Fumio Kishida was unharmed as he was whisked away by securitymen.
A suspect was detained after he threw a smoke bomb when Kishida was
about to deliver an election campaign speech at Saikazaki port in Wakayama
in the west. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated a few
months ago under similar circumstances. However, Japan had been
comparatively free of political violence.
On the style of Eurostar across English Channel but on a mini scale, Kolkata
Metro is launching soon a rail service through Hooghly's riverbed for a shortcut
to Howrah Main in the westside.
Makes travel easy for tourists and pilgrims heading for destinations like
Pushkar and Ajmer Sharif Dargah in Rajasthan. The train covers a distance of
429 km in 5 hours and 15 minutes, and has stops at Alwar and Jaipur.
The airline lodged a complaint with the airport police upon landing in Delhi and
handed over the unruly passenger, Jaskirat, to them. Both the crew members
were taken to hospital for examination of their injuries.
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!
COMMENT: Many employees at the Walmart store in Virginia had complained
about Andre Bing's misbehaviour. The survivor of the mass shooting had, way
back when, complained to the management in writing about the shooter
employee's unacceptable behaviour towards her and other employees, on
September 10. Her mother too had come and complained to the manager about Bing's abusive behaviour and her concerns about her daughter's safety. But the manager told her that Bing "was liked by the management," while the shooter
supervisor of the Chesapeake store should have been delivered to the rehab
post-haste. The manager's reply! A usual conundrum employees in India are
familiar with but was never thought to be the proclivities of reigning "animal
spirits" in the "land of dreams." Seven precious lives lost to the devil's shots!
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!
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.
At that momentous event, "I will be thinking about my
mother (the late Shyamala Gopalan), who is looking down
from heaven," Harris said. The scaled back presidential
inauguration this time will have no precedent with a
devastating coronavirus locking down everything and a
heightened security bandobast with reports of armed Trump
protesters likely to re-enact the Capitol episode posing the
gravest threat to Biden, the President-elect, and others.
"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.
The first woman Vice-President has become an inspiration for girls
of colour, and for all girls. Kamala Harris is becoming an icon. Her
passionate speech had a great, lasting impact on the listeners,
when she said, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will
not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that
this is a country of possibilities.”
Yet another helpless Indian woman having had to go to Saudi Arabia in search of work as maid servant has reportedly died of physical and mental torture
by her employer, it has been alleged. However, the Indian Foreign Ministry has
said after an inquiry that she died of natural causes.
Unlimited excitement will be on offer in Dubai as Lionsgate Entertainment
and The 20th Century Fox are building theme parks to provide the audience an
illusion of experiences of timeless horror of the Titanic disaster and the death and rebellion of the dystopia.
PUDUCHERRY (PONDICHERRY)
Promenade Beach, Paradise Beach, Auroville Beach, Serenity Beach, Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Church of the Capuchins, Manakula Vinayagar Temple, Thirukaameeswarar Temple (Periya Koil), Aurobindo Ashram, Auroville, French War Memorial, Romain Rolland Library, Governor's Palace, Bharati Park (Government Park), Light House, Chunnambar Beach, Backwater Resort