India becomes the first in the world to successfully land a spacecraft — Chandrayaan-3 module with a lunar rover on board — on the South Pole of the Moon, according to the footage broadcast by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on Wednesday. | India's Moon mission was launched on July 14, and it entered the lunar orbit on August 5. The station will conduct several maneuvers to approach the Moon until its orbit decreases to 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Moon. The Chandrayaan-3's landing module Vikram separated from the station on August 17 and previously conducted two operations to lower its orbit. ● The successful touch-down of the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s lander on the Moon will help lunar missions of other countries in the future, Indian Prime Minister stated. ● Modi expressed confidence that all countries of the world, including the Global South, are capable of achieving such results.

An investigation of the Embraer plane crash that happened in the Tver Region this evening was initiated | Russia’s Federal Agency for Air Transport has launched an investigation into the crash of the Embraer plane in the Tver Region on Wednesday, the agency said noting that Yevgeny Prigozhin was among the passengers. ● "An investigation into the Embraer plane crash that occurred in the Tver Region this evening has been launched. According to the passenger list, the first and last name of Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in this list," the agency noted. ● The Embraer business jet crashed in the Tver Region near the settlement of Kuzhenkino. According to preliminary data, all 10 people on board the plane have died. The plane was en route from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport to St. Petersburg.

■ Wagner chief listed among passengers on crashed plane (RT.com)
■ Wagner Chief Prigozhin Listed Among Passengers in Tver Region Jet Crash (Sputnik News)
■ Wagner’s Prighozin was on the passenger list for a plane that crashed, killing all 10 people aboard (AP)

The BW Lesmes tanker carrying liquefied natural gas has collided with the Burri oil products tanker in the Suez Canal, the Marine Traffic tracking service said on Tuesday, citing an eye-witness. 💬 "MarineTraffic has received eye-witness report from the #SuezCanal that 2 tankers have collided. The reported incident involves the Burri, a Cayman island tanker, and the BW Lesmes, a Singapore flagged LNG tanker," the service said on X, formerly known as Twitter. ● The tracking service has also posted a video showing towing operations monitoring data, which revealed that Burri has already been towed away from BW Lesmes after the collision. As of 5:43 Moscow time (02:43 GMT), the vessels were located next to each other in the southern part of the Suez Canal.

Medvedev slams NATO for fighting ‘full-scale’ war against Russia in Ukraine | NATO is fighting a full-scale war against Russia, using the Kiev authorities as proxies, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an op-ed dedicated to the 15th anniversary of Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia and Russia’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which was published on the aif.ru website. ● The politician pointed out that "hostile observers" should have learned a lesson from those developments but "unfortunately, it did not happen." "The Western world keeps falling into the same trap over and over again," Medvedev said. 💬"Our adversaries are up to their necks in the proxy war that NATO is fighting against us in Ukraine through the hands of the Kiev regime, which is a full-scale and deadly one," he stressed.

■ The Age of Confrontation (Dmitry Medvedev)(07/03/23)
■ The Point of No Return (Dmitry Medvedev)(02/27/23)

Vikram Sharma | A new Indian study has uncovered the secret of the Sherpa people’s genes that allows them to survive in the most extreme conditions | As he climbed Mount Everest’s Lhotse ice wall, Sameer Nicholas Patham struggled to breathe despite his supplementary oxygen. Here, where temperatures drop to -30° Celsius and the ambient oxygen is 70% lower than we breathe at sea level, every step was torture. ● But his Sherpa friends calmly and easily climbed past, carrying an average weight of 16kg. “They are superhumans,” recalls Sameer, who experienced firsthand what he describes as the incredible feats of the Sherpas, a Tibetan ethnic group globally known for their natural mountaineering skills. ● Yet if the same Sherpas were to visit Varanasi and fall sick, the hospital’s doctors would find that they had high blood pressure and low hemoglobin compared to average plains dwellers. Often such Sherpas were prescribed unnecessary medication. And though Chinese and American scientists had isolated the gene that allowed high-altitude adaptation, a biochemical analysis was always lacking – until a recent deep study by a team of Indian scientists investigated how Himalayans have survived in their challenging habitat for centuries. ● The Sherpa people are world-famous for high-altitude living and mountaineering. According to the 2011 census, there were some 16,012 Sherpas in India. Though there are other high-altitude Himalayan ethnic groups, the Sherpas dominate the portering profession to the extent that porters are commonly called “Sherpas” by outsiders. ● Other high-altitude ethnic groups include the Tibetans, inhabiting the Tibet Autonomous Region, Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan in China; they are also found in India, Bhutan and Nepal. There are 182,685 Tibetans in India, scattered in Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Karnataka and Uttarakhand. Then there are the Lepchas, an aboriginal tribe of Darjeeling and Sikkim, in the Himalayas, calling themselves “Rong Migyit” (Lepcha people). They number 47,331. Additionally, the Bhutia tribe is scattered around the Himalayan region and number 229,954.

Paris claims, however, that it did not ask the authorities in Algiers for such permission | Algeria has turned down a request from France to fly over its airspace for a military operation in Niger, where President Mohamed Bazoum was ousted in a military coup in late July, several media reports suggested on Tuesday, citing the North-African nation’s state radio. ● Algerian national radio reported late on Monday that it had learned from sources that Paris was planning a strike against Niamey's new military rulers if they did not release Bazoum, who has been held in detention since July 26. ● “Faced with Algerian refusal, France turned to Morocco, asking for authorization to pass its military planes through its airspace,” state radio said, according to the Nova News Agency.