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    Chaos At Site of Air India Plane Crash

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    Firefighters raced to douse smoking buildings as emergency workers recovered bodies after a deadly passenger plane crash in India.Dozens of medical school students in the western Indian state of Gujarat were eating lunch on Thursday when an Air India passenger plane carrying 242 people to London crashed into their dining hall. In the aftermath of the disaster, the ripped tail of the wrecked plane could be seen jutting out of the building.At least five students died in the crash in the city of Ahmedabad, said Minakshi Parikh, the dean of B.J. Medical College, whose campus is near the end of the runway of the airport. Officials feared that the death toll at the medical campus and its neighboring buildings could be higher.“Most of the students escaped, but 10 or 12 were trapped in the fire,” Ms. Parikh said.At least 204 people were killed in the crash of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, G.S. Malik, the police commissioner of Ahmedabad, said in an interview. That makes the crash India’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1996.Verified video shows the plane descending, almost as if on a glide, and then a fireball rises in its place. Photos and verified videos from the crash site show widespread carnage as well as medical workers carrying the bodies of victims into ambulances on stretchers.Dr. Bharat Ahir, who reached the scene soon after the crash, said he had seen rescuers bringing people out of thick smoke. Inside the damaged dinning hall, he said, the meals of many of the students sat unfinished.Dt. Ahir said he feared that casualties in a nearby residential complex, a multistory block where doctors and their families live, could outnumber those at the dinning facility.“The plane’s back part is stuck in the dinning hall, and the front hit the residential building,” he said.Wreckage from the plane at the site of the crash. Amit Dave/ReutersImages emerging from the scene show the blackened tangle of the wreckage of the plane. The aircraft appeared to have broken into large pieces, with one wing lying on a roadway. Firefighters could be seen spraying burned-out buildings and sooty, cracked trees as they stepped carefully around the hunks of debris.At a nearby hospital, medical workers raced through busy rooms with empty stretchers and wheelchairs, verified video showed. Crowds of people milled about.Outside, a group of men walked through the streets with a stretcher carrying an injured person. Ambulance after ambulance drove by.Mujib Mashal More

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      in US Politics

      ‘They are in shock’: Indian students fear Trump has ended their American dream

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      For weeks, Subash Devatwal’s phone has not stopped ringing. Some of the calls have been from distressed students, at other times it is their panicked parents, but all have the same question – is their dream of studying in the US still possible?Devatwal runs an education consultancy in Ahmedabad, the main city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is one of thousands of such organisations that exist across the country, helping Indian students achieve what many consider to be the ultimate symbol of success: getting into an American university.It has long been a booming business for Devatwal. Families in India will often invest their entire life savings to send their children to study in the US and last year there were more than 330,000 Indians enrolled at American universities, more than any other foreign nationality, overtaking Chinese students in numbers for the first time in years.But this year the situation looks drastically different. As Donald Trump’s administration has taken aim at international students – first implementing draconian screening measures over political views and then last week ordering all US embassies globally to indefinitely pause all student visa interviews – many Indian students and their families have been left in limbo.Trump’s unilateral decision to block Harvard University from admitting international students, which was later blocked by the courts, also caused widespread panic and stoked fears that foreign students at other universities could get caught in the president’s crosshairs.“The students are in shock. Most of them spend several years preparing to study in the US,” said Devatwal. He said many of his clients were now hesitant to pursue a US degree, given the high levels of turmoil and uncertainty following the Trump administration’s new policies. Indian students can expect to pay between $40,000 to $80,000 (£29,500 to £59,000) a year on tuition alone to study in the US.In previous years, Devatwal’s organisation sent more than 100 students to American universities but this year he said the number had dropped to about 10. Instead, families were shifting their focus to the UK and other European countries. A recent analysis by the Hindu newspaper estimated a 28% drop in Indian students going to the US in 2025.View image in fullscreen“Families contribute their savings, take out loans from banks and borrow from relatives, all in the hope that the student will secure a good job abroad, repay the debt, and build a promising future,” said Devatwal. “In such uncertain circumstances, parents are understandably reluctant to let their children take such a risky path.”Brijesh Patel, 50, a textile trader in Surat, Gujarat, said he had been saving money for over a decade to make sure his son could go to a US university, including selling his wife’s jewellery and borrowing money from relatives.“Everyone in the family wanted our son to go to the US for his studies and make something good of his life,” said Patel. His 21-year-old son, who he asked not to be named for fear of retribution by the US authorities, had secured a place at two American universities for his master’s degree and Patel had already paid 700,000 rupees (£6,000) to consultancies who helped with the applications.But amid the turmoil under Trump, Patel said his son was being advised not to even apply for his student visa, due to the uncertainty and high probability of rejection. “We simply can’t take that risk. If our son goes now and something goes wrong, we won’t be able to save that kind of money again,” he said.However, Patel said he was not willing to give up on the family dream just yet. “I am an optimist, and my son is willing to wait a year,” he said. “We’re hoping that things improve by then. It’s not just my son who will be living the American dream, it’s all of us: my wife, our relatives and our neighbours. I’ve struggled my whole life – I don’t want my son to face the same struggles here in India.”The fear among prospective and current students was palpable. Several Indian students studying in the US declined to speak to the Guardian, fearing it could jeopardise their visas.In India, a student selected in December to be one of this year’s Fulbright-Nehru doctoral fellows – a highly competitive scholarship that pays for the brightest students to study abroad at US universities as part of their PhD thesis – said the applications of their entire cohort had recently been demoted back to “semi-finalists”.The student, who asked to remain anonymous over fears it would affect their application, said they had invitation letters from top Ivy League universities for the fellowship, which is considered one of the most prestigious scholarships in the US, but now everything was up in the air. “We are supposed to start in October and our orientation was scheduled for May, all the flights and hotels were even booked, but then it all got cancelled. Now we’ve been informed all our applications are under review by the Trump administration,” said the student.They said it had caused “huge panic and anxiety” among those accepted. “I know a lot of people are going back through their social media, deleting things and doing a lot of self-censoring.”Piyush Bhartiya, a co-founder of the educational technology company AdmitKard, said many parents who had been set on sending their children to the US were rethinking their plans. He cited one example of a student who had been admitted to New York University for the coming year but was instead planning to go to the London School of Economics after the US visa interviews were paused.Bhartiya said Indian students primarily went to the US to study Stem subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths – and so the focus had shifted to other countries strong in these areas.“Germany is the main country where students are shifting to for Stem subjects,” he said. “Other countries like Ireland, France, the Netherlands, which are also gaining substantial interest in the students. At the undergraduate level, the Middle East has also seen a lot of gain in interest given parents feel that it is close by and safer and given the current political environment they may want their kids closer to the home.”Among the Indian students forced to abandon their plans is Nihar Gokhale, 36. He had a fully funded offer for a PhD at a private university in Massachusetts, but recently received a letter saying the funding was being withdrawn, as the university faced issues under the Trump administration.“It was quite shocking. I spoke to people at the university, and they admitted it was an exceptional situation for them too,” said Gokhale.Without the funding, the US was financially “out of the question” and he said he had an offer from the UK he now intended to take up.“For at least the next three or four years, I’m not considering the US at all,” he said. More

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      in Elections

      Reluctant at First, Trump Officials Intervened in South Asia as Nuclear Fears Grew

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      After Vice President JD Vance suggested that the conflict between India and Pakistan was not America’s problem, the Trump administration grew concerned that it could spiral out of control.As a conflict between India and Pakistan escalated, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on Thursday that it was “fundamentally none of our business.” The United States could counsel both sides to back away, he suggested, but this was not America’s fight.Yet within 24 hours, Mr. Vance and Marco Rubio, in his first week in the dual role of national security adviser and secretary of state, found themselves plunged into the details. The reason was the same one that prompted Bill Clinton in 1999 to deal with another major conflict between the two longtime enemies: fear that it might quickly go nuclear.What drove Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio into action was evidence that the Pakistani and Indian Air Forces had begun to engage in serious dogfights, and that Pakistan had sent 300 to 400 drones into Indian territory to probe its air defenses. But the most significant causes for concern came late Friday, when explosions hit the Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the garrison city adjacent to Islamabad.The base is a key installation, one of the central transport hubs for Pakistan’s military and the home to the air refueling capability that would keep Pakistani fighters aloft. But it is also just a short distance from the headquarters of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which oversees and protects the country’s nuclear arsenal, now believed to include about 170 or more warheads. The warheads themselves are presumed to be spread around the country.The intense fighting broke out between India and Pakistan after 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, were killed in a terrorist attack on April 22 in Kashmir, a border region claimed by both nations. On Saturday morning, President Trump announced that the two countries had agreed to a cease-fire.One former American official long familiar with Pakistan’s nuclear program noted on Saturday that Pakistan’s deepest fear is of its nuclear command authority being decapitated. The missile strike on Nur Khan could have been interpreted, the former official said, as a warning that India could do just that.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Nuclear-Armed India and Pakistan Have No Bridges Left to Burn

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      When India and Pakistan clash, the world too often dismisses it wearily as just another flare-up of age-old animosities over religion and Kashmir punctuated by inconclusive cross-border skirmishes. As President Trump recently put it — inaccurately — “They’ve had that fight for a thousand years in Kashmir,” and “probably longer than that.”This is somewhat understandable. Despite a few wars and many more scuffles between Muslim-majority Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, confrontations have always been followed by negotiation and diplomacy, often facilitated by the United States. Even when serious fighting did erupt, established guardrails kept the two sides from coming too close to the unthinkable: using their nuclear weapons.That predictable cycle is a thing of the past. The immediate trigger for the military conflict now underway between the countries was a terrorist attack on Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month that killed 26 people. The incident’s rapid escalation into armed hostilities spotlights a profound and dangerous shift in the India-Pakistan rivalry in recent years that has eliminated the diplomatic space that had allowed the neighbors to avoid a devastating conflict.That shift can be traced to the two countries’ vastly different trajectories.India has emerged as a geopolitical and economic powerhouse and its Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has cast it as not only a great nation, but an ascendant great civilization whose moment on the global stage has arrived. This has crystallized an uncompromising mind-set in which New Delhi increasingly views Pakistan not as a disruptive nuisance but an acute threat to India’s rightful rise. India has lost patience with Pakistan’s claim on the Indian-held half of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region that each side calls its own, and its support of anti-India terrorism.Pakistan, on the other hand, has been mired for two decades in economic, political and security crises. One institution there reigns supreme: a powerful army that dominates decision-making and has very significant conventional and nuclear military capability. Although beleaguered, Pakistan, with its own ambitions to remain a regional power, is unwilling to back down against India and on issues such as Kashmir that are central to its national identity.In decades past, it was usually Indian restraint in the face of Pakistani actions that maintained an uneasy equilibrium. Even after deadly incidents such as the 2008 attack in Mumbai by Pakistan-based terrorists, which killed 166 people, India typically responded with moderation and periodic peace overtures.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      The Indian Aircraft Pakistan Says It Shot Down

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      Tensions between India and Pakistan have risen sharply in the weeks since a terrorist attack in Kashmir. On Wednesday, India hit Pakistan and appears to have lost aircraft in the strike.Indian aircraft went down after the country launched attacks against Pakistan this week, in what it said was retaliation for a terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 26 people and caused tensions between the two nations to boil over.The exact number and variety of lost aircraft is not yet clear.Two or three Indian aircraft went down inside India’s border, according to Indian officials, Western diplomats and local media reports. Pakistan, for its part, claims it shot down five planes and at least one drone: three Rafale fighter jets, one MIG-29 fighter aircraft, one Su-30 fighter jet and one Heron drone.The New York Times was unable to independently verify these claims.John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit research group based in Alexandria, Va., said those five aircraft and the drone could have been downed by surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles. “Pakistan has both,” he said.Here is what to know about the aircraft Pakistan’s military says it shot down.RafaleThe Rafale is a twin-engine fighter jet that can take off from an aircraft carrier or a base onshore, according to its French manufacturer, Dassault Aviation.In April, the Indian government signed a deal with France to purchase an additional 26 of the aircraft for the Indian Navy, to be delivered by 2030. According to Dassault Aviation, India had previously ordered 36 Rafales.Photos from the village of Wuyan in India-administered Kashmir, showed debris identified as an external fuel tank for a plane. Trevor Ball, an associate researcher at Armament Research Services, said that the tank was likely from a French-made Mirage or Rafale fighter jet, but he could not confirm whether the fuel tank came from an aircraft that had been hit by enemy fire.MIG-29The Soviet-designed MIG-29 is a twin-engine fighter aircraft developed to counter U.S. fighters like the F-16. The Soviet Air Force began using MIG-29s in the 1980s, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet republics continued to use the plane. It has also been a popular export; over 30 nations have used or operated it, according to the U.S. Army Training Command.The plane was originally intended for dogfighting enemy aircraft, though some MIG-29s have been outfitted for attacking ground targets.The MIG-29 is often a competitor with the F-16 in international arms sales Mr. Pike said, adding that it was a “competition which it frequently loses.”Su-30The Su-30 is a twin-engine fighter jet developed in the Soviet Union in the 1990s by Russia’s Sukhoi Aviation. It can be used for air-to-air combat, or missions striking targets on the ground, according to a U.S. Army analysis.It’s significantly bigger than the MIG-29, at nearly 72-feet long and with a wingspan of over 48 feet. (The MIG-29 is nearly 57-feet long and has a wingspan of around 37 feet.)Heron DroneHeron drones encompass a family of Israeli-made unmanned aerial vehicles. U.S. government assessments list India as having at least one variant.Shawn Paik More

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      in Elections

      The Symbolism Behind India’s ‘Operation Sindoor’

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      The name for the military attack on Pakistan brings to mind a woman who became shorthand for the grief wrought by a terrorist attack.Himanshi Narwal was first a symbol of tragedy, then a target of hate.Last month, Ms. Narwal was captured in an image sitting beside her slain husband, who was among 26 people killed in a terrorist attack on the Indian side of Kashmir. As India struck Pakistan on Wednesday in retaliation, Ms. Narwal became shorthand for why India picked the name “Operation Sindoor” for its military action.Sindoor, or vermilion powder, is a traditional marker of the marital status of Hindu women. Married women wear it either in the parting of their hair or on their foreheads, and they wipe it off if they become widowed. During the April 22 terrorist attack, many women lost their husbands, who were targeted because they were Hindu. But few received the media attention that Ms. Narwal has after the image of her by her husband’s side went viral.The Indian government’s choice of the name Operation Sindoor signaled its intention to avenge the widowed women. On social media, the Indian Army announced the strikes with a stark image that included a jar of spilled sindoor, which resembled spattered blood.“Operation Sindoor” also signals to right-wing Hindu groups — many of which favor more traditionally defined gender roles — that the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is listening to their demands for vengeance.Carrying the body of Vinay Narwal, a naval officer who was killed in the attack last month.Bhawika Chhabra/ReutersBut some feminists have criticized the use of the word sindoor.Hindu nationalism is predominantly driven by a male view of the world, said V. Geetha, a feminist historian who writes about gender, caste and class. “Women figure in it as objects to be protected or as mother figures goading their men to prove their heroism,” Ms. Geetha said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      India and UK Strike Trade Deal Amid Trump’s Tariff Upheaval

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      The two countries signed a deal three years after negotiations began to strengthen alliances in what the British prime minister called a “new era” of trade.Britain and India agreed to a trade deal on Tuesday, strengthening economic ties between two of the world’s largest economies amid President Trump’s upheaval of the global trade system.The deal, which the British government said would increase bilateral trade by £25.5 billion ($34 billion), comes three years after the negotiations began. Intense talks between Jonathan Reynolds, Britain’s business and trade secretary, and Piyush Goyal, India’s commerce minister, took place last week to finalize the outstanding issues.The British government said India had reduced 90 percent of tariffs on goods, and within a decade most of those would become tariff free. Duties on British whiskey and gin would be halved, to 75 percent, and eventually be lowered to 40 percent. India will also reduce its car tariffs, which exceed 100 percent, to 10 percent under a quota. Britain, in turn, reduced tariffs on clothes, footwear and food products including frozen prawns.Last year, trade in goods and services between India and Britain, the world’s fifth and sixth largest economies, totaled £42.6 billion, according to British data.The trade agreement comes as many countries are seeking to bolster alliances and trade flows after Mr. Trump sent shock waves through the global economy by announcing, and then pausing, high tariffs on dozens of countries. The uncertainty created by the policy whiplash is expected to dampen investment and economic growth around the world.Officials in Britain, which squeezed out 0.1 percent economic growth in the final quarter of last year, have tried to increase investment from foreign companies and sign more trade deals. Other negotiations, including those with South Korea, are continuing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s Tariff Threat for Drug imports Poses Big Political Risks

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      Levies on Americans’ daily prescriptions and other medicines could raise costs, spur rationing and lead to shortages of critical drugs.President Trump’s decision to move a step closer to imposing tariffs on imported medicines poses considerable political risk, because Americans could face higher prices and more shortages of critical drugs.The Trump administration filed a federal notice on Monday saying that it had begun an investigation into whether imports of medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients threaten America’s national security, an effort to lay the groundwork for possible tariffs on foreign-made drugs.Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he planned to impose such levies, to shift overseas production of medicines back to the United States. Experts said that tariffs were unlikely to achieve that goal: Moving manufacturing would be hugely expensive and would take years.It was not clear how long the investigation would last or when the planned tariffs might go into effect. Mr. Trump started the inquiry under a legal authority known as Section 232 that he has used for other industries like cars and lumber.Mr. Trump said in remarks to reporters on Monday that pharmaceutical tariffs would come in the “not too distant future.”“We don’t make our own drugs anymore,” Mr. Trump said. “The drug companies are in Ireland, and they’re in lots of other places, China.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More