• Angered over President Tsai Ing-wen's visit to the US last week, China has launched a three-day military drill to intimidate Taiwan and as a warning to the US. The patrol also has a standby nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine (see pix below).
• Meanwhile, Tsai's meeting with Kevin McCarthy indicates a bipartisan move in the US, probably a Biden plan for legislation to end the ambiguity over official relations with Taiwan.
• And, next year's election in Taiwan will be fought by the US and China by proxy.
• The US seeks to check the growing Chinese military presence in the Pacific with new alliances.

ANALYSIS: The underlying crime that defendant ex-President Donald Trump, is said to have concealed by falsification of business records - which only will make the whole thing a felony and stand up in the court - is not specified in the indictment which is sketchy: may be because prosecutors can withhold details at this stage. Yet, the hush-money payment being federal election law violations, it cannot come under the jurisdiction and scope of State prosecutors. Deprived of substantial documentary evidence, how will the veteran District Attorney Alwin Bragg navigate through this complexity and prove the intent is to be seen. He will have an option to invoke State tax laws, where violation is serious crime. But that is another case. The trial will drag on for years, anyway!

What next: His fingerprints and mugshot will be taken like any defendant in criminal cases. Arrest is unlikely (Florida Governor can block any warrant, complicating matters). Trump's attorney Tacopina said Trump will turn himself in.

Can Trump contest presidential election? Yes. There is no existing US law to bar him. He can even serve as President from prison.

The loophole: The Grand Jury has no documentary evidence as the NDA was not signed either by Trump or Cohen (Trump's attorney who turned hostile) on his behalf. It is depending on the testimony of Cohen and Daniels.

Where do Republicans stand: At any rate, the 'stormy petrel' has cooked Donald Trump's presidential goose, although he thinks otherwise. The Republicans are a divided lot.

• The shooter, a former student of the school., entered through a side door, after breaking the glass door. She was shot dead by the police, but only after six lives were lost.
• Every time a shooting takes place in the US, every time the White House makes a statement: “Enough is enough.” It's funny, painful and cruel!. Mostly the mass shootings take place in the schools.

In a related development, the USCIS issued a clarification that those who have lost jobs in the ongoing layoffs in the tech sector can apply for a change of non-immigrant status or for a "compelling circumstances" employment authorization document and stay back. This followed an appeal to Biden by thousands of Indians who have been affected by the layoffs.

"Enough!" - In a sheer lack of sense of proportion, President Biden had reacted to yet another boy, just of 15 years, shooting dead five people in North Carolina some time ago, besides sounding like he is going to put an end to American gun violence instantly! After the latest LA episode, he is yet to react! Biden presents a brilliant comparison to Indian Chief Ministers for their stupid reactions in similar circumstances of recent months!

For sure, gun violence will continue as long as the gun is there! Primarily meant for self-defence, how many times - or what percentage of all firings - it has successfully defended the carriers and saved lives and how? Has there been a survey?

Cricketer Rishabh Pant had an attack of sleep at the wheel. The situation of a sudden attack of sleep during travel is not a sleep disorder like narcolepsy but a common occurrence when one does not get enough rest and, surely, is not preventable. Because no driver really knows the moment when sleep attack will come over, says a US study. The consequence can be disastrous, especially in long distance driving.

Darkness has descended on most of the US from the Great Lakes to Mexican border and from the Appalachian mountains in the east to the Rockies mountains in the west without power, and large swathes have gone under the snow. Several thousands of flights have been cancelled due to the howling blizzards and zero-visibility in the past few days and medical services are unable to operate sans accessibility. A fast-moving Guv Kathy Hochul has already declared emergency in New York and closed vulnerable airports. Christmas is washed out.

The story is no different in Canada, coming nearer to the pole where the cold vortex cycle has been blasted off (Arctic blast) by the hot winds from an Atlantic, warmed up due to climate change.

The life-threatening situation will continue for several days more. Too taxing for the hypothalamus!

COMMENT: Something is not up and up. For several weeks now overcrowding and serpentine queues during peak hours have been reported at immigration and security checks from major airports like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Passengers are missing flights. On Monday also Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia rushed to Terminal 3 of the IGI Airport in Delhi to see for himself what is amiss.

Peak hour or no peak hour, the airport gives permission for airlines to schedule their flights according to its capacity. And, only those passengers who have booked their tickets will go to the airport. No issue about that. (And, the volume is less than that of pre-covid) The crowding is at the check points. But the ruling clerks decided that the number of flights should be reduced to solve the problem of overcrowding at the check points!!!

Where is the catch? A simple and honest Minister, Scindia looks flummoxed. There is also a multiplicity of 'cross-purpose' authorities at the airport and various remote power centres are pulling the strings!

Tailpiece: Sack the Ministry of clerks, first. We need airport operator, airlines and an aviation regulator, who will be directly answerable to the Minister. Neither the legions of clerks, nor the remotely controlled security personnel. We had done it once in the past, elsewhere.

Let a work culture usher in on its own, as the Americans had prescribed to us decades ago!

A half-baked British media report has laid the 'blame' at the Indian High Commission's door for the assumed losses of the British tourists, who have en masse cancelled India trips for want of visas. In the first place, why one must book tour package and then look for visa in a busy season? Because that has been the practice with the tour operators and nothing new. They refund money if visa is not comimg. However, the article is silent on this and implicates the mission alleging it changed the visa rules, while that is contrary to the fact. The UK report, duplicated in India mindlessly, has defamed the Indian High Commission. However, there are some missing links!

A million visitors are queuing up to attend the longest-reigning Queen Elizabeth II Lying-in-State, making history; while a galaxy of world leaders land in London for the State funeral at Westminster Abbey at 11 am (3:30 pm IST) on Monday. It will be a huge gathering of world leaders never seen before. King Charles III hosted a reception at Buckingham Palace for them on Sunday evening. There were 500 dignitaries.

The queue from Southwark Park touches Tower bridge, London bridge, Southwark bridge, Millennium bridge, Blackfriars bridge, Waterloo bridge and Westminster bridge before crossing the Lambeth bridge to enter a zig-zag near the entrance.

The BBC gave a calculation of the length of the queue. The distance from Westminster to Southwark Park, the starting point of the queue, is 11 km. Then there is the zig-zag section of nearly 5 km to rough in. So the queue is meandering slowly up towards Westminster for a total of 16 km! (which in theory becomes a constant). Although, 16 km is quite a lot for standing and moving without any chance to cool your legs for a moment. "Very little opportunity to sit down as the queue will be continuously moving” - the Government itself cautioned a swelling stream of mourners pouring into London from across the kingdom day and night. The time taken can easily be 14 hours! Yet the determination keeps everyone fit as a fiddle.

The calculation doesn't take into account a queue to join the queue that has come up and the last-minute doubling of the official queue into a double lane.

The masses in the queues looked extremely solemn and serious too and displayed an amazing natural discipline that illustrated a national character evolved partly from a thousand years of democratic tradition.

ANALYSIS: Rishi Sunak, the man in a hurry, is alleged to have stabbed BoJo in the back by resigning at the most opportune moment, triggering about 60 more resignations out of coincidence or conspiracy, hitting the nail in Johnson's coffin. Much maligned by a series of scams for quite some time, the voluble, pretentious, hilarious BoJo's support base among the Conservative party MPs had already been crumbling fast, even leading to a no-confidence vote which he narrowly survived a while ago.

Now that he had lost his "best job in the world", BoJo was determined to take revenge on Sunak, and launched vicious underground campaigns like the green card scam to tarnish his image he had been assiduously building up for long in anticipation.

The PM might have played a role in putting up Truss who was not in the reckoning in the beginning when nearly a dozen names were floated for the prime ministerial race. It is said Johnson mobilised support for her from the background, putting to use all the resources at his disposal. Truss thus became the dark horse, gradually taking on the front-runner Sunak.

Assuming for a moment Sunak were not to be a candidate this time, his bringing down the disgraced Prime Minister would have had an enormously positive political advantage for him for future use. The immediate public perception would not have been one of betrayal of BoJo (Although the reality would not change).

He had done many a thing in the immediate past to carve out an artificial image to promote his ambition. Even the $18 billion package might one day be seen as a freebie. Then everything happened in the month of July in supernatural speed. Later he was even directly questioned at several of the hustings about the integrity in bringing down BoJo.

The long and short of it is that morality in public life and literature as an integral part of British culture and long democratic tradition is an invincible force in the kingdom but at times mistakenly taken for granted!

What is the fallout?

The spectacle was an engineering marvel that took India to the world club of demolitions, even as in less than ten seconds it created a gap up in the sky incomprehensible for the layman. Where has it gone!

Founded on compassion, the Amrita hospital will cater for all the economically underprivileged sections of Delhi National Capital Region and beyond. Equipped with cutting-edge technology, the poor will be able to access the latest in healthcare at India's largest hospital.

"We were taught to see a world beyond just ourselves. To be conscious and compassionate about the struggles of all people." - Kamala Harris, Vice-President-elect, United States of America. She is releasing a series of her reminiscences of her early period, of people and events that had deep influence on the course of her life and thoughts, in the coming days leading up to her inauguration as the Vice-President of America, the first woman ever to occupy a position that high in the greatest democracy yet.