COMMENT: It is anticipated that the Centre will finalise the legalities of a package and take the stage-managed Manipur 'problem' to its conclusion this week, also rendering the rabble-rousing infructuous. Let the North-east with its bountiful nature become one of the safest tourist destinations in the country!

Meanwhile, after a break on Thursday, violence resumed on Friday and on Saturday it was the most ferocious. Bishnupur-Churachandpur border reported day-long mortar and grenade attacks and a heavy, non-stop exchange of fire. Three villagers, including a father-son duo, were killed in a pre-dawn attack on a village in Kwakta area of Bishnupur district on Friday. In retaliatory attacks, mortar shells and grenades were used in Kwakta's two neighbouring villages, Phoujang and Songdo, which fall in the Kuki district Churachandpur, killing two people and injuring a few others on Saturday.

There was shooting in Imphal East district. Houses were burnt in West district. Curfew has been reimposed in the Capital.

The rival groups are well-armed as they are in possession of about 4,000 weapons including AK and ‘Ghatak’ series of assault rifles, and 50,000 rounds of ammunition and mortars and grenades looted from police stations and armouries in both the hills and the valley. Were they kept in the open?

IMPHAL, Aug 5: Violence has returned to Manipur beginning a more threatening phase of the three-month old strife that claimed over 150 lives so far. Organised firing has begun by rival communities, who have in their custody stockpiles of arms like AK-47, machine guns and bombs. At least three more people died early on Saturday. Several houses were burnt in Bishnupur. Inphal is also tense as the curfew is violated. There is contnuous firing in the buffer zone.

Everything seemed to settle down on Thursday, the day the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) had planned a mass burial of 35 bodies in Bolijang village in Torbung Bangla in Churachandpur district bordering Bishnupur, the latter a Meitei majority district. They had announced their plan on Monday. The Meiteis' COCOMI front had opposed the burial saying that for one, the land belongs to the Government and two, it is very close to Meitei homes. When the Meiteis tried to break a barricade and tried to cross into Churachandpur, the Assam Rifle and the Rapid Action force prevented them and in the ensuing stone-throwing and clashes 30 Meira Paibis were injured.

There were three positive developments on Thursday:

1) The High Court ordered status quo in response to a petition by the International Meitei Forum vis-a-vis the burial plan.

2) The Union Home Ministry wrote to the ITLF to postpone the burial and that the Government will find a solution.

3) The ITLF then issued a press statement postponing the burial. (However, the press statement contained potentially explosive matters, indicating that there is not going to be an easy solution to the Manipur problem.)

All these ingredients pointed to a turning point, a prospective settlement of the Manipur problem ahead.

But that was not to be. Both sides started stockpiling arms. During the evening and the day after several police posts and armouries were looted of huge quantities of weapons.

On Friday a crowd forcibly entered a police armoury and seized firearms, including the AK and ‘Ghatak’ series of assault rifles, and over 19,000 rounds. The looting took place at the 2nd India Reserve Battalion’s battalion headquarters at Naranseina, Bishnupur district.

Friday overnight began the shooting from the hills. Intense shooting continues. Assam Rifles, RAF and the army are on standby in the buffer zone between the valley and the hills.

There were fresh incidents in Bishnupur district on Friday. The violence resulted in the death of at least three people from the Meitei community in the Kwakta area. Several houses of the Kuki community were also set on fire.

Heavy firing continued on Saturday in the border area of Kangvai, between the Valley and the hills. Also in Imphal violence continued as mobs violated curfew. Mobs clashed with the police in West Imphal.

The beginning of the ethnic clashes

The ethnic clashes started in the northeastern state of Manipur on May 3, when the tribal Kukis who live in the hills staged protests against a move to grant Scheduled Tribe status to Meiteis also, who live in the valley, saying that it will reduce their quota. The Meiteis form the majority community. Over 160 people have died in violence since then and over 50,000 have been displaced. Hundreds of houses have been burnt on both sides.

Both sides have unlimited stockpiles of modern weapons and ammunition, mainly looted from the armouries of the security forces. It is reported that 4,000 weapons and 50,000 rounds of ammunition and mortars and grenades have been looted from police stations and armouries in both hills and the valley since the clashes began. In addition, around 500 people in 40 vehicles looted arms and ammunition from the Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB) camp at Naraseina in Bishnupur district on August 3.

Two days earlier, in a similar incident in the area, a domestic help was bitten by a pet dog in the lift when she was going for work.

Tailpiece: Sometimes appearing to outnumnber men and women on the streets, the stray dogs are turning more and more daring with sections of anti-social elements out there to feed and protect them in order to find a window for their unfulfilled love! There is an all-pervading feeling of lack of authority.

Ankit Tiwari had told the employee that “instructions had been received from the Prime Minister’s Office to conduct an enquiry” and reopen the “already disposed of” case and asked him to appear before the ED office at Madurai on October 30, DVAC said. The doctor was allegedly threatened with arrest and told to pay a bribe of Rs 3 cr to avoid the ED probe, which was later negotiated down to Rs 50 lakh.

Tailpiece: We are made to believe RBI, CBI, ED, Judiciary as sacrosanct and all others like railways, transport, revenue, education, PWD departments are composed of us the mortals, absolutely corrupt! As if in the sacrosanct places the angels descend from the heavens to work in the night and fly away before day-break! Let's be true to ourselves, we are all cut from the same cloth.

Apart from cash, Gill had also taken three planes as bribe and two of them were leased out to Redbird Aviation Academy. With the result, flying schools compromised on safety requirements and trainers met with accidents several times.

Five people were arrested from a banquet hall in Sector 51 Noida on Thursday where they were called to hold a rave party in a trap laid by the animal rights group, PFA. They named Yadav but he was not present.

Betting through Dubai-based Mahadev Book in India is conducted through a countrywide network. Probes reveal that the online gambling is worth several millions and top politicians, officials and celebs have been beneficiaries.

TAILPIECE: Polling dates for some States are round the corner. Top politicians have begun their acrimonious debate who looted more, even as Mahadev is washing their dirty laundry in the open ghat. Come what may, one needs to seize power to amass "thy wretched pelf!" One simple question is, why else one should spend lakhs or crores to get elected! A question every Indian should ask to oneself at least once a day!

His inaction amounts to defeating the rights of the people of the State to welfare measures sought to be implemented through the Bills, the Kerala Government's petition submitted, while the State of Tamil Nadu remarked that its "Governor is acting as a political rival."

Tailpiece: Coming up back to back, the petitions in their totality seem to question the provision of Raj Bhavan, and not motives of a Governor as a person.

Hundreds of cars piled up behind the wreckage of crashes occurring one after other in backing up - continuous crashes to the rhythm of metallic clanks and bangs back to back. According to reports, some ops required 'Jaws of Life' to pull apart the mangled cars to save lives inside.

The pilots struggled with Emerson to thwart a shut-off as he reached for the T-handles (see pix). Later he admitted to police he had taken psychedelic mushrooms and had a "nervous breakdown."

Doctors reasoned how the incidence of heart attacks is spiking over time and advise the simple way to play safely is to take a break and rehydrate yourself.

But how come ten people, including children, die of cardiac arrest at Garba in 24 hours, and that at different places of Gujarat? Garba had been going on for six days, and every year it is celebrated.

The killing of a teacher in France by an Islamic radical last Friday is linked to the Israel-Hamas war in West Asia, say authorities.

Shocking news from the UK: Leading grocers have started bribing policemen with free food and drinks to persuade them to take action against shoplifters.

Shoplifting has risen by about 27 per cent in 10 major cities across the UK this year. The cost of retail crime last year was $2.15 billion. Besides, “We are seeing organised gangs threatening staff with weapons and emptying stores," Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said. Data shows that the police failed to respond to 73 per cent of serious retail crimes that included assault and abuse of workers, apart from shoplifting.

Isar Mohammad allegedly picked up a banana offered to Ganesh idol on Chaturthi at a makeshift temple in Delhi and consumed it.

Harris said hip-hop is “the ultimate American art form” that “shapes every aspect of American popular culture.” “Hip-hop culture is American culture,” she said in a talk at her official residence at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.

The social media had mixed reaction. There was much appreciation that she dances better than any VP in American history. But some called her "moves" as “cringe” while others did not like her pink pants - "pink pants don’t look good.” In fact, her ensembles have always been incongruous.

"Let’s see how the (Governor's) Vice-Chancellors are given salary." Mamata's extreme statements will put the Marxist Government in Kerala, which is also facing similar issues, to shame. Has she begun the countdown for a war on the streets?

It's true Mamata has come to see a conspiracy to demolish the established systems across the country, but lacks the ability to foresee what exactly is being pushed.

Brandishing a sword, Mahant Paramhans told reporters on Tuesday he himself will behead MK Stalin's son for his remarks against Sanatan Dharma in case nobody came forward to accept his offer he made in his video. Udhayanidhi reacted to the saint's Monday video, "I will speak more. I am the grandson of the artist who put his head on the rail track for Tamil Nadu."

Somanath elaborated, "I am an explorer. I explore the Moon. I explore the inner space. So it's a part of the journey of my life to explore both science and spirituality. So I visit many temples and I read many scriptures. So try to find the meaning of our existence and our journey in this cosmos. So it's a part of the culture that we are all built to explore, find out the inner self as well as outer self. So for the outer, I do science, for the inner I come to temples." (See videos)

Rao the mathematical legend had fathered the path-breaking Rao-Blackwell theorem, one of the most important theorems in mathematical statistics, at the age of 25. That brought him global fame. He is also famous for his Cramér-Rao Bound inequality theorem relating to quality of estimators in statistics which has had a profound bearing on applications of modern economics and several other diverse fields. Simply put, with the pioneering statistician computation became a tool to analyse even socio-economic challenges of modern times.

The alleged incident has received such a flash publicity that a standardised city's hugely middle class population will have second thoughts about eating outside for some time. Now everything on the table looks suspicious!

“All subjects directly connected to the people should be shifted to the State List. Particularly the subject of education. Only if this is done can cruel exams like NEET be abolished,” Stalin said. Education was moved from the State List to the Concurrent List with the 42nd Constitution Amendment made by the Central Government in 1976.

Decentralisation has been at the core of Tamil politics since the times of CN Annadurai. Stalin indicated there will be political changes in the offing.

TAILPIECE: While the Centre and the States are at loggerheads, it takes a different cognitive acumen to know that entrance tests are not the way for students' admission to courses.