Catastrophe! London-bound Air India Flight Crashes

Yashee Sharma & Jorge Bianco 

An Air India plane headed for London has crashed with more than 240 people on board, including 61 foreign nationals, in the north-west Indian city of Ahmedabad, in Gujarat state.

The city police commissioner said it “appears there are no survivors” after the plane crashed into a medical college hostel and burst into flames near the airport but later told local media one man survived.
“Some locals would have also died,” Commissioner GS Malik told The Associated Press, adding that exact figures were still be ascertained.
Firefighters work at the site of an plane crash in India’s north-western city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, on Thursday, June12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

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Introducing Wade Frazier …

A NOTE From Wade Frazier, June 2025

Hi Michael: Well, my LinkedIn bio gives my professional background, if that is what you mean by a CV………………………………………………….. https://www.linkedin.com/in/wade-frazier-6b539a10b/

Born in 1958 in Seattle.  My most important activities (at least to me!:) was my involvement in the energy industry in the 1980s.  We had the world’s best heating system (it still is).  We also pursued free energy before we were wiped out, and my partner went to prison.  The CIA offered my partner $1 billion to fold our operation before we had the boom lowered on us.  My story regarding those events is generally unbelievable.  One of my many accounts is here: https://ahealedplanet.net/advent.htm#hitting

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Democracy At Peril? A Forum …. to Dine On

Factum EPIGS Summit, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 11–12 June 2025**

Join us at EPIGS’25 for this panel discussion featuring journalists, civic tech leaders, and election experts from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Pakistan, and the Maldives as they unpack evolving electoral narratives and explore challenges to platform integrity across Asia. Hear regional insights, real-world experiences, and ideas for safeguarding democracy in the digital age.

 

THE PANELISTS
o Rohana Hettiarachchi (Sri Lanka) – Executive Director of People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL)
o Che De Los Reyes (The Philippines) – Journalist and Media Development Specialist
o Aishath Adnan (The Maldives) – Co-Founder of Women in Tech Maldives
o Harindra Dassanayake (Sri Lanka) Co-Founder of Muragala
o Dulanjaya Mahagamage (Sri Lanka) – Manager – Social Media and Research at Hashtag Generation
o Usama Khilji (Pakistan) – Co-Founder and Director of Bolo Bhi and the Vice Chair of the Global Network Initiative
ModeratorRajni Gamage (Sri Lanka) – Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore (NUS).

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Safeguarding the Ocean’s Resources …. a NICE Gathering

Saroj Pathirana in FACEBOOK, June 2025

A large group of top-level leaders, ministers, princes, and top-level leaders have gathered in France’s port Nice (Nice) to attend the United Nations Third World Ocean Conference.

As several leaders approached Nice city by ship, a massive ship from the Greenpeace Environmental Organization named Arctic Sunrise  was also approaching the city to protest against cannings happening at the bottom.

Samoa State, which made the first announcement to start the conference, announced 9 new sea regions fully insured, protecting 30% of its own seaside. Accordingly, fishing of 36,000 square kilometers is strictly prohibited. And the Samoa Island State’s warning is to fully start its ocean zone into a sustainable management system by 2030.

We will bring further details about this week-long conference, courtesy of Ocean Reporting Network at Pulitzer Centre.

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Sri Lankan Cricket’s Baptism of Fire on The World Stage, 1975

Rex Clementine

Exactly 50 years ago to this day, Sri Lanka played their first ever international cricket match. It was the 1975 World Cup and it indeed was a baptism by fire; bowled out for 86 by West Indies.

Anura Tennekoon and Clive Lloyd at the toss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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England beat Windies in First T20 in UK

Alan Gardner in ESPNcricinfo, June 2025

England 188 for 6 (Buttler 96) beat West Indies 167 for 9 (Lewis 39, Dawson 4-20) by 21 runs

Jos Buttler began life back in the ranks of England‘s T20I side by making his highest score on home soil, his supremely calculated innings of 96 from 59 providing a reassuring touch of quality to a new-look batting order. Liam Dawson then marked his return to England duty after more than two years out of the side with his best return in any format, figures of 4 for 20 putting the skids under West Indies in the chase.

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An American Outsider’s Appraisal of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict unto Death

 

Prefatory Note by Michael Roberts in Adelaide, 7 June 2025 

Brian Victoria was a colleague teaching Japanese in the Asian Studies Department when I moved to Adelaide Univerisity Anthropology in 1977; and we got to know each other at seminars and in faculty corridors. He moved abroad subsequently. While his expertise probably lies in political issues in the Pacific theatre, one of my brainwaves  — rare nowadays — led me to seek his appraisal of the deadly, devastating and unholy conflicts occurring in recent years in Gaza, Palestine, Israel,and their surrounds (an issue piercing TPS because of a sharp division of opinion between two of my friends, David Schokman and Arlen van Der Wall).

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LATE NIGHT LIVE’s Searching Stories

A Note from Errol Fernando, early June 2025 **

Dear Michael,  I listened to a very interesting interview on Late Night Live recently which dealt with the whole story of Merle Oberon and her genealogy. Please google Late Night Live and listen to this interview which tells you about her Sri Lankan mother, her efforts to hide her ethnicity, pretending that she was born in Tasmania, etc, etc.

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Merle Oberon: The Full Montage ….

The Wikipedia Disclosures …. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Oberon

Merle Oberon with Laurence Olivier in  in Wuthering Heights (1939)

 

Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson; 19 February 1911 – 23 November 1979) was a British actress. She began her acting career in British cinema in the early 1930s, with a breakout role in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). She later moved to Hollywood, where she became an international star, earning acclaim for films such as The Dark Angel (1935), Wuthering Heights (1939), and That Uncertain Feeling (1941). Her career spanned from the 1920s to the 1970s, primarily in English-language films produced in the UK and the U.S. Her performance as Kitty Vane in The Dark Angel earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

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Merle Oberon’s Burgher Genealogical Lineage …

An Item passed on by Jayantha Somasundaram of Canberra, June 2025 … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

 Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson; 19 February 1911 – 23 November 1979) was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O’Brien Thompson, a Welsh mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways, and his wife, Charlotte Selby (whose full name was Constance Charlotte Thompson, according to her 1937 obituary), who was born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and was a Burgher from British Ceylon.

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