3 Things Express Audio

First, Nandagopal Rajan, COO, The Indian Express Online is joined by Anand Trivedi,  Director, CyberProof, a UST company, to talk about the menace of deepfakes that has surfaced in the process of the Lok Sabha elections. 

Next, Indian Express’ Asad Rehman talks to us about the influence that Bahujan Samaj Party and Mayawati have in Uttar Pradesh as the state approaches the sixth phase of Lok Sabha elections on 25th of May. (16:30)

And in the end, we talk about Singapore Airlines aircraft that encountered turbulence so severe that it resulted in the death of a passenger. (23:31)

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Produced and written by Niharika Nanda and Shashank Bhargava
Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.
It’s the 21st of May and here are today's headlines.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a rally in Bihar today asserted that the people of the country are his successors. He said, quote, “I don’t have any successor, the people of this country are my successors,” Unquote. Earlier in East Champaran, PM Modi alleged that the INDIA bloc stood for corruption, appeasement politics and a “perverted anti-Sanatan mindset”, all of which would receive a “big blow” when the Lok Sabha poll results are announced on 4th of June.

Election Commission today barred former Calcutta High Court judge Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, now the BJP’s Tamluk Lok Sabha candidate, for violating the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). The EC’s ban on campaigning will be in effect from 5 pm today and be in place for the  next 24 hours. The decision comes a day after Gangopadhyay sent his reply to a show-cause notice issued by the EC for his “undignified” remark against West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee.

An analysis of the 111 speeches delivered by Modi from March 17 to May 15 by The Indian Express – drawing from the text available on narendramodi.in – shows how the key themes and changes in emphasis powered the narrative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party and government as they bid for a third term. Attacking the Congress and its first family as the ancien régime, vikas and vishwaguru, and holding out the promise of Viksit Bharat by 2047: These themes have been a refrain in Modi’s speeches since the elections were notified. After the release of the Congress manifesto, the rhetoric swerved towards Hindu-Muslim issues and the idea of wealth redistribution and religion-based reservation at the expense of SC/STs and OBCs.

The Indian national flag is being flown at half-mast at all public building across the country today, as a mark of respect for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi who was killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday. India announced the one-day state mourning on Monday. No official entertainment will take place during state mourning, an official had told PTI. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first global leaders to take to social media X, to offer his condolences to the family of Ebrahim Raisi and affirm his support for Iran.

US President Joe Biden slammed the International Criminal Court prosecutor's application for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling the move "outrageous". Biden said, quote, "And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence - none - between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security." His top aide Secretary of State Antony Blinken also criticized the move, raising questions over the court's jurisdiction as well as its process in making this application.

This was the Catch-Up on the 3 Things by The Indian Express.

First, Indian Express’ Mallica Joshi discusses the allegations made by AAP's Rajya Sabha member Swati Maliwal against Bibhav Kumar, a close aide of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and how these allegations have affected the party’s campaign leading up to the polls.

Next, Indian Express’ Bijin Jose explains what Artificial General Intelligence is and why many in the global tech community are apprehensive about it (15:35).

And in the end, we provide a brief update on the deaths of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in a helicopter crash (25:58).

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Produced Shashank Bhargava and Niharika Nanda
Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar
Audio clips sourced by Mahiyar Rohinton Patel and Kumar Siddhartha

This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.
It’s the 20th of May and here are today's headlines.

Polling is underway for 49 Lok Sabha seats across six states and two Union Territories including Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla. As of this afternoon, the Election Commission received about 1036 complaints from various political parties in West Bengal related to malfunctioning EVMs, agents being stopped from entering polling booths, and voters being threatened or stopped from going to cast their votes in different constituencies.  Meanwhile, in addition to five Lok Sabha seats in Odisha, voters will also cast their ballot for the second phase of simultaneous state assembly elections in 35 seats today.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said that he was hurt seeing the poverty in Odisha despite the state having “so many mineral resources”, and alleged that the Chief Minister’s Office and residence had been captured by “a handful of corrupt people”. In an indirect dig at V K Pandian, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s close aide and BJD’s key election strategist who is from Tamil Nadu, Modi also claimed that people were saying the keys of the Puri Jagannath Temple’s Ratna Bhandar (treasure trove) had been sent to the souther state. THis is his third visit to Odisha in a fortnight.

Days after a Banaras Hindu University study reported long-term adverse events of “special interest” in a group of over 900 people a year after they were vaccinated with Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has called it a “poorly designed study” with critical flaws. The director-general of the apex medical research body has also written to the authors of the paper and the editor of the journal in which it was published, stating that it “incorrectly and misleadingly” acknowledges ICMR though the body did not offer any financial or technical support for the paper.

The Enforcement Directorate has moved an application seeking an extension of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal's judicial custody by 14 days in the money laundering case linked to the 'excise policy scam' after he surrenders on 2nd of June. Kejriwal is currently on interim bail till 1st of June after he was granted bail by the apex Court.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has been killed in a helicopter crash in the mountains to the northwest of the country, close to its borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The helicopter, which was also carrying Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and the Governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province Malek Rahmati, disappeared in dense fog on Sunday. According to Iran’s Constitution, the First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber will take over as interim president.

This was the Catch-Up on the 3 Things by The Indian Express.

First, Indian Express’ Nayonika Bose joins us to talk about the massive hoarding that collapsed in Mumbai killing 16 people and injuring many more. She talks about why it collapsed and everything that has happened since.

Next, Indian Express’ Shubhajit Roy talks to us about the recently signed 10 year contract between India and Iran regarding the strategically important Chabahar port. (12:07)

And in the end, we talk about what Pakistan's foreign minister Ishaq Dar said about India and Pakistan's ties. (19:52)

Hosted by Niharika Nanda
Produced and written by Niharika Nanda and Shashank Bhargava
Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.
It’s the 17th of May and here are the top stories of the week.

The voter turnout in the 96 constituencies across 9 states and a Union territory that went to polls in the fourth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Monday reached 67.71% as of 10 am on Tuesday. The Election Commission had said the provisional turnout at 11.45 pm on Monday was 67.25%, however, the final turnout would be announced today. Significantly, the turnout in Srinagar, which was the one seat in Jammu and Kashmir that went to polls on Monday, recorded a turnout of 37.98%, which was the highest since 1996.

Bhavesh Bhinde, owner of a hoarding in Ghatkopar that collapsed amid rains was arrested on Thursday by the crime branch from Rajasthan’s Udaipur. The director of Ego Media Private Limited, which had the contract for the hoarding on a 10-year lease, was absconding since the incident took place. The death toll from the giant hoarding collapse in Ghatkopar area of Mumbai touched 16, after the bodies of the two more victims were retrieved. The search and rescue operations at the site have been called off. The illegal 100-foot-tall hoarding collapsed Monday due to thunderstorms and gusty winds.

Invalidating his arrest in a terror case, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release of Newsclick founder-editor Prabir Purkayastha. The reason the court gave:  Delhi Police failed to inform Purkayastha the grounds of his arrest before taking him into custody. The ruling emphasised that proper procedure and due process are the guardrails against arbitrary action, even in stringent terror cases. The apex court on Thursday said it had not carved out an exception for Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal while granting him interim bail till June 1 to campaign for the Lok Sabha elections and added that “critical analysis or even criticism of the judgment” was “welcome”.

On Monday, Delhi police said that AAP Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal called the police control room lleging that she had been assaulted by Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal's aide Bibhav Kumar at Kejriwal’s residence. While the police had said that Maliwal went to the Civil Lines police station, she had not filed an official complaint. While AAP MP Sanjay Singh said that strict action would be taken against Kumar, National Commission for Women (NCW) summoned him for a hearing in the matter.

South Africa asked the top UN court on Thursday to order a halt to the Rafah offensive as part of its case in The Hague accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinian people faced "ongoing annihilation". The hearings at the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, come after South Africa last week asked for additional emergency measures to protect Rafah, a southern Gaza city where more than a million Palestinians have been sheltering.

This was the Catch-Up on the 3 Things by The Indian Express.