Morning Digest: Punjab ‘helpless’ as farmer leader’s condition worsens; Russian President Putin apologises to Azerbaijani leader for ‘tragic incident’, and more

The Hindu Morning Digest gives a select list of stories to start the day. Read the top news today on December 29, 2024

The Punjab government on Saturday told the Supreme Court that a “forcible evacuation” of farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal, who is on a fast-unto-death, to a hospital will lead to “collateral damage” to both the State Police and agitating farmers. Mr. Dallewal has been on a hunger strike at the Khanauri border since November 26 to press the Centre to accept the agitating farmers’ demands, including a legal guarantee of minimum support price (MSP) for crops.

Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to his Azerbaijani counterpart for what he called a “tragic incident” following the crash of an Azerbaijani airliner in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people. The plane was flying on Wednesday (December 25, 2024) from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, when it turned toward Kazakhstan and crashed while making an attempt to land. There were 29 survivors.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh was cremated with full state honours on Saturday (December 28, 2024) in the presence of top dignitaries from India and abroad. Mr. Singh’s funeral pyre was lit by his eldest daughter Upinder Singh at the Nigambodh Ghat amid the chanting of religious hymns.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has met Congressman Michael Waltz, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for National Security Adviser, during which they had a wide-ranging conversation on the bilateral partnership between India and the U.S. as well as current global issues. Mr. Jaishankar is on an official visit to the U.S. from December 24 to 29. This was the first highest-level in-person meeting between the Indian government and the incoming Trump administration.

Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said the present government “insulted a great son of Mother India” by not allocating a separate place for the funeral of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. On Friday (December 27, 2024), Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging the Centre to identify a designated place where the last rites of the departed leader could be held and a memorial built thereafter. As a political row broke out over the issue, the Centre said a decision to set up a memorial has already been taken and a trust would be formed to identify the place soon.

Google Maps’s turn-by-turn navigation is massively popular around the world. In India alone, the tech giant said last December, 2.5 billion kilometres of navigation were requested by users per day. Google amasses map data from Indian cities and highways through a combination of commercial third-party sellers and user contributions. Roads, pedestrian walkways, expressways, buildings — these are all labelled by lane count, direction, permissible vehicle classes, and speed limits. Thanks to its massive user base and real-time data from these phones, Google is able to also use real-time data to provide travel duration estimates, and suggest alternate routes to avoid congestion. But the real world does not always operate or change in ways that are immediately flagged by Google’s systems.

Instances of GPS interference on passenger aircraft, including ‘spoofing’ with false signals, are on the rise over conflict zones globally, including on India’s borders with Pakistan, which are among the top sites for such occurrences, according to OPSGROUP, a voluntary group of 8,000 aviation personnel, including pilots, who share information on risks to flights. The GPSjam portal also lists India’s borders with Pakistan and Myanmar as among the top five regions where more than 10% of aircraft reported low navigation accuracy.