June 21, 1985, Forty Years Ago: Nepal Bomb Blast
The first batch of Mirage-2000, the multi role French fighter aircraft that has been acquired by the Indian Air Force, will be flown to India by IAF pilots who have completed flying training in France. India has purchased 40 of these versatile fighter jets under a contract signed in 1983 but the exact number of planes that will constitute the first batch is not known. Some reports have indicated that the batch would consist of five to 10 planes.
Shiite Muslim leader Nabih Bern said that he accepted an offer from Switzerland to use its territory to hold any exchange of US hostages seized aboard a hijacked plane for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. Bern's remarks came after his office said Pope John Paul II had joined diplomatic efforts to resolve the ordeal of 40 American hostages seized aboard the plane.
The UN Security Council has issued a 'strong warning' to South Africa that failure to co-operate in speeding up the independence of Namibia could force the world body to adopt punitive measures under the UN charter, including mandatory sanctions. Only Britain and the United States abstained as the council voted 13 to nil for a non-aligned resolution which, among other things, condemned the racist regime in Pretoria for its installation of a so-called interim government in Namibia.
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First Post
5 minutes ago
- First Post
From Red Fort to Atlantic: India tests deep-sea waters in France before Matsya-6000 launch
To realise deepwater exploration ambitions, India has sent its scientists to France to get experience with deepwater exploration in a French submersible. The learnings will be implemented in India's own deepwater exploration with an Indian submersible. An image of a submersible engaged in deepwater exploration generated by artificial intelligence (AI). In line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement of the 'National Deep Water Exploration Mission', the government has sent scientists to France to learn deepwater exploration and implement their learnings to India's deepwater exploration upon their return. In his Independence Day speech, Modi said that India would explore energy reserves underwater on a mission mode as part of self-reliance efforts. 'To make the country developed, we are now moving towards 'Samudra Manthan'. Taking forward our Samudra Manthan, we want to work in a mission mode towards finding oil reserves, gas reserves under the sea and hence India is going to start the National Deep Water Exploration Mission. This is our important announcement to become energy independent,' the prime minister said. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD VIDEO | PM Modi (@narendramodi) says, 'We are now working towards becoming self-reliant to make the country developed, and are also moving towards 'Samudra Manthan'. For this, India is launching a National Deep Water Exploration Mission.' He added, 'Today, the entire world is… — Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) August 15, 2025 As part of efforts to realise the mission, the Modi government has sent scientists to France to learn deepwater exploration in the Atlantic Ocean and implement their leanings in the Indian mission upon their return. How learnings in Frane will help India India sent scientists to France this month to get international experience in unwater energy exploration in the Atlantic Ocean, according to CNN-News 18. As part of the India-French partnership, Indian scientists from National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai, participated in deep ocean human scientific expeditions onboard the submersible NAUTILE developed by the French marine institute French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), as per the report. The partnership has helped Indian scientists gain valuable operational experience at the deep sea up to 5,000 meters depth in the Atlantic Ocean and functional operations, the report said. Such experience will help them when they would work on India's own human submersible, MATSYA-6000, which will soon carry three persons to a depth of 6,000 meters as part of the Deep Ocean Mission, the report said. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
The Print
32 minutes ago
- The Print
NDA's VP candidate CP Radhakrishnan files nomination papers. Modi in attendance
Radhakrishnan filed his nomination in the presence of about 20 proposers and 20 supporters. Union Ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, JP Nadda, Kiren Rijiju and Arjun Ram Meghwal were also present at the occasion. New Delhi: NDA's candidate CP Radhakrishnan on Wednesday filed his nomination papers for the Vice Presidential elections in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Earlier today, he paid floral tribute to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the Parliament premises. He also paid tribute to the statues of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, Rani Lakshmibai, BR Ambedkar and Bhagwan Birsa Munda at the Parliament. CP Radhakrishnan was accompanied by Union Ministers Pralhad Joshi, Kiren Rijiju, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, L Murugan and BJP leader Vinod Tawade. Radhakrishnan has previously served as a Member of Parliament and as Governor of Jharkhand and Telangana. Prime Minister Modi praised his 'dedication, humility, and intellect', noting his long-standing grassroots work in Tamil Nadu. Chandrapuram Ponnusamy Radhakrishnan, who has been the Maharashtra Governor since July 31, 2024, had earlier also served as the Governor of Jharkhand, Telangana and Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry. Radhakrishnan, who served as the two-time MP from Coimbatore, was born on October 20, 1957, in Tamil Nadu's Tirrupur. The BJP stalwart from Tamil Nadu has achieved a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and became the state committee member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the BJP's precursor, in 1974. Before the Jan Sangh, he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In the year 1996, Radhakrishnan was appointed as the BJP Tamil Nadu secretary, following which he was elected as a Lok Sabha member from Coimbatore in 1998 and reelected again in 1999. During his tenure as MP, he served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee and was also a member of the Parliamentary Committee for Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and the Consultative Committee for Finance. Radhakrishnan was also a member of the Parliamentary Special Committee investigating the Stock Exchange Scam. (ANI) This report is auto-generated from ANI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content. Also read: CP Radhakrishnan vs who? Why DMK's pushing INDIA bloc for a Tamil vs Tamil contest for India's V-P
Economic Times
32 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Is the Ukraine summitry all reality TV, zero substance?
Reuters U.S. President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and French President Emmanuel Macron. So much has happened in recent days, it's easy to overlook how little has happened. To wit: Nothing material. Not when it comes to matters of war and peace in Ukraine, where Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to bomb civilians, to detain children (for which he is wanted by the International Criminal Court) and more generally to terrorize a sovereign nation that he considers an errant satrapy. That, however, is not the impression you may have formed if, like me, you've been following the summitry and pageantry on YouTube, TikTok, X, Truth Social or your medium of choice. In the endless scroll of our screens, one meme chases another while all orbit around the bright yellow-orange star of the show, Donald Trump. The medium is the message, the philosopher Marshall McLuhan observed six decades ago. And the message today is that this US president — for better or worse — is shaping world affairs. Here is Trump applauding Putin as the Russian leader approaches on a red carpet in Alaska. There he is again, receiving the rehearsed gratitude of the Ukrainian president and seven European allies, who rushed impromptu to the White House to contain whatever damage the KGB-trained Putin may have wreaked in Trump's mind. There he'll soon be again, if and when Trump gets both Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, into the same room, in what would be a 'trilat' made for Reality TV — and specifically The Apprentice — was of course the medium that, starting in 2004, catapulted Trump from relative obscurity onto the memetic platform from which he ultimately stepped into the Oval Office not once, but twice. Like so much in our zeitgeist, everything about this medium is sort of real and sort of not, kind of jocular and kind of serious, not quite substantive but always is a universe in which Trump's meeting in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy in February — when the American host berated and humiliated the Ukrainian guest — counted within the White House as a success because, as the president put it, it made for 'great television.' Trump ran that script again during another visit to the Oval Office, when he trapped South Africa's president in an ambush as devastating as it was riveting. A virtuoso of the craft, Trump also incorporates voluntary or involuntary extras, bit players and cameos into his show. He mused about whether or not he would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities not at the Resolute Desk but on the White House lawn, where a work crew was erecting a flagpole and unexpectedly became the supporting cast in this particular episode. When weighing air strikes, or anything, Trump's first question to his advisers isn't about his options or strategic consequences. It is: 'How is it playing?'None of this would have surprised McLuhan, who analyzed (without judging) the role of media in the creation of reality, and did so when print and radio were old and television was new. Content, he understood, was subservient to the vectors in which it reaches human brains. A text-based culture rewards linear and logical thinking. Video (already in McLuhan's time) instead turns politics into theater, shortens attention spans and favors appearance over media change accelerated in the 1980s and 90s — during Trump's formative years — other theorists elaborated on McLuhan. Jean Baudrillard, a French sociologist, saw that the media increasingly reflected not reality but what he called hyperreality, a world of 'simulacra,' or copies without originals. In one memorable phrase, he said that 'the map precedes the territory,' by which he meant that narratives trump (sorry) truth. That popped into my mind this week as Trump presented Zelenskiy with a map of Ukrainian territories now apparently up for writing before the rise of Fox News or TikTok, the American media theorist Neil Postman came closest to predicting the moment we are in today. In Amusing Ourselves to Death , he argued that the new media would increasingly turn everything — from news to politics and war — into mere entertainment and spectacle. He foresaw a dystopia not unlike Brave New World , in which Aldous Huxley's Soma takes the form of Insta feeds or Trump's Truth here we are, with two summits down and several more to go. We parse things such as, say, wardrobes. In the Oval Office in February, Zelenskiy was roasted for wearing the military-style garb he has donned since Russia invaded; this time he showed up in all black, and Trump agreed that he looked 'fabulous.' A positive sign? Days earlier, the Russian foreign minister arrived at his Alaskan hotel with a sweatshirt that, in Cyrillic, advertised the 'USSR.' Code for Putin's imperialist treachery?And all the while a tragedy is unfolding for those who dare to see it. The reality — yes, there still is one — includes these facts: The war that Trump once promised to end in 24 hours rages on. Trump keeps toggling between blaming Putin and Zelenskiy for it. By being ambiguous about US support, he has hurt Ukraine's effort to defend itself. By ending Putin's diplomatic isolation, Trump has made the Russian side stronger than it would be. And by giving Putin a deadline for a ceasefire, then letting it expire without the 'severe consequences' he promised just a week ago, Trump forfeited the pressure he needs to exert new is that there are suddenly lots of meetings about meetings. What remains is that people are bleeding, crying and dying, all because of the decisions made by one man, Putin. In the minds of Trump and most of us in our brave new world, the map may seem to precede the territory. But that is not a luxury which people have, say, in Luhansk or Donetsk. Ukrainians and their friends are right to turn off their phones for a while, in the sad knowledge that nothing meaningful has changed.
