Expresso Top National and International Headlines of the Week on 26 August 2023

In top national news: In what appeared to be a breakthrough Thursday in efforts to reduce tensions between the two countries over the military standoff in eastern Ladakh since May 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi conveyed India’s concerns to Chinese President Xi Jinping on “unresolved issues” along the Line of Actual Control, and the two leaders “agreed” to “direct their relevant officials to intensify efforts at expeditious disengagement and de-escalation” of troops on the ground. This development comes a fortnight before President Xi’s likely arrival in Delhi for the G20 Summit being hosted by India on September 9-10. Indian officials said there was no scheduled bilateral meeting between the two leaders.

In other news: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scripted history as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft made a soft landing on the surface of the Moon Wednesday evening. The Vikram lander made the soft landing at 6.04 PM IST. With the mission’s success, India has become the first country to land a spacecraft near the lunar south pole. In fact, India is only the fourth country in history to complete a soft landing on the Moon after the United States, the Soviet Union and China. A day after landing, ISRO confirmed that all Chandrayaan-3 systems are normal and that all activities are happening on schedule.

With Chandrayaan-3 successfully landing on the Moon, decks have been cleared for ISRO to unveil the next stage of its lunar exploration programme. As of now, ISRO is preparing for one more lunar mission, this one in collaboration with Japanese space agency, JAXA. This mission, called LUPEX, or Lunar Polar Exploration, is slated for 2024-25. But there would be more in the Chandrayaan series as well. The immediate priority for ISRO is the Aditya-L1, its first mission to the Sun, which is slated for an early September launch. Aditya-L1 will observe the Sun from a distance of 90 million km. and will study different kinds of phenomena like solar corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and coronal mass ejections.

Moving on: Kolkata Police, which is probing the death of the undergraduate student, has pieced together the chain of events at the JU Main Hostel on the night of August 9, minutes before the 17-year-old fell from the second-floor balcony of the four-storeyed hostel building, leading to his death. According to the investigators, who say they have evidence of ragging against the 12 accused arrested so far, the 17-year-old student was “disrobed, bullied and abused with homosexual slurs”. “Some residents of the hostel have said that the 17-year-old told them that he was not gay. What provoked him to say so is now the focus of our investigation,” a senior police officer monitoring the investigation told The Indian Express.

In top international news: Donald Trump’s mug shot was released on Thursday evening after he was booked at an Atlanta jail on more than a dozen felony charges as part of a wide-ranging criminal case stemming from the former US president’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia. An unsmiling Trump — inmate no. P01135809, according to Fulton County Jail records — was captured glaring at the camera in the mug shot. The image represented yet another extraordinary moment for Trump, who did not have to submit to a photograph when making appearances in his three other criminal cases. Trump spent only about 20 minutes at the jail before heading back to his New Jersey golf club.

In news from Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to the family of Yevgeny Prigozhin on Thursday, breaking his silence after the mercenary leader’s plane crashed with no survivors two months after he led a mutiny against army chiefs. Two US officials told Reuters that Washington believed a surface-to-air missile originating from inside Russia likely shot down the plane, though they said the information was preliminary and under review. They spoke on condition of anonymity and offered no evidence. Russian investigators opened a criminal probe but there has been no official word from Moscow on what may have caused Wednesday evening’s crash.

In news from Thailand: Real estate mogul Srettha Thavisin won the backing of Thailand’s parliament on Tuesday to become prime minister, paving the way to a new coalition government and an end to weeks of uncertainty and political stalemate. Srettha, who was thrust into the spotlight just a few months ago by the populist Pheu Thai Party, secured the support of more than half of the legislature, on a day when the party’s billionaire figurehead Thaksin Shinawatra made a historic homecoming after years of as a fugitive in self-imposed exile.

Lastly, after a month’s deadlock, Nepal’s Parliament was back in session Wednesday as seven national parties, both ruling and opposition, agreed on the formation of a judicial commission to probe the smuggling of gold into the country. The Federal Parliament had been stalled by the main opposition, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), since July 20 — a day after the smuggling came to light — as it demanded a special probe by a commission rather than a routine administrative one. The chief whips of the House signed an agreement in the presence of their respective party chiefs. The agreement said an inquiry commission headed by a Nepal Supreme Court judge would begin work on September 22.