Leader urges to learn from lessons of martyrs

In a message on Thursday, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei commemorated 8-year of Sacred Defense against the foreign-backed Saddam Ba’athist regime.

The Leader’s message stressed that Sacred Defense Week brings back the memory of martyrs.

He described the Sacred Defense martyrs and all other martyrs as role models for all generations and all those who will come in the future.

“Their behavior is a lesson; Their motives are wisdom (philosophy). We should listen to their lessons properly and use them for our well-being in this world and the hereafter in all periods and generations,” Ayatollah Khamenei’s message further read.

MNA

Asian Games: Fearless Preeti wins Olympic quota, assures India of a medal

Preeti Pawar secured a quota for the Paris Olympics and also assured herself of a medal, moving into the women’s 54kg semifinals

Published Date – 01:07 PM, Sat – 30 September 23


Asian Games: Fearless Preeti wins Olympic quota, assures India of a medal



Hangzhou: Indian boxer Preeti Pawar secured a quota for the Paris Olympics and also assured herself of a medal, moving into the women’s 54kg semifinals of the Asian Games here on Saturday.

The 19-year-old put up a fearless display against Kazakhstan’s Zhaina Shekerbekova, a three-time World Championship medallist and reigning Asian champion, to eke out a 4-1 win in the fiercely-fought quarterfinal.

Preeti started the bout on the offensive but her defence was broken several times by her more experienced rival. Unperturbed, the Indian teenager continued to pummel Shekerbekova to take a slender 3-2 lead in the first round.

Up against the experienced 33-year-old, Preeti fought a strategic bout as she moved off the center of the ring in the beginning of the second round with a long range jab.

In the last three minutes, the two boxers showered a lot of punches at each other but both were inaccurate. As the clock ticked, the fatigue kicked in for Shekerbekova, while Preeti continued to pepper her opponent with shots to take the win.

On Friday, Nikhat Zareen became the first Indian boxer to win an Olympic quota.

In the women’s events, the semifinalists in the 50kg, 54kg, 57kg, and 60kg while the finalists in the 66kg and 75kg will qualify for the Paris Olympics.

The gold and silver medallists in each of the seven weight divisions in the men’s event will receive Olympic quotas.

"Want To Take Away Thought Of Injury": Neeraj Chopra Eyes Asiad Gold

Neeraj Chopra played most part of the season with a groin strain.© AFP

A groin strain has been troubling Neeraj Chopra for some time now but the Olympic champion does not want the thought of injury affect him as he gears up to defend his Asian Games title. Chopra played most part of the season with a groin strain but still won the world championships title in August in Budapest and went on to finish second in the Diamond League finals on September 16.

“I have come back here after training and doing rehab in a relaxed manner in Switzerland. I hope to give my 100 per cent and defend my Asian Games title,” Chopra told reporters here.

The 25-year-old javelin thrower has Olympic qualification in his mind.

“A little bit of groin issue is still there, it happened last year also. I was feeling better but it happened again. I have to take care of this very well and then prepare for the Paris Olympics. This kind of thing happens for athletes who compete at the top level.” He said the challenge throughout the season was how to keep his mind away from the injury and focus more on his game.

“I was struggling during the world championships and I was trying to divert my mind from the injury and focus on the throw.

“My strength is on the speed in the run-up but my biggest problem this time was I could not throw with full run-up even during training because of this injury. But still I am very happy with my performance this season. I want to take away this thought of injury from the mind.”

Topics mentioned in this article

Iranian Kurash player wins silver at Asian Games

This medal is the 11th silver medal of Iran’s convoy in the Asian Games.

The Kurash event of the 2023 Asian Games is being held between September 30 and October 2 at the Xiaoshan Linpu Gymnasium in Hangzhou. 

With more than 12,000 competitors from 45 nations and territories, the 2022 Asian Games has more participants than the Olympics.

Iran has sent 289 male and female athletes to the Games in 34 sports events.

MNA

Indian athletes make finals in long jump, 1500m, women’s 100m hurdles

Indian hurdlers Jyothi Yarraji and Nithya Ramraj advanced to the women’s 100m hurdles final

Published Date – 12:55 PM, Sat – 30 September 23


Indian athletes make finals in long jump, 1500m, women’s 100m hurdles



Hangzhou: Indian hurdlers Jyothi Yarraji and Nithya Ramraj advanced to the women’s 100m hurdles final, while ace long jumpers Murali Sreeshankar and Jeswin Aldrin also sailed through, keeping their medal hopes alive at the Asian Games here on Saturday.

Asian champion Yarraji finished second in her heat with a timing of 13.03 seconds to qualify for the women’s 100m hurdles final.

China’s Yuwei Lin finished first with a personal best time of 12.79.

India will have a second hurdler in the event as Nithya Ramraj finished fifth in her heat but qualified as second fastest loser with a time of 13.30.

Second-fastest Asian hurdler Yarraji had won gold at the Asian Athletics Championships. She has broken the national record in the 100m hurdles a staggering seven times.

In long jump, Commonwealth Games silver medallist Sreeshankar jumped more than the automatic qualification mark of 7.90m to make it to the final.

The 24-year-old from Kerala, who boasts a personal and season’s best of 8.41m, produced a first jump of 7.97 to directly make the cut.

Having started off with a foul, Asia’s best Jeswin Aldrin’s third attempt of 7.67 was not enough for an automatic qualification but he still made the cut after finishing second in his heat and among the top 12.

There will be two Indians in the men’s 1500m final as Jinson Johnson and Ajay Kumar qualified from their respective heats.

Johnson finished fifth with a time of 3:56.22 to seal an automatic qualification spot.

Ajay Kumar was second to cruise into the final with a timing of 3:51.93, finishing second in his heat.
Finals of all the three events — women’s 100m hurdles, men’s long jump and men’s 1500m — are slated on Sunday.

UFOs: How NASA Plans To Get To The Bottom Of Unexplained Sightings

UFOs: How NASA Plans To Get To The Bottom Of Unexplained Sightings

NASA is now taking the topic of unexplained UFO sightings very seriously. (Representational)

Portsmouth, UK:

As reports continue flying in about what were traditionally called UFOs (unidentified flying objects), NASA is taking the topic very seriously. In fact, following the publication of a report from an independent committee of experts in fields including astronomy and aviation safety, the agency has even appointed a new director of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) research.

UAP is the term NASA now uses for UFOs. The committee was directed to gather reports of UAPs and try to understand what these mysterious events really are, including answering the question of whether or not they could be extraterrestrial in origin.

The committee held a press conference back in May, when it provided an update on its work up to that point. The study team outlined some of the common explanations for UAP sightings – which includes boats low on the horizon and high-flying balloons – as well as how many events remained truly unexplained.

Now, the committee has published the full report into what it has found, including recommendations for NASA as its work continues. That report, which also contains NASA’s response and plan as it moves forward, can be read in full here. I’ve also created a video about the findings.

The report makes clear that, so far, the committee has absolutely no evidence that any of the reported UAP events have any involvement from aliens. But for the reports that are still unexplained by terrestrial phenomena or aircraft, the team doesn’t rule anything out. It makes it clear that an extraterrestrial origin is unlikely, but that it has no evidence at all for what these sightings are.

The rest of the report deals with how NASA should respond to the findings, and what it plans to do to continue this research in future.

Need for transparency

The most substantial response has been the appointment of the director of UAP research – a brand new role. Initially, when announcing this, NASA refused to name the person in the role. It hoped to shield the new UAP director from the kind of harassment that some members of the committee have received for their involvement in the research.

However, the space agency also pledged to be completely transparent about the work on UAPs and everything it finds. This philosophy seems to have prevailed, and NASA later announced that the new director would be Mark McInerney, a previous NASA liaison to the US Department of Defense.

NASA also put forward the idea of developing a smartphone app to aid with the future reporting of UAPs. While there are hundreds of sightings available for study by the committee, one persistent problem it has faced is poor data and images.

NASA hopes to combat this issue for future reports by using the billions of high-tech detectors around the world that most people carry everywhere. Smartphones can collect a lot of high quality information, starting with photos and videos, but they can also gather data on gravity, magnetic fields, locations and more. If the general public were open to the idea, NASA would like to one day allow people to report sightings directly from their phones to the agency.

Another interesting revelation in the report is the prominence that NASA believes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning could have as this work continues. Looking for patterns in the UAP reports – such as geographical reporting hotspots – could hold the key to finally understanding the causes of some of the events that remain mysterious.

Chris Pattison explains the findings of the NASA report on UAPs.

Pattern spotting is something that humans are very good at, but sometimes the common thread is so subtle and unexpected that people can’t spot it. Luckily, AI is getting better and more powerful, and pattern spotting is one of the things it excels at. This raises the interesting possibility that AI could be essential in one day identifying the first evidence for extraterrestrial life visiting Earth. It’s not likely that we’ll identify aliens, but NASA isn’t ruling it out.

The week that this report was released turned out to be a busy week for discussions about aliens. In Mexico, a journalist named Jaime Maussan presented alleged “mummified aliens” to the country’s Congress that he claimed had been found in Peru.

He said the specimens contained non-human DNA, but this has not yet been independently verified. In fact, much doubt has been cast over the authenticity of these corpses.

In both cases, the world must wait longer to get more concrete evidence. As more reports are collected by NASA, it might be possible to get more clarity on what these strange objects are. And if independent testing of the Mexico specimens takes place, there might be a conclusion to this claim too.The Conversation

(Author:Christopher Pattison, Researcher at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth)

(Disclosure Statement:Christopher Pattison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
 

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Contract worker found hanging in Mancherial

A worker who was hired on a contract basis was found hanging on the premises of an opencast mining project

Published Date – 12:56 PM, Sat – 30 September 23


Contract worker found hanging in Mancherial

Representational Image

Mancherial: A worker who was hired on a contract basis was found hanging on the premises of an opencast mining project in Srirampur on Friday night.

Srirampur police said Veeraswami (50) was suspected to have ended life by hanging to a tree at a camp of his employer. He was a native of Suryapet district. Some coal miners spotted the body and alerted police. The reason of his drastic step was yet to be ascertained.

Meanwhile, leaders of various trade unions staged a protest demanding action against the employer of the operator, alleging Veeraswami killed himself after being threatened by the employer that a theft case would be booked against him. They demanded a compensation of Rs 50 lakh to Veeraswami’s family.

Putin Tasks Troshev to Form Volunteer Units for Ukraine Operations

Putin tasked Troshev with creating volunteer units for combat missions in Ukraine.

Updated On – 11:23 AM, Sat – 30 September 23


Putin Tasks Troshev to Form Volunteer Units for Ukraine Operations



Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin met with and former Wagner commander Andrey Troshev, who is now already working with the Defence Ministry, CNN reported on Friday citing a statement by Kremlin.

Putin tasked Troshev with creating volunteer units for combat missions in Ukraine.

He said that he wanted to discuss “social guarantees” for anyone who had fought to “defend the fatherland,” according to a partial transcript of the meeting.

Putin also referenced a previous meeting with Troshev in which they had talked about the formation of volunteer combat units to fight in Ukraine, CNN reported.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov that Troshev “is already working with the defense ministry”.

Putin has assigned the former chief of staff, Troshev, with the task of forming volunteer units to perform combat missions for Russia’s war in Ukraine, New York Times reported citing a video clip of the Thursday evening meeting that the Kremlin published on Friday.
Without referring to Wagner by name, Putin added that Troshev “fought in such a unit for more than a year” and knows “how it’s done.”

Notably, the Wagner fighters, thousands of whom were recruited from prisons in Russia, operated under a largely independent command until June, when the Defence Ministry moved to integrate them into the broader military, according to New York Times.

The move would have reduced the power of the group’s former leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and, analysts believe, helped touch off his failed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership.

However, since the mutiny and Prigozhin’s death in August, the fate of Wagner has been unclear. Putin signalled as much in his meeting with Troshev, telling him that state-sponsored support measures for veterans of the fight in Ukraine were also available to members of volunteer groups that fought there, New York Times reported.
Troshev is a retired Russian colonel and a founding member and executive director of the Wagner Group, according to sanctions documents published by the European Union and France, according to CNN.

Troshev is a veteran of wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya who uses the call sign “Sedoi,” or “Gray-haired.” According to European and United Kingdom sanctions documents, he provided “a crucial contribution to Bashar al-Assad’s war effort” and “repressed the civilian population in Syria.”

In June, Putin proposed that Troshev command the private military group in the wake of the failed Wagner rebellion.

Following the failed mutiny, security experts predicted that the Kremlin would seek to further absorb the group into the Russian military.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials said Wagner fighters had returned to the eastern front, now working as individuals for the Russian Defense Ministry, CNN reported.

I want to take away thought of injury from the mind: Neeraj Chopra

Chopra played most part of the season with a groin strain but still won the world championships title in August in Budapest

Published Date – 12:50 PM, Sat – 30 September 23


I want to take away thought of injury from the mind: Neeraj Chopra



Hangzhou: A groin strain has been troubling Neeraj Chopra for some time now but the Olympic champion does not want the thought of injury affect him as he gears up to defend his Asian Games title.

Chopra played most part of the season with a groin strain but still won the world championships title in August in Budapest and went on to finish second in the Diamond League finals on September 16.

“I have come back here after training and doing rehab in a relaxed manner in Switzerland. I hope to give my 100 per cent and defend my Asian Games title,” Chopra told reporters here.

The 25-year-old javelin thrower has Olympic qualification in his mind.

“A little bit of groin issue is still there, it happened last year also. I was feeling better but it happened again. I have to take care of this very well and then prepare for the Paris Olympics. This kind of thing happens for athletes who compete at the top level.” He said the challenge throughout the season was how to keep his mind away from the injury and focus more on his game.

“I was struggling during the world championships and I was trying to divert my mind from the injury and focus on the throw.

“My strength is on the speed in the run-up but my biggest problem this time was I could not throw with full run-up even during training because of this injury. But still I am very happy with my performance this season. I want to take away this thought of injury from the mind.”