New Delhi:

As he embarks on a two-day trip to Mauritius, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said the visit will open a “new and bright” chapter in the ties between the two nations.

PM Modi is visiting Mauritius on March 11 and 12 at the invitation of Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam primarily to grace the island nation’s national day celebrations.

In his departure statement, the prime minister said he was looking forward to engaging with the leadership of Mauritius to elevate “our partnership in all its facets and strengthen our enduring friendship for the progress and prosperity of our peoples”.

A contingent of Indian armed forces will participate in the celebrations along with a warship of the Indian Navy and the Akash Ganga skydiving team of the Indian Air Force.

“Mauritius is a close maritime neighbour, a key partner in the Indian Ocean, and a gateway to the African Continent. We are connected by history, geography and culture,” PM Modi said.

“Deep mutual trust, a shared belief in the values of democracy, and celebration of our diversity are our strengths,” he said.

The prime minister said the close and historical people-to-people connection between the two sides is a source of shared pride.

“I am confident that this visit will build on the foundations of the past and open a new and bright chapter in the India and Mauritius relationship,” he said.

The prime minister noted that “significant strides” have been made in the past 10 years between the two sides with people centric initiatives.

“I look forward to the opportunity to engage with the Mauritius leadership to elevate our partnership in all its facets and strengthen our enduring friendship for the progress and prosperity of our peoples, as well as for security and development in the Indian Ocean Region, as part of our vision SAGAR,” he added.

SAGAR stands for Security And Growth for All in the Region.

The national day celebrations of Mauritius will be on March 12.

India and Mauritius have uniquely close cooperation in maritime security, development, capacity-building, besides close people-to-people ties. The close bonds are especially evident in the numerous India-assisted development projects that dot the Mauritian landscape.

India is amongst the largest trading partners of Mauritius.

Mauritius was the second largest source of FDI into India for 2023-24, after Singapore.

Mauritius and India signed a comprehensive economic cooperation and partnership agreement (CECPA) in February 2021 after nearly 15 years of negotiations. It was the first trade agreement signed by India with an African country.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Elon Musk said X (formerly Twitter) was hit by a massive cyberattack on Monday, suggesting that a large, coordinated group or even a nation-state could be behind it. The attack led to three outages throughout the day, each lasting nearly an hour.

“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing…,” Elon Musk posted on X.

There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against 𝕏.

We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.

Tracing … https://t.co/aZSO1a92no

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2025

According to Downdetector, the platform faced three outages throughout the day, with interruptions peaking around 3:00 pm with nearly 2,200 reports from Indian users, surging again at 7:30 pm with 1,500 reports, and continuing later around 9:00 pm as users faced further access issues.

Elon Musk acquired X in 2022 for $44 billion. In 2023, he became the first person to reach 200 million followers on X.

The tracking website showed that nearly 52 percent of problems were related to the website, 41 percent to the app and 8 percent had to do with server connection problems.

Latakia:

Syria’s new authorities announced on Monday the end of an operation against loyalists of deposed president Bashar al-Assad, after a war monitor reported more than 1,000 civilians killed in the worst violence since his overthrow.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the overwhelming majority of the 1,068 civilians killed since Thursday were members of the Alawite minority who were executed by the security forces or allied groups.

The violence in the coastal heartland of the Alawite community, to which the ousted president belongs, has threatened to throw into chaos the country’s fragile transition after decades of the Assad clan’s iron-fisted rule.

The authorities on Monday ended their sweeping “military operation” against security threats and “regime remnants” in Latakia and Tartus provinces on the Mediterranean coast, defence ministry spokesman Hassan Abdul Ghani said in a statement.

The announcement came after interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose Islamist group led the offensive that toppled Assad on December 8, said the country would not be pulled back into civil strife.

“Syria… will not allow any foreign powers or domestic parties to drag it into chaos or civil war,” Sharaa said in a speech.

He also vowed to “hold accountable, firmly and without leniency, anyone who was involved in the bloodshed of civilians… or who overstepped the powers of the state”.

Clashes broke out in the area on Thursday after gunmen loyal to the deposed president attacked Syria’s new security forces.

The fighting has killed 231 security personnel and 250 pro-Assad fighters, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria. The authorities did not provide any casualty figures.

In Jableh in Latakia province, a resident who requested anonymity over safety concerns spoke to AFP in tears about being terrorised by armed groups who had taken control of the town.

“More than 50 people from among my family and friends have been killed. They gathered bodies with bulldozers and buried them in mass graves.”

‘Extreme fear’ 

In some areas, residents had begun tentatively venturing out but many were still afraid to leave home after dark and complained of a lack of basic supplies.

“Today the situation in Latakia is a little calmer, people are out and about after five days of anxiety and extreme fear,” said Farah, a 22-year-old university student who gave only her first name.

But with the situation still “very tense”, she said that “after six o’clock, you do not see anyone in the street… the neighbourhood turns into a ghost town”.

An AFP journalist said the road between Latakia and Jableh further south was largely empty, with only military vehicles and ambulances passing through.

Vehicles damaged in clashes also littered the sides of the road.

In addition to the mass killings of Alawites, there have been reports of Christians being caught up in the attacks.

During a sermon in Damascus on Sunday, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch John X said that “many innocent Christians were also killed” alongside Alawites.

Obituaries were shared on social media for several members of the small Christian community living on the coast, seven of whom AFP was able to confirm were killed.

“We are all victims, from all sects… I believe that Christians in the area, in general, have fears just like other groups and religions,” said Michel Khoury, 42, a Christian lawyer in Latakia.

“We are all on a sinking ship, and no one will protect us except ourselves.”

The Syrian presidency has announced the formation of an “independent committee” to “investigate the violations against civilians and identify those responsible”.

Amnesty International said Monday that the authorities should also “grant independent national and international investigators access to Syria, including to Syria’s coastal areas, so that they can conduct their own fact-finding work”.

‘Not in control’

Sharaa — whose Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has its roots in the Syrian branch of jihadist network Al-Qaeda — has vowed to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities since toppling Assad.

HTS is still listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and other governments.

Analysts have said the latest violence calls into question the new authorities’ ability to rule and rebuild a country devastated by 13 years of civil war.

“The militia chaos that we saw in the Alawite coastal cities tells us… that the new Syrian army is not in control,” said Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria at the University of Oklahoma.

The violence “will hinder Ahmed al-Sharaa’s efforts to consolidate his rule and to convince the international community that he is in control”, Landis added.

Iran, a key backer of Assad, on Monday rejected accusations that Tehran may have been involved in the latest violence.

Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei described the claims in media reports, including from the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV channel, as “completely ridiculous”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged Monday to continue providing “every kind of support for our neighbour Syria to recover… and to achieve peace with all its ethnic and sectarian minorities”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Indian-origin NASA astronaut Sunita Williams (Suni), who has been dubbed as the “stranded astronaut” over his stay in space since June last year, has done some “amazing experiments” and indulged in over 900 hours of research.

Having spent over 600 days in space so far, for three different missions, the 59-year-old also did spacewalks for 62 hours and nine minutes, leading the women astronaut corps in spending maximum time on the activity. 

Ms Williams and her fellow astronaut Barry (Butch) Wilmore have been at the International Space Station (ISS) for several months. The duo had launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5 last year for its first crewed flight, and reached the space station on June 6 – for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission that eventually got extended. 

They, however, faced delays, space debris threats, helium leaks and technical glitches on the Starliner spacecraft on which they travelled.

Ms Williams is likely to be back on Earth in the next few weeks.

So what is it that Ms Williams is doing while orbiting the Earth, nearly 400 kilometres above?

On the way up to the ISS, the astronaut piloted the Boeing Starliner she helped develop, and which cost NASA 4.2 billion dollars. She, along with Mr Wilmore, saw the Starliner depart from the ISS and land safely on Earth on September 7. She also became the first woman astronaut to test a space capsule. 

At the ISS, Ms Williams helped with a lot of maintenance and cleaning of the football field-sized space station. She and her colleague helped replace many old instruments on the ISS and send back a lot of trash to Earth.

According to NASA, Ms Williams, Mr Wilmore and another astronaut, Nick Hague, “completed more than 900 hours of research between over 150 unique scientific experiments and technology demonstrations during their stay aboard the orbiting laboratory”. 

As Ms William’s stay got extended from weeks to months, the veteran of the three-space flight was then promoted to the role of ISS Commander, a rare distinction that placed the safety and security of the ISS on her shoulders. The ISS is possibly the single-most expensive engineering experiment ever to be undertaken by humans. It has continuously been inhabited by humans for the last 25 years.

Ms Williams had to accommodate extensive weight training in space, in her schedule, to keep her body fit and in shape as she floated around in near zero gravity in space. At  one point, there were swirling “rumours” about her health till she issued a clarification, saying she weighs the same as she did when she arrived at the ISS. Her “wild hair” also garnered worldwide attention, with US President Donald Trump saying: “I see the woman with the wild hair, good, solid head of hair she’s got. There’s no kidding, there’s no games with her hair.”

The astronaut has also taken a long spacewalk, also called an extra vehicular activity (EVA), and has completed 62 hours and nine minutes on the activity. 

On her last space walk on January 30, Ms Williams spent five hours and 26 minutes on EVA in an effort to upgrade the ISS. A fortnight before that, on January 16, she did a six-hour spacewalk.

She has also done some tests and experiments on her own physiology to have a better understanding of how the body reacts to the space environment. On an earlier visit, she ran a marathon in space.

As part of her outreach activities, Ms Williams sent Diwali, Christmas and New Year greetings to humans on Earth and even held a session with students of a school named after her. She even wished the participants of the 2024 Paris Olympics good luck from space.

Among other activities, the astronaut helped with some gardening in space by watering lettuce plants and studying them, in an effort which, according to NASA, could “show how less-than-ideal conditions affect plant growth and help scientists design systems to produce safe and nutritious food for crew members on future space journeys”.

Ms Williams also carried out experiments on how to recover water at the ISS through what NASA described as the packed bed reactors, referring to systems that “pack” materials such as pellets or beads inside a structure to increase contact between any liquids and gasses flowing through it. 

She installed hardware for the Packed Bed Reactor Experiment: Water Recovery Series (PBRE-WRS) investigation, to examine how gravity affects these systems aboard the ISS. The results could help scientists design better reactors for water recovery, thermal management, fuel cells and other applications.

While Mr Wilmore swabbed the exterior of the ISS, searching for life on the inside of the space station, his colleague experimented with other microbes. According to NASA, Ms Williams posed with bacteria and yeast samples for Rhodium Biomanufacturing 03, part of an ongoing examination of microgravity’s effects on bio-manufacturing engineered bacteria and yeast aboard the ISS. 

NASA says microgravity causes changes in microbial cell growth, cell structure and metabolic activity that can affect bio-manufacturing processes. This investigation could explain the extent of these effects and advance the use of microbes to make food, pharmaceuticals and other products in space, reducing the cost of launching equipment and consumables from Earth.

Ms Williams also carried out the BioNutrients investigation that demonstrated technology to produce nutrients during long-duration space missions using engineered microbes like yeast. Food stored for long periods can lose vitamins and other nutrients, and this technology could provide a way to make supplements on demand. She prepared specially designed growth packets for the investigation aboard the ISS.

Once she returns to Earth, Ms Williams will make another record having flown four different space capsules – Space Shuttle, Soyuz, Boeing Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon.

Incidentally, during her long stay at the ISS, a seismic shift happened in the politics and governance in the US, and she became an unwarranted accomplice in the war between the Democrats and the Republicans. She did not wade into the war of words, steering clear and focusing on her singular job as an astronaut.

Medan:

An Indonesian court sentenced a transgender woman to more than two years in prison Monday for a remark online about Jesus’ hair, a local official said, in a case condemned by rights groups as excessive.

Ratu Thalisa was found guilty by a court in Medan city on the western island of Sumatra of spreading hatred under a widely-criticised online hate-speech law in a TikTok livestream, Dapot Dariarma of the local prosecutor’s office told AFP.

The judge handed the woman — a Muslim according to court documents — a sentence of two years and 10 months, he said.

In the livestream in October, Ratu Thalisa was reportedly shown talking to a picture of Jesus on her smartphone and telling him to cut his long hair.

Ratu Thalisa, who sold beauty products online, was reportedly responding to a comment that told her to cut her hair to avoid appearing like a woman.

Rights groups, who have slammed the electronic information law as too vague and open to misuse against religious minorities, called for the sentence to be quashed.

“This prison sentence is a shocking attack on Ratu Thalisa’s freedom of expression,” said Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia, in a statement.

“While Indonesia should prohibit the advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, Ratu Thalisa’s speech act does not reach that threshold.”

Prosecutors immediately appealed Monday’s verdict, which was more lenient than their demand for a sentence of more than four years. Ratu has seven days to decide whether to appeal.

The Southeast Asian nation of some 280 million has significant numbers of religious minorities — including Christians, Hindus and Buddhists — who have been targeted by radical Islamist groups amid concerns about rising intolerance.

But the law has also been increasingly used by religious minorities to report perceived violations.

In 2022, former sports and youth minister Roy Suryo was sentenced to nine months in prison after a court found him guilty of hate speech for retweeting pictures of then-President Joko Widodo’s face superimposed on a Buddhist statue.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)