Stranded F-35 in Kerala fixed, set for trial flight today before UK return: Sources
The fifth-generation stealth jet, which landed in Kerala on June 14 after being diverted from the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales due to bad weather and low fuel, reportedly suffered a hydraulic failure. British engineers have since been working to fix the fault, which affected key components like landing gear, brakes and control surfaces.The F-35B's unscheduled and prolonged stay, first parked in the open and later moved into a hangar, has been the subject of much curiosity, memes, and even a cheeky campaign by Kerala's tourism department thanking the UK for its 'visit'.Initially, there were concerns that the jet would need to be dismantled and shipped back on a transport aircraft because of the extent of the hydraulic snag. However, the arrival of a Royal Air Force team with spare parts and equipment aboard an Airbus A400M Atlas on July 6 seems to have turned things around.The F-35B, built by Lockheed Martin, is one of the most advanced and expensive fighter jets in the world, costing over USD 115 million each. It is designed for short take-offs and vertical landings and is a cornerstone of NATO air power.- Ends
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India.com
21 minutes ago
- India.com
India may stun everyone by rejecting Su-57 fighter jet to buy F-35 from US due to..., move may prove game changer for IAF because...
The F-35 Fighter jet-Image for representational purpose American F‑35 fighter aircraft news: As India phases out its old MiG‑21 fighter jet fleet amid growing threats from China and Pakistan, the Indian Air Force is exploring options to quickly acquire fifth-generation fighter jets. Among the top options that India has been offered are the American F‑35 and the Russian Su‑57, both seen as game-changers. It was earlier reported that India may go for the purchase of Russian Su‑57 fighter jets but as of the recent update, reports suggest that India may purchase the American F‑35 fighter aircraft. Why India may choose American F‑35 fighter aircraft? Taking about the while the F‑35 offers cutting-edge stealth and combat technology, it comes with limitations such as lack of weapons integration flexibility and possible restrictions on technology sharing. On the other hand, the Su‑57 is more compatible with India's existing defence systems and may offer opportunities for co-production under the 'Make in India' initiative. Choosing between the two could significantly influence India's defence posture and global alignments. However, reports now say that India may surprise everyone and buy US's F-35 fighter aircraft because it uses world's most advanced stealth technology, has world class network-centric warfare capabilities and this aircraft has proven itself in war. Another advantage of the F-35 aircraft is that it is extremely effective in carrying out surgical strikes against Pakistan on terrorist hideout. India's 5th-generation stealth fighter jet gets key clearance Meanwhile, the government of India, in a major push towards Atmanirbharta (self-reliance), approved the Execution Model for the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme recently. As per a report by IANS news agency, the AMCA project clearance marks a critical step towards realising India's goal of joining an elite club of nations in designing and producing its own fleet of next-generation combat aircraft. The project will be helmed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), said the Defence Ministry in a press release. Designed with low radar cross-section and supercruise capability, the AMCA is seen as the successor to the frontline Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jets. Some reports suggest that its mass production is likely to commence by 2035. (With inputs from agencies)
Time of India
4 hours ago
- Time of India
Donald Trump once decried the idea of presidential vacations. His Scotland trip is built around golf
Edinburgh: During sweaty summer months, Abraham Lincoln often decamped about 5 kilometres north of the White House to the Soldiers' Home, a presidential retreat of cottages and parkland in what today is the Petworth section of northwest Washington. Ulysses S Grant sometimes summered at his family's cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey, even occasionally driving teams of horses on the beach. Ronald Reagan once said he did "some of my best thinking" at his Rancho Del Cielo retreat outside Santa Barbara, California. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Data Science Data Analytics Design Thinking MBA Healthcare healthcare Management Finance Project Management Technology Cybersecurity Digital Marketing Product Management CXO Operations Management Data Science Artificial Intelligence Leadership PGDM others Public Policy Degree MCA Others Skills you'll gain: Data Analysis & Interpretation Programming Proficiency Problem-Solving Skills Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Duration: 24 Months Vellore Institute of Technology VIT MSc in Data Science Starts on Aug 14, 2024 Get Details Skills you'll gain: Strategic Data-Analysis, including Data Mining & Preparation Predictive Modeling & Advanced Clustering Techniques Machine Learning Concepts & Regression Analysis Cutting-edge applications of AI, like NLP & Generative AI Duration: 8 Months IIM Kozhikode Professional Certificate in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Starts on Jun 26, 2024 Get Details Donald Trump 's getaway is taking him considerably farther from the nation's capital, to the coast of Scotland. The White House isn't calling Trump's five-day, midsummer jaunt a vacation, but rather a working trip where the Republican president might hold a news conference and sit for interviews with US and British media outlets. Trump was also talking trade in separate meetings with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Live Events Trump is staying at his properties near Turnberry and Aberdeen, where his family owns two golf courses and is opening a third on August 13. Trump played golf over the weekend at Turnberry and is helping cut the ribbon on the new course on Tuesday. He's not the first president to play in Scotland: Dwight D Eisenhower played at Turnberry in 1959, more than a half century before Trump bought it, after meeting with French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris. But none of Trump's predecessors has constructed a foreign itinerary around promoting vacation sites his family owns and is actively expanding. It lays bare how Trump has leveraged his second term to pad his family's profits in a variety of ways, including overseas development deals and promoting crypto-currencies, despite growing questions about ethics concerns. "You have to look at this as yet another attempt by Donald Trump to monetise his presidency," said Leonard Steinhorn, who teaches political communication and courses on American culture and the modern presidency at American University. "In this case, using the trip as a PR opportunity to promote his golf courses." Presidents typically vacation in the US Franklin D Roosevelt went to the Bahamas, often for the excellent fishing, five times between 1933 and 1940. He visited Canada's Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where he had vacationed as a child, in 1933, 1936 and 1939. Reagan spent Easter 1982 on vacation in Barbados after meeting with Caribbean leaders and warning of a Marxist threat that could spread throughout the region from nearby Grenada. Presidents also never fully go on vacation. They travel with a large entourage of aides, receive intelligence briefings, take calls and otherwise work away from Washington. Kicking back in the United States, though, has long been the norm. Harry S Truman helped make Key West, Florida, a tourist hot spot with his "Little White House" cottage there. Several presidents, including James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison, visited the Victorian architecture in Cape May, New Jersey. More recently, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama boosted tourism on Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard, while Trump has buoyed Palm Beach, Florida, with frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate. But any tourist lift Trump gets from his Scottish visit is likely to most benefit his family. "Every president is forced to weigh politics versus fun on vacation," said Jeffrey Engel, David Gergen Director of the Centre for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who added that Trump is "demonstrating his priorities." "When he thinks about how he wants to spend his free time, A. playing golf, B. visiting places where he has investments and C. enhancing those investments, that was not the priority for previous presidents, but it is his vacation time," Engel said. It's even a departure from Trump's first term, when he found ways to squeeze in visits to his properties while on trips more focused on work. Trump stopped at his resort in Hawaii to thank staff members after visiting the memorial site at Pearl Harbour and before embarking on an Asia trip in November 2017. He played golf at Turnberry in 2018 before meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland. Trump once decried the idea of taking vacations as president. "Don't take vacations. What's the point? If you're not enjoying your work, you're in the wrong job," Trump wrote in his 2004 book, "Think Like a Billionaire." During his presidential campaign in 2015, he pledged to "rarely leave the White House." Even as recently as a speech at a summit on artificial intelligence in Washington on Wednesday, Trump derided his predecessor for flying long distances for golf - something he's now doing. "They talked about the carbon footprint and then Obama hops onto a 747, Air Force One , and flies to Hawaii to play a round of golf and comes back," he said. Presidential vacations and any overseas trips were once taboo Trump isn't the first president not wanting to publicise taking time off. George Washington was criticised for embarking on a New England tour to promote the presidency. Some took issue with his successor, John Adams, for leaving the then-capital of Philadelphia in 1797 for a long visit to his family's farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. James Madison left Washington for months after the War of 1812. Teddy Roosevelt helped pioneer the modern presidential vacation in 1902 by chartering a special train and directing key staffers to rent houses near Sagamore Hill, his home in Oyster Bay, New York, according to the White House Historical Association. Four years later, Roosevelt upended tradition again, this time by becoming the first president to leave the country while in office. The New York Times noted that Roosevelt's 30-day trip by yacht and battleship to tour construction of the Panama Canal "will violate the traditions of the United States for 117 years by taking its President outside the jurisdiction of the Government at Washington." In the decades since, where presidents opted to vacation, even outside the US, has become part of their political personas. In addition to New Jersey, Grant relaxed on Martha's Vineyard. Calvin Coolidge spent the 1928 Christmas holidays at Sapelo Island, Georgia. Lyndon B Johnson had his "Texas White House," a Hill Country ranch. Eisenhower vacationed in Newport, Rhode Island. John F Kennedy went to Palm Springs, California, and his family's compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, among other places. Richard Nixon had the " Southern White House " on Key Biscayne, Florida, while Joe Biden travelled frequently to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, while also visiting Nantucket, Massachusetts, and St Croix in the US Virgin Islands. George H W Bush was a frequent visitor to his family's property in Kennebunkport, Maine, and didn't let the start of the Gulf War in 1991 detour him from a monthlong vacation there. His son, George W Bush, opted for his ranch in Crawford, Texas, rather than a more posh destination. Presidential visits help tourism in some places more than others, but Engel said that for some Americans, "if the president of the Untied States goes some place, you want to go to the same place." He noted that visitors emulating presidential vacations are out "to show that you're either as cool as he or she, that you understand the same values as he or she or, heck, maybe you'll bump into he or she."
Time of India
a day ago
- Time of India
Sundar Pichai joins billionaire club: All about his education, family & and net worth
Sundar Pichai, the soft-spoken, Chennai-born executive at the helm of Alphabet, has quietly entered the ranks of billionaires. His fortune, now pegged at $1.1 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, comes not from flash or flamboyance but from a steady climb powered by rising Alphabet shares and a low-key leadership style. A rare feat for any non-founder tech CEO, but Pichai's journey was never typical to begin with. Early life and education Born on June 10, 1972, in what was then Madras, India, Sundar Pichai grew up in a two-room apartment. The living room doubled as a bedroom, where he and his brother would sleep each night. His father, Regunatha Pichai, worked as an electrical engineer at British firm GEC. His mother, Lakshmi, was a stenographer. Money was tight, but the vision was clear. 'My mom and dad did what a lot of parents did at that time… they sacrificed a lot to make sure their children were educated,' Pichai once said. Source: X After schooling at Jawahar Vidyalaya and Vana Vani in Chennai, he earned a degree in metallurgy at IIT Kharagpur, graduating with a silver medal. That opened the door to Stanford, where he pursued a master's in engineering and materials science. By 1995, he had relocated to the U.S. for good, first working briefly at Applied Materials, before heading to Wharton for an MBA. Family and personal life It was at IIT Kharagpur that Sundar met Anjali. She was also studying chemical engineering, a quiet, driven young woman from Rajasthan whose father, Olaram Haryani, served in the government. Friendship turned to love, though like many IIT romances, the early years weren't always smooth. Today, the couple lives far from the glare of headlines. They have two children, Kavya and Kiran, whom they raise with deliberate privacy. While Sundar became a household name in tech, Anjali built a solid career of her own, beginning at Accenture and later moving into business operations at Intuit, a major software firm. In a 2018 interview, Pichai offered glimpses into how his family handles the very technology that made him a global figure. 'When I come home on a Friday evening, I really do want to let go of my devices for a couple days. I haven't quite succeeded in doing that,' he admitted during an interview. 'At home, our television is not easily accessible, so that there is 'activation energy' before you can easily go watch TV. I'm genuinely conflicted, because I see what my kids learn from all this. My son is 11 years old, and he is mining Ethereum and earning money. He's getting some insight into how the world works, how commerce works.' Net worth Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has seen its value soar. Since early 2023, its stock has delivered roughly 120 percent returns. That surge added over $1 trillion in market cap, and catapulted Pichai's net worth to 10 figures. Though his direct stake in Alphabet is just 0.02 percent, that sliver alone is valued at around $440 million. The rest of his wealth is largely in cash, amassed through years of compensation, bonuses, and stock awards. In August, he quietly marked 10 years as Google's CEO. The occasion coincided with an earnings update shared by Pichai on X (formerly Twitter), which even drew praise from Elon Musk.
