
1,300 prisoners participate in ‘Yogandhra' at Central Jail
Notably, Karthik Ramachandra Reddy, a Class 9 student from SKVT Government School, demonstrated advanced yoga postures like Gandabherundasana, Urdhva Kukkutasana, Brahmastrasana, Kailasasana, Malayasana, and Sugrivasana. Speaking on the occasion, Tourism, Culture and Cinematography Minister Kandula Durgesh announced a special cine celebrities' yoga session will be held in Tirupati on June 15. He said that a record was set in Surat, Gujarat, where 1.23 lakh people participated in yoga, and expressed the AP's ambition to surpass that by organising a mega yoga event with five lakh participants in Visakhapatnam.
District collector P Prasanthi emphasised that yoga should be practiced regularly and voluntarily, as it contributes significantly to physical and mental well-being. The jail's Superintendent S Rahul showcased various products made by inmates, including furniture, bed sheets. He mentioned that some of these items are being supplied to other prisons across the state. Rajanagaram MLA Battula Balaramakrishna, MLC Somu Veerraju, Joint Collector S Chinna Ramudu, Additional SP Ramesh Babu, District Revenue Officer T Sitarama Murthy and others participated in this Yoga session.
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Economic Times
an hour ago
- Economic Times
At least 3 killed and others injured in train derailment in southern Germany
Synopsis A regional passenger train derailed in southern Germany near Riedlingen, resulting in at least three fatalities and numerous serious injuries. The incident occurred around 6:10 p.m. with approximately 100 passengers on board. Authorities are investigating the cause, considering heavy rains and a possible landslide as potential factors, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed condolences. AP Rescue workers search for passengers in a derailed train, Zwiefaltendorf, Sunday July 27, 2025. A regional passenger train derailed in southern Germany on Sunday, killing at least three people and seriously injuring others, authorities and local police said the cause of the crash near Riedlingen, roughly 158 kilometers (98 miles) west of Munich, remains under investigation. Photos from the scene showed parts of the train on its side as rescuers climbed atop the was not immediately clear how many people were injured. Roughly 100 people were onboard the train when at least two carriages derailed in a forested area around 6:10 p.m. (1610 GMT).Storms passed through the area before the crash and investigators were seeking to determine if the rain was a factor."There have been heavy rains here, so it cannot be ruled out that the heavy rain and a related landslide accident may have been the cause. However, this is currently the subject of ongoing investigations," said Thomas Strobl, interior minister of the state of Baden Wurttenberg. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in a post on social platform X, said he mourned the victims and gave his condolences to their Bahn, Germany's main national railway operator, said in a statement that it was cooperating with investigators. The company also offered its condolences. (AP)


Scroll.in
13 hours ago
- Scroll.in
A 16th-century Chinese writer spoke of workplace burnout, creating a design for radical acts of rest
We are in the middle of a global workplace burnout epidemic — aptly named the 'burnout society ' by Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Four centuries ago, late Ming Dynasty scholar-official Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) shifted from state administrative work to xiaopin – brief, personal essays celebrating everyday pleasures like gardening, leisurely excursions and long vigils beside a rare blossom. Today, his Ming Dynasty-era practice resonates with uncanny urgency within our burnout epidemic. Amid the Wanli Emperor's neglect and escalating bureaucratic infighting in Beijing, Yuan turned away from what today we call a 'toxic workplace.' Instead, he found refuge in Jiangnan's landscapes and literary circles. There he exchanged hierarchical pressures, administrative tedium and cut-throat careerism for moments of unhurried attention. Yuan's xiaopin, alongside those of his contemporaries, transformed fleeting sensory moments into radical acts of resilience, suggesting that beauty, not institutions, could outlast empires. The Ming Dynasty: A literary rebellion The late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) was an era of contradictions. While Europe hurtled toward colonialism and scientific rationalism, China's Jiangnan region – the fertile Yangtze Delta in today's Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces – flourished via merchant wealth, global silver trade and a thriving print culture. Bookshops lined city streets like modern cafés. They peddled plays, poetry and xiaopin volumes like Meiyou Pavilion of Arts and Leisure (1630) and Sixteen Xiaopin Masters of the Imperial Ming (1633). The imperial examination system, a civil service written exam – once a path to prestige – had become a bottleneck. Thousands of scholars languished in bureaucratic limbo, channelling their frustrations and exhaustion into xiaopin 's intimate vignettes. In his preface to Meiyou Pavilion, editor Zheng Yuanxun (1603–1644) praised the genre's 'flavour beyond flavour, rhythm beyond rhythm' – a poetic nod to its rich sensory detail and subtle musicality – rejecting moralising orthodox prose by embracing immersive aesthetics. Against neo-Confucianism 's rigid hierarchies, xiaopin elevated the private, the ephemeral and the esthetically oblique: a well-brewed pot of tea, the texture of moss on a garden rock and incense wafting through a study. Wei Shang, professor of Chinese culture at Columbia University, has noted such playful text flourished among late Ming literati disillusioned with the era's constraints. The texts reframed idleness and sensory pleasure as subtle dissent within a status-obsessed society. When doing less becomes radical Long before French poet Charles Baudelaire's flâneur used dandyism and idle promenades to resist the alienating pace of western modernity, Ming literati like Chen Jiru (1558–1639) and Gao Lian (1573–1620) framed idleness as defiance. Drawing on Daoist wu wei (non-action), Gao praised the 'crystal clear retreat' that scrubbed the heart of 'worldly grime' and cultivated 'a tranquil heart and joyful spirit.' For him, human worth lay not in bureaucratic promotions but in savouring tea, listening to crickets or resting against a well-fluffed pillow. Hung-tai Wang, a cultural historian at Academia Sinica in Taipei, identifies xiaopin as a 'leisurely and elegant' aesthetic rooted in nature's rhythms. Chen Jiru, a Ming Dynasty-era painter and essayist, embodied this framework by disallowing transactional logic. In one essay, Chen lauds those who possess 'poetry without words, serenity without sutras, joy without wine.' In other words, he admired those whose lives resonated through prioritizing lived gestures over abstract ideals. In the late Ming's burgeoning urban and commercial milieu, xiaopin turned everyday objects into remedies for social isolation. In the Jiangnan gardens, late Ming essayists saw landscapes infused with emotion. At the time, essayist Wu Congxian called it 'lodging meaning among mountains and rivers:' moonlight turned into icy jade, oar splashes to cosmic echoes. Chen Jiru had study rituals – fingering a bronze cauldron, tapping an inkstone – curating what he termed 'incense for solitude, tea for clarity, stone for refinement.' This cultivation of object-as-presence anticipates American literary scholar Bill Brown's 'thing theory,' where everyday items invite embodied contemplation and challenge the subject-object binary that enables commodification. The Ming Dynasty-era scholar-connoisseur, Wen Zhenheng (1585–1645), turned domestic minutiae into philosophical resistance. His xiaopin framed everyday choices – snowmelt for tea, rooms facing narrow water, a skiff 'like a study adrift' – as rejections of abstraction. Through details like cherries on porcelain or tangerines pickled before ripening, he asserted that value lies in presence, not utility. Wen suggests that exhaustion stems not from labour but from disconnection. The burnout rebellions: ' Tang ping,' 'quiet quitting' Just as xiaopin turned domestic rituals into resistance, today's movements recast the mundane as a mode of defiance. In April 2021, China's tang ping ('lying flat') movement surfaced with a post by former factory worker Luo Huazhong: 'Lying flat is justice.' The message was simple and subversive: work had become intolerable, and opting out was not laziness but resistance. In a backlash against China's '996' work model extolled by tech moguls like Jack Ma, tang ping rejects the sacrifice of dignity and mental health for productivity and casts idleness as a quiet revolt against exploitative norms. In the West, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked similar reckonings. The ' Great Resignation ' saw millions leave unfulfilling jobs. And 'quiet quitting' rejected unpaid overtime and emotional labour. These movements emerged as a soft refusal of hustle culture. As anthropologist David Graeber argues in Bullshit Jobs (2018), the 'moral and spiritual damage' inflicted by meaningless work reflects a profound political failure. Just like the late Ming literati who poured their lives into a state that repaid them with hollow titles and bureaucratic decay, today's workers withdraw from institutions that exploit their labour yet treat them as disposable. Unlike French philosopher Michel de Montaigne's introspective self-examination in his Renaissance-era Essays, xiaopin refuses utility. In doing so, it inverts the contemporary self-help trend critiqued by Byung-Chul Han, which co-opts personal ' healing ' as a form of productivity through neoliberal logic. Xiaopin proposes resistance as an existential shift beyond (self-) optimisation. Its most radical gesture is not to demand change, but to live as if the system's demands are irrelevant. Xiaopin asks: What is progress without presence? Its fragments – on lotus ponds, summer naps, a cat's shadow – prove that resistance need not be loud. Like Japanese writer Haruki Murakami's vision of contemporary literature as 'a space of individual recovery,' the genre shelters us from 'hierarchy and efficiency.' Here, time is not spent but reclaimed. To pause in an age of weaponised ambition is in fact revolt. Tracing a petal's vein, sipping tea until bitterness fades, lying flat as the machinery of productivity grinds on – these are not acts of shirking reality, but defiant gestures against the systems that feed on our exhaustion. They are affirmations of agency: microcosms where we rehearse what it means to belong to ourselves, and thus, to the world. Xiaopin 's revolution awakens in a flicker of attention: a reminder that presence, too, is a language – one that hums beneath the buzz of progress, waiting to be heard. Jason Wang is Postdoctoral Fellow, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, Toronto Metropolitan University.


Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
Indian man praises Netherlands' civic sense as authorities plan to fix minor road bumps near his home
An Indian man residing in the Netherlands has captured the attention of social media users after he posted a heartwarming video showing his appreciation for the country's proactive governance. Prabhu Visha, the man behind the viral clip, took to Instagram to share a short video of himself skating down a smooth stretch of road near his home, accompanied by a powerful message about civic responsibility and inclusiveness. A video went viral after an Indian man admired the Dutch government's plan to repair small road flaws.(Instagram/prabhuvisha) (Also read: Dutch princess attends graduation ceremony but doesn't receive diploma because…) 'Even small bumps matter here' The video opens with Prabhu gliding effortlessly on his skates. Overlaid on the clip is a simple but striking statement: 'This is why I believe the Netherlands truly cares for its people.' In the caption, Prabhu reflects on a recent experience that left him deeply impressed with the Dutch system. 'Coming from India, this honestly felt so beautiful to me. Near my home in the Netherlands, there were some small bumps on the road. For me, the road was already perfect. But then we got a letter from the government explaining they will fix it – with details of why, when, where and how,' he wrote. He added, 'It's possible some people complained about it, and that's why they're fixing it. But still, it's amazing that they listen and act. Even small bumps matter here – for pregnant women, people biking with kids, or the elderly. Seriously, hats off to this government for their inclusion and communication. This is what it means to work for the people and with the people. I wish every country cared for its people like this.' Take a look here at the video: Internet reacts with admiration The post struck a chord with viewers and prompted a wave of praise in the comments section. One user remarked, 'This is what public service should look like – listening and acting swiftly.' Another commented, 'I wish our local officials showed even half this level of concern.' A third wrote, 'This gives me hope that good governance still exists somewhere.' Others chimed in with admiration, calling the Dutch approach 'inspiring' and 'the gold standard in civic management.' One user noted, 'The fact they even explain why they're fixing something already better than most countries!'