16-07-2025
July 16, 1985, Forty Years Ago: Black Box Analysis
The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the engineering department of Air India are all set to extract a read-out and a print-out of the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder of the ill-fated Air India jumbo Kanishka that perished in the Atlantic off the Irish coast on June 23.
The Sri Lankan President, J R Jayewardene, has offered to grant 'sufficient autonomy' to Tamil areas of the island to resolve the ethnic issue, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi said. The offer had come during the talks the Sri Lankan President had with the Prime Minister. Virtually ruling out support for a separate Eelam, the Prime Minister told a news conference at Raj Bhavan that 'we will not support anything more than what is available in India'.
The overseas wing of the so-called Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) seems to be disintegrating and its former president, Amanullah Khan, is so frustrated with what he called 'integral politics' that he is now seriously thinking of setting up his headquarters in some Middle East country, possibly the UAE.
After a fiery four-and-a-half-hour discussion over the 'Dharavi land scandal', the entire Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly walked out for the day in protest against the government's refusal to appoint a committee of House members to probe the 'deal'. Leader of the Opposition Sharad Pawar did not agree with Minister of State for Urban Development Ram Manohar Tripathi's offer to ask the chief secretary to investigate the land deal.
