtracking on tariffs as a negotiating tool and nudging global companies to invest and Make America Great Again, oil prices have increased by roughly $10 a barrel, or 20 cents per gallon—thanks to Israel's military adventure in Iran. In the month since the Hamas-Israel conflict erupted, the price of the Indian crude oil basket surged nearly 10%. A litre of petrol now costs roughly Rs 107.48 in Thiruvananthapuram. If you crisscross the oceanic swathes of the Pacific to reach Pittsburgh, you could buy 1.45 litres for the dollar equivalent of that. This is one rare commodity in the US that you can buy cheaper than in India. A chai costs $1.5 at the Indian store in Monroeville. We do not need the IQ of STEM aspirants to understand that, unlike in our storied backyards, the welcome absence of the burden of cess alone would push oil prices out of the pricey terrain for all and sundry. For our political machinery, a tax on oil—which you cannot do without—remains the go-to fix for a pedestrian revenue-generation philosophy. The butterfly effect may move oceans and create giant waves. Oceans and titanic waves may spur the flutter of butterflies, if chaos theory is invoked. But the united colors of migration, jobs, stats, and oil may remain unique, distant truths across the planet—perhaps even farther than the oceans that separate them. (The writer is a senior journalist who has shifted to the US)
Time of India
25 minutes ago
- Time of India
India will start operating evacuation flights from Israel from tomorrow
Indian students sitting in first evacuation flight from Iran (File Image) NEW DELHI: India's Operation Sindhu launched earlier this week to evacuate Indians stranded in Iran picked up steam with two more special flights expected to land in Delhi on the intervening night of June 20 and 21. As a "special gesture", Tehran agreed to lift airspace restrictions to facilitate the exercise. India has chartered Iranian carrier Mahan Air flights for the evacuation. While the first flight from Mashhad in Iran landed late Friday, another one was from Ashgabat in Turkmenistan was expected later. An IndiGo flight was also en route from Ashgabat. Iranian authorities said around 1,000 students will return to India in the next few days. tnn As for Indian nationals wishing to leave Israel, official sources said India will start operating evacuation flights for them from Amman on Sunday. They will be taken to Jordan by road on Sunday as border points are shut on Saturdays. Deputy chief of mission Mohammad Javad Hosseini said more evacuation flights could be operated in the coming days to bring back Indians, if required. The official also urged India to condemn Israel's actions saying this was a case of aggression against a country and must be condemned in line with international law. "We consider Indians as our own people. Iran's airspace is closed but because of this issue, we are making arrangements to open it for the safe passage of Indian nationals," Hosseini said at a media briefing. "Around 1,000 Indians who were relocated from Tehran to Qom and then to Mashhad will be evacuated to New Delhi on three charter flights." Hosseini said Tehran is in close contact with the ministry of external affairs (MEA) and the Indian embassy in Tehran to ensure safe evacuation of Indian nationals. "We are arranging for the safe passage of Indians who want to leave via air or via road through third countries, or directly from Iran," he said. The Iranian diplomat said Indians in Iran are safe, but added that a few Indian students sustained injuries after an Israeli air strike hit a dormitory in Tehran.
