Who isn’t in rapper-comedian Lil Dicky’s new song about climate change?

The Benny Blanco-produced track “Earth” ― released this week in anticipation of Earth Day 2019 on Monday ― features:

Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Halsey, Wiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Hart, Zac Brown, Brendon Urie, Hailee Steinfeld, Kevin Hart, Adam Levine, Shawn Mendes, Charlie Puth, Sia, Miley Cyrus, Lil Jon, Miguel, Rita Ora, Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry, Lil Yachty, Meghan Trainor, Joel Embiid, Tory Lanez, John Legend, Backstreet Boys, Bad Bunny, Kris Wu and Psy.

It’s quite the lineup!

Even Hollywood movie star and activist Leonardo DiCaprio is involved.

And its animated music video, in which the celebrities appear as animals, is spreading its call to environmental action to millions and millions of people on YouTube.

“If we don’t completely redefine how we do everything on earth, from an energy perspective, from a food perspective, from a conserving nature perspective, in the next 12 years, the damage is irreversible and we’re screwed. Within our lifetime,” Lil Dicky, whose real name is David Burd, told Time magazine.

“What started as a silly joke of an idea along the way became the most important thing I’ll ever do,” added the funny man-musician, who himself courted controversy last year following his “Freaky Friday” collaboration with Chris Brown.

Blanco and Lil Dicky’s manager, music mogul Scooter Braun, reportedly helped recruit the global pop stars to sing for free on the song. Proceeds go toward nonprofits seeking solutions to climate change.

The release of the track is timely, given the 2018 publication of a United Nations report that warned the world had just 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe ― and the recent increase in public awareness on the issue.

Check out the music video for “Earth” here:

In the clip below, Lil Dicky explains why “we have a big problem on our hands, guys, and that’s mostly driven by our behavior here on Earth”:

And here’s some of the reaction from the entertainers involved:

Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge is hoping for a third straight victory from the Gulbarga Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka on 23 April. But unlike the last two Lok Sabha elections, where he defeated BJP’s Revunaik Belamagi (who left the party last year), reports suggest that this time’s fight will be tougher for the veteran politician, who has been an MLA nine times and an MP twice.

His opponent, Umesh Jadhav, is a Congress rebel who joined the BJP and will be banking on the support of the numerically significant Banjara community, The New Indian Express reported. The report added that many influential Congress politicians who had backed Kharge in the last election have switched sides to the BJP now, making the Dalit leader’s position more uncertain. The BJP has won the Gulbarga seat, a Congress stronghold, only once since 1977.

Kharge, who enjoys the Gandhi family’s trust, has often been sent by the party to deal with messy political situations in different states, including his own Karnataka. The 76-year-old has often been in the running to become the state’s CM, most recently in 2017, but each time, he has lost out to others. His son Priyank Kharge is currently a minister in HD Kumaraswamy’s cabinet.

Kharge, who was the leader of the Congress in the 16^th Lok Sabha, had high levels of attendance in each Parliament session since 2014, according to data from PRS India.

Congress is fielding former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit from North East Delhi and former state unit chief Ajay Maken from New Delhi, the party announced on Monday as it named candidates for six of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi.

The Congress also fielded Arvinder Singh Lovely from East Delhi, Rajesh Lilothia from North-West Delhi and Mahabal Mishra from West Delhi.

The party’s list indicates it will not be in alliance with AAP in the capital.

The BJP had on Sunday declared four sitting MPs as its candidates from Delhi. Names for the three remaining seats are expected to be announced by Monday. 

The party has again nominated Harsh Vardhan and BJP state unit president Manoj Tiwari from Chandni Chowk and North East Delhi seats respectively.

Former Delhi chief minister Saheb Singh Verma’s son Parvesh Verma has been fielded from West Delhi and Ramesh Bidhuri from South Delhi.

The BJP is yet to declare candidates for North West Delhi, New Delhi and East Delhi seats.

“The names of sitting MPs are under consideration from the seats. However, the party may spring surprise by fielding new faces on these seats such as former cricketer Gautam Gambhir from New Delhi seat currently held by Meenakshi Lekhi,” a senior BJP leader said.

AAP- Congress alliance talks

Of the three main parties in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party has declared names for all seven seats. Congress and AAP were engaged in hectic parleys on a pre-poll tie-up to avoid division of votes. However, the talks have not materialised yet.

The AAP has been seeking an alliance with the Congress extending to Haryana along with Delhi, but the Congress has made clear that it will not have a tie-up anywhere other than the national capital. 

The nomination process ends on April 23. All the seats in Delhi will vote on May 12.

On Monday, six of AAP’s candidates Atishi (East Delhi), Dilip Pandey (North East Delhi), Guggan Singh (North West Delhi), Raghav Chadha (South Delhi), Brijesh Goyal (New Delhi) and Pankaj Gupta (Chandni Chowk) ― will file their nominations, the party said.

AAP’s West Delhi candidate Balbir Singh Jakhar had filed his nomination papers on Thursday. 

You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter marine ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Ben Von Wong wants you to know that it does.

Von Wong builds massive art installations out of discarded plastic trash, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use items. 

At the end of January, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a stunning pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Comprised of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the installation made its debut at the Estella Place shopping mall in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled.

Von Wong likes to point out that every individual straw that’s part of his installation likely came from a beverage that someone sipped for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

“A lot of what I’ve been trying to do is make people realize that their actions do matter,” Von Wong told HuffPost. He wants his art to encourage people to reduce their plastic consumption.

In March, Von Wong built another piece, “Plastikophobia,” an otherworldly cave built from 18,000 used plastic cups. He said that one of the most interesting experiences he had with that installation came while watching passersby interact with it. “I would watch people [stare at it] while carrying a drink with a straw and plastic cover in a plastic bag,” he noted. “It’s a really interesting paradox.”

In a piece from 2016, Von Wong wanted to illustrate a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of Greenpeace volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped from a truck all at once. 

Plastic trash makes its way into the ocean from many different routes. In the waters around the United States, much of the floating plastic is from people’s litter ― items dropped here and there ― rather than mass dumping. In places like Indonesia, where trash-collection infrastructure is not as developed as it is in the U.S., garbage often gets dumped into rivers and washes out to sea. The U.S. also ships a lot of its plastic abroad, which makes proper disposal the recipient nation’s problem.

Global plastic production has quadrupled over the past 40 years, according to a study published in 2017. A separate study published this week in the journal Nature Communications found that the amount of plastic being dumped into the oceans has skyrocketed since the 1990s. 

Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks and McDonald’s to reduce their brands’ plastic footprint.

“Unless we [stop] plastic at the source, cleanups and recycling alone [will] never be enough,” Von Wong wrote in a 2016 blog post published alongside his “Truckload of Plastic” project. 

Experts agree.

“It’s a lie that wasteful consumers cause the problem and that changing our individual habits can fix it,” Matt Wilkins, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, wrote in an op-ed for Scientific American.

“Corporations should pay for the damage they cause,” British politician Geraint Davies wrote for The Guardian. “Only then will they be forced to create environmentally friendly alternatives.” 

For their part, big corporations do seem to be in an exploratory phase of finding solutions to the plastic crisis. For instance, dozens have signed on with Loop, a new service that sends people goods in recyclable packaging that can be sent back to be cleaned and reused.

This story is part of a series on plastic waste, funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the company.

On Saturday morning, four news websites reported that a former employee of the Supreme Court of India had submitted a complaint of sexual harassment against Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi to the other sitting judges with a detailed account of the harassing conduct as supported by her sworn affidavit and evidence (including audio-visual evidence).

Despite being on a five-day vacation, the Supreme Court of India website almost immediately put out a notice stating that a ‘Special Bench’ comprising the Chief Justice of India himself and two other judges was to assemble at 10:30 am in open court “to deal with a matter of great public importance touching upon the independence of the judiciary” on the mentioning by the Solicitor General.

It follows from news reports that at the hearing, the Chief Justice, speaking from the bench, proceeded to make several statements sullying the complainant; declaring her to be a criminal part of a bigger plot to deactivate the office of the CJI, and to make several statements that could only be aimed at gaining public sympathy for himself. This included invoking his 20 years of service, revealing his bank balance and predicting that such severe threats as this complaint would drive away good judges. The Attorney General and Solicitor General, both law officers of the Government of India, unequivocally took the side of the Chief Justice while bizarrely expressing their shared experience of being similarly under attack. In all this shared anguish between the senior officers of the judicial and executive branch, no representative of the complainant was heard, no qualms were felt in prejudging her case even before an inquiry, and no restraint was exercised so as to maintain her dignity.

This unprecedented emergency ‘hearing’ raises several important questions. First, how could the Chief Justice, as the person alleged to have perpetrated the sexual harassment, sit on a bench constituted to respond to a complaint against him? The rules of natural justice, which are foundational rules to ensure fairness of the judicial process, dictate that no man shall be a judge in his own cause.

As master of the roster, the Chief Justice has the sole power to decide the composition of a bench. In placing himself on this Special Bench, he reveals nothing short of complete disdain for any notion of fairness. The conspicuous absence of any women justices on this Special Bench is also contrary to the spirit of the POSH Act which requires that any body dealing with sexual harassment be chaired by a woman and comprise a majority of women members.

It is incomprehensible what purpose this Special Bench served except for allowing a person accused of sexual harassment to use his constitutional office and position of power to respond to personal allegations against him by communicating to the public through a judicial hearing. The course of action to be followed in such cases is clear in law. The ‘In House Procedure’ for dealing with cases of misconduct against judges, the POSH Act and the Supreme Court Sexual Harassment Regulations, 2013, all require for an inquiry committee to be set up to investigate and adjudicate allegations raised against any individual judge in cases of misconduct. While all of these regulations require action to be initiated by the Chief Justice, there is no reason for deeming the Chief Justice – who is first among equals – beyond the scope of any accountability procedure in place for judges of the Supreme Court. Why then was the matter dealt with on the judicial side through a Special Bench instead of referring the matter to the next senior-most judge for initiating an inquiry?

The invocation of judicial independence to deflect the allegations is both disingenuous and dangerous. Judicial independence cannot mean that no complaints of misconduct can ever be made against a specific individual justice of the court. Any concerns about judicial independence are addressed by the In-House Procedure which requires that a complaint be examined by the peers of the respondent Judge to safeguard judicial independence while also “preserve the faith of the people in the independence and impartiality of the judicial process” by ensuring that members of the higher judiciary are held accountable for their actions. In the past, the Supreme Court has adjudicated upon instances and allegations of sexual harassment by sitting/retired Judges, without ever branding it as an attack on judicial independence. In the instance of one particular retired judge, the Supreme Court fact-finding committee found that the allegations of sexual harassment were prima facie made out. In sidestepping the inquiry procedure, the Chief Justice unfortunately signals that he is above the law – and the Attorney General, Solicitor General and other senior members of the Bar appear to support that position.

The hearing reportedly ended with the passing of an order. This was egregiously not signed by all three presiding members of the bench, but only by the other two judges and without including the Chief Justice in the ‘coram’ or any mention of the fact that the Chief Justice was present on the bench and extensively participated from the bench. Such inaccuracy in the record of proceeding, in any other situation, would invite severe reprimand by the Court. The order observes as follows:

“Having considered the matter, we refrain from passing any judicial order at this moment leaving it to the wisdom of the media to show restraint, act responsibly as is expected from them and accordingly decide what should or should not be published as wild and scandalous allegations undermine and irreparably damage reputation and negate the independence of the judiciary. We would therefore at this juncture leave it to the media to take off such material which is undesirable.”

The deeming of the detailed allegations as wild and scandalous even before any inquiry has even begun already tips the scales of justice heavily against the complainant and reveals that even after the #MeToo movement has arrived in India, the keepers of justice still find it hard to treat sexual harassment as a serious issue.

The glaring departures from procedure in the handling of this complaint did not stop the Bar Council of India and other Bar Associations from vilifying the complainant and declaring their allegiance to the Chief Justice of India at this preliminary stage. For women in the legal profession, it can hardly be surprising that the men’s club has closed ranks to insulate a powerful man faced with allegations of sexual harassment. Nevertheless, it is a cruel reminder that women in the profession have a long way to go before we can expect equal respect and dignity from our senior male peers. In the face of growing disillusionment by the events on Saturday, an immediate inquiry by a neutral and impartial committee is necessary to recover faith in the integrity and ability of the Supreme Court as an institution to deliver justice.

The writer, a Delhi-based Advocate, is a member of the Women in Criminal Law Association, which released a statement questioning the handling of the complaint.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court, expressing regret over his remarks related to the Rafale judgment.

The apex court had directed Gandhi to give an explanation by 22 April for “incorrectly” attributing his “Chowkidar Narendra Modi chor hai” remark to its judgment.

The top court gave a categorical clarification that in its Rafale judgement there was no occasion for it to make a mention of the alleged contemptuous observation that “Chowkidar Narendra Modi chor hain” as has been attributed to it by Gandhi. 

In his affidavit, Gandhi said his statement was made in heat of campaigning and has been misused by political opponents, according to PTI.

A contempt plea was filed by BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi against Gandhi. In her plea, Lekhi claimed Gandhi attributed observations to the court which was not in its 10 April Rafale verdict on the admissibility of certain documents leaked to the media as evidence.

(With PTI inputs)

Shah Rukh Khan was the surprise guest at the recently-concluded Critics’ Choice Awards held at Bandra’s Rang Mandir auditorium where Sriram Raghavan’s Andhadhun won the most number of trophies.

The actor flew down straight from China where he was present for the premiere of Aanand L Rai’s Zero, the closing film at the Beijing International Film Festival.

In his speech at the ceremony, Khan roasted film critics and even took several digs at the verbose nature of film criticism (“pontificating on the exactness of a director’s angle”).

His speech, essentially, was written like a film review.

The actor also called out, in a stroke of genius self-parody, the ‘star-system’ ailing Bollywood. Eventually, it was understood that he was talking about the star ratings given by critics in their reviews as much as he was talking about the star-driven nature of Bollywood.

Present in the audience were several film critics such as Anupama Chopra, Rajeev Masand, Raja Sen besides several others.

Khan also appeared to be introspective. 

He said, “We filmmakers have fought along to give more credit to constructive and jaded ideas. We search for art, we search for form without the essence of the stories. We find logic and disregard the free-spirit of story telling. We have to remind ourselves that truth is formless, only untruths are formed. We as film fraternity have to be truer to ourselves, to the stories we set out to tell.”

He went on to say, “So I request all my critics friends here, please don’t be like us Bollywood film stars, and get carried away by what Bollywood succumbed to many years ago - the star system. The star system cannot be the only way of summing up films by our critics. 3 stars, 3.5 stars, 3 and a quarter stars, 5 stars....It’s a film, not a hotel for God sake. With critics sprouting all over, film critic is becoming an endangered species. Please let it not get replaced by consumer service.”

Watch the clips here:

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Madras High Court to decide on 24 April a plea of TikTok app seeking vacating of its ban order.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said if the Madras High Court fails to decide on the plea of TikTok app then its ban order will stand vacated.

The apex court had earlier refused to stay the Madras High Court order that directed the Centre to ban the “Tiktok” app over concerns about access to pornographic content through it.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the Chinese company ByteDance, had told the top court earlier that there were over billion downloads of the mobile app and ex-parte orders were passed by the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court.

He had said the court did not even issue notice in the matter and an order was passed without hearing them.

The high court had on April 3 directed the Centre to ban mobile application “TikTok” as it voiced concern over “pornographic and inappropriate content” being made available through such apps.

It had directed the media not to telecast video clips made with TikTok. The app allows the users to create short videos and then share them.

It had asked the government if it would enact a statute on the line of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in the US and posted the matter for further hearing on April 16.

The high court’s interim order came on a public interest litigation (PIL) which alleged the app encouraged paedophiles and the content “degraded culture and encouraged pornography”.

Even after the havoc caused by Blue whale online game, which reportedly led to suicides by several people, officials have not learnt that they should be alert to these types of problems, the high court said.

Only when officials and policy makers were able to act on problems of society, decision could be taken to prevent these kind of apps, it had said.

Voicing concern, the court had said it was evident from media reports that pornography and inappropriate content were made available through such mobile applications.

Apart from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi is also contesting the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Wayanad, a decision that has invited sharp reactions from both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left. 

Explaining his bid to contest from Kerala’s Wayanad, Gandhi said people in South India “feel hostility” from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he wants to send out the message that he stands with them.

The decision has given new life to the Congress in Kerala and, reports suggest, it is an attempt by the party to consolidate its electoral base in south India, especially Kerala which has 20 Lok Sabha seats. 

Wayanad, according to The Indian Express, is considered one of the safest seats for the Congress in Kerala. Senior Congress leader M.I. Shanavas won the first election from the seat in 2009 and retained it in the 2014 elections. 

Since Shanavas’ death in November 2018, the seat has been lying vacant. 

Gandhi will take on NDA candidate Thushar Vellappally, chief of Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), the political arm of the Sree Narayan Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP). The LDF in Kerala has fielded CPI’s PP Suneer in Wayanad.

The CPI(M) and CPI said the Gandhi’s candidature from Wayanad signalled that the Congress wanted to take on the Left. Modi had raked up controversy by saying that Gandhi has picked the safest possible seat to contest the elections as the majority is in minority in Wayanad.  

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena will declare a nationwide emergency from midnight on Monday following Easter Sunday suicide bomb blasts at churches and luxury hotels that killed 290 people and wounded more than 500, his office said.

“The government has decided to gazette the clauses related to prevention of terrorism to emergency regulation and gazette it by midnight,” the president’s media unit said in a statement.

It said the measure would be confined to dealing with terrorism and would not impinge on freedom of expression.  

The Lok Sabha campaign in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur has scored high on vitriol, if not the quality of political discourse. Part of this is down to the two high-profile candidates—BJP’s Jaya Prada against Samajwadi Party’s Azam Khan—and the rest due to their frequent potshots against each other, from ‘khaki underwear’ to ‘Anarkali’ to ‘x-ray eyes’.

Actor-turned-politician Jaya Prada has been making headlines since March when she joined the BJP, her fifth political party. She has won the Rampur seat twice, in 2004 and 2009, when she was part of the Samajwadi Party. It was in 2009 that she had accused Khan of circulating nude photos of her. In a recent interview, she claimed that she was isolated in the party by him “because of my popularity among Hindus and Muslims.” In 2010, she was expelled from SP for supporting Amar Singh. In 2011, Singh and Jaya Prada floated a party, the Rashtriya Lok Manch, which failed to win any seats in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Jaya Prada then joined the Rashtriya Lok Dal in 2014 and contested from the Bijnor seat, where she lost.

Jaya Prada entered politics through the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 1994 at the invitation of its founder NT Rama Rao. She was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1996, representing Andhra Pradesh. However, she quit the party, reportedly after her differences with Chandrababu Naidu.

Last week, Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav made an emotional appeal to the people of Mainpuri, his constituency, to vote him to power since this would be his last election. Yadav has been elected to this seat four times. This time, he is contesting against BJP’s Prem Singh Shakya. In 2014, Yadav contested from both Mainpuri and Azamgarh. He vacated the Mainpuri seat for Tej Pratap Singh Yadav.

Yadav, a trenchant critic of Narendra Modi’s Hindutva politics, has buried the hatchet with his arch-rival, BSP’s Mayawati, in a bid to keep the BJP from repeating its 2014 performance in Uttar Pradesh. Mayawati and Yadav had fallen out over the ‘guesthouse scandal’ in Lucknow in 1995, when she withdrew support to Yadav’s government, making it fall.

Yadav is a seasoned politician who was first elected as an MLA in the UP Assembly in 1967. He has been the chief minister of the state three times. He forayed into politics at the age of 15 and was inspired by socialist politician Ram Manohar Lohia. Yadav has also served as the defence minister in HD Deve Gowda’s cabinet.

One of the decisions he is best known for is his order to open fire on kar sevaks marching towards Ayodhya in 1990.

COLOMBO — The coordinated Easter Sunday bombings that ripped through Sri Lankan churches and luxury hotels, killing more than 200 people, were carried out by seven suicide bombers from a domestic militant group named National Thowfeek Jamaath, a government official said Monday.

All of the bombers were Sri Lankan citizens, but authorities suspect foreign links, Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said at a news conference.

Earlier, Ariyananda Welianga, a government forensic crime investigator, said an analysis of the attackers’ body parts made clear that they were suicide bombers. He said most of the attacks were carried out by a single bomber, with two at Colombo’s Shangri-La Hotel.

The bombings, Sri Lanka’s deadliest violence since a devastating civil war ended a decade ago on the island nation, killed at least 290 people with more than 500 wounded, Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said Monday.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan police investigating the bombings are examining reports that intelligence agencies had warnings of possible attacks, officials said Monday.

Two government ministers have alluded to intelligence failures. Telecommunications Minister Harin Fernando tweeted, “Some intelligence officers were aware of this incidence. Therefore there was a delay in action. Serious action needs to be taken as to why this warning was ignored.” He said his father had heard of the possibility of an attack as well and had warned him not to enter popular churches.

And Mano Ganeshan, the minister for national integration, said his ministry’s security officers had been warned by their division about the possibility that two suicide bombers would target politicians.

The police’s Criminal Investigation Department, which is handling the investigation into the blasts, will look into those reports, Gunasekara said.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, said the attacks could have been thwarted.

“We placed our hands on our heads when we came to know that these deaths could have been avoided. Why this was not prevented?” he said.

Earlier, Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardena described the blasts as a terrorist attack by religious extremists, and police said 13 suspects had been arrested, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility. Wijewardena said most of the bombings were believed to have been suicide attacks.

But officials have yet to say who they believe is behind the attacks. The Tamil Tigers, once a powerful rebel army known for its use of suicide bombers, was crushed by the government in 2009, and had little history of targeting Christians. While anti-Muslim bigotry has swept the island in recent years, fed by Buddhist nationalists, the island also has no history of violent Muslim militants. The country’s small Christian community has seen only scattered incidents of harassment in recent years.

The explosions — mostly in or around Colombo, the capital — collapsed ceilings and blew out windows, killing worshippers and hotel guests in one scene after another of smoke, soot, blood, broken glass, screams and wailing alarms.

A morgue worker in the town of Negombo, outside Colombo, where St. Sebastian’s Church was targeted, said many bodies were hard to identify because of the extent of the injuries. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

Lakmal, a 41-year-old businessman in Negombo who declined to provide his last name, went with his family to St. Sebastian’s for Easter Mass. He said they all escaped the blast unscathed, but he remains haunted by images of bodies being taken from the sanctuary and tossed into a truck.

At the Shangri-La Hotel, a witness said “people were being dragged out” after the blast.

“There was blood everywhere,” said Bhanuka Harischandra a 24-year-old from Colombo and founder of a tech marketing company. He was heading to the hotel for a meeting when it was bombed. “People didn’t know what was going on. It was panic mode.”

Most of those killed were Sri Lankans. But the three bombed hotels and one of the churches, St. Anthony’s Shrine, are frequented by foreign tourists, and Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry said the bodies of at least 27 foreigners from a variety of countries were recovered.

The U.S. said “several” Americans were among the dead, while Britain, India, China, Japan and Portugal said they, too, lost citizens.

The streets were largely deserted Monday morning, with most shops closed and a heavy deployment of soldiers and police. Stunned clergy and onlookers gathered at St. Anthony’s Shrine, looking past the soldiers to the stricken church.

The Sri Lankan government initially lifted a curfew that had been imposed during the night but reinstated it Monday afternoon. Most social media remained blocked Monday after officials said they needed to curtail the spread of false information and ease tension in the country of about 21 million people.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he feared the massacre could trigger instability in Sri Lanka, and he vowed to “vest all necessary powers with the defense forces” to take action against those responsible.

The scale of the bloodshed recalled the worst days of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, when the Tamil Tigers, from the ethnic Tamil minority, sought independence from the Sinhalese-dominated country. The Sinhalese are largely Buddhist. The Tamils are Hindu, Muslim and Christian.

Sri Lanka, off the southern tip of India, is about 70 percent Buddhist. In recent years, tensions have been running high between hard-line Buddhist monks and Muslims.

Two Muslim groups in Sri Lanka condemned the church attacks, as did countries around the world, and Pope Francis expressed condolences at the end of his traditional Easter Sunday blessing in Rome.

Six nearly simultaneous blasts took place in the morning at the shrine and the Cinnamon Grand, Shangri-La and Kingsbury hotels in Colombo, as well as at two churches outside Colombo.

A few hours later, two more blasts occurred just outside Colombo, one at a guesthouse where two people were killed, the other near an overpass, Atapattu said.

Also, three police officers were killed during a search at a suspected safe house on the outskirts of Colombo when its occupants apparently detonated explosives to prevent arrest, authorities said.

Authorities said a large bomb had been found and defused late Sunday on an access road to the international airport.

Air Force Group Captain Gihan Seneviratne said Monday that authorities found a pipe bomb filled with 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives. It was large enough to have caused damage to a 400-meter (400-yard) radius, he said.

Harischandra, who witnessed the attack at the Shangri-La Hotel, said there was “a lot of tension” after the bombings, but added: “We’ve been through these kinds of situations before.”

He said Sri Lankans are “an amazing bunch” and noted that his social media feed was flooded with photos of people standing in long lines to give blood.

K Surendran is BJP’s candidate for Pathanamthitta, the Kerala Lok Sabha seat in which the Sabarimala temple is located. The seat is one of the closely-watched constituencies in Kerala, which goes to polls on 23 April.

Surendran was at the forefront of the protests against the Sabarimala verdict, which had led to widespread protests in Kerala. This is the key poll issue on which he has campaigned in the district. 

The BJP leader had called the protests a golden opportunity, a clear sign the party has consciously leveraged the issue in hopes of finally winning a seat in the state. However, Rahul Gandhi’s decision to contest from Wayanad, which has consolidated the dispirited Congress fleet, has affected these hopes a little.

“Sabarimala is a crucial issue for us. There are other development issues like drinking water, but Sabarimala can’t be ignored,” Surendran told NDTV.

According to NDTV, there are 245 police cases registered against him, all of which are related to violence at Sabarimala and attempts to stop entry of women below the age of 50. Surendran has cases in almost all the districts in Kerala, The NewsMinute reported. He was arrested in November 2018 for attempting to enter the temple against police orders.

In his initial affidavit, Surendran had claimed there were only 20 cases against him. 

Surendran has previously contested twice from the Kasargode Lok Sabha seat and once from the Manjeswaram assembly seat, but has never won.

In Pathanamthitta, Surendran is up against LDF’s Veena George, an MLA from Aranmula, and UDF’s Anto Antony, a two-time MP from the seat.

The other constituency that the BJP has some hopes from is Trivandrum, where Kummanam Rajasekharan is taking on Shashi Tharoor.

BJP MP Varun Gandhi is contesting the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Pilibhit, from where his mother and Union minister Maneka Gandhi has traditionally contested. 

Maneka and Varun swapped their seats and the Union minister is now contesting from Sultanpur.   

According to PTI, Maneka had urged the BJP leadership to field Varun from Pilibhit, which is considered a relatively safe seat for her family. She is the sitting MP of Pilibhit and has been elected six time from the constituency since 1989. 

Varun fought from Pilibhit in the 2009 general elections and won with a margin of 2.8 lakh votes. Maneka came back to Pilibhit in 2014 and won. 

While campaigning in Pilibhit, Varun said that even if Muslims don’t vote for him, he’s ready to give them jobs. This came just days after his mother said that she will have second thoughts about helping Muslims if she wins from Sultanpur without the community’s help. 

Varun is fighting against mahagathbandhan candidate Hemraj Verma of the Samajwadi Party. The Congress has not fielded a candidate but is backing one put up by the Apna Dal.  

While Varun admitted this is “a tough election” for him, he asserted, “It is tough for others as well.”

He may be a master strategist and the key to sewing up coalitions to strengthen Bharatiya Janta party (BJP), but Amit Shah is now contesting his first ever Lok Sabha battle from Gandhinagar. 

Shah is contesting from a seat previously represented by party stalwarts like former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former home minister Lal Krishan Advani and former Election Commissioner and Congress leader TN Seshan.

Advani had won this seat six times from 1991 to 2014, barring the 1996 polls when Vajpayee had contested from Gandhinagar as well as Lucknow. BJP’s dropping of Advani from its list of candidates signalled an end of road in electoral politics for him. 

Shah is contesting against Congress leader and two-time MLA from Gandhinagar North CJ Chavda.   

Gandhinagar constituency is dominated by Patidars, followed by Thakors. Though Congress is expecting that Patidars may support the party after the quota agitation, it seems a distant reality as was visible in the 2017 state elections, in which the community supported the BJP.   

In the past, Shah had won the Gujarat Assembly elections four times from Sarkhej constituency (before delimitation), and once from Naranpura seat (after delimitation), both of which are part of Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat.  

He had also acted as in-charge of Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat for Advani, when the national leader was busy campaigning for the BJP in other parts of country in 2009. 

(With PTI inputs)

Actor Suresh Gopi, BJP’s candidate for the Thrissur constituency in Kerala, gave his campaign quite the filmy spin on Sunday.

Gopi was seen acting out his signature move from the 1994 Malayalam film Commissioner very enthusiastically. Perhaps too enthusiastically. Watch from 2:25 onwards below.

The incident took place on Sunday during Gopi’s road show in the city. Police had permitted the BJP candidate to campaign in the first half of the Corporation road, while the second half was allotted to LDF. 

It’s not clear how this started, but according to Mathrubhumi, Gopi’s action was a response to LDF workers. The workers reportedly taunted Gopi with the ‘shit’ action to which he responded in kind.

However, Manorama reports it began with Gopi, who enacted the well-known move on the request of BJP workers which prompted LDF workers to give it back in kind. The exchange took place minutes before campaigning was due to end in Kerala, the report said.

All the Lok Sabha seats in Kerala go to polls on Tuesday in the third phase of the elections.

Mahatma Gandhi was known as many things: a peacemaker, an activist, a spiritual leader and a hero. The man, born Mohandas K. Gandhi, helped India gain its independence in 1947 and fasted to end widespread violence dozens of times. While society knows him as a role model for peaceful protest, Gandhi also spent his 78 years studying one personal passion: nutrition.

Some of Gandhi’s diet choices were protest-based, such as fasting for days on end. Others tied back to his dedication to nutrition, including his distrust of processed foods.

According to Nico Slate, author of the new book “Gandhi’s Search for a Perfect Diet,” healthy eating was always part of Gandhi’s life.

“Gandhi’s interest in healthy eating started during childhood; his mother was a religious observer who fasted often and was careful about the foods she ate and served,” Slate told HuffPost. “He was a curious man, and like many parts of life, he had the desire to think deeply about his food.”

While Gandhi died over 70 years ago, his diet was well ahead of its time. Virtually all elements of Gandhi’s diets ― which raised eyebrows among his peers ― are commonplace, or even “fad diets,” today. Slate, who spent five years researching Gandhi’s history with nutrition, noticed a number of core themes.

Gandhi was skeptical of salt, then drastically changed his views

While Gandhi knew his favorite fruits and vegetables naturally contain salt, he steadfastly avoided adding any additional salt to his meals. According to Slate, Gandhi embarked on a salt-free diet in 1911, but he eased up over time after listening to his doctors. By the late 1920s, Gandhi welcomed a little salt ― no more than 30 grains per day ― into his diet.

California-based dietitian nutritionist Ashley Lytwyn agrees with Gandhi’s doctors.

“Salt is one of the electrolytes we absolutely need to function,” she told HuffPost. “We have a fear of salt in our culture, but if you’re eating a balanced diet, your body is naturally going to consume the adequate amount of salt.”

After understanding the importance of salt ― particularly for those working in the fields ― Gandhi went on to protest Britain’s hefty tax that made salt virtually unattainable for poor people in India. His 60,000-protester-strong Salt March in 1930 was integral to India gaining independence in 1947.

Veganism was too restrictive, so Gandhi gave up meat

Gandhi was born into a vegetarian household, but he always aspired to be vegan. He tried veganism as a young adult but, after suffering severe health issues, he was forced to change course. 

“Experience has taught me that in order to keep perfectly fit, [a] vegetarian diet must include milk and milk product such as curds, butter, ghee, etc.,” Gandhi wrote in his book, “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism.” “I excluded milk from my diet for six years. … But in the year 1917, as a result of my own ignorance, I was laid down with severe dysentery. I was reduced to a skeleton, but I stubbornly refused to take milk or buttermilk. … I could have had in mind only the milk of the cow and buffalo; why should the vow prevent me from taking goat’s milk?”

According to Lytwyn, highly restrictive diets such as veganism can be done, but they require vitamin supplements and nutritional planning.

“Nutrients like B12 can be tough to get with a vegan diet, and the iron in vegetables isn’t as bioavailable as iron in animal proteins,” Lytwyn said. “Even if he ate enough iron-rich vegetables, the body can’t always absorb what it needs.”

After he acc the need for goat dairy in his diet, Gandhi lived as a steadfast ― and healthy ― vegetarian. In fact, vegetarianism actually led to Gandhi’s true calling as a social activist.

“During law school, Gandhi had a transformative experience living with progressive vegetarians in London,” Slate said. “At first, he was terribly shy and not politically active, but these vegetarians had strong beliefs against imperialism and racism; they gave Gandhi the confidence to become an activist, speaker and writer.”

Gandhi was a label-checker who loved raw, unprocessed foods

Like many health-conscious Americans, Gandhi avoided foods with ingredients he couldn’t pronounce. When companies began importing vegetarian alternatives to India’s popular ghee (clarified butter) in the 1930s, many thought he’d accept them without question. Gandhi quickly proved them wrong.

“Since ghee alternatives were made in a factory, Gandhi came out strongly against them,” Slate said. “He wanted simple foods with simple ingredients. If you gave him one of today’s vegan protein bars with 25 obscure ingredients, he wouldn’t eat it.”

Yet again, Gandhi’s diet was ahead of its time; the high trans-fat Vanaspati ghee is notoriously unhealthy. Gandhi expressed concern in his book “Diet and Diet Reform”: “In reality ghee is pure animal product. One thoughtlessly uses the expression vegetable ghee or Vanaspati, but it is a contradiction in terms. Vanaspati as an article of diet is a very poor substitute for ghee. It not only lacks absorption by the human system, but has no vitamin potency.”

Lytwyn fully agrees with Gandhi’s simplistic approach to food but notes that times have changed, and so have our eating schedules.

“Some foods are best served simply,” she said. “Take oatmeal. It’s a beautiful complex carb that tastes delicious ― why alter it? At the same time, people need alternatives in today’s fast-paced culture. If it’s between skipping a meal or eating a granola bar, I’d say eat the granola bar. You need to nourish yourself.”

Fasts were key to Gandhi’s political and nutritional diet

While Gandhi’s fasts altered the course of history ― including his famous 1948 “fast unto death” for peace in Delhi ― he also fasted for religious and nutritional reasons. Gandhi fasted dozens and dozens of times, including his longest stretch of 21 days.

As a specialist in eating disorders, Lytwyn urges dieters to rethink today’s newfound fasting craze, particularly given its focus on weight loss, not activism.

“Gandhi’s nonviolent approach was moving and impactful,” she said. “But, as I’ve seen with many clients, fasting can cause those predisposed to eating disorders to spiral out of control. If you’re excessively restricting yourself, of course your body will overcompensate with a fast-then-binge cycle.”

Gandhi avoided sugar, but couldn’t give up this one “sweet”

For the most part, Gandhi kept sugar out of his diet, but he had one major exception: fruit. He loved fruit. In fact, while he was successfully restrictive when it came to processed or refined sugars, the strong-willed Gandhi had trouble curbing cravings when it came to “sweets” like mango.

“Gandhi tried hard not to eat too much of anything; he thought enjoying food too much would distract him from his spiritual goals,” Slate said. “But Gandhi was human. One time he received this crate of fresh mangoes as medicine for a group of patients he was helping and he just entirely gave in.” 

Gandhi, known for restraint against cravings, ate several mangoes before sharing them with his patients. He lamented his overindulgence in a letter.

“Mango is a cursed fruit,” Gandhi wrote in 1941. “It attracts attention as no other fruit does. We must get used to not treating it with so much affection … but they [the patients] will all get some as we have three boxes.”

While Gandhi did give in to cravings, he didn’t respond by throwing away his diet. He acknowledged it, lamented it and moved on. Lytwyn urges her clients to do the same.

“When my clients have an overeating episode, I tell them to learn from it and let it go,” she said. “We don’t have to hold onto this one experience as a moral judgment of ourselves. There’s really no perfect way to eat, and trying to achieve perfection will drive us mad. It’s all about moderation.”

Food is different for everyone, and Gandhi accepted that

According to Slate, Gandhi didn’t push his strict diet and nutritional beliefs on peers. He wrote about his food experiments in letters and books, but humbly acknowledged that he didn’t know everything and openly listened to others’ findings.

While not directly related to his diet, Lytwyn believes this is Gandhi’s greatest food lesson of all.

“We have this cultural obsession where people project their diet and fitness onto others, but if you look at different cultures, they’re not on this never-ending quest for thinness,” she said. “If you gave five different people the same foods and the same exercise plan, they still won’t have the same body at the end of it. We need to embrace our bodies as they are, rather than changing or altering them to the ideals and pressures others project on us.”

Perhaps the biggest mystery of “Game of Thrones” was revealed Sunday in the second episode of Season 8: The Night King just wants to erase everyone’s internet history.

The mystery of the White Walkers and the Night King has been around since the first scene of the pilot episode. We’ve had scant details about their motivations until now ― we’ve just seen them turn babies into White Walkers and leave strange symbols all over Westeros. But “Game of Thrones” just gave fans the info dump they’ve been waiting for.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly ahead of Season 8, the Night King himself, Vladimir Furdik, revealed that his character has a “target he wants to kill.” And in Episode 2, Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) admits that target is him.

During a war council to talk about strategy as the army of the dead closes in, Bran says the Night King is after him because he’s the Three-Eyed Raven. And White Walkers have come for the other Three-Eyed Ravens before him.

Here’s what the Night King’s been after: “An endless night. He wants to erase this world, and I am its memory,” Bran says.

As the Three-Eyed Raven, Bran is basically the “Game of Thrones” Google search. He holds all the memories of the past, present and future, and the Night King wants to clear all cookies.

Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) chimes in: “That’s what death is, isn’t it? Forgetting. Being forgotten. If we forget where we’ve been and what we’ve done, we’re not men anymore. We’re just animals.”

You might remember that Archmaester Ebrose (Jim Broadbent) said a similar thing to Sam in Season 7, telling him:

In the Citadel, we lead different lives for different reasons. We are this world’s memory, Samwell Tarly. Without us, men would be little better than dogs. Don’t remember any meal but the last, can’t see forward to any but the next. And every time you leave the house and shut the door, they howl like you’re gone forever.

Now, even without Bran, Westeros has history books. Sure, having Bran is like having all the episodes of “Game of Thrones” on demand whenever you want, but if the Night King and the White Walkers want to destroy the memories of the world, shouldn’t they go after those history books as well? After all, one of the most popular fan theories is that Sam will write the whole story in the end.

Sam also kind of explains this, saying to Bran: “Your memories don’t come from books. Your stories aren’t just stories. If I wanted to erase the world of men, I’d start with you.”

So, that’s where we’re at. After all this time, it turns out the Night King is after the death of humankind and all of its memories, simple as that.

Aside from revealing the White Walkers’ endgame, Bran also explains that when the Night King marked him back in Season 6, he basically put a tracking device on him. Now he knows where Bran is at all times. And the Three-Eyed Raven can’t get into his settings and turn that GPS signal off. 

With the reveal in Season 7 that if the Night King falls, the entire army of the dead falls, the plan heading into the Battle of Winterfell is to use Bran as bait in the Godswood and draw the Night King out into the open. There, Theon (Alfie Allen) and the Ironborn will be providing him with some protection. 

So it’s basically R.I.P. to Theon. But if Bran dies, Westeros will go offline for good.

AMETHI — Dubbing the BJP’s Amethi candidate Smriti Irani as an “outsider”, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Monday accused her of distributing shoes in order to insult Rahul Gandhi and said the people in the Congress chief’s Lok Sabha constituency are not beggars.

Interacting with the voters in this key parliamentary constituency, the Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh said the people of Amethi and Rae Bareli have self-respect and they do not beg from anyone.

″...if anyone has to beg, it is them (BJP), who will beg for your votes,” a visibly agitated Priyanka told the voters in the presence of reporters at a “nukkad sabha”.

She also slammed “outsider” Irani for distributing shoes in Amethi.

“She (Irani) thinks she can insult Rahul Gandhi by doing this,” Priyanka said, adding that the Union minister was in fact insulting the people of Amethi.

“The people of Amethi are very sensible. You all know who was going to open a food park in Amethi and the fact that it has not been opened till now. The food park would have benefitted five lakh farmers in Amethi and Rae Bareli,” she said.

Union Textiles Minister Irani had lost against Rahul Gandhi from Amethi in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Five years later, she is again hoping to breach the Gandhi family bastion.