TIRUCHY l sunday l september 06, 2026 l `12.00 l PAGES 24 l LATE CITY EDITION Putin, Zelenskyy agree to pause strikes during talks with U.S. The pause on strikes on Kyiv and Moscow from Saturday was tied to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s (pics ) visit to Moscow and Kyiv russia says ‘no talk of new ideas’ Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed, in a clip from Tass News, that Kushner and Witkoff would meet Putin during their Moscow visit on Saturday, but said there was “no talk of new ideas” to end the conflict. The envoys’ trip comes as both Ukraine and Russia escalate aerial attacks, some 4.5 years after the Kremlin’s invasion of its neighbour ■ 53 u.s. push to stop war loses momentum ■ Washington’s push to end the fighting, now in its fifth year, has lost momentum as US attention has been focused for the past six months on its war with Iran and a protracted engagement in the Gulf | P9 The two US envoys were received in Moscow by envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who shared photos cap tioned “Welcome to Moscow Peacemakers” drones of ukraine shot down by russia on friday night CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI all 10 guilty in Naxal attack that wiped out C’garh Cong leadership Awaiting punishment E J A Z KAISER @ Raipur Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacts with a boy in Delhi Metro en route to the Shri Ram College of Commerce for it centenary celebrations on Saturday | PTI WITH THIS ISSUE PM taps Gen Z idiom, calls SRCC alumni the OGs will meet two kinds of people. One kind consists of people PRIME Minister Narendra who positively transform the Modi struck a distinctly Gen Z strength of society into the note as he addressed students strength of the nation. The secat Shri Ram College of Com- ond kind is made up of people merce (SRCC) in Delhi on the who become the ‘naraz fufa’ occasion of Teachers’ Day on whenever any work is started. Saturday, using contemporary Their favourite thing is to opphrases like “OG (original pose everything?” he said. gangster)” and invok“ W h e n we we re ing popular culture building the world’s while returning to the tallest statue, the ‘fufa’ campus 13 years after said, ‘What is the need Those who saw the for this?’ When we his 2013 visit. glass as half Setting the tone earstarted working on the empty in 2013, ly in his speech, Modi high-speed train, the referred to SRCC’s when I had visited ‘fufa’ again said, ‘What the SRCC, still alumni as trendsetters choose to see it the is the need for this? in their own right. “If When we introduced same way today I say it in Gen Z lanUPI, these same ‘fufas’ Narendra Modi, guage, they are OG,” asked, ‘Why UPI.’ PM at SRCC he said, pointing to When we built the new their contributions Parliament building, across fields. He added, they again said, ‘What is the “Dhurandhar na ho, lekin need for this?’” Modi said. dhoom toh machayi hai.” Reflecting on SRCC’s legacy, Modi also took aim at critics Modi drew from his personal of the government’s develop- interactions with alumni ment initiatives during his ad- across sectors. “Our Arun Jaitdress, calling them “naraz fufa ley studied here. Currently my , (aggrieved uncle)” who oppose team includes Sanjeev Sanyal, all projects by asking why they who also studied here. In other are needed. He told students, words, SRCC members have “Outside this campus, you will made a name for themselves in encounter a new world. You every field,” he said. I f r a h M u f t i @ New Delhi Squeezed PLUS in the12 PAGES Middle PLUS 12 P AGES e x p r ess r e a d HC: Shops must display names in Tamil by Nov Chennai: The Madras High Court has set November 1 deadline for shops and establishments across Tamil Nadu to display their names in Tamil on their signage, in addition to English | P4 TVK alliance name may be finalised on Sept 9 Chennai: TNCC chief Manickam Tagore on Saturday said his party would attend the TVK’s consultative meeting on September 9. The alliance’s name may be finalised at the event, Tagore said | P4 A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) Court in Jagdalpur on Saturday convicted all 10 surviving Maoist insurgents, including three women, on trial for their alleged role in the ghastly 2013 Jhiram Ghati massacre in south Chhattisgarh, known as one of India’s most politically catastrophic terror strikes. The court of special judge Ajay Singh Rajput found all the accused guilty of terror and mass murder, and will announce the quantum of punishment on September 16. The accused are lodged in Jagdalpur Central Jail in Bastar. The prosecution examined as many as 101 witnesses in the The convicts were identified as Pramila Modiyam, Chaitu Lekam, Sumitra Punem Modiyam, Mukka Mandavi, Kosa Kavasi, Aayata Markam, Madkami Deva, Joga Madkami, Banjami Sanna and Mahadev Nag. Kosa Kavasi’s brother Guddu claimed that Kosa and Mukka Mandavi had been falsely implicated in the case case. Defence counsel Arvind Choudhary said his team will appeal against the verdict in higher courts. The 10 individuals convicted for orchestrating and executing the bloodshed hailed from the Bastar region. On May 25, 2013, ahead of the Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, a convoy of the Congress’ ‘Parivartan Yatra’ returning from a rally in Sukma was ambushed by heavily-armed Maoists in the dense forests of Jhiram valley between Darbha and Tongpal. The ambush wiped out virtually the entire top-tier leadership of the state Congress. Among the 31 killed were then- Woman, 60, trapped in flood slush at home, rescued after 10 days in Nepal S V KRISHNA C HAITANYA @ Kathmandu Rescue teams on Saturday pulled a Chinese national alive from a tunnel at the Upper T r i s h u l i - 1 H yd ro e l e c t r i c Project, nearly two weeks after the devastating flood that swept through Nepal’s northern districts, while rescuers separately saved a 60-year-old woman trapped inside a debris-buried house in Nuwakot. In the rescue operation in Betrawati, Nuwakot, an Armed Police Force team led by Inspector Suman B K rescued Chandika Shrestha from the top floor of a four-storey house owned by her husband, Anand Shrestha. The house had been buried under debris following the devastating floods. Shrestha was brought out alive from a window on the top floor. She had passed out when rescuers spotted her but gradually regained Death toll crosses 1,300, including 85 children The death toll from the flash floods in Nepal reached 1,344 on Saturday as more bodies were recovered. They included 85 children, while 501 were found with body parts missing, officials said. As many as 1,030 bodies have been temporarily buried after DNA collection The woman rescued from her house in Betrawati, Nuwakot | Express consciousness. Her family had performed symbolic last rites assuming she was dead, after they could not find her for several days following the flash floods. At the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydroelectric Project, the Chinese national, identified as Luhaitao, was rescued from about 225 metres inside the tunnel by a joint team involving the Nepali Army and foreign personnel. Further search and rescue operations at the hydropower project are continuing. The rescue comes a day after two Nepali workers, Sanjay Sah and Kabir Maharjan, were pulled alive from a tunnel at the Trishuli-3A Hydroelectric Project after being trapped for nine days. The two rescues have raised hopes that more people could still be alive inside underground structures across the flood-hit hydropower projects. Tender scam: DVAC raids 30 places linked to Nehru EX P RESS NEWS SER V I C E @ Tiruchy/ Chennai/Coimbatore/Tiruppur/Erode The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) searched 30 locations across five cities on Saturday in a case registered over alleged irregularities in tenders awarded by the Municipal Administration and Water Supply (MAWS) department during the DMK regime. Properties linked to former minister and Tiruchy West MLA KN Nehru and his brother were among those searched. Sources said the raids were based on a December 3, 2025, communication sent by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to state authorities alleging large- A large number of DMK functionaries sat outside former minister KN Nehru’s residence during the search in Tiruchy on Saturday | M K Ashok Kumar scale manipulation of MAWS tenders. The ED had said that at least `1,020 crore was collected as bribes and commissions through manipulation of contracts. The searches in Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchy, Erode, and Tiruppur resulted in the seizure of 241 documents related to the alleged irregularities and electronic evidence, DVAC said in a release. The case invokes provisions relating to criminal conspiracy , criminal breach of trust and cheating under the IPC and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, besides Sections 7, 7A, 8, 9, 12 and 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The December communication from ED was the second of three reports the directorate had sent regarding alleged irregularities in the MAWS department. Its first report concerned alleged bribes in recruitment, based on which the Madras HC directed DVAC in February to register an FIR. The agency registered the case in June, following which the HC temporarily restrained further proceedings.  P5 M K S a j e e v k u m a r @Thrissur Former Congress MLA of Velachery constituency, JMH Aassan Maulaana, has been disqualified from contesting elections for three years by the Election Commission of India for failing to lodge true and correct account of his election expenses during the 2021 Assembly poll. The disqualification order, passed on August 19 under Section 10A of the Representation of the People Act (1951), bars him from being chosen as, or being, a member of Parliament or a state legislature for three years. Maulaana currently does not have any Assembly seat to lose as he completed his 2021-26 term and lost from Velachery in the 2026 election. According to the ECI order, Maulaana had declared election expenditure of `17,03,548. However, the Chennai District Election Officer (DEO) found that `32,05,915 spent on newspaper advertisements promoting his candidature had not been included in the expenses  P5 Eight engineering students from Tamil Nadu were killed after their car rammed into a goods truck parked on National Highway-66 in Thrissur district of Kerala around midnight on Friday . Police have registered an FIR against the absconding truck driver for culpable homicide under Section 105 of the BNS, as he had allegedly parked the vehicle illegally on the underconstruction stretch of the NH at Panambikkunnu Centre in Kaipamangalam. The victims were students of PSNA College in Dindigul. V Viswa of Salem was behind the wheel at the time. The rest of the students were identified as I Suriya, Jeeva N, and K Yuvasanjith of Dindigul, and G Santhosh, R Prasanna, Joshua Hilson J and M Mura- The CBI has registered an FIR against Subhash Chandra for allegedly inflating his net worth to avail loans from LICHFL and defaulting on repayment | P7 JLR to slash headcount by 4K in UK as US levy bites @ New Delhi india spin a web Shafali Verma (L) celebrates the wicket of Muneeba Ali with Richa Ghosh (R) as Pakistan collapsed from 27/0 to 55 all out against India in the Women’s T20 Asia Cup on Saturday. India chased the total in 8.4 overs to win by seven wickets | bcci ‘Son said he will return’ Mangled remains of the car | Express Essel group founder booked by CBI e Xp r e s s n e w s S e r v i c e EC bars ex-Cong MLA from 8 engg students from TN killed in Kerala car crash contesting polls for 3 years S K u m a r e s a n @ Chennai Chhattisgarh Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son Dinesh Patel, former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla, senior Congress leader and Salwa Judum architect Mahendra Karma, and former MLA Uday Mudliyar, alongside several party workers. The then Raman Singh-led BJP government handed over the probe to the NIA within two days of the attack. NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet on September 28, 2015, following arrest of two more suspects. In January 2019, the Bhupesh Baghel-led Congress government constituted a Special Investigation Team to probe the attack, alleging NIA had not investigated the larger conspiracy behind the attack. “On Friday morning, Yuvasanjith told me about the trip. He left in the afternoon, promising to return on Saturday. But, it was the Kerala police who contacted us with the bad news,” said M Karthikeyan, Yuvasanjith’s dad likrishnan M of Madurai – all aged around 20. As per preliminary information, the car heading from Guruvayur towards Kodungallur was speeding. The FIR states that the truck was parked on the right side of the highway near a barricaded stretch where traffic had been diverted due to ongoing construction work. Viswa allegedly failed to notice the bar ricade and crashed into the truck. The impact wrecked the car, with rescuers forced to cut open the vehicle to retrieve the occupants. All eight engineering students are believed to have died on the spot. People sleeping inside one of the three goods trucks reportedly parked on the roadside alerted passersby , following which police and fire and rescue personnel rushed to the spot.  P5 TATA Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is preparing to cut around 4,000 jobs in the United Kingdom (UK) over the next two years amid a drop in sales and rising costs. The luxury carmaker has taken a hit after the US slapped import duty on imports from the UK and a cyberattack in 2025 that led to a complete halt in operations. The planned job cut, reported by The Times, is part of JLR’s effort to deliver 1.7 billion British pounds (`21,700 crore) in savings and reduce its breakeven point to 300,000 vehicles. The carmaker has already told employees and trade union partners that it is opening a voluntary redundancy programme for salaried and management staff. JLR employs around 34,000 people directly in the UK across three sites in the West Midlands and another in Halewood, Merseyside. “Today we informed our col, leagues and trade union partners that JLR is opening a voluntary redundancy programme offering salaried and management team members the opportunity to leave the business. We will share further information with our colleagues first,” the company added. JLR’s profits fell by 10% in the quarter to June 2026, while pre-tax profit dropped by more than two-thirds to £109 million. US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 10% tariff on cars imported from UK hit its operations in its biggest market. North America accounts for 29% of JLR’s sales.