India defended on Saturday a safeguards agreement with the UN atomic energy agency for a sensitive deal on its nuclear reactors, saying it guaranteed uninterrupted fuel supplies for its plants.
Government officials said the safeguards agreement — submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week — ensured there would be no abrupt disruption of fuel supplies for its civilian nuclear power plants.
“Discontinuity in the operation of a reactor cannot happen suddenly,” Anil Kakodkar, the chief of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, told reporters.
Under the agreement, India will open its civilian nuclear facilities to international inspection, a condition it must meet to help seal a controversial pact to share nuclear technology with the US.
The Indian government faces a confidence vote in parliament on July 22 following a political crisis sparked by its decision to push ahead with the deal.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh argued the pact is crucial for India’s energy security and continued strong economic growth.
But left-wing parties, who withdrew crucial support for the ruling coalition over the pact, insisted the deal would bind India too closely to the US and ran counter to India’s non-aligned status.
They also said they believe that allowing UN inspections of the country’s civil nuclear program — as demanded by the US — would harm India’s strategic weapons program.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
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