Junior Digest

Sept 24,2024: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition filed by Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah against an approval granted by Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot to three private individuals to file cases of corruption against him over a land grant to his wife by the Mysore Urban Development Authority (MUDA).

Justice M Nagaprasanna ruled that the Governor’s August 16 order to grant sanction for filing of cases against Siddaramaiah does not suffer from lack of application of mind. The high court pointed out that the reasons for granting the sanction had been detailed in the files of the Governor and did not have to be brought into the final sanction order.

“No fault can be found with the Governor exercising independent discretion to pass the impugned order. It would suffice if the reasons were recorded in the file of the decision-making authority particularly of the high office and those reasons succinctly formed part of the impugned order. A caveat is that reasons must be in the file,” Justice Nagaprasanna said in a summary of findings while dismissing Siddaramaiah’s petition.

“Reasons for the first time cannot be brought before the constitutional court by way of objections. The gubernatorial order nowhere suffers from the want of application of mind. It is not a case of not even a semblance of application of mind by the Governor but the abundance of application of mind,” Justice Nagaprasanna stated.

The “grant of an opportunity for hearing prior to grant of approval under Section 17 A [of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988] is not mandatory if the authority chooses to do so it is open to it,” the HC said.

New York, Sept 6,2024: US private space company SpaceX launched 21 Starlink satellites into orbit.
According to SpaceX, the satellites were launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:33 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday.
Shortly after the launch, Falcon 9’s first-stage booster returned and landed on a droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX later confirmed the deployment of the 21 satellites.
Thursday’s liftoff was the 15th launch and landing for the first stage booster, according to SpaceX.

Chennai, Sep 6,2024: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has signed an MoU with the
Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG) for scientific collaboration in the domain of space science,
technology and exploration.
The event took place in ISRO Headquarters, Bengaluru, and was presided by Dr. Somanath S.,Chairman, ISRO/Secretary, Department of Space (DOS).
The pact was signed by Shantanu Bhatawdekar, Scientific Secretary, ISRO and Prof. A.P. Dimri, Director, IIG.
This collaboration will facilitate formulation of joint programme in the scientific understanding of
the Sun-Earth connection, as well as exploration of space, ISRO said in an update.
IIG is an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

New Delhi, Sep 9,2024: The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice to the Assam government and asked it about the manner in which it plans to deport over 200 foreigners currently lodged in a transit camp in the state.

A bench comprising Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice Augustine George Masih sought a reply from the Assam government on the report of the Assam State Legal Service Authority on the deportation of declared foreigners in the transit camp.

The court asked, “In what manner foreigners detained in transit camp can be deported?”

On August 14, an affidavit was filed by the Union Home Ministry saying that there are about 211 declared foreign nationals in the transit camp.

The court asked the registry to put the report of the Assam Legal Service Authority on record and told it to ensure that there is a joint effort by the Union Home Ministry and the state government to deport the foreign nationals.

New Delhi,Sept 18,2024: Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday tendered his resignation as the Delhi chief minister during his meeting with lieutenant governor VK Saxena at the Raj Niwas.

“Arvind Kejriwal has submitted his resignation to Delhi LG… All MLAs have together decided upon nominating Atishi as the new CM… Atishi has staked claim to form the government,” Aam Aadmi Party leader Gopal Rai told reporters.
Atishi, who was chosen as the leader of legislative party by AAP MLAs earlier in the day, staked claim to form the government.

“Today Arvind Kejriwal has submitted his resignation. This is an emotional moment for the party and the people of Delhi…At the same time, the people of Delhi are resolving to make Arvind Kejriwal the chief minister again…Till the elections are not held I will be looking after Delhi and we have a stake claim to form government,” ANI quoted Atishi as saying.

Atishi, 45, is the third woman chief minister of Delhi after Sushma Swaraj and Sheila Dikshit.

Sept 12,2024: CPI(M) general secretary and former Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechury passed away on Thursday at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, where he was admitted on August 19 with pneumonia. He was 72.

According to CPI(M) leaders, Yechury was in the intensive care unit (ICU) and was being treated for an acute respiratory tract infection. Over the past few days, he had been on respiratory support and under treatment by a multidisciplinary team of doctors with his condition reported to be critical.

He is survived by his wife Seema Chishti, editor of The Wire, daughter Akhila and son Danish.

His family has donated his body to AIIMS, New Delhi for teaching and research purposes. His body will be handed over to the hospital on Saturday.

Yechury’s body will be taken from AIIMS to his residence in Delhi on Friday, and will be kept there overnight. His body will be taken to the CPI(M) central committee office Saturday morning for public viewing and will be handed over to AIIMS later in the evening.

Sept 23,2024: Sri Lanka’s new president Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been sworn into office, promising “clean” politics as the country recovers from its worst economic crisis.

The left-leaning Dissanayake has cast himself as a disruptor of the status quo, and analysts see his victory as a rejection of corruption and cronyism that has long plagued the country.

Saturday’s election was the first since 2022, when discontent over the economy fuelled mass protests and chased former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa from power.

“We need to establish a new clean political culture,” he said. “I commit to achieving this. We will do the utmost to win back the people’s respect and trust in the political system.”

The 55-year-old, who is familiarly known as AKD, told Sri Lankans that “democracy doesn’t end with voting in a leader”.

“We need to strengthen democracy. I pledge to do my utmost to safeguard democracy,” he said.

“I have said before that I am not a magician – I am an ordinary citizen. There are things I know and don’t know. My aim is to gather those with the knowledge and skills to help lift this country.”

Dissanayake received a Buddhist blessing at the end of his speech. Representatives of Sri Lanka’s other main religions – Islam, Hinduism and Christianity – were also present during the oath-taking, highlighting the new president’s emphasis on diversity.

In a statement on the eve of the ceremony, Dissanayake said the “unity of Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and all Sri Lankans is the bedrock of this new beginning”.

During the campaign, Dissanayake promised voters good governance and tough anti-corruption measures.

He has promised to develop Sri Lanka’s manufacturing, agriculture and IT sectors. He has also committed to continuing the deal struck with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail Sri Lanka out of the economic crisis while reducing the impact of its austerity measures on the country’s poorest.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena resigned before Dissanayake was sworn in, paving the way for the dissolution of parliament.

In an earlier interview with BBC Sinhala, Dissanayake signalled that he would dissolve parliament soon after being elected.

“There is no point continuing with a parliament that is not in line with what the people want,” he said at the time.

Dissanayake won after the counting stretched into a second round on Sunday, as no candidate was able to win more than 50% of the total votes in the first round.

Once the second and third-choice votes for president had been tallied, the Election Commission said Dissanayake had won with a total of 5,740,179 votes.

Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa came in second at 4,530,902. Outgoing President Ranil Wickremesinghe got 2,299,767 during the first round of counting and was excluded from the second round.

Colombo, Sep 21,2024: Around 20 percent votes were cast in the first three hours in most of the districts as Sri Lankans exercised their democratic rights to elect a new president on Saturday.

According to the Returning Officers, Polonnaruwa district recorded the highest voter turnout of 35 percent while the polling figure was the lowest – 10 percent – in Jaffna. In capital Colombo, 20 percent of votes were cast till 10 am local time, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported.

The voting started at 7 am with the people of the tiny island nation, grappling with a serious economic crisis, looking to elect a head of state for the next five years.

A record 38 candidates, including incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe, are vying for the country’s highest office in the first election since the economic catastrophe a little more than two years back threw Sri Lanka into political turmoil.

The then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to flee abroad in July 2022 as the country saw an unprecedented food and fuel scarcity and defaulted on its loans.

Wickremesinghe, who has been steering the country since then, is contesting as an independent candidate.

The other formidable contenders are Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is representing the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance and Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party. Namak Rajapaksa, son of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, is also in fray.

According to the news portal EconomyNext, 17.1 million of the country’s 22 million population are eligible to vote and the results are expected to be declared by Sunday if the counting process goes smoothly, Election Commission officials have said.

As per the polling system, voters rank up to three candidates in order of their preference on a ballot paper, with a contestant needing to obtain 50 percent of first preference votes to win.

If none of the rivals reach the magic figure of 50 percent of polled votes, a second round of voting will be held between the top two candidates from the opening round after eliminating the other contestants.

Kotputli-Behror (Rajasthan), September 18,2024: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat has said that crises do not have the power to destroy India because the country has Sanatan Dharma.
“Crises do not have the power to destroy India, India is not just a piece of land, India is Sanatan, India is with Sanatan Dharma, India has Sanatan Dharma,” Bhagwat said during a visit to Balnath Ashram here on Tuesday.
Bhagwat participated in the Mahamrityunjay Mahayagya in the ashram. He spoke about the importance of uplifting the vulnerable in the society.
“We should make efforts to progress our brothers who are poor backwards in society. We should uplift them by giving them whatever we have,” Bhagwat said.
Earlier in the day, Mohan Bhagwat emphasized the need to eliminate the untouchability completely from the country.
Addressing an RSS gathering at the Indira Gandhi Sports Ground in Alwar, Bhagwat said, “This (untouchability) feeling must be completely eradicated. This change must be brought about by transforming the mindset of society. Social harmony is the key to driving this transformation.”
Bhagwat called on the volunteers to embody five key areas in their lives: social harmony, environmental conservation, family awareness, a sense of self, and civic discipline. He added that when the volunteers incorporate these values into their lives, society will follow.
He noted that next year marks the 100 years of the RSS. He urged the volunteers to fully understand the ideas behind the work they do and to always keep those principles in mind while performing their duties.
He emphasized the need to strengthen the nation, “Our nation has to be made strong.”
“We said in our prayers that this is a Hindu nation because the Hindu society is responsible for it. If something good happens in this country, the glory of Hindu society increases, and if something goes wrong, Hindu society is held accountable as it is the steward of the nation,” Bhagwat added.
The RSS Chief, further stated that making the nation prosperous and powerful requires hard work and collective effort.
He explained that what we call Hinduism is, in fact, a universal human religion — a religion of humanity that seeks the welfare of all.

New Delhi, Sep 13,2024: The Supreme Court on Friday granted bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on his petition challenging his arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Delhi liquor policy case.

The conditional bail bars Kejriwal from attending office or signing official files but paves the way for him to campaign for the Aam Aadmi Party in Haryana Assembly elections.

A bench comprising Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, however, upheld his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and CBI, saying that the appellant’s arrest did not suffer from illegality.

WASHINGTON, Sept 19,2024: Two mighty beams of energy have been detected shooting in opposite directions from a supermassive black hole inside a distant galaxy – the largest such jets ever spotted, extending about 140 times the diameter of our vast Milky Way galaxy.

The black hole resides at the heart of a galaxy about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). Because of the time it takes for light to travel, looking across great distances is peering back in time, with these observations dating to when the universe was less than half its current age.

Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. Most galaxies, including the Milky Way, have a large black hole at their core. Some of these shoot jets of high-energy particles and magnetic fields into space from their two poles as they devour material such as gas, dust and stars falling into them due to their immense gravitational strength.

The two jet structures documented in the new study – using the LOFAR (Low-Frequency Array) radio telescope, a network of antennas centered in the Netherlands – extend 23 million light-years from end to end.

These super-heated jets, caused by the violent events around the black hole, are comprised of subatomic particles called electrons and positrons, and magnetic fields, moving at nearly the speed of light.

The researchers have nicknamed these two jets Porphyrion (pronounced poor-FEER-ee-ahn), named after a giant from ancient Greek mythology. Porphyrion is about 30% longer than the previous record-holder for such jets.

“Jet systems like Porphyrion appear to be among the most energetic spectacles that have occurred in the universe since the Big Bang,” said Caltech astrophysicist Martijn Oei, lead author of the study published in the journal,
referring to the event that initiated the universe about 13.8 billion years ago.

“The general understanding is that jets are formed when magnetized material falls onto a rotating black hole,” added astrophysicist and study co-author Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire in England. “They need to be sustained by a continued infall of matter into the black hole, something of the order of one solar mass (the mass of the sun) a year of material.”

Such jets, not visible to the naked eye, start out small and grow over time.

“We’ve known for a while that black holes can generate these jets. But what is interesting is that to generate a large structure like this, the jets must stay on for a long time – about a billion years,” Hardcastle said.

The Porphyrion jets reach far beyond their home galaxy, with an energetic output equivalent to trillions of stars like the sun.

“That is equivalent to the energy released during the most cataclysmic cosmic collisions: for example, those that occur when two galaxy clusters, each sometimes containing thousands of galaxies, merge together,” Oei said.

“The fact that it extends so far from its parent black hole means that it may be carrying energy, particles and magnetic fields into the voids in the cosmic web, the gaps between groups and filaments of galaxies which we know make up the large-scale structure of the universe. This may help us to understand the ubiquitous magnetic fields in the present-day universe,” Hardcastle said.

Such jets could heat up gas in interstellar space, shutting down the formation of new stars that requires cold clouds of gas, and could damage habitable planets, the researchers said.

The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, in its current quiescent state, does not have such jets.

“The key finding is that jets from black holes can, if circumstances are right, become as large as the universe’s major cosmic structures – galaxy clusters, cosmic filaments, cosmic voids,” Oei said. “This means that individual black holes can have a sphere of influence that extends way beyond the galaxy in which they reside.”

Kathmandu, Sep 30,2024: Nepal’s hydropower plants and irrigation facilities were badly damaged in floods and landslides triggered by incessant rainfalls in recent days, with an estimated initial loss of 4.35 billion Nepali rupees (32.6 million U.S. dollars).

Addressing a press meeting on Sunday, officials at Nepal’s Ministry for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation said that disasters spelt by continuous rains on Friday and Saturday had caused an estimated loss of 3 billion rupees (22.5 million dollars) to hydropower and transmission projects, while river control and irrigation projects suffered an estimated loss of 1.35 billion rupees (10.1 million dollars).

According to the officials, floods had damaged 11 operating hydropower plants with a combined generation capacity of 625.96MW and forced other operating plants to shut down. As a result, 1,100MW in generation capacity was halted, nearly one-third of the total capacity of the country’s operating power plants.

Fifteen hydropower plants under construction were damaged as well, it was noted.

As power plants and transmission lines were damaged, power supply in different parts of the country has been disrupted.

“Managing enough power for the country in the upcoming winter could be challenging as it takes time to maintain and repair the damaged power plants,” said Kul Man Ghising, managing director of Nepal Electricity Authority.

Nepal produces surplus hydropower during the monsoon season, but in the dry season it generates around one-third of the power.

Meanwhile, the death toll from floods and landslides hit 170 by Sunday evening, the Home Ministry said in a statement. Furthermore, 111 were injured and 42 others missing, the ministry said, noting that about 4,000 victims had been rescued.

The Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement that 47 of 80 national highways in Nepal had remained obstructed.

Sept 13,2024: A billionaire and an engineer have become the first non-professional crew to perform one of the riskiest manoeuvres in space – a spacewalk.

Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis stepped out of the SpaceX spacecraft around 15 minutes apart, starting at 11:52BST, wearing specially-designed suits.

“Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Mr Isaacman said as he exited.

It was commercially funded by Mr Isaacman. Before, only astronauts with government-funded space agencies had done a spacewalk.
Polaris Dawn has a four-person crew: Anna Menon, Sarah Gillis, Scott Poteet, and Jared Isaacman.

Images broadcast live showed the two crew emerge from the white Dragon capsule to float 435 miles (700km) above the blue Earth below.

Mr Isaacman emerged first, wiggling his limbs, hands and feet to test his suit. He returned back inside the hatch, and Ms Gillis, who works for SpaceX, then climbed out.

Both crew narrated their spacewalk, describing how their suits performed outside of the craft.
The walk, originally scheduled for 07:23BST, was postponed early on Thursday.

Anticipation and tension grew as the crew prepared to open the hatch on the craft that has no air lock, or doorway between the vacuum outside and the rest of the spacecraft.

The four crew members spent two days “pre-breathing” to prevent becoming seriously ill from decompression sickness, known as getting “the bends”, as the pressure changed. That involves replacing nitrogen in the blood with oxygen.

The craft was then depressurised to bring it closer to the conditions of the space vacuum outside.

This type of space walk took a “very different approach” to previous walks from, for example, the International Space Station, according to Dr Simeon Barber, research scientist at the Open University.

In recent decades astronauts used an airlock that separates most of a craft from the space vacuum outside – but this SpaceX Dragon capsule was in effect entirely exposed to space outside.

“It’s really exciting and I think it shows again that SpaceX is not afraid to do things in a different way,” he told BBC News.

But it was not without major risks.

Mr Isaacman, who funded the Polaris Dawn mission, was the only member of the four-person crew on the Polaris mission to have previously been to space.

He is commander on the Resilience spacecraft with his close friend Scott ‘Kidd’ Poteet, who is a retired air force pilot, and two SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.

The Dragon capsule the team flew in has now launched to space three times, taking 11 crew in total. However, the capsule and the spacesuits are not subject to regulation and were untested in this environment.
The crew wore special suits and the entire spacecraft was exposed to the vacuum outside

Spacewalks are one of the most difficult manouevres in space, so the fact that a private company has pulled it off is a milestone in the history of space travel.

This walk at 435 miles (700km) was higher than any previous walk, and used innovative technology in the new extravehicular activity (EVA) astronaut suits.

These are an upgrade from SpaceX’s previous intravehicular activity (IVA) suits.

The EVA suit incorporates a heads-up display in its helmet, which provides information about the suit while it is being used.

Sarah Gillis read out data from her heads-up display during her time outside the Dragon capsule.

SpaceX say the suits are comfortable and flexible enough to be worn during launch and landing, eliminating the need to have separate IVA suits.

Extra nitrogen and oxygen tanks were installed and all four astronauts wore the suits, meaning the mission broke the record for the most people in the vacuum of space at once.

The Resilience spacecraft left Earth on Tuesday on a SpaceX rocket.

The mission said it would travel up to 870 miles (1,400km) up in orbit – further than any human has been in space since Nasa’s Apollo programme ended in the 1970s.
Government space agencies like Nasa want the private sector to transport their astronauts on missions and bring down the cost of space travel.

And entrepreneurs like Isaacman and Elon Musk want to expand private space travel so that more non-professional astronauts can go to space.

This is a major symbolic step forwards, but that day is probably a long way off as the costs remain prohibitively high.

Hyderabad, Sep 9,2024: Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy virtually inaugurated the Indian Institute of Handloom Technology (IIHT) for the 2024-25 academic session at Lalita Kalathoranam on Monday.
During the event, the Chief Minister expressed his satisfaction with the establishment of IIHT in Telangana, noting that previously, students had to travel to Andhra Pradesh and Odisha to pursue handloom courses. He emphasized that no efforts had been made in the past decade to establish such an institute in Telangana.

Reddy revealed that after discussions with Union Minister Piyush Goyal, permission was granted to set up the IIHT. To ensure no time is wasted, classes will commence this year at Telugu University, with plans to relocate the institute to Skill University next year. The Chief Minister also announced a monthly stipend of Rs 2,500 for each student.

He further highlighted the government’s commitment to supporting weavers, with the release of Rs 290 crore in pending dues. The government also plans to distribute two sarees annually to each of the 63 lakh members of self-help groups in the state, with an annual order of 30 lakh sarees placed with local weavers.

Additionally, Reddy assured that Rs 30 crore in handloom loans would be waived, making weavers debt-free.

The Chief Minister announced that IIHT will be named after Konda Laxman Bapuji, a leader recognized for his sacrifices for the Telangana movement, and instructed officials to take the necessary steps to implement this.

Textile and Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao also spoke at the event, emphasizing the government’s priority for both farmers and weavers.

He pointed out that technological challenges are a major issue for the handloom sector and that steps will be taken to promote the export of handloom products.

He noted the swift establishment of IIHT within just 10 days and confirmed that IIHT will soon be shifted to Skill University. Rao praised the Chief Minister’s efforts, particularly Revanth Reddy’s dedication to serving all communities at a young age.

Beijing, Sept 6,2024: China plans to conduct two launches as part of the Tianwen-3 mission to collect samples from Mars and send them to Earth around 2028, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing Liu Jizhong, chief designer of China’s Mars sample-return mission.

“China has retrieved the first ever samples from the far side of the moon with the Chang’e-6 mission this year. Since Mars is much farther away than the moon, it will take two launches to carry out the Mars sample-return mission due to the limited carrying capacities of our current rockets. Two Long March-5 carrier rockets will be used for the mission,” Liu was quoted as saying by the news agency on Thursday.

The mission’s main goal is to search for signs of life, the report said, adding that Chinese scientists also want to study Martian climate and its evolution, Martian geology and the planet’s internal processes.

In June, the Vice Administrator of the China National Space Administration, Bian Zhigang, said that China would launch the Tianwen-2 mission to explore asteroids before 2025. Later, it plans to launch the Tianwen-3 and Tianwen-4 missions before 2030 to collect samples from Mars and explore the Jupiter system.

Sept 19,2024: The use of pagers and walkie-talkies in back-to-back coordinated explosions in Lebanon has drawn scrutiny to the security of global supply chains and their vulnerability to tampering by governments or other actors.

The utilisation of thousands of electronic devices in the apparent attacks, which are widely believed to have been orchestrated by Israel as part of an operation targeting Lebanon’s armed group Hezbollah, has raised the spectre of everyday communications equipment being weaponised in the future.

Tech companies are likely to see the attacks as a powerful reminder of the importance of securing their supply chains, while the general public’s trust in technology may also take a hit, tech industry and supply chain analysts told Al Jazeera.

“Every company that makes or sells physical devices will be worrying about the integrity of their supply chain,” said James Grimmelmann, Tessler Family professor of digital and information law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School in the United States.

“They are likely to consider adding additional safeguards and verifications so that they can better detect and prevent moves like this.”

While Israel has been implicated in assassinations using tampered communications devices before – including the 1996 killing of Hamas bomb maker Yahya Ayyash via an explosives-rigged mobile phone – the scale of the attacks, involving thousands of simultaneous detonations, was unprecedented.
At least 32 people were killed and more than 3,100 were injured in the explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday, including Hezbollah members and civilians, according to Lebanese authorities.
Erosion of public trust
Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in the US, described the attacks as a potential watershed for the public’s trust in their electronic devices.

“Somehow thousands of devices were turned into weapons without anyone noticing it. How widespread are these explosive devices? How did the explosives get into the devices or the device supply chains? This attack raises terrifying questions that were never even considered before,” Green said.

Mariarosaria Taddeo, a professor of digital ethics and defence technologies at University of Oxford, said the attacks set a concerning precedent as they involved interference with the supply chain “not for a specific act of sabotage but for a distributed, highly impactful attack”.

“This scenario has been considered by experts but less so by state actors. If something good comes out of them, this is going to a public debate on control of the supply chain, strategic autonomy over digital assets, and digital sovereignty,” Taddeo said.

While it is unclear exactly how the pagers and walkie-talkies were turned into explosive devices, Lebanese and US officials have told multiple media outlets that Israeli intelligence booby-trapped the devices with explosive materials.

Israel has not commented to either confirm or deny responsibility.

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, whose brand of pagers were used in the attacks, on Wednesday denied manufacturing the deadly devices, saying they had been made under licence by a company called BAC.

Gold Apollo’s CEO Hsu Ching-kuang told US radio NPR that BAC had paid his company through a Middle Eastern bank account that was blocked at least once by his firm’s Taiwanese bank.

BAC, which is based in Hungary’s capital Budapest, has not responded to requests for comment.

On Thursday, The New York Times, citing three unnamed intelligence officials, reported that BAC was an Israeli front set up to manufacture the explosive pagers.

Icom, a radio equipment maker based in Japan, said it had stopped producing the model of radios reportedly used in the attacks about 10 years ago.

“It was discontinued about 10 years ago, and since then, it has not been shipped from our company,” Icom said in a statement.

“The production of the batteries needed to operate the main unit has also been discontinued, and a hologram seal to distinguish counterfeit products was not attached, so it is not possible to confirm whether the product shipped from our company.”

New Delhi, Sep 30,2024: Actor Mithun Chakraborty will receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on Monday.

The announcement was made by Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Railways, Information Technology and Information Broadcasting, in his post on X.

He wrote, “Mithun Da’s remarkable cinematic journey continues to inspire generations! Honoured to announce that the Dadasaheb Phalke Selection Jury has decided to confer this award on legendary actor Shri Mithun Chakraborty Ji for his distinguished contribution to Indian cinema.

He further added that the award will be presented to Mithun Da by the hands of President Droupadi Murmu at the 70th National Film Awards ceremony on October 8, 2024.

Mithun has also made a significant impact in politics. He joined the Rajya Sabha in 2014 as a Trinamool Congress nominee but resigned two years later. In 2021, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the West Bengal assembly polls.

JERUSALEM/BEIRUT, Sept 28,2024: Israel killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a powerful airstrike in Beirut, dealing a heavy blow to the Iran-backed group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks.
The Israeli military said on Saturday it had eliminated Nasrallah in the strike on the group’s central command headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday. Hezbollah confirmed he had been killed, without saying how.

Nasrallah’s death is a major blow to both Hezbollah and Iran, removing an influential ally who helped build Hezbollah into the linchpin of Tehran’s network of allied groups in the Arab world.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the killing of Nasrallah as a necessary step toward “changing the balance of power in the region for years to come.”

U.S. President Joe Biden described Nasrallah’s death as a measure of justice for what he called his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese, and said the U.S. fully supported Israel’s right to self-defence.

But when asked if an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon was inevitable, Biden told reporters on Saturday: “It’s time for a ceasefire.”

A senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan, was also killed in the Israeli attacks in Beirut on Friday, Iranian media reported.

Sources told Reuters that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been moved to a secure location in Iran following Nasrallah’s killing.

Iran later called for a United Nations Security Council meeting on Israel’s actions in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. It also warned against any attacks on its diplomatic facilities and representatives.

“Iran will not hesitate to exercise its inherent rights under international law to take every measure in defense of its vital national and security interests,” Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, said in a letter to the 15-member council.

Israeli strikes in Lebanon killed 33 people and wounded 195 others on Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said.

More than 1,000 people have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded as a result of Israeli attacks in the past two weeks, the health ministry said, and about one million Lebanese have been displaced by the strikes, including hundreds of thousands since Friday, Nasser Yassin, the minister coordinating the government’s crisis response, told Reuters on Saturday.

Israel said it killed a senior Hezbollah intelligence official in a strike on southern Beirut, naming him as Hassan Khalil Yassin. Hezbollah has made no mention of this.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it would continue its battle against Israel “in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defence of Lebanon and its steadfast and honourable people”.

Iran’s Khamenei said Nasrallah’s death would be avenged and his path in fighting Israel would be pursued by other militants.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his country was facing the threat of danger, without mentioning the death of Nasrallah. His office later announced three days of mourning for the Hezbollah chief.

Hezbollah and Israel have been fighting a conflict in parallel with Israel’s war against the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza since Hamas’ attack on Israel last Oct. 7, in a cross-border confrontation that has sharply escalated in recent days.
The Israeli military said Nasrallah was eliminated in a “targeted strike” on the group’s underground headquarters below a residential building in Dahiyeh – a Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut. It said he was killed along with senior Hezbollah official Ali Karaki and other commanders.

Nasrallah’s death is by far the largest blow in a traumatic fortnight for Hezbollah, starting with a deadly strike on thousands of communications devices used by its members.
Days later, Israel significantly ramped up airstrikes in Lebanon, killing several top Hezbollah commanders and hundreds of other people across wide areas of the country.