What can save elephants from train accidents? Artificial Intelligence (AI), says the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR). Incidents of wild elephant deaths due to train hits are common in Assam but the NFR has found a technological solution by utilising AI-based software.

Since August 2022, when the NFR started monitoring the movement of the animal with the help of the Intrusion Detection System (IDS) in 11 elephant corridors, which cover a distance of 70 km, in the Lumding and Alipurduar divisions, there has not been a single such incident.

Buoyed by the success of the IDS, the NFR has now decided to make this technological intervention in the remaining 75 elephant corridors falling under its jurisdiction. 

The biggest armed force service, Indian Army, has taken the decision to induct women into their combat stream. The preparations are in process.

The Indian Army has taken the decision to begin the induction of women into combat arms in the near future beginning with the Regiment of Artillery. As per the Ministry of Defence, the combat employment philosophy of women in the Armed Forces is a continuously evolving process and regularly reviewed by them.

The Regiment of Artillery is said to be the second largest arm of the Indian Army, after the infantry. Artillery with its missiles, guns, mortars, rocket launchers and unmanned aerial vehicles is also described as an ‘Arm of Decision’.

As of now the women officers have not been granted permanent commission into Infantry, Armoured, Artillery and Mechanised Infantry.

At present there are 1705 women officers in the Indian Army into ten Arms and Services viz. Corps of Engineers, Corps of Signals, Army Air Defence, Army Service Corps, Army Ordnance Corps, Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers, Army Aviation Corps, Intelligence Corps, Judge Advocate General Branch and Army Education Corps in addition to the Armed Forces Medical Services.

The Indian Air Force pioneered in inducting the women into combat roles beginning with three women officers commissioned as the Fighter pilots in June 2016. IAF has commissioned 15 women fighter pilots till date. The women officers are now being inducted in all combat roles into the force.

Indian Navy, from December 2022, The Indian Navy has decided to open every branch of the service, including the Submarine and Aviation, for its women officers and the Personnel Below Officers Rank (PBOR) from 2023 in pursuant to its gender-neutral approach.

The Indian Navy has already deputed 28 women officers onboard ships. Women officers are also deployed in combat roles onboard naval Aircraft/ship borne helicopters.

The total number of women serving into the Armed forces is around 10,493 as per the data shared by the Ministry of Defence in March 2022 and this includes those in the Medical, Dental and Nursing Corps.

The chronology of women induction into the Armed Forces

In 1958, the Army Medical Corps (AMC) granted regular commission to women.

In 1991 the Indian Navy commenced induction of women as officers.

In 1992, women were allowed to serve in the armed forces as Short Service Commission (SCC) officers in various supporting branches.

In February 2020 Supreme Court gave its verdict for Permanent Commission to women. Total of 577 women officers granted Permanent Commission till November 2021.

The first batch of Women Military Police at the Other Ranks joined Army in May 2021.

From July 2021 women officers began training in Army Aviation.

In August 2022 first batch of 19 women cadets reported for the tri-service National Defence Academy.

In November 2022, 341 women Agniveers of Indian Navy joined training at INS CHilka.

In June 2023 the first six women Army officers will attend Defence Services Staff College.

First time 108 women officers are to soon get the rank of Colonel.

100 women Agniveers will join the Army training from April this year.

Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, jailed half a year ago over protests related to a building collapse, has been released for two weeks because of health concerns.

Rasoulof, 50, was arrested on July 8 after being accused of encouraging demonstrations that erupted after the deadly collapse of a building in May in the southwestern city of Abadan.

After the tragedy, a group of Iranian filmmakers led by Rasoulof published an open letter decrying "corruption, theft, inefficiency and repression" and urging the security forces to "lay down their arms".

Rasoulof won the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival with his anti-death penalty film "There Is No Evil" but was unable to accept the award in person as he was barred from leaving Iran.

In a book full of startling revelations, Prince Harry’s assertion that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan is one of the most striking — and has drawn criticism from both enemies and allies.

In his memoir, “Spare,” Harry says he killed more than two dozen Taliban militants while serving as an Apache helicopter copilot gunner in Afghanistan in 2012-2013.

The Taliban, who adhere to a strict interpretation of Islam, returned to power when Western troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.

In Britain, some veterans and military leaders said publishing a head count violated an unspoken military code.

Tens of thousands of British troops served in Afghanistan, and more than 450 died, between the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 and the end of U.K. combat operations in 2014.

Myanmar's junta has carried out air strikes on an ethnic armed group's base near the border with India.

The military coup almost two years ago has sparked renewed fighting with long-established ethnic rebel groups, as well as with dozens of "People's Defence Force" groups that have sprung up to oppose the junta.

The bombing by five jets on  Jan 10 evening killed five fighters at the headquarters of the Chin National Front (CNF), which claims to represent the mainly Christian Chin minority in western Myanmar.

Local media also reported five fighters had been killed and that one bomb landed in Champhai district, in India's Mizoram state.

But Indian police said the bomb had actually landed directly in the dry riverbed that marks the international boundary.

The CNF's fighters have dwindled in recent years, and it signed a ceasefire with the military in 2015.

But in May last year it signed an agreement with a shadow government dominated by lawmakers from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) that is working to overturn the coup.

Coup leader Min Aung Hlaing has justified his power grab by claiming electoral fraud in November 2020 elections won by Suu Kyi's NLD.

International observers said at the time the polls were largely free and fair.

Did you know that the 'Naatu Naatu' song from 'RRR' which struck gold at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards, has a connection to Ukraine?

'Naatu Naatu' was shot in August 2021 in Ukraine's Kiev outside Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's official residence. The track was filmed a few months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Telugu track 'Naatu Naatu' is composed by veteran music director MM Keeravaani and sung by Kala Bhairava and Rahul Sipligunj. 

Cardinal George Pell, a onetime financial adviser to Pope Francis who spent 404 days in solitary confinement in his native Australia on child sex abuse charges before his convictions were overturned, died  on Jan 10 in Rome. He was 81.

Pell suffered fatal heart complications following hip surgery, said Archbishop Peter Comensoli, Pell’s successor as archbishop of Melbourne. Pell had been in Rome to attend the funeral last week of Pope Benedict XVI.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo on  Jan 11 expressed regret over mass human rights violations committed in the country's past, including a violent anti-communist purge in the 1960s and the disappearance of student protesters in the late 1990s.

More than half a million leftists were massacred across the Southeast Asian nation in the mid-1960s, a bloody spectacle that ushered in the long rule of dictator Suharto, whose fervent anti-communist stance remains decades on.

The killings led to the collapse of the now-banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), once among the biggest in the world behind those of China and the Soviet Union.

The president also mentioned the murder and abduction of dozens of student protesters and activists during mass street rallies in 1998 that brought down the three-decade dictatorship of Suharto.

The Indonesian leader went on to list 10 other violations that took place between the 1960s and the early 2000s before he rose to power, based on the findings of a commission he ordered to investigate the violations last year.

He acknowledged rights abuses in the restive easternmost province of Papua, including a 2003 army and police operation that left dozens of civilians dead and where officers were accused of murder, torture and abduction.

Papua has been the scene of a decades-old rebel insurgency aimed at gaining independence from Indonesia after it took control of the former Dutch colony in the 1960s.

Human rights groups said Widodo's expression of regret, like several other Indonesian leaders before him, did not go far enough