Merry Christmas arrived in cinemas today. The film directed by Sriram Raghavan is a thriller led by Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi. Now, Atlee, who directed Vijay in Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan has reacted to the film.

Atlee took to his social media handle to share his thoughts on Merry Christmas. Sharing a poster of the film on his Instagram story, he wrote, “Merry Christmas! I have been waiting to write this one. My favourite narrative of recent times is a beautiful love story with an amazing thriller. Vijay Sethupathi, you were pure class to watch, and the climax performance was wooowwww. You’re always an inspiration. Keep inspiring us with such lovely films. Love you. Katrina Kaif’s work is stunning. Sriram Raghavan Sir, what a film. It’s a pure classic written all over it. Add a blockbuster feather to your cap, Sir.”

Check it out here:

It is indeed high praise. Earlier in the day, Vijay Kaushal cheered for his wife, actress Katrina Kaif. He wrote, “Merry Christmas everyone! So freaking proud of you love for how beautifully you have surrendered yourself to Sriram Sir’s masterful storytelling and to the complexities of ‘Maria’…Her rawness, her mystery, her magic… All done with such honesty and nuance! And that dance… uff! This one’s truly your best work till date. Vijay Sethupati Sir… don’t know how you bring that childlike innocence in your characters but it’s pure joy to watch you bring Albert alive. How you guys are going to make people jingle all the way when they watch the film… especially that end! Go enjoy this thrilling fun ride in theatres near you! Merry Christmas in cinemas now.”

Merry Christmas released in Hindi and Tamil. Radhika Apte and Sanjay Kapoor feature in the Hindi version while Radhika Sarathumar, Gayathrie and others star in the Tamil version. 

SEE ALSO: Merry Christmas Movie Review

Adding a 21.8-km feather to the country’s infrastructure cap, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link between Sewri in Mumbai and Nhava Sheva in Raigad district on Friday.

The trans harbour link, also known as the Atal Setu, is India’s longest sea bridge and will reduce the time taken for the journey between the two points from the current hour and a half to around 20 minutes.

Constructed at a cost of Rs 17,840 crore, the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) has six lanes, and 16.5 km of the bridge’s length is over the sea.

Officials said that, apart from bringing Mumbai and Navi Mumbai closer, the Atal Setu – named after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee – will not only help ease traffic and enhance transportation but also serve as an engine of economic growth.

The MTHL will provide faster connectivity to the Mumbai International Airport and the Navi Mumbai International Airport and also reduce travel time from Mumbai to Pune, Goa and South India. It will also boost connectivity between the Mumbai Port and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port.

Earthquake Resistant, Open Tolling

The Atal Setu is India’s first sea bridge to implement an open road tolling system, which will allow vehicles to pass through toll booths at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour without having to stop.

IIT Bombay had been roped in to strengthen the Atal Setu during its construction in 2018 and a team worked to ensure the design was done keeping in mind that it falls under a moderate earthquake damage risk zone. Professor Deepankar Choudhury, Head of Civil Engineering at IIT Bombay, said that the bridge is built to withstand four different types of earthquakes of up to 6.5 magnitude.

According to a report by news agency ANI, the lights used on the bridge were also chosen carefully to ensure that they do not disturb the aquatic environment.

“This is India’s longest bridge built on the sea. Several technologies have been used in the making of this bridge, which are used for the first time in India. The lights used in this bridge do not disturb the aquatic environment,” Commissioner of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority Dr Sanjay Mukherjee was quoted as saying.

The mystery surrounding the Indian Air Force’s An-32 transport aircraft, which had gone missing over the Bay of Bengal in 2016, may have been solved after debris from a crashed aircraft was detected off the Chennai coast. Twenty-nine personnel were onboard the aircraft which went missing during an operation mission.

An Autonomous Utility Vehicle (AUV), developed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology, was launched for deep-sea exploration to locate the missing aircraft at its last known location in the Bay of Bengal. 

The search was carried out at a depth of 3,400 metres using a multi-beam SONAR (Sound and Navigation Ranging), synthetic aperture SONAR and high-resolution photography. The payloads identified debris from a crashed aircraft on the sea bed 310 km off the Chennai coast.

Findings From Deep-Sea Search

The photographs were analysed and found to conform with the An-32 aircraft. No other aircraft crashed at that site or in that area and the photographs of the debris underpinned the results from the deep-sea search operation. The National Institute of Ocean Technology, which functions under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, believes that the debris possibly belongs to the crashed An-32 aircraft. The findings give closure to families of the personnel who were onboard but the reason behind the crash was never revealed. 

What Happened On July 22, 2016

The An-32 transport aircraft, with flight number K-2743, took off from the Tambaran air base in Chennai at 8:30 am on Jully 22, 2016 and was supposed to land at Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands around 11:45 am. The aircraft took off with 29 personnel including, eight civilians 

Sixteen minutes after take-off, the pilot made the last call and said, “Everything is normal”. The aircraft rapidly lost altitude from 23,000 feet and was off the radar around 9:12 am, 280 km off the Chennai coast. Almost eight years after the crash, debris from a crashed aircraft has been located 310 km from the coast in the same area. 

A massive search operation was launched by the Indian Air Force and the Navy to locate the aircraft. Navy’s Dornier aircraft and 11 ships – Sahyadri, Rajput, Ranvijay, Kamorta, Kirch, Karmuk, Kora, Kuthar, Shakti, Jyoti, Ghariyal and Sukanya, were deployed for the search operation.

This was India’s biggest search operation to locate the missing aircraft, which took off in rough weather from Chennai. A preliminary investigation said the aircraft was not carrying essential equipment that would have helped locate it in the event of a crash at sea.

NDTV had learnt that the black box of the Indian Air Force’s An-32, which had 29 people onboard, was not fitted with an underwater locator beacon, making a search operation for the wreckage of the aircraft extremely difficult.

The underwater locator beacon is designed to emit an electronic signal at a particular frequency for at least a month after it is automatically activated during a crash and is used on all civilian aircraft.