"Minorities have the first right to the country's resources": Cong releases ‘Minority Declaration’ in Telangana, promises Rs 4,000 cr budget for welfare. Additional Rs 1,000 crore per annum to provide subsidised loans to jobless minority youth and women. Newly wed couples belonging to minority communities will be given Rs 1.6 lakh.
Countering Belt and Road: US commits $553 mln financing for Adani terminal venture at Colombo port
MusIim man in Germany:” when MusIims are in majority, we would take over Germany with force. Sharia law will be instead of Germany laws. When Germans stand against our sharia they will be attacked. Christians and Jews have to pay Jizya,Hindus,Buddhists have to leave or be killed” pic.twitter.com/OiN19m6DYR
Kaangress-like: Turncoats, internal feuds, centralized control -- BJP looking a lot like Kaangress.
Early cyclone detection: Indian scientists develop new technique that can detect tropical cyclones earlier than satellites!
Prior to the formation of a cyclonic system over the warm oceanic environment, the initial atmospheric instability mechanism, as well as the vortex development, is triggered at higher atmospheric levels. The method developed by the scientists aims to identify initial traces of pre-cyclonic eddy vortices in the atmospheric column and track its Spatio-temporal evolution.
Light and lightness: Sleeping and waking one hour earlier cuts risk of depression.. “Keep your days bright and your nights dark. Have your morning coffee on the porch. Walk or ride your bike to work if you can, and dim those electronics in the evening.”
Agrisolar Symbiosis: Solar farms could double as pollinator food supplies. In rural areas, an increase in pollinators can be beneficial to crops.
iOS15: China exempt from Apple 'private relay' privacy feature . . . . . . . . Big Tech is all woke if we tolerate.. grovels if we act tough!
Ladakh: 'Be ready with boots, bricks, bandobast'.. Chinese troops are not very far from the LAC -- 150-200KM. They can return to their previous positions in about 4-5 hours.
2-DG price: The final pricing of the 2-DG COVID-19 drug, touted as an “affordable” option, has left much to be desired with Dr Reddys
announcing a steep Rs 990 per sachet.
Covid Vaccine IP: How Big Pharma lobbied against India.. Lobby groups advocated not removing India from USTR priority watch list.
Boke Bong: Amartya Sen only Bharat Ratna awardee to avail free air travel.. He travelled 21 times between 2015 and 2019 . . . Freeloader #2
How Lutyens properties were usurped by the Nehru family:
-:- Teen Murti Bhavan
-:- 1, Safdarjung Road
-:- 10, Janpath
Nowhere in the world, the official residences of govt heads are usurped in this manner . . . . . . . . . Freeloader #1
Who benefits from privacy? Is Telegram becoming the new alternative to the Dark Web? Cybercriminals are sharing illegally obtained private data without fear of reprisal
Over 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada: From 19th century until 1970s, more than 150,000 indigenous children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused. Up to 6,000 are said to have died.
Myocarditis: Israel reports heart problem link with Pfizer 2nd shot.
What is science? People talk glibbery about science. What is science? People coming out of the university with a masters degree or a PhD, you take them into the field, they literally don't believe anything unless it is a peer reviewd paper - that is the only thing they accept. And you say to them, let's observe, let's think, let's discuss - they don't do it. It's just, is it in a peer-reviewed paper or not? That's their view of science. I think it's pathetic.
They go into universities as bright young people. They come out of them brain dead. Not even knowing what science means. They think it means peer-reviewed papers etc. No! That's academia and if a paper is peer reviewed it means everybody thought the same before they approved it. An unintended consequence is that when new knowledge emerges new scientific insights they can never ever be peer reviewed. So we're blocking all new advances in science that are big advances.
If you look at the breakthroughs in science almost always they don't come from the center of that profession they come from the fringe. The finest candle makers in the world couldn't even think of electric lights they don't come from within they often come from outside. We're going to kill ourselves because of stupidity.
Not a freeloader: Andhra sarpanch buys Rs 4 lakh ambulance with own money to aid villagers
Looting Karnataka: Black money heist case fuels internal feud in Kerala BJP. The origin of the havala money is a BJP office in Karnataka.
All resources are centralised at Delhi and route to power in Delhi goes via the poor but populous states of North. A natural consequence of this is unfair distribution of political and economic resources between politically strong and politically irrelevant states.
Now TN elections are over. TN Bjp leaders should insist to name all central schemes in regional languages Bjp finding it difficult to market welfare schemes with hindi name. Unless it is done, tn bjp can forget tamil nadu. Eg. Many tamilians dont know what is. Pm. awas yojana.
Tiger population won't survive vikAss: Despite a few hiccups, we still have tigers occupying all the habitats they were occupying at the beginning of Protect Tiger. This no longer seems to be the case with tiger reserves and sanctuaries being brought under the umbrella of development projects.
Is privatisation a panacea? Private airlines such as Jet Airways and Kingfisher collapsed due to a pile up of a large amount of debt. This resulted in an increase in the non-performing assets of public sector banks. Many private companies in the telecom sector are still struggling with debt. . . . . In the financial sector, YES Bank, a private sector bank, collapsed and SBI had to rescue it. Public sector banks face huge NPAs mainly due to private sector entrepreneurs wilfully defaulting on loans. The public sector oil and gas companies are also pushing for privatisation today, as governments fail to cover subsidy losses.
Capability Gap : CDS says China is capable of launching cyber attacks against India and that there is a capability gap between the two countries when it comes to technology.
Peter Thiel: Google and Apple are in bed with China. “Since everything in China is a civilian-military fusion, Google was effectively working with the Chinese military”... ″Apple is one that has real synergies with China. The whole iPhone supply chain gets made from China”... China may be using bitcoin to take down US Dollar.
Have I been Zucked? Over six million Facebook user’s data in India has allegedly surfaced on the hacker forum for free. “This means that if you have a Facebook account, it is extremely likely the phone number used for the account was leaked”.
Beijing tests the US in South China Sea: “If your goal is to take over a sea space and atoll without fighting for it, this is a brilliant if dishonest tactic. Only professional seamen know it’s a lie. Another major complication for Biden is Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, who has undermined the alliance while hailing closer ties with Beijing.
Dr. Sarala: How to prepare Millet Fermented Porridge: Ambali/Khameer.
Quote of the year: "Rahul Gandhi has a nervous, unformed quality about him like a student eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacking the aptitude or the passion to master the subject" -- Barack Obama.
No room for Mongolian nationalism: China erasing Genghis Khan from its history... French museum abruptly cancels a long-planned Genghis Khan exhibit after the Chinese Cultural Affairs Bureau demanded that the museum alter the exhibition’s title, removing the words “Genghis Khan,” “empire,” and “Mongol.”... The CCP forces the ruling ethnic Han Chinese culture onto minority cultures in its regions of Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, in many cases assimilating native minorities against their will.
The burning scar: Inside the destruction of Asia’s last rainforests. A Korean palm oil giant has been buying up swathes of Asia's largest remaining rainforests and setting it on fire deliberately.
A different kind of vikas: A Resilient Sponge Corridor - Beijing Yongxing River Greenway... Breaking through the conventional way of flood control engineering, Beijing Yongxing river greenway turns seasonal urban drainage into a water resilient green sponge to retain and filtrate stormwater, meanwhile create an ecologically sound, productive and community-building green infrastructure.
The concrete channel is removed and wetlands were constructed through a balanced cut and fill to create diverse habitats and activity places that fulfil the needs of local communities. This project showcases landscape as green infrastructure that provides a holistic ecosystem that regulates the hydrological environment, supports native biodiversity and creates community vitality.
Pullata Ram Kumar: NRI from Andhra Pradesh donates RO plant every year on his son's birthday
Trump lost the trade war: China stood firm and won. The sad truth is that the U.S. will continue to run huge wealth and technology transfers to China financed by America’s increasing net foreign debt that will show as net foreign assets on China’s books.
That's certainly how the Chinese see it. Trump tried to bully them; they hung tough; and are basically ending up where they started, buying agricultural products while selling us increasingly sophisticated manufactured goods 2/ https://t.co/akDz4MGiIz
If losing some $17 billion in agricultural exports to China due to the
trade war was tough for farmers, imagine a much larger market, with
China taking some $50 billion away from American agribusiness in the
future should relations deteriorate.
This is not France versus Germany. This is a capitalist democracy versus
a Frankenstein economy that’s one-part capitalist, one part
state-controlled, and run by a single political party — the Communist
Party — long considered the enemy of Western democracies.
“Sheltering Minority Refugees Act”: This govt simply does not understand the art of telling its story and managing the narrative internationally.
India creates an act for sheltering persecuted minorities.
It is slammed in global media for “persecuting” minorities. 🙄
RCom Bankruptcy: How India’s banks ran up a $7 Billion phone bill
Urgent need to connect bank databases: Shell companies have been used extensively for laundering the proceeds of crime. They thrive as bank databases are unconnected. In the Nirav Modi case, there was a Swift database, Punjab National Bank’s core banking system and the foreign exchange transactions database. All the three databases were not automatically connected.
o London’s Laundry Business: Billions of pounds of corruptly gained money has been laundered by criminals and foreign officials buying upmarket London properties through anonymous offshore front companies – making the city arguably the world capital of money laundering.
o The tax haven in the heart of London: It is the hub of a global network of tax havens sucking up offshore trillions from around the world and sending it, or the business of handling it, to London.
'Complete Streets':
Planning should factor in all people using our streets, not just
drivers. "When you
plan just for cars, you get cars, and we now have so many that traffic
is
horrendous and getting worse, it just won’t work anymore". It translates
to roads being reduced and lanes narrowed, parking spaces eliminated,
bike lanes added and the walk from curb to curb shortened.
China Is A Naval Powerhouse: China shipyards build civilian and military ships at the same time and most if not whole R&D and staff cost is dumped on civilain market. US navy shipiards not only don't do civilian ships but mostly have narrow specialization.
Loan Mela: The new governments will have to spend more than Rs 220 billion in Rajasthan, more than Rs 160 billion in MP, and nearly Rs 30 billion in Chhattisgarh to keep the promise.
The *political cost* of keeping BJP away from power by promising 'impossible' dreams and creating 'unsustainable' coalitions should soon play out, whether in Karnataka or Madhya Pradesh, one needs to have patience to wait out for it
We saw industry after industry violating every pollution control norm - this sort of growth they said, nobody wants, when locals cannot get clean air or clean water. Every river we crossed was a dry bed and often the river bed was being drained of water by mafia https://t.co/YmOxXCVdma
Mobility: Mahindra Electric is betting big on e-rickshaws
“Ancient Modalities”: Meditation is the fastest growing wellness activity in the US
Tao Te Ching: “Clay is made into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness that use depends. The door and windows are cut out to form a house; but it is on empty space, that its use depends. It is the empty space in the room that gives its function. Everything is shaped by nothing”.
The Extraordinary Life of Maurice Frydman: Virtually nothing is known about this most extraordinary man. He was in all the right places in all the right times to get the maximum benefit of interaction with some of the greats of Indian spirituality -- Sri Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Mahatma Gandhi and J. Krishnamurti… He was a Gandhian, he worked for the uplift of the poor in India, he worked with Tibetan refugees, he edited extraordinary books [like] “I am That,” probably one of the all time spiritual classics. Ramana Maharshi said of Frydman “He belongs only here to India. Somehow he was born abroad, but has come again here”.
“We ripen when we refuse to drift, when striving ceaselessly become a way of life, when dispassion born of insight becomes spontaneous. When the search ‘Who Am I?’ becomes the only thing that matters, when we become a mere torch and the flame all important, it will mean that we are ripening fast. We cannot accelerate that ripening, but we can remove the obstacles of fear and greed, indolence and fancy, prejudice and pride.” Maurice Frydman, April 1976 The Mountain Path
Karnataka bungle: “Once Modi and Shah left, the leaders here went into sleeping mode. The induction of former CM S M
Krishna was not used for the
benefit of the party. If the party had issued a ticket to Krishna’s
daughter Shambhavi from Maddur, a better show would have been possible”.
Caste math: A profile of the new Karnataka assembly
NASA satellites reveal freshwater decline: In northern India, groundwater extraction for irrigation of crops such as wheat and rice have caused a rapid decline in available water, despite rainfall being normal throughout the period studied. The fact that extractions already exceed recharge during normal precipitation does not bode well for the availability of groundwater during future droughts.
