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☆ U.S. confirms talks with Russia on prisoner swap for Evan Gershkovich, but tempers expectations.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Anushka Patil | More About Anushka Patil | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The United States confirmed on Friday that it was in talks with Russia about a potential prisoner swap for the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, but cautioned that the discussions had not yet produced “a clear pathway to a resolution.”The Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said this week that the two countries were in contact about the possibility of a swap. President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, confirmed the Kremlin’s remarks on Friday, but he said that he did not want to give “false hope.”“There have been discussions, but those discussions have not produced a clear pathway to a resolution,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters, adding that the U.S. did not have a “clear answer” on how it would secure Mr. Gershkovich’s release.

Persons: Evan Gershkovich, Dmitri S, Peskov, Biden’s, Jake Sullivan, Mr, Sullivan Organizations: United, Wall Street, Mr Locations: United States, Russia, U.S

But now, as Mr. Putin seeks to project an image of restored stability and control, he has been putting his defense minister on display, even if Mr. Shoigu has not addressed the public or even been heard speaking. Mr. Shoigu was also present on Monday as Mr. Putin convened a meeting of his top security chiefs. On Tuesday, as Mr. Putin praised his security forces in a grandly choreographed speech, Mr. Shoigu was again present, wearing his military uniform. Mr. Shoigu, who was a very popular minister of emergency situations before becoming defense minister in 2012, has had a long and friendly relationship with Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin may have kept both men in charge as part of his decades-long efforts to place the sprawling Russian military more under his control.

Persons: Vladimir V, Sergei K, Shoigu, Valery V, Putin, Yevgeny V, Wagner, ” Mr, Gerasimov, Mr, Prigozhin, Ramzan Kadyrov, —, ”, ” Andrei Guryulov, Aleksandr Dugin, Aleksandr G, Lukashenko, Dugin, Long, General Gerasimov, It’s, Andrei Soldatov, Putin “, ” Oleg Matsnev Organizations: Putin, Cuban, National Defense Control Center of Russia, Russian military’s Zvezda, United, Defense Ministry, General Staff Locations: Moscow, Russia, Ukraine, United States, Cuba, Russian, Ukrainian, Lyman, Chechnya, United Russia, Belarus

☆ Inside the Titan: Quiet and Cramped, With a Single Porthole
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Anushka Patil | Jacey Fortin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Passengers seeking a glimpse of the R.M.S. Titanic aboard the submersible that disappeared in the North Atlantic this week have endured hours in a dangerous drop to the ocean floor aboard a cramped craft with a single porthole. Mike Reiss, a producer and writer for “The Simpsons,” boarded the vessel, known as the Titan, last summer. He said that passengers were required to sign a waiver that mentioned death three times on the first page. Passengers on his 10-hour journey — a trip than can cost up to $250,000 — were composed but excited, he said.

Persons: Mike Reiss, ” Organizations: Titanic, OceanGate Expeditions Locations: North

☆ British Explorer on Missing Submersible Said He Knew the Risk of Such Voyages
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Emma Bubola | Anushka Patil | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Hamish Harding, a British explorer aboard the submersible missing in the North Atlantic, acknowledged in a 2021 interview that he had taken on deep-sea missions in the past knowing that rescue would not be an option. At almost seven miles, the Mariana Trench is far deeper than the Titanic site that the submersible was set to visit, which is about two-and-a half miles down. On the 2021 trip, Mr. Harding, a 58-year-old British businessman, and Victor Vescovo, an American explorer, set a Guinness World Record for the longest time spent traversing the deepest part of the ocean on a single dive. Their 4-hour, 15-minute dive also set a record for farthest distance traveled along the deepest part of the ocean. “It was potentially scary, but I was so busy doing so many things — navigating and triangulating my position — that I did not really have time to be scared,” Mr. Harding told The Week.

Persons: Hamish Harding, ”, Mariana Trench, Harding, Victor Vescovo, Mr Locations: British, Mariana, American

“The submersible industry had significant concerns over the strategy of building a deep sea expedition submersible without following existing classification safety guidelines,” Mr. Kohnen said. OceanGate said in the post that because its Titan craft was so innovative, it could take years to get it certified by leading assessment agencies. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” the company wrote. The submersible sustained modest damage to its exterior, he wrote, leading OceanGate to cancel the mission so it could make repairs. Still, Mr. Concannon wrote in the filing, 28 individuals had been able to visit the Titanic wreckage on the craft in 2022.

Persons: —, Will Kohnen, Mr, Kohnen, Rush, OceanGate, Bart Kemper, ”, Kemper, Charles Kohnen, Will Kohnen’s, “, David Concannon, Concannon, Rebecca Beach Smith, Kitty Bennett Organizations: The New York Times, Stockton Rush, Manned, Vehicles, Marine Technology Society, Titan, Atlantis, Eastern, of, Court Locations: Canadian, U.S, of Virginia

☆ ‘Never Have I Ever’ star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan jokes Mindy Kaling has ‘spoiled’ Hollywood for her
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Harmeet Kaur | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —Maitreyi Ramakrishnan was a high school student who had never acted professionally when in 2019, she responded to an open casting call from Mindy Kaling for a TV series about an Indian American teenager. That’s one thing I don’t think I’ll ever comprehend: This was my first opportunity? I couldn’t ask for a better boss than Mindy Kaling. Mindy Kaling screwed me over. The first Tamil person I knew on TV was Mindy (Kaling) in “The Mindy Project.” That was probably the first South Asian person I saw on TV.

Persons: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Mindy Kaling, Ramakrishnan, Devi Vishwakumar, Priya Mangal, Lizzie Bennet, “, ”, Devi, She’s, Kulkarni, I’ve, hasn’t, That’s, Kamala, Harry Potter, Patil, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Yule, –, Hermione Granger, we’re, ” That’s, ” What’s, What’s Organizations: CNN, Netflix, “, South Locations: American, South Asian, Canada

A second passenger train, heading in the opposite direction, then struck some of the dislocated cars. More than 2,200 passengers in all were onboard the passenger trains, according to railway officials, and at least 23 cars were derailed. The other passenger train was a Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast Express train, running from a commuter hub in the southern city of Bengaluru to Kolkata, the capital of the northeastern state of West Bengal. Site of the train crash An initial government report said that the Coromandel Express passenger train derailed while traveling at full speed. In 2016, 14 train cars derailed in India’s northeast in the middle of the night, killing more than 140 passengers and injuring 200 others.

Persons: Ashwini Vaishnaw, Vaishnaw, Derailments, Jitendra Prakash, Narendra Modi, Modi, Modi’s, Amit Dave, Suresh Prabhu, Mr, Mujib Mashal Organizations: Chennai Coromandel Express, South Eastern Railway, Express, Coromandel, INDIA, Economic, Disaster Management, Reuters Rail Locations: India, Balasore, Odisha State, Shalimar, Chennai Coromandel, India’s, Howrah, Bengaluru, Kolkata, West Bengal, Odisha, Bhubaneswar, Odisha’s, Bihar, Pukhrayan, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad

The other passenger train was a Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast Express train, running from a commuter hub in Bangalore to Kolkata, the capital of the eastern state of West Bengal. India’s railway minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said that he had ordered an investigation into the cause and that those affected by the crash would receive compensation. Site of the train crash An initial government report said that the Coromandel Express passenger train derailed while traveling at full speed. Dozens of trains had been canceled but crews were rushing to restore service after pushing off the train cars involved in the crash off the tracks. In 2016, 14 train cars derailed in India’s northeast in the middle of the night, killing more than 140 passengers and injuring 200 others.

Persons: Ashwini Vaishnaw, Derailments, Jitendra Prakash, Narendra Modi, Modi, Modi’s, Amit Dave, Suresh Prabhu, Mr, Vaishnaw, Mujib Mashal Organizations: Chennai Coromandel Express, South Eastern Railway, Express, Coromandel, INDIA, Sunday, Economic, Disaster Management, Reuters Rail Locations: India, Balasore, Odisha State, Shalimar, Chennai Coromandel, India’s, Howrah, Bangalore, Kolkata, West Bengal, Bahanaga Bazar, Bhubaneswar, Odisha’s, Bihar, Pukhrayan, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad

☆ Russia's War in Ukraine: Live Updates
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-31 | by ( Anushka Patil | Nataliia Novosolova | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Tuesday. Frontline fighting has repeatedly damaged the facility, disrupted its power supply and contributed to a staffing crisis that is “not sustainable,” Mr. Grossi said on Tuesday. Even as Russia and Ukraine accused each other of causing damage and outages, Mr. Grossi largely avoided placing blame on either country while he sought to negotiate an agreement. Speaking after Mr. Grossi’s briefing, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., denounced Russia’s actions as a “clear escalation” of Moscow’s efforts to “undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and authority” over the plant. “And this undermines our ability to have confidence in the level of nuclear safety at the plant,” she said.

Persons: Rafael Mariano Grossi, Mr, Grossi, Grossi’s, Linda Thomas, Greenfield, ”, Sergiy Kyslytsya, Vassily Nebenzia, Julian Barnes Organizations: International Atomic Energy Agency, . Security Locations: New York, Russia, Ukraine, Kyiv, gunpoint, United States, U.S, Ukrainian, Russian

Follow our live updates for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment proceedings. The Republican-dominated Texas House has scheduled a vote on the impeachment of the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, for Saturday at 1 p.m. In February, Mr. Paxton agreed to pay $3.3 million in a settlement with the four former senior aides. Many of the investigators’ findings about Mr. Paxton were already known publicly, from the allegations made in the aides’ lawsuit. In 2015, his first year in that office, Mr. Paxton was charged with felonies related to securities fraud and booked in a county jail outside Dallas.

Mr. Zelensky, American and British officials say, seems to sense that when he shows up in person, he can both break through American resistance to sending more powerful weapons and pressure nations like India and Brazil that have stayed on the sidelines. Even before he arrived, Mr. Zelensky had won a significant victory. Mr. Biden met with the other leaders of the so-called Quad — Australia, India and Japan — on Saturday night. Mr. Zelensky will also meet with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan on Sunday, the Kyodo News agency reported. The G7 leaders have already pledged at the summit to toughen punishments on Moscow and redouble efforts to choke off funding for its war.

☆ An A.F.P. journalist was killed by rocket fire near the intense fighting in the area around Bakhmut.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Anushka Patil | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

A video journalist working for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, was killed by rocket fire near the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine, A.F.P. Some of the heaviest battles of the war are being fought in and around the nearby city of Bakhmut. The journalist, Arman Soldin, 32, and four colleagues were with Ukrainian soldiers when they came under a Grad rocket attack on Tuesday afternoon, the agency said. Mr. Soldin is the 17th journalist to be killed in Ukraine since 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. His death came just two weeks after a Ukrainian journalist was killed and an Italian journalist injured in an attack on their way to the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

Russian service members rehearsing last week for the military parade in Moscow on Tuesday, when Russia celebrates the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. More recently, he has tried to wrap Ukraine into that narrative, falsely depicting it as a Nazi redoubt. The parade is likely to be subjected to closer scrutiny than usual, both inside Russia and beyond its borders. This year, the jets have skipped their usual practice runs over Moscow, raising questions about whether they will participate. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the march was canceled as a “precautionary measure” against possible attacks.

☆ Russia-Ukraine War Russian Foreign Minister Wraps up Americas Tour at U.N.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Anushka Patil | Juston Jones | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Video For Valentyn, a Ukrainian soldier in the Donetsk region, the war’s death toll is more than a statistic. He is tasked with moving wounded troops — and dead bodies — away from the front lines, often under Russian fire. On the horizon, a military vehicle moves along a dusty road and screeches to a halt when it reaches the trees. A soldier named Valentyn parks it there for natural camouflage from Russian drones scouting for Ukrainian military positions. “This is a big tragedy for us.”“One more body is left behind with the Russian soldiers,” he added.

☆ Russia-Ukraine War News: Live Updates
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Anushka Patil | Juston Jones | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

“We are nine hours apart and over 10,000 kilometers apart,” Mr. Zelensky told Mexico’s lower house of congress — the Chamber of Deputies — in a virtual address shortly before 1 p.m. there. But speaking to Mexican lawmakers, Mr. Zelensky did not ask for military hardware or money. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico has said little publicly since he condemned the war days after it started in February 2022. Mr. López Obrador, who leads the left-wing Morena Party, did not show up in the chamber where Mr. Zelensky spoke over a video link. “We recognize in you the struggle that you have been waging all this time in defense of your homeland and the dignity of your people,” he said, addressing Mr. Zelensky.

☆ Analysis: CATL's 'price war' shows its power, and China's EV edge
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

"It's very much a market share game," said Caspar Rawles, chief data officer at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd - more widely known by its initials - is the dominant global supplier with a 37% share of the EV market. For CATL, the discount is a way to head off a bid by Chinese EV makers to seek alternatives. CATL batteries power Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) I.D. "The reductions that CATL is offering would help the Chinese EV industry," said James Frith, a principal at battery-tech focused venture capital group Volta Energy Technologies.

Today's EVs run on lithium ion batteries — mostly made with lithium, cobalt, manganese and high-grade nickel, whose prices have soared. The EVs of the future — those arriving after 2025 — could shift to sodium ion or lithium sulfur battery cells that could be up to two-thirds cheaper than today's lithium ion cells. China's CATL (300750.SZ) has said it plans to begin producing sodium ion cells in 2023. Michigan-based Amandarry and British startup AMTE Power (AMTE.L) are developing sodium ion batteries using sodium chloride — basically table salt — as the main cathode ingredient. Battery developers hope they can add sodium ion and lithium sulfur batteries to the range open to the auto industry.

In an NBC News poll of registered voters last month, economic concerns beat out every other issue. Recent data from three swing states — Wisconsin, Arizona and Pennsylvania — sheds light on the varying economic pressures that might influence choices at the ballot box. Tony Evers faces Republican challenger Tim Michels, the job market is hot. Gas prices in the state have recently come down to an average of $3.60 a gallon, compared to $3.76 nationally, after this summer’s nationwide surge. Wisconsin’s metro areas aren’t big enough to be broken out in federal data, but food prices in the Midwest have risen by 12.7% over the last year, compared to 11.2% nationally.

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