Turkish president Erdogan expects S-400 missiles delivery by mid July
US threatens to cut Turkey from F-35 programme
Moscow, June 30: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that there have been no delays in the delivery of Russian S-400 air defence missiles to his country.
He made the remarks at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 Osaka summit in Japan, Xinhua reported, citing an official transcript of the conversation published on the Kremlin website.
"The S-400 delivery we continue watching over this process in accordance with our agreement reached in Dushanbe," Erdogan told Putin, calling joint missile production and technology transfer a priority of bilateral co-operation.
The supplies of the S-400 missiles to Turkey will begin in the first half of July, Erdogan said earlier this month after returning from the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia held in Tajikistan''s Dushanbe.
The US repeatedly warned that it would cut off Turkey''s purchase of F-35 fighters if Ankara goes ahead with plans to buy the Russian S-400 missiles.
Pentagon announced in June that it would halt F-35 fighter training for Turkish pilots, and all Turkish trainees in the program must leave the country by July 31.
The S-400 air defense missile system is considered the most advanced of its kind in Russia, capable of destroying targets at a distance of up to 400 km and a height of up to 30 km.
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Student found dead in hostel room in IIT Kharagpur
Kolkata (PTI): A 22-year-old M Tech student was found dead in his hostel room in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, the second such incident reported on the campus within a span of 10 days.
The student, identified as Soham Haldar, was found hanging from the ceiling of his hostel room on Tuesday and he was immediately taken to the institute hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead, an IIT Kharagpur official said.
Haldar, a dual-degree student in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering, was a boarder of the Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya Hall of Residence on the campus.
Police from the Kharagpur Town police station have initiated a probe into the incident as preliminary findings indicated that it could be a case of suicide, though the exact cause of death will be ascertained following the post-mortem examination, the official said.
In a statement, the institute expressed deep grief over the student's death and said a detailed inquiry has been initiated.
The authorities have informed the family and are extending all possible assistance to them, it added.
Director Suman Chakraborty told PTI that the institute will strengthen the mechanism to identify stressed-out and depressed students and take follow-up steps to address their issues.
The grief-stricken parents of the student, who hailed from Barasat in North 24 Parganas district, have come to the campus and the authorities will speak to them, he said.
"Haldar's friends, faculty and staffers also could not gauge any stress or anxiety in him. But we need to enable students suffering from anxiety and extreme stress to open up their minds and do everything needed to prevent such incidents," he said.
Investigators are also scrutinising CCTV footage from the hostel premises to piece together the sequence of events leading to the incident.
The incident comes close on the heels of another student's death reported on April 18, when 21-year-old Jaibir Singh Dodia, a third-year Mechanical Engineering student from Ahmedabad, allegedly died after jumping from the eighth floor of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hall of Residence. That case is also under investigation.
The back-to-back incidents have once again brought the issue of mental health and student support systems at the institute into focus, especially in view of several such cases reported last year.
