Day: June 5, 2024

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News Review#NewsAndTimes #NT #TNT #News #Times#World #USA #POTUS #DOJ #FBI #CIA #DIA #ODNI#Israel #Mossad #Netanyahu#Ukraine #NewAbwehr #OSINT#Putin #Russia #GRU #Путин, #Россия #SouthCaucasus #Bloggershttps://t.co/O0SIgLVWzMhttps://t.co/DO5LG3PY4T…

— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) June 5, 2024

Fauci Unmasked https://t.co/zNh2Rc2XvA
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— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) June 5, 2024

Plaintiffs suing the Biden administration over Gaza policy have asked a federal appellate judge to recuse himself because of a trip he took to Israel in March. The World Jewish Congress, which sponsored the junket for 14 federal judges, framed the delegation as part of Israel’s “fight in the international court of public opinion.”

In an emergency motion filed Tuesday, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued they were “ethically compelled” to ask Judge Ryan Nelson of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to recuse himself because the WJC trip was “explicitly designed to influence U.S. judicial opinion regarding the legality of ongoing Israeli military action against Palestinians.”

The plaintiffs are a mix of Palestinian human rights organizations and individual Palestinians, including Dr. Omar Al-Najjar, who has written about his experiences working in the decimated health infrastructure in Gaza. In November, they filed a complaint in federal court against President Joe Biden and other top officials, seeking “an injunction requiring the United States to fulfill its international law duty to prevent and cease being complicit — through unconditional financial and diplomatic support — in the unfolding genocide in Gaza.”

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After Historic Ruling, Lawyers Vow to Keep Fighting Biden Over Complicity in Gaza Genocide

The district court dismissed the case in late January but urged the administration “to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.” The plaintiffs appealed to the 9th Circuit, which is scheduled to hear oral arguments next week. Nelson’s selection for the three-judge argument panel was announced on Monday.

In March, Nelson joined 13 colleagues from the federal bench on the WJC-sponsored trip. Like Nelson, many of the judges on the trip were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

According to a disclosure about the trip, the judges met with high-ranking members of the Israel Defense Forces about “Operation Swords of Iron” — what Israel calls its current military operation in Gaza — and the application of international humanitarian law during war. The trip also included sessions with one of the attorneys defending Israel before the International Court of Justice, Tal Becker; former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin; and members of Israel’s Supreme Court and Knesset, the disclosure shows.

The judges met with a high-ranking official at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, to get the “American perspective,” one judge told the Jerusalem Post. State Department Secretary Antony Blinken is one of the defendants in the case before the 9th Circuit.

In a LinkedIn post summarizing lessons from the trip, Judge Matthew Solomson of the Federal Court of Claims, who helped organized the delegation, wrote, “Israel’s military culture is very attuned to international law; commanders consult lawyers at every step and the lawyers have veto power. We watched many video clips of Israeli military lawyers stopping strikes based on proportionality and collateral damage assessments. Their enemy doesn’t play by such rules.”

In late March, Nelson and Solomson spoke about the trip at a lunch talk hosted by Harvard Law School’s chapters of the Federalist Society and the Jewish Law Students Association. Their remarks were not made public, but Solomson wrote in a LinkedIn post that Nelson “expressed his inspiring faith in God and, concomitantly, an optimistic view of the future.”

In their recusal motion, the plaintiffs highlight coverage of the trip in the Israeli press, particularly by the English-language ILTV. “This invaluable experience allowed them to delve deeper into the legality of Israel’s conduct in the operation,” ILTV said of the trip in an Instagram post.

“At this time, when Israel is facing so much in the court of public opinion and in the courts around the world,” WJC’s chief marketing officer, Sara Friedman, told ILTV in March, “it’s so important for people who understand the judicial system, who understand the laws of war, to come here.”

“The World Jewish Congress is sending a message by bringing these groups that we are supporting the state of Israel,” Friedman told ILTV. “By bringing these groups here and showing them the truth about what is going on, it’s the best diplomacy we can do.”

Friedman did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment about the trip. The Intercept also asked WJC for copies of materials given to the judges during the trip.

An anonymous statement by federal judicial clerks last month criticized the Israel trip.

Peter Joy, who studies legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said it is often difficult to predict how judges will rule on recusal.

“They make a strong case for the judge to step down,” said Joy. “Here’s somebody who went on a trip, the explicit purpose of which was to try to get Israel’s point of view across.”

Cassandra Burke Robertson, director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, did not think it was a clear-cut case for recusal.

“The closest issue here is that it sounds like officials on the trip may have been providing specific information about the legality of the operation,” Robertson said. “But if the information was more general, then I don’t think it would be disqualifying.”

“Although Judge Nelson certainly COULD recuse, I don’t think recusal is required under the statute or Judicial Canons,” Rory Little, a professor at UC Law San Francisco, told The Intercept in an email. “He might recuse; it’s not a clear case in either direction.”

Arguments are scheduled for January 10, and the plaintiffs asked the 9th Circuit to rule on their emergency recusal motion by Thursday. A spokesperson for the 9th Circuit said the panel will address the motion, “presumably before Monday.”

The Justice Department, which did not oppose the recusal motion, declined to discuss the case.

The post A Federal Judge Visited Israel on a Junket Designed to Sway Public Opinion. Now He’s Hearing a Gaza Case. appeared first on The Intercept.

Astronaut Butch Wilmore can’t forget the time he landed on permafrost. It was 2015, and Wilmore was returning to Earth in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft after spending 167 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The landing was on solid ground in Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, but braking rockets at the bottom of the Soyuz—which was descending by parachute—should have cushioned the impact in the instant before it hit the ground. There was, however, the additional matter of ice covering the soil in the cold Kazakh November.

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“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced on landing,” Wilmore says. “I didn’t get the breath knocked out of me, but I was still shocked.”

Wilmore expects a gentler go of things next week, when he and his crewmate, astronaut Suni Williams, return to Earth after flying the maiden mission of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft. Starliner took off this morning from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, at 10:53 a.m., EDT, carrying Wilmore, the commander, and Williams, the pilot, aloft for an eight-day visit to the ISS. It is only the sixth time in NASA’s history that it has launched a new crewed spacecraft—after the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, shuttles, and Dragon. It is also the first time an American spacecraft descending by parachute will touch down on land instead of in the ocean, eliminating the need for recovery vessels to scramble to the splashdown site. To cushion the impact, the Starliner is equipped with inflatable airbags that Wilmore and Williams call their “marshmallows.”

“We descend at 21 to 27 feet per second, and the airbags push that down to feeling about nine to 15 feet per second,” Wilmore says. “So we’ll let you know how it goes.”

A new ship with a long history

There are a lot of unknowns involving Starliner. The troubled ship has been in development for a decade—even longer than the space shuttle, which was announced in January 1972 and did not fly until April 1981. NASA first tasked SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 with the job of building commercial crew vehicles that could carry astronauts to and from the ISS, freeing the U.S. from its dependency on the Russians, who were charging in excess of $90 million a seat for rides aboard their Soyuz. NASA awarded Boeing $4.2 billion for the work and SpaceX $2.6 billion, targeting 2017 as the year the ships would begin to fly. Neither company came close.

SpaceX did not launch a crew to the ISS until 2020, and as for Boeing, well, until this week, the clock was still ticking. An only partly successful uncrewed test flight in 2019 saw the ship get to space but fail to dock with the ISS. It wasn’t until 2022 that the company launched a successful uncrewed test mission. The current much-delayed launch comes as Boeing faces serial woes on its commercial aircraft side, after two crashes of its 737 line—one in 2018 and one in 2019—claimed 346 lives; a door blew off a 737 Max jet during flight in January 2024; the 737 failed multiple Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) audits in the wake of the incident; and two whistleblowers who had come out against the company regarding production and safety issues suddenly died—one on May 2, of a severe infection, and the other, in March, of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The company has not been implicated in the deaths. All of that has both NASA and Boeing’s space division working hard to keep the focus on the Starliner launch, especially on the imperative of bringing Wilmore and Williams home safely.

“The first crewed flight of a new spacecraft is an absolutely critical milestone,” said NASA’s associate administrator Jim Free at an April 25 press conference. “The lives of our crew members…are at stake. We don’t take that lightly at all. The most important thing we can do is protect those two people, as well as our crew currently on board the space station.”

Asked by one reporter how important it is for Boeing to “score a win” with the Starliner flight, Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of the Boeing Commercial Crew Program, deflected back to safety.

“We have humans flying on this vehicle,” he said. “We always take that so seriously…we signed up to do this, and we’re going to do it and be successful at it.”

The astronauts themselves, who spoke to TIME remotely from pre-flight quarantine on May 1 in the days before an earlier planned launch was scrubbed for technical reasons, profess confidence in their craft, while at the same time acknowledging that it and Boeing as a whole face challenges.

“We’ve been laser-focused on Starliner,” says Williams. “This is the only thing that we’re really concentrating on. I think it’s not a secret to say that the spacecraft was delayed a little bit. We’ve added some areas that we thought really needed improvement…we wanted to make sure that they got done, and the response was good.”

Adds Wilmore: “I went to test pilot’s school in 1992, and [I’ve] been doing tests for a long time. Boeing is a very highly visible company. When you’re taking people and you’re flying them in the atmosphere and then out of the atmosphere, that’s more highly visible, so you’re going to get more press on that type of thing.”

Whether the spacecraft, now that it’s aloft, will garner better press than the company that built it is impossible to know at the moment. But the stakes for Boeing—to say nothing of Wilmore and Williams—could not be higher.

Stumbling out of the gate

The blunder that doomed Starliner’s 2019 mission was an embarrassing one for both NASA and Boeing. The ship had problems with its mission clock when it reached space, meaning that it didn’t know what its altitude was and burned too much fuel trying to get oriented, preventing it from being able to climb to the station’s 250-mile orbit. In a press statement, NASA called the orbit “off-nominal”—space-speak for “no good.” The Starliner landed safely two days later in New Mexico, but a NASA investigation enumerated 80 “corrective actions”—to software, hardware, testing protocols, peer reviews, and more—that would have to be made for Starliner to be determined fit for flight. 

In May 2022, an uncrewed Starliner did complete a mission to the station. After two more years of crew-training and spacecraft certification, not to mention delays caused by the simple business of trying to schedule multiple spacecraft competing for the station’s limited docking ports—the crewed Russian Soyuz, the crewed SpaceX Dragon, and uncrewed cargo vehicles from Russia, SpaceX, and Northrop Grumman—Starliner at last got its runway slot.

But Boeing has a lot of catching up to do before it comes anywhere near what SpaceX has accomplished in the decade since the two companies won their commercial crew contracts. Between transporting cargo and astronauts, SpaceX has made 42 visits to the ISS. While Boeing was never contracted for uncrewed cargo runs to the station, SpaceX’s demonstrated ability to fly up and down reliably has made it a national and global leader in commercial launch services. At the April 25 press conference, Nappi would not even guarantee that Boeing would remain in the commercial crew game after the company’s six contracted flights to the station are completed by the end of the decade.

“We’ve got plenty of time to think about what’s after that,” he said. “And we will do that.”

Williams and Wilmore are not remotely thinking so far down the line. Their nominal mission will last for a brief eight days aboard the station, most of which time they’ll spend checking out the Starliner and ensuring it will be fit to fly future crews for much longer stays. Merely reaching and docking with the station will serve to prove that the spacecraft’s guidance and navigation systems work. But there’s a lot more to approving a new spacecraft than just determining it can get where it’s going.

The two astronauts will be running tests on Starliner’s solar arrays, communications, on-board computers, power systems, and more. They will also check the simple matter of how airtight the ship is once it’s docked to the station. That’s important not just to prevent air leaks, but to establish that the spacecraft can serve as a shelter-in-place haven in the event of an emergency like a sudden depressurization of the station, a fire, or a toxic ammonia leak from the coolant system used in the ISS’s American modules.

“In case of any of those classic emergencies,” says Williams, “our lifeboat is our spacecraft.”

Some of the station’s other seven crew members will also lend a hand, climbing into the Starliner with Williams and Wilmore and determining if the ship can comfortably accommodate the four-person crews who will be flying it on future missions. In return, Williams and Wilmore are prepared to help out on space station experiments and maintenance chores—especially if their mission is extended. Technical anomalies aboard the spacecraft or high winds in the various desert Southwest landing spots in which the spacecraft can thump down could delay the crew’s return by a month or more. Williams and Wilmore, who have both served on long-duration station rotations previously, are hoping that this one will be a short one. The Starliner is a reusable spacecraft, and if the one they’re flying holds up well, it will be used on future missions.

“We want to go and get back as quickly as possible so they can turn our spacecraft around and also take all those lessons learned and incorporate them into the next Starliner,” says Williams.

What comes next

Assuming this mission succeeds, at least a few of those next Starliners are all but certain to fly. Beyond 2030, NASA, for one, is hoping Starliner continues in service. It’s not for nothing that the space agency chose two companies rather than just one to build its low-Earth orbit spacecraft. That provides what NASA calls “dissimilar redundancy,” something that will prevent the country from being grounded if one of the launch providers has an accident or goes out of service for any period—the way the U.S. was stuck on Earth after both the shuttle Columbia and Challenger disasters and in the nine years after the shuttles were retired in 2011.

As for the bruised Boeing brand, the current mission will establish if at least some recovery is possible. Both the company and NASA stress that Boeing was the prime contractor on the station itself, and, along with building Starliner, that is no small thing. The ISS, said Emily Nelson, NASA’s chief flight director, at the press conference, “is the longest continuously operational spacecraft in human history. So we’re excited to bring the two together.”

Wilmore and Williams, meanwhile, are excited to make a different kind of history. As the first crew to fly a new spacecraft, they earn a spot in the NASA firmament, along with giants like Alan Shepard, the first man to fly a Mercury spacecraft; Gus Grissom, the first commander of a Gemini spacecraft; Wally Schirra, who piloted the inaugural Apollo; and John Young, commander of the first shuttle.

“It’s very humbling,” says Wilmore. “You pinch yourself because we never dreamed we’d be here. We’re just grateful for the opportunity, and that’s why we’re focused on mission, mission, mission.”

As any true Bravo fan knows, first impressions can be deceiving. Take The Valley, for instance. What initially appeared to be a desperate bid to capitalize on the popularity of a post-Scandoval Vanderpump Rules ended up turning into one of the greatest first seasons of reality television of all time.

The Valley—which premiered in March as a VPR spinoff that reunited three of its parent show’s most infamous alums—has it all: disgraced Bravolebrities making comebacks, disintegrating marriages, and dysfunctional cast trips. By now, Janet’s baby has been born (hello Cameron!), and both Brittany and Jax and Michelle and Jesse have split. It seems like neither Lala Kent nor Scheana Shay will be taking up a permanent post next season, and Mamaw’s beer cheese is officially on the menu at Jax’s Studio City. But there are still a number of lingering questions after the finale.

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Why isn’t there a reunion?

Not every new Bravo show has a reunion for its first season (see: Summer House, Southern Hospitality), and since the finale featured footage from months after the season officially wrapped, it makes sense that producers didn’t drag the cast back in for a reunion. Presuming that production for Season 2 picks up soon, perhaps there was no time for a reunion in between filming, especially with the bonus footage that gave viewers an update on most of the heavy-hitting plot points.

What’s the status of Jax and Brittany’s marriage? What about Michelle and Jesse’s?

Both couples have called it quits, but neither have officially filed for divorce yet. Michelle ended things with Jesse three days after the show wrapped and has moved out of their West Hollywood home. No fear, she can still pop over to Chateau Marmont; her rental is only two blocks away. The two are in the process of divvying up their realty business but seem to be successfully co-parenting their daughter, Isabella.

Brittany, too, moved out from her and Jax’s shared home, taking Cruz and herself to an Airbnb property. The couple is currently separated, with no firm plans to divorce on the horizon. The timeline around their separation is murky. Brittany has moved from rental to rental since announcing the separation in February, and Jax has lied to the press about their living arrangements. The pair did both attend the White House Correspondents Dinner, albeit not together.

Did Nia have to move to Santa Clarita?

Poor Nia spent the season struggling with postpartum depression as she cared for her newborn twins, her toddler, and a fourth big baby: her husband, Danny. Now, along with a lengthy nap, the couple needs a bigger home. Of course, they’d get more for their money if they were willing to stray further from Los Angeles. But for Nia, Santa Clarita was simply a bridge (or a freeway exit) too far, and she worried that Danny, who was open to living in the burbiest of burbs, would force her to move there anyway. The conflict remains unresolved at the end of the season—but for what it’s worth, Nia is right and perfect and deserves everything she wants.

Will Jasmine ever get her own storyline?

If there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on, it’s that Jasmine Goode seems great. But the BachelorNation alum and former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader turned protégée of real estate pro Michelle, who also did time as a server at Vanderpump Rules hub SUR, barely had anything to do in the show’s first season. We watched her play confidant to various miserable married people and caught occasional glimpses of her girlfriend, Melissa Marie. Yet by the finale, Jasmine still hadn’t become a real participant in the core group’s drama. Here’s hoping The Valley gives her something more substantial to do in Season 2.

Who was the famous director Michelle was hanging out with?

As rumors swirled throughout the season that Michelle was—or had at some point been—cheating on Jesse, one name dropped in conversation was that of an A-list director who Michelle had apparently been fraternizing with at none other than Chateau Marmont. Unfortunately for all of Bravo’s nosiest fans, the director’s name was bleeped out every time it was mentioned.

But worry not. While the case has yet to be fully cracked, there are a number of theories floating around online for those who want to seek them out.

Has Danny gotten any more voice acting work since the show has aired?

In the show’s premiere, when we’re introduced to Danny Booko, one-half of The Valley’s most seemingly functional (read: bland) couple, he’s making an honest living to provide for his wife Nia and their three children by working as a voice actor, including creating zombie noises for a The Walking Dead spinoff. Since then, we’ve learned that Danny has an alter ego (“Darkside Danny”) that unleashes when he has a few drinks and that he’s a little worried about their family’s finances. Thankfully, it appears that he’s booked more voice acting work this year; according to IMDb, he’s a voice actor for the first installment of Kevin Costner’s Western epic, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, and will be appearing as a looper (someone who does background noise) for the upcoming Transformers One movie.

Who is Kristen still friends with on the cast?

While Season 1 of The Valley saw Janet, Michelle, and Jesse not so wisely try to ice Kristen out of group activities (put some respect on reality tv queen Doute’s name!), Janet recently told The Daily Dish that the break in their friendship is more of a “pause.”

“I don’t think, you know, this is the end of our friendship,” she said. “Never say never.”

A May 24 Instagram post also showed Kristen hanging out with Zach, Brittany, and Nia at Jax’s Studio City. Michelle and Jesse, on the other hand, apparently haven’t spoken to Kristen since filming wrapped. “We haven’t spoken at all,” Jesse told Us Weekly in May. “[Her boyfriend] Luke and I are cordial—mostly talking about stuff related to the show. But yeah, I mean, it’s sad. You hate to lose friends.”

How is Jax’s bar doing, financially?

When he wasn’t emotionally terrorizing Brittany and being Los Angeles’ most unhinged menace, Jax seemingly spent most of The Valley trying to get Jax’s Studio City, the sports bar that carries his name but in which he has no financial investment, off the ground. Now that the bar is open, according to Jax, an extremely unreliable narrator, it’s apparently doing “very, very well.” In an interview with The Daily Dish, Jax said that things were so good that he plans to open up two more restaurants, going so far as to claim: “I could be the next Lisa Vanderpump.” Given Jax’s rocky relationship to truth telling, we’re taking this news with more grains of salt than the rim of a Jalapeño margarita from SUR.

Will Mamaw’s beer cheese stay on the menu at Jax’s Studio City, or will Brittany get it in the divorce?

Mamaw’s beer cheese, the hero menu item at Jax’s Studio City, is so central to Jax and Brittany’s relationship that the so-called Kentucky delicacy got its own Bud Light-powered storyline and a tasting party in Season 7 of Vanderpump Rules. Since the beer cheese is famously inspired by a recipe from Brittany’s mamaw, the logical answer to this question is that Brittany will obviously retain custody of the beer cheese and its IP—but as any true student of the VPR universe knows, Jax Taylor defies any and all logic. We look forward to watching the custody showdown for the beer cheese playing out on a multiple episode arc in Season 2 of The Valley.

Are Lala and Scheana going to The Valley?

Despite both Lala and Scheana appearing in The Valley premiere—and Lala making a seemingly obvious attempt to stir up drama with Brittany at the Vanderpump Season 11 reunion—Bravo has made it clear there will be no full-time transfers between the two shows. For now, at least.

“[The Valley] cast is pretty full right now,” showrunner Alex Baskin told the Hollywood Reporter in May. “I would imagine you’ll continue to see crossovers like you have, but that cast is bursting at the seams. It’s not like we’re in need of additional cast members. Between Jax and Brittany, Jesse and Michelle, and a whole bunch of other developments, we really have a great focus for that show and we’re excited about running that back because, God knows, if we had cameras up right now there would be a ton to cover. And there will be when we do.”

Will there be a second season?

Yes. Bravo has renewed The Valley for a second season, and the entire cast is expected to return, despite looming divorces.

Some time ago, India achieved the status of a middle power: a country with a deep global footprint and heavy strategic importance, but not strong enough to ascend to the upper echelon of world powers. The reelection of Prime Minister Narendra Modi positions India to begin a transition from a middle to a major power. But that shift won’t be easy.

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Modi will begin his third term on June 8 with a smaller mandate, and he will need to rely on coalition partners, who agreed to back him on Wednesday, to govern. But less political space won’t have a major impact on foreign policy, because there’s broad multipartisan support for Modi’s longstanding priority of deepening India’s role—and power—on the global stage.

India has truly come into its own as a top international actor. It’s the world’s most populous country. It has the fifth-largest economy (growing at one of the world’s fastest rates). It boasts one of the most rapidly expanding tech sectors. And, following its lunar landing last year, it’s now a formal space power.

Modi has plenty of motivations to leverage these achievements and accelerate India’s climb up the world’s power hierarchy. He has long prioritized strengthening India’s role in the world. The election manifesto of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014, the year he first became premier, vowed to build “a strong, self-reliant, self-confident India, regaining its rightful place in the comity of nations.”

Modi’s signature ideology, Hindu nationalism, is about making India stronger abroad, not just at home. Modi also views Hindu nationalism as a soft power tool; he promises to institute a program to highlight Lord Ram’s legacy abroad.

Modi has already done much to advance India’s global rise. He’s gained it membership in an array of global forums, from a new quad arrangement with the U.S., the UAE, and Israel to the prestigious Missile Technology Control Regime. Modi solidified India’s status as a net security provider, increasing arms sales to Indo-Pacific partners and projecting naval power in the Middle East to protect and assist ships targeted by missiles and piracy.

Read More: The Modi-fication of India Is Almost Complete

To the world, expanding Indian global power in a third Modi term presents opportunities and obstacles alike. Washington and like-minded allies could have an increasingly formidable partner to counter China. The Global South, the causes of which Modi has increasingly sought to champion, will have a powerful advocate. For capital-rich companies and countries, massive Indian consumer markets will beckon. Last month, external affairs minister S Jaishankar described his boss as a leader with “networking, standing, and respect.” He’s not wrong: most governments are keen to engage with Modi’s India.

But India’s growing global clout could raise some red flags. New Delhi’s embrace of multipolarity, through efforts to empower the Global South and strengthen multilateral organizations (including those it belongs to that counter the West), risks diluting U.S. power. India’s growing power also brings into sharper relief a fundamental conundrum for the West: How to square the strategic imperatives of partnership with an accelerating Indian illiberalism that fuels transnational repression—including some allegedly carried out on Western soil. But none of this will reverse India’s deepening security relations with Washington—a concern for Beijing and Moscow.

Admittedly, this may be putting the cart before the horse. India’s path to great powerdom, while possible under Modi, is not inevitable. To get there, he’ll need to make extensive course corrections.

One is hardwiring India’s economy for longer term stability and sustainability. Youth unemployment ranges from 44 to 54% for those in their 20s—staggering figures in a country where half the population is under 30. India needs more jobs and more skilled workers to accommodate fast-growing sectors and truly transform its economy into a global juggernaut.

India must also get a handle on its China challenge. It’s struggled mightily to deter its main strategic competitor. Chinese forces periodically stage border incursions and have built villages and roads on land India claims as its own. China is rapidly developing the capacity to project power in the Indian Ocean—from its western reaches, home to China’s only overseas military base, to areas to the east near the Andaman Sea, where India has territorial assets. An aspiring great power can’t afford to be bogged down by its biggest rival so close to home.

Furthermore, India needs institutional fixes, like steps to accelerate the implementation of defense reforms and to increase the size of its diplomatic corps.

Another big challenge is the world itself. It’s undergoing severe churn and fraught with furious geopolitical competition.

India has traditionally navigated great power rivalry by doubling down on its core foreign policy principle of strategic autonomy, balancing ties with competing powers and avoiding alliances to maximize flexibility. But if current trends hold, and geopolitical competition and instability keep intensifying, Modi may find himself under growing pressure to get off the fence.

Still, he’s passed two tough recent tests. New Delhi has maintained close ties with Moscow, its longtime partner, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which India has declined to condemn, while managing to keep relations warm with the U.S. Meanwhile, it’s backing Israel’s war in Gaza, justifying it as a necessary counterterrorism move, even as its strong ties with the Palestinians and Arab capitals remain intact.

From this balancing act, India derives a unique form of global influence: It defies the polarization of power politics, straddling competing camps and positioning itself as a bridge and potential mediator.

Modi pledges to make India a Vishwaguru—a teacher and leader of the world. During his third term, India may strive to teach the world how a rising power can stay true to its founding foreign policy principle, even while staking out greater leadership in a changing world order.

Frank Moody was prepared to give up his life over the battlefields of Europe. What he didn’t bargain for was giving up his life over Lake Huron, off the coast of Michigan. But on April 11, 1944, that’s what happened when Moody, a Black Tuskegee Airman, was flying a training run with three other pilots in his P-39 fighter and his plane suddenly augured in, crashing into the deep Huron waters. Fifty-four days later, his body washed ashore, but it was not until 70 years to the day after the crash—on April 11, 2014—that divers discovered the wreckage of the plane.

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The cause of the accident that claimed the young lieutenant was always a mystery. Ten years of salvage work and accident forensics, however, finally pinpointed the cause as a breakdown in the forward machine guns’ interruptor—a timing device that pauses the firing of the bullets in the fraction of a second when the propeller is spinning in front of the gun barrel. In the case of Moody’s plane, holes in the propeller proved that the interruptor failed, dooming him to a tragic end before he ever left to fight for his country.

Many other Black men made that journey and braved that fighting. From 1941 to 1946, close to 1,000 African American pilots were trained as Tuskegee airmen, back in the days before Jan. 26, 1948, when Pres. Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the American armed forces. Now, Moody’s story, and that of the Tuskegee airmen as a whole, are being told in a National Geographic special, The Real Red Tails, which premiered May 31. Told with archival films, Lake Huron dive footage, and interviews with surviving airmen, the special is equal parts tribute, tone poem, and historical object lesson—one that tells the tale of what the airmen called their Double-V campaign: victory over facism abroad and victory over racism at home.

“I tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps, and they didn’t want me. I had to be drafted,” retired Lt. Col. James Harvey, who will turn 101 in July, told TIME. “The commanding general of the Air Force did not want us in his Air Corps.”

What the commander wanted and the country needed were two different things, however, and with the U.S. mobilizing for a massive, two-front war, the military could not afford to sideline the 9.8% of the population that was Black. Still, there were massive hurdles to overcome, beyond the officially sanctioned segregation of the armed forces. As the film shows, a 1925 document on the suitability of Blacks for military service was awful and unsparing in its racism.

“He is,” read the ostensibly learned analysis of African American males, “by nature subservient [and] mentally inferior.” He is “susceptible to crowd psychology,” “cannot control himself in the face of danger,” and does not have “the initiative, courage, and resourcefulness of the white man.”

It was Pres. Franklin Roosevelt who started the first Black fighter squadron, the 99th pursuit squadron, in January of 1941, in part as a bid for the Black vote in the 1944 election. It didn’t hurt either Roosevelt’s or Black Americans’ cause that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt famously traveled to Tuskegee to be photographed in a plane with an African American airman.

Still, the fight was uphill for the men of the 99th. Harvey recalls that even after establishing himself as a qualified pilot, he had to practice twice in a training plane just to prove he could fly, while white servicemen were not made to jump through that same hoop. His white wing commander once asked him what he wanted to be called, and Harvey looked at the man with stupefaction. “I said, ‘I’m a first lieutenant, so how about Lieutenant Harvey?’” he told TIME.

In the documentary, Harvey also recalls training on the Tuskegee military base, which he describes as “a Jim Crow base in a Jim Crow city.” When he went into town one day, the sheriff made it clear just how welcome his presence was, telling him, “If I find you back in town I’ll blow your brains out.”

Still, Harvey flew and fought bravely for his country. He was at the dock preparing to ship out overseas when word came down that the war in Italy had ended and the rest of Europe was likely to follow, so the men of his detachment remained stateside. He did not see combat until the Korean War, when he flew 126 combat sorties in just 89 days, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and numerous Air Medals. He came close to losing his life like Moody, during one mission when he was peeling off at a nearly vertical angle after strafing a town and a burst of anti-aircraft fire caught the fuel tank on the tip of his wing. 

“My wing man said he saw this big ball of fire about the size of a basketball hit my tank,” he says. “Lucky for me I was turning, or I wouldn’t be here today.”

But he is here today, and that is a gift to history. Ultimately, Harvey served 22 years in the military before retiring to work for the Oscar Mayer company. That, however, was not his first choice. He originally interviewed to be a commercial airline pilot, but was told that the company had an age cutoff of 35, and he was 42.

“I said OK, if that’s their policy, that’s their policy,” he says. As it turned out, it wasn’t their policy. Sixteen years later he spoke to a white pilot who was hired by the same airline at about the same time and was also over 35. 

“The light went on,” Harvey says. “They didn’t want passengers to get in the aircraft, gaze in the cockpit, and see a person of color behind the controls.”

Given his druthers, Harvey would still be at the controls. The Real Red Tails ends with him and another very elderly airman walking out of a hangar, shot from behind, laughing about the fact that they would take a nearby Cessna up today if they could. They can’t, of course. But while they may have flown their last, they have not spoken their last. The story they tell in the new documentary is one of a nation slowly, haltingly, imperfectly getting right with itself and its history—and honoring a thousand of its heroes in the process.