&w=3840&q=100)
History Today: When construction on the Berlin Wall began in 1961
Former US President Ronald Reagan looks susprised when he was handed a hammer and chisel to work on one of the last remnants of the Berlin Wall, September 12, 1990. File Image/Reuters
Today, August 13, is a historic day.
On this day in 1961, soldiers in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) began construction on the Berlin Wall – separating the communists backed by the Soviet Union from the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
Also on this day in 1997, South Park debuted on Comedy Central. The show by Trey Parker and Matt Stone was rude, crude and unforgettable and changed animation comedy forever.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Construction of Berlin Wall begins
The East German soldiers began building the wall shortly after midnight on August 13, 1961.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had given Walter Ulbrich, the Communist leader of East Germany, the nod to begin the work. East Germany by now was essentially under the thumb of the Soviet Union.
East Germany had already sealed off its main border with West Germany in 1952. This was, as it were, the final brick in the wall. Soldiers worked overnight, putting up over 120 kilometres of barbed wire. Residents woke up to find themselves cut off from friends and loved ones.
The reason behind putting up this wall was to stop the flow of people from East Germany to West Germany. It is estimated that around 1000 people per day were leaving East Germany in search of opportunity in West Germany.
After the wall went up, just 5,000 people managed to cross over in nearly three decades. At least 100 were killed by East German border guards known as Volkspolizei.
West Germans applaud as East Berlin citizens travel through Checkpoint Charlie, at the Berlin Wall, at the border of West Berlin, November 10, 1989. File image/Reuters
By November 1989, East Germany was in chaos. Its long-time leader Erich Honecker had resigned the previous month. Massive protests were also ongoing and reforms were being demanded. The wall fell after East German border guards gave way in the face of a massive crowd. The iconic images that were captured that day remain instantly recognisable around the world. Eleven months later, Germany was reunified.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
South Park debuts
South Park, an animated show unlike any other, debuted on Comedy Central in 1997.
Set in a fictional Colorado mountain town of the same name, the series revolves around four young boys – Eric Cartman, Stanley Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenneth (Kenny) McCormick.
The show, which is known for its low-budget appearance, has revelled in mocking celebrities and sacred cows of American life over the years.
From Tom Cruise to the Royal Family, Prophet Muhammad, Jesus and Santa, no one has been off limits from Parker and Stone. Even those who worked on the show haven't been safe. Isaac Hayes, who voiced the character of Chef, walked off the show in protest after it targeted Scientology.
South Park went after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2023.
The show has recently drawn the ire of President Donald Trump, who in a recent episode was depicted naked in bed with Satan.
'This show hasn't been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention,' White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in the statement. 'President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country's history – and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump's hot streak.'
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Parker, asked for his response at the San Diego Comic Con International deadpanned, 'We're terribly sorry.' Parker and Stone, incidentally, also created the award-winning Broadway musical the 'Book of Mormon'.
This Day, That Year
1521: The Aztec Empire falls after Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés captures Tenochtitlán (Mexico City).
1642: Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers the southern polar cap of Mars.
1792: Marie Antoinette and other royals are imprisoned in France.
1899: Sir Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest movie directors of all time, is born.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News18
37 minutes ago
- News18
When Nehru Rebuked Russia But Welcomed US: How Kerala Became A Cold War Battleground In 1957
Between 1957 and 1959, funds were allegedly funnelled through Congress leaders and anti-communist factions, sparking political unrest in Kerala Kerala, long regarded as the bastion of communists in India, has often found itself at the crossroads of global intrigue. Even today, the state is governed by the Left, but its political landscape has, at times, drawn the attention of the most powerful nations across the globe. In June this year, Kerala made headlines when a British F-35B fighter jet, grounded by bad weather, remained stuck for months. The incident attracted international curiosity, but it was not the first time this coastal state became the focus of global eyes. Decades earlier, during the height of the Cold War, Kerala was not just a political stronghold but a playground for international espionage. In the 1950s and 1960s, both the Soviet Union and the United States maintained active spy networks in the region, quietly manoeuvring for influence. The state's strategic political shift in 1957 made it a flashpoint. That year, the Communist Party of India (CPI) won state elections, forming the first democratically elected communist government in the country, a move that stunned capitals from the US to the UK. The West viewed this as a direct extension of Russia's influence into South Asia. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, though wary of Western fears, was equally concerned about foreign interference. According to Indian Express archives, shortly after the CPI's victory, a senior communist leader sought to travel to Moscow to study governance under Soviet guidance. In April 1957, Intelligence Bureau chief BN Mullick alerted Nehru to the plan. The prime minister reacted sharply, summoning Soviet ambassador Alexander Menshikov and warning him against meddling in India's internal affairs. Yet, while Nehru publicly cautioned Russia, Western intelligence agencies were quietly being courted. The CIA, alongside British intelligence, actively worked to undermine the Left government. Between 1957 and 1959, funds were allegedly funnelled through Congress leaders and anti-communist factions, sparking political unrest. By 1959, the CPI government was dismissed. The US later accused the Soviets of funding Kerala's communists, while historians have pointed to possible covert cooperation between Nehru's administration and the CIA in the government's ouster. The episode left Kerala with a Cold War legacy, a land where ideological battles once played out on the world's stage, and where the fight for influence was waged not just in rallies and elections, but in the shadowy world of espionage. view comments First Published: Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
The Secret Channel Russia and Ukraine Use to Trade Prisoners of War
KYIV, Ukraine—Europe's largest wave of prisoner exchanges since the wake of World War II was set in motion when a Ukrainian soldier reached into the pocket of a dead Russian officer and found a phone. The device landed in the hands of Brig. Gen. Dmytro Usov, a deputy to the head of Ukraine's HUR military intelligence service, which had just lost two of its men in battles northwest of Kyiv. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was only three weeks old, and the phone presented a way to retrieve their remains. Usov, a career intelligence officer with a trim gray-streaked beard, scrolled through the deceased's phonebook and pressed 'call' on a contact whose rank suggested this might be a Russian frontline commander. 'Your officer is dead,' he told the stunned Russian after introducing himself. He texted a photograph of the corpse, then offered a deal: the bodies of your men for ours. What followed has evolved into one of the strangest subplots of Europe's biggest war since the 1940s: a series of swaps that started with a few corpses and then slowly escalated into the regular trade of hundreds of captured prisoners, many skeletal and barely clinging to consciousness. President Vladimir Putin has refused to meet Volodymyr Zelensky unless the Ukrainian president all but concedes defeat, complicating President Trump's peace summit in Alaska on Friday. The two countries, once part of the same Soviet empire, no longer have embassies with each other, and successive peace talks have broken down. And yet without fanfare, Ukraine and Russia over the course of their war have managed to exchange more than 10,000 combatants across front lines and secure corridors in neighboring Belarus. They include some 1,200 soldiers traded in recent weeks; another 100 young, wounded and ill combatants are due to cross the border on Thursday, Ukrainian officials say. Despite being snared in conflict and deadlocked at the negotiating table, both sides speak of their shadowy prisoner exchange channel—run directly by military intelligence officers—as efficient and professional. Their transactions mark a striking paradox: two bitter enemies aligned on almost nothing, yet collaborating time and again on one deeply human issue—prisoners of war. Military historians have puzzled over the relatively smooth logistics and regular pace of these trades, conducted mid-conflict, a pattern virtually unheard of in modern warfare. By contrast, the Soviet Union held onto German POWs for years after World War II. Some weren't freed until 1956. The United States and North Vietnam didn't begin consistent POW releases until 1973, after two decades of American deepening involvement and a long, grinding peace process. Iran and Iraq, whose war ended in 1988, released their last POWs three days before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq began. The backstory of how Moscow and Kyiv began trading in a resource they both have—an oversupply of captured men—dates back more than a decade, to the earliest days of Ukraine's violent break from Russia. It hints at a hidden infrastructure that reveals the war is more nuanced than many Americans understand. Mostly, it centers around a tiny handful of military and intelligence officers who now constitute nearly the last thin wire still linking two neighbors that Putin insists are 'one people, a single whole.' Usov, speaking hours before his agency commenced another historic exchange via Belarus in June, put it a different way: 'Despite the fact that we're enemies, that Russia is the aggressor, we have established a certain level of communication,' he said. 'It's hard to fight them, and it's hard to negotiate with them. But at the same time, we do it honestly.' Usov used a cellphone found in the pocket of a dead Russian officer to initiate contact with officials on the other side of the war. To understand how two wartime enemies managed to set aside their differences to retrieve their POWs, The Wall Street Journal spoke to more than a dozen Ukrainian, Russian and European officials, and visited exchange points along the frontline and detention facilities throughout Ukraine. Reporters also spent time in the basement of a military-intelligence office in Kyiv that functions as the nerve center for Ukraine's hunt for soldiers captured by Russia. These sources described trades as a way to ease domestic pressure, demonstrate progress to foreign powers—most recently, the U.S.—and relieve themselves of the burden of feeding and housing thousands of the enemy. At the center of the web is perhaps the world's top prisoner trader, Vladimir Putin, who last year greenlighted a wide-ranging exchange, freeing a group of dissidents and journalists, including three wrongly held Americans—among them, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich—in return for eight Russian spies, cybercriminals, smugglers and a professional hitman. That trade, on a cordoned off airfield in Turkey, attracted global attention. But it is dwarfed by the lesser-known human commerce underway along the frontlines between Russian and Ukrainian forces. 'If there's a chance to save a human life, returning someone home to their family before hostilities end, and in the process free our own soldiers whom we deeply care about it, then we do it,' said Russia's chief negotiator on Ukraine, Vladimir Medinsky, who used a Russian idiom to emphasise that the neighbors remain mortal enemies: 'As we say in Russia, we don't christen our children together.' 'Five letters in his name' The seeds of the POW channel were planted more than a decade ago, in the President Hotel in the Belarussian capital of Minsk. It was 2014 and Ukraine was struggling to reclaim eastern territory seized by Russian-backed militants. Western leaders had pressured its government into talks—to resolve political, economic and cultural disputes. The negotiators argued over every point, from the spelling of Ukrainian and Russian names to whose troops were shelling where, according to the Swiss diplomat, Tony Frisch, who oversaw the sessions. When he tried to coax the parties to socialize during lunch breaks or have evening drinks at the hotel bar to build a rapport, he was sternly rebuffed. Several times, Viktor Medvedchuk, the head of a minor pro-Kremlin Ukrainian party who was supposed to be negotiating for Kyiv, made a surprising announcement: He needed to fly to Moscow, to seek guidance from 'a man with five letters in his name.' When he returned, it was clear Putin wanted to make a trade, and the stage was set for a series of small prisoner exchanges from the end of 2014 into the next year. Prisoners crossed through checkpoints on landmine-littered roads, between Ukraine and the Kremlin-backed paramilitaries. The two sides fell into dysfunctional haggling over whose captives were worth more, as one Russian delegate refused to speak—at all. In the meantime, the Swiss visited paramilitary prisons with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and met Ukrainian captives who recalled being tortured, choked with plastic bags, their children's lives threatened. Ultimately, over the course of about 125 meetings, the two sides managed to trade 600 prisoners: 'I can tell you, it was sometimes like a discussion in a market in Morocco for sheep or cows,' said Frisch. Then, as Russian troops amassed around Ukraine's borders in early 2022, meetings were abruptly canceled. On February 22, 2022, Putin yanked all Russian diplomats from Ukraine, blaming 'provocations' and threats to their lives. That same day, he effectively ended the Minsk process, lamenting a lack of results. Two days later, some 150,000 Russian troops streamed across the border. The long game Less than a month later, Brig. Gen. Usov was summoned to his boss Kyrylo Budanov's office at HUR's sprawling headquarters: Ukraine's military intelligence agency had no way to contact its counterpart inside Russia. Old communications lines were shuttered and new attempts were floundering. 'There was no trust. We had battles just outside Kyiv, and we had to convince them to swap people,' Budanov said in an interview. 'But we didn't believe each other.' The breakdown rendered the Chinese-made Xiaomi cellphone in Usov's hands an unusually precious channel to re-establish communication between two nations rallying troops into a fight that both claimed was now a war of survival. Ukrainian Military Intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said that, early on, 'there was no trust.' In conversations with the Russians, Usov used his call-sign—Stayer, or marathon-runner—and his real name only sparingly. Trust had to be built painstakingly slowly. He never shared his own number. Two months into the war, Russia revealed his counterpart: a lieutenant general at Moscow's military intelligence agency, known as the GRU. In Libya, Gen. Aleksandr Zorin had been Russia's pointman on relations with the pro-Kremlin faction controlling the country's east. He represented Russia in Syrian ceasefire talks with the U.S. in Geneva—and as those talks dragged into the evening, he stepped into the press hall, and delivered pizza to foreign journalists. Usov found Zorin, who at 56 is his senior by 12 years, frank and straight-talking. Zorin had been born in Soviet Ukraine. 'The way he spoke, and discussed things, corresponded with his general's rank,' Usov said. 'He was head and shoulders above the others I had talked with up to that point.' That call with Zorin was the start of a long working relationship that would inspire Usov to embrace a new role as negotiator. Two of his great-grandfathers had died in Nazi captivity and he said he felt duty-bound to ensure Ukrainian servicemen did not repeat their fates. The two senior spies began to assess one another in more regular calls. Usov was learning on the job, studying the complex mechanics needed to safely engineer an exchange, and seeking advice from Jonathan Powell—now the U.K.'s national security adviser, who had once helped end The Troubles in Northern Ireland. He read a copy of Zorin's doctoral thesis, which he said recounted negotiating conflicts in the Middle East. 'When I read this, I understood how I might establish a working relationship with him,' Usov said. Zorin couldn't be reached for comment and the GRU didn't respond to a request for an interview. Within a month, Usov was barrelling deep into Russian-held territory to meet Zorin in person in the devastated coastal city of Mariupol, escorted by two Russian Tigr armored vehicles, a white flag fluttering above his car. The cars wound through streets littered with the corpses of dead civilians. Next to the charred metal and rubble of the port city's steel mill, the Ukrainians stopped to collect one of the commanders of a 2,500-strong garrison of elite Ukrainian fighters who were surrounded inside the plant under constant bombardment to surrender. That afternoon Usov shook hands with Zorin, who was flanked by four Russian officers, and sat opposite him at a conference room table at a location outside the city, according to a person who was there. The talks dragged on for hours, with both sides fielding calls to their superiors in Kyiv and Moscow. Eventually, Ukraine consented to a surrender: The 2,500 fighters would be taken to Russian prisons. The question remained of how Ukraine might bring the fighters home. Kyiv looked for a country that could mediate an exchange, but Switzerland was now on Moscow's 'Unfriendly Countries List,' punishment for joining European sanctions. Instead, it turned to the new Switzerlands of the Middle East: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. On September 21, Turkey brokered the largest swap since Russia's invasion, a choreography that flew five captured Ukrainian commanders to the capital of Ankara while Moscow received Medvedchuk, the pro-Russian politician who had once negotiated in Minsk but had since been arrested for high treason. A separate group of European POWs captured while fighting for Ukraine simultaneously boarded a Saudi jet leaving Russia to find a celebrity businessman there to escort them: Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. By now, the two sides had an understanding. The top intelligence officers had met and sized each other up. Foreign governments were standing by to help resolve disputes if necessary. Intelligence chiefs in both countries reported back to superiors in their capitals: This is someone we can work with. Smuggled lists In time, those early exchanges birthed a whole new infrastructure. In a leafy district of Kyiv, near hipster cafes and beauty salons, a nondescript three-story building became HUR's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners-of-War. On the top floor, Usov and his HUR subordinates meet regularly in a conference room with the families of POWs who come dressed in T-shirts bearing logos of their son or husband's brigade and often harangue the officials over a lack of results. In the basement, analysts scour Russian websites and social media feeds for clues about POWs' location and condition. They have compiled a vast database that includes 200 data points about each individual including height, eye color and Russian responses to questions from the Red Cross. Ukrainians released in swaps have smuggled out lists with the names of comrades in a specific cell. Photos of those lists are compiled in evidence to convince the Russians a particular person is in their captivity. 'To get people back, we have to know who we're fighting for,' said Viktoriia Petruk, a 34-year-old who leads the analytics department and spoke for the first time to the media about her work. Viktoriia Petruk leads a group of HUR analysts who scour websites and social media to feed a database of POWs held by the Russians. The basement analysts have identified almost 200 detention facilities across Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine where Ukrainian combatants are held often in dire conditions. Ukraine has five dedicated POW camps, most of them former prisons where the captive Russians earn money sewing, chopping wood, or producing furniture for sale at Ukrainian stores. Kyiv is eager to show Western partners it has moral high ground by treating its prisoners better than Russia. Logistics have often been fraught. In January 2024, a Russian military plane carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs to a prisoner swap was shot down near the border, a move Moscow blamed on Kyiv, which hasn't taken responsibility for it. During a lull in swaps, and facing political protests from prisoners' relatives, HUR concocted several long-shot schemes to speed things up: offering convicted pro-Russian collaborators and even the bones of long-buried Russian spies for exchange. Russia didn't take the bait. But when peace talks stalled in Istanbul this Spring, both countries consented to another round, this time bigger than ever before. On a sunny recent morning, Usov again headed north from Kyiv to greet a fresh cohort of hundreds of exchanged Ukrainian soldiers. Injured men limped and staggered up to the general to thank him, then asked a question: when would be the next round of prisoner trades that might bring their brothers-in-arms home? Write to Matthew Luxmoore at Drew Hinshaw at and Joe Parkinson at The Secret Channel Russia and Ukraine Use to Trade Prisoners of War The Secret Channel Russia and Ukraine Use to Trade Prisoners of War
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
an hour ago
- First Post
Why Melania Trump is threatening to sue Joe Biden's son for $1 billion
US First Lady Melania Trump has threatened to sue Hunter Biden for over $1 billion (nearly Rs 8,800 crores) over remarks linking her to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. She has demanded that the former president's son retract his statements about Epstein and issue a public apology. Hunter Biden alleged that Epstein had introduced Donald Trump to Melania in the late 1990s The letter is dated August 6 and was first reported on Wednesday. Reuters/File Photo US First Lady Melania Trump has warned that she will sue Hunter Biden for more than $1 billion over his comments linking her to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. She has asked the former first son to withdraw his statements about Epstein and make a public apology. If he refuses, she plans to take legal action to seek damages for what she describes as 'overwhelming financial and reputational harm'. Notably, the Donald Trump administration has recently faced renewed attention over Epstein after the Department of Justice said last month it would not share more details from its investigation into his prison death in 2019, which was ruled a suicide. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD ALSO READ | Why did Trump and Jeffrey Epstein really fall out? In this explainer, we look at Melania's notice to Hunter Biden and the controversy surrounding the case. Let's find out: Inside Melania Trump's $1 billion notice to Hunter Biden Melania Trump's lawyer has demanded that Hunter Biden 'immediately retract the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements' he made about the First Lady in an interview earlier this month on the YouTube show 'Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan.' 'Failure to comply will leave Mrs. Trump with no choice but to pursue any and all legal rights and remedies available to her to recover the overwhelming financial and reputational harm that you have caused her to suffer,' Florida-based lawyer Alejandro Brito wrote in his letter to Hunter and his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, Fox News reported. Notably, Hunter Biden claimed it was 'beyond a doubt' that the president and Jeffrey Epstein were 'very close friends' and that the sex offender introduced Trump to the future First Lady in the late 1990s. Hunter Biden made the statement in an interview on a YouTube show. Reuters/File Photo He referred to a Daily Beast article based on claims from Trump biographer Michael Wolff. The Daily Beast later removed the story after receiving a letter from Melania Trump's lawyer challenging its headline and framing. The First Lady's legal notice says Wolff's 'false narrative' was the basis for Hunter Biden's remarks and added that if he did not withdraw his statements and issue an apology, she would take further legal action. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'They spent an enormous amount of time together,' Hunter Biden said about the president and Epstein in his interview with Callaghan. 'That's how Melania, and the First Lady and the president met. Yeah, according to Michael Wolff.' Notably, the US President and First Lady have long said that they met through Paolo Zampolli, a modelling agent, at a New York Fashion Week party in 1998. The letter is dated August 6 and was first reported on Wednesday. What happens next? The notice required Joe Biden's son to meet its conditions by August 7. 'If you do not comply with the above by August 7, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. EST, Mrs. Trump will be left with no alternative but to enforce her legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for over $1 Billion Dollars in damages,' Brito wrote. 'You are on notice.' A source familiar with the matter told Fox News that Biden did not meet the August 7 deadline. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The US President and First Lady have long said that they met through Paolo Zampolli. Reuters/File Photo The Epstein files The legal notice follows weeks of calls for the White House to release the so-called Epstein files, which are previously unreleased records connected to the criminal investigation into the convicted paedophile. Epstein was charged in 2019 with sex trafficking minors in Florida and New York. He died in prison while awaiting trial. Although his death was officially ruled a suicide, the circumstances have fuelled speculation and conspiracy theories. A Justice Department memo said no additional documents related to the case would be made public. The decision drew sharp criticism from some Trump supporters who had expected full disclosure under the current administration. Trump has also filed a $10 billion defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over a story about a sexually suggestive letter bearing Trump's name, which was included in a 2003 album made for Epstein's birthday. With inputs from agencies
