#Indian airlines news

[networkthoughts]

Fly91 Selects ATR’s Pay-by-the-hour Support Programme

Toulouse, 30 May 2024 – World’s number one manufacturer of regional aircraft ATR, and Indian pure play regional airline FLY91, today announced the signature of a Global Maintenance Agreement (GMA), a pivotal step towards providing reliable and cost-effective regional air travel across India. Under this comprehensive agreement, ATR will provide repair, overhaul and pooling services of Line…

[sharemarketinsider]

IndiGo and Japan Airlines Codeshare Partnership: Boosting India-Japan Connectivity

🌏✈️ Ready for seamless travel between India and Japan? IndiGo and Japan Airlines are teaming up with a new codeshare partnership starting December 16! This move promises to boost connectivity, business, and tourism between the two nations. Curious about how this impacts your travel plans? Click to find out more! #IndiGo #JapanAirlines #TravelNews #Aviation #IndiaJapan #AirTravel 🌐

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #39

October 18-25 2024.

President Biden issued the first presidential apology on behalf of the federal government to America's Native American population for the Indian boarding school policy. For 150 years the federal government operated a system of schools which aimed to destroy Native culture through the forced assimilation of native children. At these schools students faced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and close to 1,000 died. The Biden-Harris Administration has been historic for Native and Tribal rights. From the appointment of the first ever Native American cabinet member, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to the investment of $46 billion dollars on tribal land, to 200 new co-stewardship agreements. The last 4 years have seen a historic investment in and expansion of tribal rights.

The Biden-Harris Administration proposed a new rule which would make contraceptive medication (the pill) free over the counter with most Insurance. The new rule would ban cost sharing for contraception products, including the pill, condoms, and emergency contraception. On top of over the counter medications, the new rule will also strength protections for prescribed contraception without cost sharing as well.

The EPA announced its finalized rule strengthening standards for lead paint dust in pre-1978 housing and child care facilities. There is no safe level of exposure to lead particularly for children who can suffer long term developmental consequences from lead exposure. The new standards set the lowest level of lead particle that can be identified by a lab as the standard for lead abatement. It's estimated 31 million homes built before the ban on lead paint in 1978 have lead paint and 3.8 million of those have one or more children under the age of 6. The new rule will mean 1.2 million fewer people, including over 300,000 children will not be exposed to lead particles every year. This comes after the Biden-Harris Administration announced its goal to remove and replace all lead pipes in America by the end of the decade.

The Department of Transportation announced a $50 million dollar fine against American Airlines for its treatment of disabled passengers and their wheelchairs. The fine stems from a number of incidences of humiliating and unfair treatment of passages between 2019 and 2023, as well as video documented evidence of mishandling wheelchairs and damaging them. Half the fine will go to replacing such damaged wheelchairs. The Biden administration has leveled a historic number of fines against the airlines ($225 million) for their failures. It also published a Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights, passed a new rule accessible lavatories on aircraft, and is working on a rule to require airlines to replace lost or damaged wheelchairs with equal equipment at once.

The Department of Energy announced $430 million dollars to help boost domestic clean energy manufacturing in former coal communities. This invests in projects in 15 different communities, in places like Texas, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan. The plan will bring about 1,900 new jobs in communities struggling with the loss of coal. Projects include making insulation out of recycled cardboard, low carbon cement production, and industrial fiber hemp processing.

The Department of Transportation announced $4.2 billion in new infrastructure investment. The money will go to 44 projects across the country. For example the MBTA will get $400 million to replace the 92 year old Draw 1 bridge and renovate North Station.

The Department of Transportation announced nearly $200 million to replace aging natural gas pipes. Leaking gas lines represent a serious public health risk and also cost costumers. Planned replacements in Georgia and North Carolina for example will save the average costumer there over $900 on their gas bill a year. Replacing leaking lines will also remove 1,000 metric tons of methane pollution, annually.

The Department of the Interior announced $244 million to address legacy pollution in Pennsylvania coal country. This comes on top of $400 million invested earlier this year. This investment will help close dangerous mine shafts, reclaim unstable slopes, improve water quality by treating acid mine drainage, and restore water supplies damaged by mining.

Data shows that President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (passed with Vice-President Harris' tie breaking vote) has saved seniors $1 billion dollars on out-of-pocket drug costs. Seniors with certain high priced drugs saw their yearly out of pocket costs capped at $3,500 for 2024. In 2024 all seniors using Medicare Part D will see their out of pocket costs capped at $2,000 for the year. It's estimated if the $2,000 cap had been in effect this year 4.6 million seniors would have hit it by June and not have had to pay any more for medication for the rest of the year.

The Department of Education announced a new proposed rule to bring student debt relief for 8 million struggling borrowers. The Biden-Harris Administration has managed despite road blocks from Republicans in Congress, the courts and law suits from Republican states to bring student loan forgiveness to 5 million Americans so far through different programs. This latest rule would take into account many financial hardships faced by people to determine if they qualify to have their student loans forgiven. The final rule cannot be finalized before 2025 meaning its fate will be decided at the election.

The Department of Agriculture announced $1.5 billion in 92 partner-driven conservation projects. These projects aim at making farming more susceptible and environmental friendly, 16 projects are about water conservation in the West, 6 support use of innovative technologies to reduce enteric methane emissions in livestock. $100 million has been earmarked for Tribal-led projects.

[nando161mando]

The actual letter American Airlines corporate gives new Flight Attendants when they look for housing in Boston, NYC, Miami, Dallas etc

[mariacallous]

India’s $13.9 billion aviation industry—projected to cater to over 300 million domestically by 2030—is a ticking time bomb.

This July, in the sweltering heat at the Delhi High Court, additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati announced that new rules on pilot duty and rest periods would not be implemented this year after all. Introduced by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in January, the rules were designed specifically to combat pilot fatigue. They were set to take effect in June, but were abruptly retracted. The hearing addressed a writ petition filed by the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), seeking clarity on when the new norms would be enforced. The DGCA’s response followed its request to airline companies in April for a tentative implementation timeline.

Concerns over pilot fatigue had been mounting in the months leading up to the announcement of the new Flight Duty Period, Flight Time Limitations, and Prescribed Rest Periods by the DGCA. The urgency deepened in November 2023 when a 37-year-old Air India pilot, Captain Himanil Kumar, collapsed at Delhi Airport while training to fly the airline's Boeing 777 fleet, and later died at the hospital. Kumar was the second Indian pilot to die on duty within three months; in August, Captain Manoj Subramanyam, a 40-year-old IndiGo pilot, suffered a fatal cardiac arrest just minutes before his flight from Nagpur.

These back-to-back tragedies raised alarm in the industry. “Another young Indian pilot passed away today due to a suspected cardiac event,” reportedly tweeted Captain Shakti Lumba, a retired IndiGo VP who is now the president of the Professional Pilots Society in India (His tweet was since deleted.) “If this doesn’t convince the DGCA, civil aviation ministry, and airlines to urgently address the stress, fatigue, and anxiety among pilots, nothing will.”

The DGCA, India’s aviation watchdog, regulates the country’s Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL). At 13 hours of flight duty time, India’s FDTL is already demanding, but after the pandemic slowdown, increased route expansion and pilot shortages have forced many to fly beyond the recommended maximum of 60 hours a week, exacerbating crew exhaustion. The DGCA finally responded to the growing crisis by revising FDTL norms in January 2024.

The new guidelines increased weekly rest periods from 36 to 48 hours and introduced quarterly fatigue reports. Its scheduled implementation on June 1, 2024, was pushed back due to pressure from operators. An airline CEO, speaking anonymously to the Economic Times in January, claimed the proposed regulations would require a 20 percent increase in pilot numbers, which would escalate expenses and lead to huge numbers of flight cancellations. Still, the DGCA held firm on the FDTL implementation deadline till early March. By the end of the month, however, it appeared to have yielded to influence from the airline lobby. A notice on the regulator’s website announced the deadline had been deferred, without providing a reason or setting a new date.

The pilot fatigue problem isn’t unique to India. In January, two pilots for Indonesia-based Batik Air fell asleep for 28 minutes mid-flight, causing their plane to veer off course between Sulawesi and Jakarta. In April, unionized Virgin Atlantic pilots in the UK voted 96 percent in favor of pursuing an industrial action in response to rising fatigue. Earlier, the CEO of Wizz Air UK faced a backlash for urging crew members to push through their fatigue to avoid flight cancellations. In May, senior pilots at Virgin Australia raised safety concerns, claiming rostering systems were pushing them "to the limits.”

But in India, the belief that overwork and fatigue are not just acceptable but essential has become entrenched across industries. The aviation crisis is just the tip of the iceberg; it is the tech industry that is leading the charge. Last year, Infosys cofounder Narayana Murthy suggested that Indian youth should work 70 hours a week for the nation's development. Murthy’s advice came up at the Indian Parliament on the first day of its winter session and found support from a list of influential Indian tech leaders, including Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of India’s first AI unicorn, Ola Krutrim; Ayushmaan Kapoor, cofounder of the AI-powered customer platform Xeno; and even veterans like Sajjan Jindal, CEO and MD of JSW Group, and Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems. Almost all of them justified the extended work hours, which far exceed the maximum eight to nine hours per day stipulated by the International Labour Organisation and the Indian Labour Code, as necessary for strengthening India’s economy. “We have to make India an economic superpower that we can all be proud of,” Jindal wrote on X. He cited Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, “who works 14-16 hours everyday,”as a model. In July this year, the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employee Union said the state government had plans to increase working hours in the sector from the current maximum of 10 hours (including overtime) to a staggering 14 hours a day. As the union planned massive campaigns to oppose the move, the labor minister stated that the push for the proposal had come from the companies.

The airline companies think they have a solution to the fatigue crisis: technology. IndiGo, India’s largest airline, announced it would be an “early adopter” of a wrist-worn fatigue-monitoring device it was developing with French defense and aerospace company Thales Group. The device can provide “detailed insights into demographic data, including routes, pairings, crew profiles, and more, going beyond traditional scheduling-focused biomathematical models,” the airline stated in a press release in September. The airline, which operates 2,000 flights daily and employs over 5,000 pilots, said the device would be rolled out after a proof-of-concept trial. No date for the rollout was announced.

Wearable activity trackers are not new to the aviation industry. IndiGo’s device sounds similar to Actiwatch, a now-discontinued line of research-grade actigraphs from Philips, used to monitor sleep patterns, study circadian rhythms, and track physical activity as part of an airline’s fatigue risk-management system. But they partly rely on performance tests and subjective measures, such as self-reporting, which often results in being targeted by the airlines, says Captain C. S. Randhawa, president of the Federation of Indian Pilots. Safety management systems on the whole tend to be neglected by operators and are viewed as an additional expense, says Captain Amit Singh of the NGO Safety Matters Foundation.

In May 2023, Air India launched safety management software called Coruson, as well as BAM (Boeing Alertness Model), a fatigue-mitigation tool integrated into its rostering system, which is used by airlines to create and manage pilot schedules. Coruson, developed by cloud software company Ideagen, centralizes, analyzes, and reports on safety-related data—such as incidents, hazards, and risk assessments. BAM, developed jointly by Boeing and the software company Jeppesen, predicts and manages pilot fatigue by analyzing flight schedules and performance data. These tools were designed to prevent the creation of fatiguing rosters and pairings, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson noted in an internal message to employees. The carrier also introduced two new digital tools for its crew—the Pilot Sector Report app, to help pilots easily submit information on flight performance, incidents, and observations post-flight; and DocuNet, a digital management system that facilitates the storage, retrieval, and sharing of documents (such as flight manuals, training records, and compliance documents).

Despite these measures, the airline was fined by the DGCA in March this year for violating FDTL limits and fatigue management rules. This May, Air India Express cabin staff called in sick en masse to protest against “mismanagement.” This followed a similar protest from the crew, mostly pilots, at Vistara airlines. Both Air India and Vistara are now owned by one of India’s largest conglomerates, the Tata Group, which took over the former from the Indian government in January 2022.

Twenty-five of those who called in sick at Air India Express were terminated. Others were reportedly served an ultimatum. Those sacked were later reinstated by the airline following an intervention by the chief labour commissioner. Nearly a week before, the regional labor commissioner of Delhi had allegedly written to the Tata group chairman pointing to “blatant violations of labour laws” and insisting the legitimate concerns of the cabin crew be looked into. According to CNBC, Vistara employees said the agitation at their end had to do with recent salary updates, which fixed pilot pay at 40 flight hours—down from 70. Protesting first officers claimed that the new salary structure would result in an almost 57 percent pay cut. Under the new terms they would also have to fly up to 76 hours to earn what they were previously earning at 70 hours.

To placate the pilots and get them back to work, management had assured them that salaries for the “extra working hours” would be credited once Vistara was integrated with Air India. At the time, two Air India pilots unions had written to the chairman of the company, saying that such issues were not isolated but systemic. Burnout was the other related issue, with many pilots complaining of inadequate rest and being pushed to their limits.

Captain Singh, a former senior manager at AirAsia, tells WIRED that such effects significantly increase the risk of accidents, but also adversely affect pilot health in the long run. Tail swaps—rushing between different types of aircraft to take off immediately after disembarking from another—have become more prevalent under the 13-hour rules, and can further contribute to exhaustion, as do hasty acclimatization and, most significantly, landing three, four, or more flights consecutively, which Captain Randhawa described as a “severe energy management challenge.”

In the 2024 “Safety Culture Survey” conducted by Singh’s Safety Matters Foundation in July, 81 percent of 530 respondents, primarily medium- to short-haul pilots, stated that bufferless rosters contribute to their fatigue. As many as 84 percent indicated concerns with the speed and direction of shift rotation. “That’s the problem with the new rostering softwares the operators are introducing,” a pilot from a private airline, who requested anonymity, says. “They’re optimizers designed to make pilots work every second of their 13-hour schedule, leaving no breathing room.” The buffer-deficient timetables push pilots to their limits, so any additional pressure—like unpredictable weather—can easily overwhelm them.

Solving this issue with wrist-worn fatigue-measuring devices is contentious. But that isn’t the only problem. A year since they were hyped up, the buzz around fatigue-management tech has all but fizzled out. There have been no updates from IndiGo about the wrist device. Neither IndiGo nor the Thales Group responded to requests to comment.

[allthegeopolitics]

The Indian government plans a new law to punish those making hoax bomb threats against flights, which disrupt the schedules of airlines and cause massive inconvenience to thousands of passengers. In less than two weeks, more than 120 flights operated by Indian carriers have received bomb threats, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Continue Reading

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

#20yrago Monsanto stole patented wheat from Indian farmers https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/archive/2004/7403-monsantos-indian-wheat-patent-withdrawn-in-europe-4102004

#15yrsago Meet the 42 lucky people who got to see the secret copyright treaty https://www.keionline.org/39045

#15yrsago Airlines that charge fees lost more money than airlines that didn’t https://joe.biztravelife.com/09/042309.html

#15yrsago EFF comes to the rescue of Texas Instruments calculator hackers https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/10/13

#10yrsago How state anti-choice laws let judges humiliate vulnerable teens https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/teen-abortion-judicial-bypass-parental-notification/

#10yrsago One weird legal trick that makes patent trolls cry https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/13/one-weird-legal-trick-that-makes-patent-trolls-cry/

#10yrsago Hong Kong’s pro-democracy websites riddled with malware https://www.volexity.com/blog/2014/10/09/democracy-in-hong-kong-under-attack/

#1yrago Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29 billion https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

[beardedmrbean]

https://apple.news/A3f8u6tXeTaqMtF6EF6ebMw

Now isn’t that odd 🤔

A Florida man on an American Airlines flight was put in a headlock, removed from the aircraft and arrested after he called fellow passengers "blue-eyed white devils" and threatened to "take this plane down with all you motherf---ers on it."

Shail Patel, 29, was drunk when he boarded the flight from Tampa to Philadelphia on Tuesday and began "antagonizing passengers, calling flight attendants names, threatening passengers and aggressively moving through the aircraft," court documents show, according to WFLA.

The report stated he was acting hostile after he boarded and "began acting erratically, yelling and cursing at the passengers."

Patel called passengers "blue-eyed white devils" and threatened to "take this plane down with all you motherf------ on it," according to court documents. He is also accused of slapping a passenger on the hand and face and spitting on them.

Video footage of the incident showed Patel yelling an antisemitic slur at a flight attendant before he was put in a headlock by a fellow passenger and removed from the aircraft. "I'm trying to get to my home country and you people made it harder for me to get to my home country," he was heard yelling at one point in the video.

A flight attendant used the aircraft's public address system to ask if any off-duty police officers were on board who could help restrain Patel. Police said six off-duty law enforcement officers stepped in and took him off the plane.

"Prior to departure of American Airlines flight 2506 with service from Tampa (TPA) to Philadelphia (PHL), law enforcement was requested to the aircraft due to a disturbance in the cabin involving a disruptive customer," American Airlines said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "We thank our team for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience."

The flight had a 30-minute delay because of the incident.

Patel was arrested on two counts of battery and one count of disorderly intoxication. He is being held at the Hillsborough County Jail on a $2,150 bond. __________________________

First thought was Patel is a Indian name, was confused about the home country bit but given the fact that he was drunk it's safe to assume guys not Muslim.

Still this is the end result of DEI policies and similar programs that are just ways to pin the blame on white people for everything, Missouri AG pointing to the same thing and attaching some of the blame for that young girl that got her head bashed into the sidewalk on this nonsense.

[olowan-waphiya]

'''It's one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation history. In March 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport en route to Beijing and lost communication about 38 minutes into the flight. Military radar tracked the aircraft as it veered off course before the signal (and the plane) disappeared somewhere over the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean.

All 12 crew members and 227 passengers were presumed dead, and search-and-rescue efforts yielded no signs of the doomed plane apart from a few pieces of debris that washed up on coastal shores months later. Now, scientists have partially reconstructed the possible origin and drift path of that debris via a novel means: extracting data about ocean temperatures stored in shells of barnacles, according to a new paper published in the journal AGU Advances.''''

[airsllides]

airsLLide No. 6663: VT-EJG, Airbus A310-304, Air India, Geneva, February 29, 1992.

In 1987, a new management was given the task to turn inefficient and money losing Air India around and modernize the company. Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi appointed Rajev Jetley who accepted the challenge and attempted to turn the tides at the State owened carrier. Among the visible changes was the introduction of a new, modernist livery in the omnipresent 'Eurowhite'-style, with a golden sun and 24 sunrays in the tail. It was named the 'sun class' colors and should have replaced the classic "Palace in the Sky" livery with its elaborate window ornaments and the Maharaja figure as its ambassador...

Wait, you say you just recently still saw some Boeing with those window ornaments? Yes, indeed, you are right. Mr. Jetley's revolutionary wind did not blow for very long: both within the airline as with the rather conservative, influential members of the Indian society, the old livery and logo were considered something untouchable, and thus, staff from ground handlers to cockpit crews protested repeatedly against the new corporate image, constantly making references to the old 'Maharadja' icon in announcements and still calling lounges and first class cabins Maharaja Class (officially, it was ment to be renamed 'sun class').

The new revolutionary management resigned in July 1990, and quickly thereafter, the airline reverted to an only slightly modified version of its original livery (the ornaments around the windows were a bit less elaborate now to ease paintjobs, and the red had more of a hint into a lighter orange than the original rich red).

Only ten aircraft ever wore the 'sun class' livery, four A310-300s delivered new in that scheme, a Boeing 747-300 also delivered new, and four Boeing 747-200 that were repainted into it.

[aviaposter]

Airbus A321 Air Jamaica

Registration: 6Y-JMS Type: A321-211 Engines: 2 × CFMI CFM56-5B3/P Serial Number: 1966 First flight: Mar 28, 2003

Air Jamaica, established on August 27, 1963, served as Jamaica’s national airline. The Jamaican government opted not to invest in British West Indian Airways (BWIA), leading to the creation of Jamaica Air Service Ltd. This new airline was co-owned by the Jamaican government, the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), and BWIA. Employees from BWIA in Jamaica were transferred to the new company. In May 2011, Caribbean Airlines took over ownership and operations of Air Jamaica. Caribbean Airlines, based in Piarco, Trinidad and Tobago, managed Air Jamaica’s administrative functions from Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica. Air Jamaica ceased operations in 2015.

Poster for Aviators aviaposter.com

[networkthoughts]

Armenian Airlines to connect Yerevan to Delhi this November

In June this year, Armenia Airways announced that it would connect Delhi with Yerevan effective July 15. The flight by the two aircraft airlines never began operations going by airport websites of Delhi, Yerevan and data from Flightradar24. Delhi airport, though, has managed to sign up another Armenian carrier to start flights to Delhi from November. The airline’s name being very similar to the…

[e-learningsoftware]

S1000d Software Working Process - Code and Pixels

A new buzzword in the technical publishing world. New word? Not exactly new, but surely it’s a new word in the Indian Defense Technical Publishing segment.

S1000D is an Interactive Electronic Technical Publishing(IETP). It’s also called #ietm too.

S1000d is not new but very few Indian companies, which support documentation of foreign Airline documentation are similar to #S1000d word. But almost 90 % of the people who do S1000D conversation do not know what s1000d is.

[dzthenerd490]

News Post

Palestine

Why are hundreds of thousands of people protesting across Israel? | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Stop Genocide: Israel’s Final Solution to the Palestine Problem - CounterPunch.org

Turkish exports still reach Israel as goods sent to Palestine skyrocket | Middle East Eye

Ukraine

Ukraine’s foreign minister tenders resignation ahead of expected cabinet reshuffle as Russian missiles kill at least 7 | CNN

Putin Will Never Give Up in Ukraine | Foreign Affairs

Poland scrambles planes as Russia strikes western Ukraine | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Sudan

RSF loots National Museum of Sudan, says report | Middle East Eye

Starvation crisis of ‘historic proportions’ in Sudan, aid groups warn | Hunger News | Al Jazeera

As the war in Sudan marks 500 days, what is the situation in the country? | Explained News - The Indian Express

The World Is Ignoring the Catastrophe in Sudan | TIME

Other

DR Congo: At least 129 killed during mass prison break attempt | CNN

Ethiopian Airlines suspends flights to Eritrea (bbc.com)

Hundreds stranded at Sudan-Ethiopia border as conflict flares - Sudan Tribune

Myanmar regime labels key ethnic armed groups ‘terrorist’ organisations | Conflict News | Al Jazeera

[history-matters]

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.11

330 – Constantine the Great dedicates the much-expanded and rebuilt city of Byzantium, changing its name to New Rome and declaring it the new capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. 868 – A copy of the Diamond Sūtra is published, making it the earliest dated and printed book known. 973 – In the first coronation ceremony ever held for an English monarch, Edgar the Peaceful is crowned King of England, having ruled since 959 AD. His wife, Ælfthryth, is crowned queen, the first recorded coronation for a Queen of England. 1068 – Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, is crowned Queen of England. 1258 – Louis IX of France and James I of Aragon sign the Treaty of Corbeil, renouncing claims of feudal overlordship in one another's territories and separating the House of Barcelona from the politics of France. 1713 – Great Northern War: After losing the Battle of Helsinki to the Russians, the Swedish and Finnish troops burn the entire city, so that it would not remain intact in the hands of the Russians. 1812 – Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the British House of Commons. 1813 – William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth discover a route across the Blue Mountains, opening up inland Australia to settlement. 1857 – Indian Rebellion of 1857: Indian rebels seize Delhi from the British. 1880 – Seven people are killed in the Mussel Slough Tragedy, a gun battle in California. 1889 – An attack upon a U.S. Army paymaster and escort results in the theft of over $28,000 and the award of two Medals of Honor. 1894 – Four thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers go on a wildcat strike. 1919 – Uruguay becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1970 – The 1970 Lubbock tornado kills 26 and causes $250 million in damage. 1985 – Fifty-six spectators die and more than 200 are injured in the Bradford City stadium fire. 1996 – After the aircraft's departure from Miami, a fire started by improperly handled chemical oxygen generators in the cargo hold of Atlanta-bound ValuJet Airlines Flight 592 causes the Douglas DC-9 to crash in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 on board. 1997 – Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format. 1998 – India conducts three underground atomic tests in Pokhran. 2011 – An earthquake of magnitude 5.1 hits Lorca, Spain. 2013 – Fifty-two people are killed in a bombing in Reyhanlı, Turkey. 2014 – Fifteen people are killed and 46 injured in Kinshasa, DRC, in a stampede caused by tear gas being thrown into soccer stands by police officers. 2016 – One hundred and ten people are killed in an ISIL bombing in Baghdad. 2022 – The Burmese military executes at least 37 villagers during the Mon Taing Pin massacre in Sagaing, Myanmar. 2024 - Minnesota officially updates its flag.