June 7, 1985, Forty Years Ago: Clashes In Northeast
At least 25 police personnel were killed and several injured in a continuous exchange of fire for the past three days between Assam and Nagaland police at Merapal on the inter-state border. Official sources said that 20 of those killed were Assam policemen. In Guwahati, Assam Home Commissioner Jatin Hazarika confirmed the death of 10 state policemen and indicated that the casualties might be higher.
PM In France
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi arrived in Paris to a warm and affectionate welcome and straightaway went into talks with President Francois Mitterrand. The French government rolled out the red carpet for Gandhi and the PM, Laurent Fabius, set aside protocol to personally greet Gandhi at Orly Airport on his arrival from Cairo on a five-day official visit.
Colombo's Outreach
A three-month truce with separatist Lankan guerillas is being worked out behind the scenes by politicians in Colombo, New Delhi and Madras as a direct result of last week's Indo-Lankan summit, well-informed sources said. At the summit meeting between Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, an agreement had reportedly been reached that violence of any sort should end as a pre-condition for any political solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic violence.
Curfew In Ludhiana
The calm which was prevailing in Punjab for the last two days was disturbed when a curfew was clamped in the industrial town of Ludhiana as a precautionary measure after a fire broke out in the Society Cinema hall there. According to official reports, the fire broke out in the cinema hall due to a short circuit. It has been controlled and there was no loss to life or property.
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The Hindu
2 hours ago
- The Hindu
Election Commission of India says absurd to defame us after electoral loss in Maharashtra
On a day when the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, levelled allegations of irregularities in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly election yet again, the Election Commission (EC) said it was completely 'absurd' to 'defame' the poll body after 'any unfavourable verdict by the voters'. In articles published in different languages in various publications on Saturday, the Congress MP claimed that the outcome of the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly election was 'glaringly strange', and the 'scale of rigging' was so desperate that, despite all efforts to conceal it, tell-tale evidence has emerged' from official statistics. He also claimed he was 'not talking about small-scale cheating but of industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of our national institutions'. The Leader of the Opposition had raised the issue earlier in the Lok Sabha as well as at a joint press conference with other Opposition parties, and during his tour to the United States. The poll body, on December 24, 2024, wrote to the Congress explaining its position. In April also, it had rebutted similar allegations made by Gandhi in the U.S. EC sources on Saturday said that the poll body has already elaborated the procedure behind the updation of electoral rolls. Any deletion and addition in the electoral roll is strictly as per the given framework under Article 324 of the Constitution, provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Registration of the Electors Rules, 1960, as well as the extant instructions issued by the commission from time to time. The process was undertaken in the full glare of 1,03,727 booth-level agents appointed by the political parties, including 27,099 agents by the Indian National Congress (INC) themselves. After the finalisation of the electoral rolls during the Maharashtra election, out of the 9,77,90,752 electors, only 89 appeals were filed before the first appellate authority (District Magistrate) under Section 24(A) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and only one appeal was preferred before the second appellate authority (Chief Electoral Officer) under Section 24(B) of the same Act. Section 24 of the Representation of People Act, 1961, says that appeals can first be filed with the District Magistrate (DM) and then with the Chief Electoral Officer. As per Rule 27 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, the first appeal to the District Magistrate can be filed within 15 days of the order of the Electoral Registration Officer, and the second appeal to the Chief Electoral Officer can be filed within 30 days of the order of DM. However, the delay in filing appeals can be condoned by the DM and/or Chief Electoral Officer as per the proviso of Rule 27. Partners should understand India's zero tolerance for terror policy, not put India and Pakistan on par, says Jaishankar India expects its partners to understand its 'policy of zero tolerance' on terrorism, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told visiting British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, adding that the country could not 'countenance' equating 'perpetrators of evil' with their victims. The stern statement from the External Affairs Minister came at the beginning of talks during Lammy's one day visit to Delhi on Saturday, and follows a few weeks after Lammy's visit to Pakistan, where he said that the U.S. and the U.K. were working with India and Pakistan to ensure 'an enduring ceasefire', dialogue, and Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) between India and Pakistan. The comments, in an interview to Reuters in Islamabad on May 17, had ruffled feathers in New Delhi as India has repeatedly denied any third country's role in the four-day conflict between India and Pakistan after the Pahalgam terror attack. 'We practice a policy of zero tolerance against terrorism and expect our partners to understand it, and we will never countenance perpetrators of evil being put at par with its victims,' Jaishankar told Lammy, while thanking the U.K. government for its condemnation of the Pahalgam terror attack, and support for India's fight against terrorism. In a statement ahead of the visit, the U.K. High Commission had said that Lammy would address the 'recent escalation in tensions following the Pahalgam terrorist attack and how welcomed sustained period of peace can be best supported in the interests of stability in the region'. Jaishankar's strong words are part of a diplomatic pushback by the government against other countries over what is seen as India's 'hyphenation' with Pakistan in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, where many countries expressed concern and offered to help stop the military escalation during the four-day conflict. The government has faced criticism from the Opposition over U.S. President Donald Trump's claim that he mediated the crisis, a claim seemingly bolstered by Russian Presidential Aide Ushakov and Lammy in their respective statements. In addition, the Opposition has claimed that the government has failed diplomatically to stop Pakistan, which is a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), from becoming the Chair of the Taliban Sanctions Committee and the Vice-Chair of the Counter Terrorism Committee for the year, despite India's ties with permanent members the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, and others on the council. Official sources said that 'India will be working closely with its friends' in the UNSC to keep a watch on Pakistan's activities on the council, given that Pakistan will also assume the Presidency of the UNSC in July. The sources said that Pakistan had requested Chairpersonship of four committees dealing with terrorism, and had only been nominated to the top of two, and Co-chair of some informal working groups (IWGs) due to a move by the Council to 'reign in Pakistan'. They added that at least 50 of 343 individuals and entities that have been designated by the UNSC as terrorists are linked to or reside in Pakistan, and many globally wanted terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden had lived and trained there. The Ministry of External Affairs did not respond to requests for a comment on whether the issue of Pakistan's role in the UNSC terror committees had been discussed between Jaishankar and Lammy. Lammy met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday morning, the second time he was accorded the meeting, after his previous visit in July 2024. He is also meeting Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal to take forward discussions on the India-U.K. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that was finalised in May, and discussions over signing could be held between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the U.K. PM Keith Starmer when they meet in Canada in mid-June on the sidelines of the G7 summit, where India is a special invitee. In his opening remarks, Jaishankar also referred to the India-U.K. FTA, as a 'milestone' in ties, and the potential of other bilateral agreements, including the Technology Security Initiative (TSI) for Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Strategic Exports and Technology Cooperation Dialogue to 'propel' ties forward. 'Signing a Free Trade Agreement is just the start of our ambitions — we are building a modern partnership with India for a new global era,' Lammy said in a statement ahead of his visit to India, pointing to cooperation in growth, technology, tackling the climate crisis, delivering 'migration priorities', and security issues. Musk deletes post claiming Trump 'in the Epstein files' Tech billionaire Elon Musk has deleted an explosive allegation linking Donald Trump with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that he posted on social media during a vicious public fallout with the U.S. President this week. Musk, who exited his role as a top White House advisor just last week, alleged on Thursday that the Republican leader is featured in secret government files on former associates of Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while he faced sex trafficking charges. The Trump administration has acknowledged it is reviewing tens of thousands of documents, videos and investigative material that his 'MAGA' movement says will unmask public figures complicit in Epstein's crimes. 'Time to drop the really big bomb: (Trump) is in the Epstein files,' Musk posted on his social media platform, X, as his growing feud with the President boiled over into a spectacularly public row on Thursday. 'That is the real reason they have not been made public,' he said. Musk did not reveal which files he was talking about and offered no evidence for his claim. He initially doubled down on the claim, writing in a follow-up message, 'Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.' However, he appeared to have deleted both tweets by Saturday morning. Supporters on the conspiratorial end of Trump's 'Make America Great Again' base allege that Epstein's associates had their roles in his crimes covered up by government officials and others. They point the finger at Democrats and Hollywood celebrities, although not at Trump himself. No official source has ever confirmed that the President appears in any of the material. Trump knew and socialised with Epstein but has denied spending time on Little Saint James, the private redoubt in the US Virgin Islands where prosecutors alleged Epstein trafficked underage girls for sex. 'Terrific guy,' Trump, who was Epstein's neighbour in both Florida and New York, said in an early 2000s profile of the financier. 'He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' Just last week, Trump gave Musk a glowing send-off as he left his cost-cutting role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But their relationship imploded within days as Musk described as an 'abomination' a spending bill that, if passed by Congress, could define Trump's second term in office. Trump hit back in an Oval Office diatribe and from there the row detonated, leaving Washington and riveted social media users alike stunned by the blistering break-up between the world's richest person and the world's most powerful. With real political and economic risks to their row, both then appeared to inch back from the brink on Friday, but the White House denied reports they would talk. India central to key supply chains; must be part of G7 discussions: Canadian PM Carney India is the fifth largest economy in the world, and it is central to a number of critical global supply chains, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said, arguing that the leadership of the country must be part of discussions at the upcoming G7 summit. Carney's comments came after some of his political opponents in Canada criticised him for inviting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 summit in view of a probe into allegations of Indian links to the killing of a Khalistani separatist in 2023. Prime Minister Modi accepted Carney's invitation to attend the G7 summit during a phone conversation on Friday. Canada is hosting the G7 summit in the Alberta province from June 15 to 17 in its capacity as the current chair of the grouping. To a specific question on the case of killing of pro-Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in 2023, Carney told reporters that it is not appropriate for him to comment as the legal process in the case is underway. The Canadian Prime Minister said the G7 summit will deliberate on a range of key issues including energy security, digital future, critical minerals and on partnerships in building infrastructure in the emerging and developing world. Carney suggested that he extended the invitation to Modi after talking to other G7 member countries. 'There are certain countries that should be at the table for those discussions,' he said when asked why PM Modi was invited when there have been allegations of Indian links to the Nijjar case. 'India is the fifth largest economy in the world; effectively the most populous country in the world. [It is] central to a number of those supply chains; [it is] at the heart of a number of those supply chains, so it makes sense,' he said. Without elaborating, Carney noted that India and Canada have agreed to continue law enforcement dialogue. 'Bilaterally, we have now agreed importantly to continue law enforcement dialogue. There has been some progress on issues of accountability,' he said. Canada's NDP party slammed Carney for extending the invitation to Modi. 'This decision is profoundly troubling,' it said. The India-Canada relations hit rock bottom following then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's allegations in 2023 of a potential Indian link to the killing of Nijjar. In October last year, India recalled its High Commissioner and five other diplomats after Ottawa attempted to link them to the Nijjar case. India also expelled an equal number of Canadian diplomats. However, Liberal Party leader Carney's victory in the parliamentary election in April triggered hopes for reset of the relationship. In the last few months, the security officials of India and Canada resumed contacts and both sides were looking at the possibility of appointing new high commissioners. India had accused Trudeau's government of allowing pro-Khalistani elements to operate from Canadian soil. After Trudeau's exit, New Delhi said it hoped to rebuild ties with Canada based on 'mutual trust and sensitivity'. Five Maoists gunned down in encounters in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district Five Maoists were killed in two encounters with security forces in an ongoing operation in the Indravati National Park area of Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district, police said on Saturday. With the latest casualties, seven Maoists, including top leaders Sudhakar and Bhaskar, were neutralised in the operation in the last three days, they said. 'Security forces have recovered the bodies of seven Maoists during the ongoing anti-Naxal operations in the Indravati National Park area of the district,' a senior police official said. On Saturday, two bodies were recovered following a gunfight, while three were found after the exchange of fire on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, he said. The official said the operation involving personnel from the state police's Special Task Force (STF) and District Reserve Guard (DRG) as well as the CRPF's specialised unit CoBRA, was launched on June 4 based on input about the presence of Maoist leader Sudhakar, Telangana State Committee member Bandi Prakash, Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC) member Pappa Rao, and a few other armed cadres. On Friday, security forces neutralised Bhaskar, alias Mailarapu Adellu, a special zonal committee (SZC) member of the Telangana State Committee (TSC) of Maoists who carried a reward of Rs 45 lakh in Chhattisgarh and Telangana, and Maoists' central committee member Narasimha Chalam, alias Sudhakar, who had a bounty of Rs 40 lakh in Chhattisgarh, was killed on Thursday, he said. The official said the identity of five more killed Maoists, two of them women, is yet to be ascertained. A huge cache of arms and ammunition, including two AK-47 rifles, has been seized in the operation, he said, adding that search and area domination operations were underway in the surrounding forested terrain to track remaining Maoist cadres and ensure complete sanitisation of the region. A few security personnel have suffered injuries due to snakebite, honeybee sting, dehydration and other operational injuries during the operation and were provided medication, the official said. The outlawed CPI (Maoist) general secretary Nambala Keshav Rao, alias Basavaraju (70), was neutralised in the Bastar region on May 21, 2025. In brief: At least 76 army personnel were on Saturday airlifted from Chaten in north Sikkim, where road connectivity has been snapped due to multiple landslides triggered by heavy rain, officials said. This marks the 'completion of coordinated evacuation efforts', which included the rescue of all stranded tourists earlier, they said. 'Altogether 76 army personnel were airlifted by three MI-17 helicopters. The air evacuation operation from Chaten has concluded today with the helicopters transporting army personnel from Chaten to Pakyong Greenfield Airport,' an official said. The state government continues to closely monitor the overall situation and remains committed to providing all necessary support in the disaster-hit region and assistance to those affected by natural calamities, another official said. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow.
The Hindu
2 hours ago
- The Hindu
One of the oldest unsolved problems
A young traveller, an able administrator The son of a pastor, Christian Goldbach was born on March 18, 1690 in Konigsberg – the historic German and Prussian name of the city we now know as Kaliningrad, Russia. Growing up in that city and attending university there, Goldbach studied some mathematics (don't raise your eyebrows), but mainly took to law and medicine. When he was out of his teens, he set out travelling. His journey around much of Europe began in 1710 and his lengthy travels enabled him to meet many of the leading scientists of the day. We'll get to that in a bit. After spending nearly 15 years thus, travelling, Goldbach settled down, so as to say. He had become an established mathematician by this point. Despite initial rejections, Goldbach became a professor of mathematics and historian at the newly set up Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1728, when Peter II became the tsar of Russia, Goldbach was named as the new tutor of the young emperor. When Peter II moved the court from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Goldbach moved with him. From this time onwards, Goldbach grew in stature as an administrator too. Even though there were plenty of changes in the political scene, Goldbach remained unaffected. While there was a purge of officials along with the various political moves that accompanied the replacement of one Russian ruler by another, Goldbach was never one of them. He continued to rise in status, drew bigger salaries, and also received lands. He laid down the guidelines for the education of royal children, guidelines that remained in practice for nearly 100 years. By 1740, the administrative work occupied so much of his time that Goldbach asked his duties at the Academy to be reduced. When he further rose to a senior position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he stopped working for the Academy. Goldbach died in Moscow on November 20, 1764, aged 74. Keeping in touch Travelling a continent and meeting prominent scientists was one thing. But keeping in touch with them years later was quite another. Goldbach was a letter writer par excellence and he was at it for nearly his whole lifetime. Having set off in 1710, Goldbach encountered German polymath Gottfried Leibniz in Leipzig in 1711. Goldbach moved on from Leipzig but the two continued to be in touch. Their correspondence between 1711-13 included 11 letters, with Leibniz writing five and Goldbach writing six, all in Latin. In 1712, Goldbach met French mathematician Abraham de Moivre and Swiss mathematician Nicolaus I Bernoulli, who himself was also on European travels, in London, England. Goldbach bumped into Bernoulli again in Oxford and the latter started discussing infinite series with Goldbach. It is worth mentioning that while Goldbach was fascinated by the mathematics that he was being exposed to this way, he had little in the form of formal knowledge in the subject. In fact, during the conversation about infinite series, Goldbach confessed his ignorance, prompting Bernoulli to loan him a book on the topic by his uncle Jacob Bernoulli. Goldbach, however, was intimidated by infinite series at that time, and gave up his attempts to understand the text after finding it too difficult. Things, however, changed in the years that followed. After reading an article about computing the area of a circle by Leibniz in 1717, Goldbach was drawn again to the theory of infinite series. He published a number of papers on mathematics in 1720 and 1724 and became a mathematician of repute by the time he decided to settle down following his travels. In 1721, Goldbach met Swiss mathematician Nicolaus II Bernoulli in Venice, Italy, while he was also on a tour of European countries. He suggested to Goldbach that he start a correspondence with his younger brother Daniel Bernoulli, a mathematician and physicist. Goldbach began his correspondence with Daniel in 1723 and it continued for seven years. Most famous correspondence For someone who made letter writing a part of himself, it is fitting that he is now best remembered for what he set out on one such letter. Swiss polymath Leonhard Euler met Goldbach in St. Petersburg in 1727 and even though Goldbach moved to Moscow the following year, they had a long lasting relationship. The correspondence between the two spanned 35 years and the nearly 200 letters between the two were written in a number of languages – Latin, German, and French – and covered a whole gamut of topics, including, of course, mathematical subjects. In fact, Euler's interest in number theory was kindled by Goldbach. Their intimacy also meant that Goldbach was the godfather of one of Euler's children. Most of Goldbach's important work in number theory was contained in his correspondence with Euler. While Goldbach's conjecture is the most famous remnant of their correspondence now, they also discussed Fermat numbers, Mersenne numbers, perfect numbers, the representation of natural numbers as a sum of four squares, Waring's problem, and Fermat's Last Theorem, among others. Goldbach's conjecture In a letter to Euler dated June 7, 1742, Goldbach expressed what we now know as Goldbach's conjecture. In his own words, he asserted that 'at least it seems that every number that is greater than 2 is the sum of three primes.' Bear in mind that in Goldbach's time, the number 1 was considered prime, a convention that is no longer followed. An equivalent form of this conjecture stated in modern terms therefore asserts that all positive even integers >=4 can be expressed as the sum of two primes. It's been over 275 years since Goldbach stated his conjecture, but it hasn't been proven yet. Computers have shown that it holds true for trillions of numbers, but that's not quite enough. It is one thing to show through brute force that it is valid up to a certain number, quite another to prove it for all numbers. The hunt, naturally, has been on to find a solution and Goldbach's conjecture now holds place of prominence as one of mathematics' – number theory in particular – oldest unsolved problems. There have been numerous attempts to crack that armour, but it hasn't been achieved just yet. There have been breakthroughs, of course. Soviet mathematician Ivan Vinogradov in 1937 proved that every sufficiently large odd number is the sum of three primes. Chinese mathematician Chen Jingrun, meanwhile, showed that all sufficiently large even numbers are the sum of a prime and the product of at most two primes in 1973. There have also been competitions and awards encouraging and challenging mathematicians to solve the problem. The British and American publishers of Apostolos Doxiadis' novel, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture, for instance, offered a $1 million bounty to anyone who could prove Goldbach's conjecture within two years in March 2000. The prize, naturally, went unclaimed. The conjecture, however, continues to remain open – alluringly simple and tantalising in its wording, but beyond the best mathematical brains for centuries.
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
Rahul sounds 'match-fixing' alarm again, says Bihar next
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday renewed his allegation of electoral malpractices in last November's assembly election in Maharashtra that the BJP-led alliance swept and said " match-fixing will come next in Bihar", which goes to polls later this year. Gandhi, who has been attacking the central government over its handling of Operation Sindoor, again raised the allegation of electoral malpractices in identical articles written in more than a dozen newspapers and through social media posts. He focussed his charges more on the authenticity of electoral rolls and high voter turnouts and less on electronic voting machines. He again objected to the Chief Justice of India not being part of the search committee for election commissioners. Incidentally, all these issues are topics of petitions currently pending before the apex court. Maintaining the Maharashtra poll was a blueprint for "how to steal an election" and "for rigging democracy", Gandhi claimed it was done through various steps. "Step 1: Rig the panel for appointing the Election Commission , Step 2: Add fake voters to the roll, Step 3: Inflate voter turnout, Step 4: Target the bogus voting exactly where BJP needs to win, Step 5: Hide the evidence. It's not hard to see why the BJP was so desperate in Maharashtra," he wrote on microblogging platform X. "But rigging is like match-fixing - the side that cheats might win the game, but damages institutions and destroys public faith in the result. All concerned Indians must see the evidence. Judge for themselves. Demand answers. Because the match-fixing of Maharashtra will come to Bihar next, and then anywhere the BJP is losing. Match-fixed elections are a poison for any democracy," he said. Gandhi renewing the charges over Maharashtra election results after a pause on the front and the fact that his latest burst is mostly a summary of the old charges, have made many in the Congress wonder whether he was using it more as a caveat ahead of the upcoming Bihar assembly poll, where Gandhi's new-found switch to 'social justice' plank has high-stakes. They said his article is mostly inspired by the "investigations" done by the AICC's data wing.
