Tarana Burke has zero interest in hearing about perpetrators’ comeback stories on the second anniversary of the Me Too movement.

“Coming up on this anniversary, I’ve had so many invitations to come and speak, and the topic is, ‘Is there a way back for these men after the #MeToo movement? What’s the road to redemption?’” the Me Too founder told Teen Vogue in an interview published Tuesday. “And I’m just like, you know what? Stop asking me these questions. It’s so offensive.”

Burke, who created the Me Too movement in 2007, reflected on how the campaign has grown exponentially since it went viral two years ago this month. Actor Alyssa Milano tweeted the hashtag #MeToo two years ago, asking her followers to share their stories of sexual violence. The movement has revealed rampant abuse by powerful men including Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and Kevin Spacey.

And while it’s important to unearth abuses that have been hidden for so long, Burke told Teen Vogue that the movement was meant to center survivors, not perpetrators. 

“Often when I talk, I do a pop quiz for people and I say, ‘You know, we can right now popcorn at least 10 names of the most prominent men who’ve been accused or what have you, and you couldn’t name 10 survivors from there,’” she said. 

“It‘s such a problem, that we can have a movement that has really been built on the backs of survivors and not check in on those survivors,” Burke continued. “Yes, it would have been a celebrity story, because Weinstein was a huge story, and it would have continued to be a huge story. But this sustained conversation, this phenomenon came from 19 million individual people having the courage to say ‘me too.’”

She added that it’s “inhumane” that the cultural conversation continually centers perpetrators over survivors. 

“You cannot forget these people. You cannot forget us. You cannot forget people who have the courage,” she said. “I don’t care if you volunteered for an expose, or you literally just put #MeToo on your Facebook page. There is courage in that.”

Head over to Teen Vogue to read Burke’s full interview. 

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

KG Simon, the Kozhikode Rural Superintendent of Police, who is heading the investigation into what has been called the Kerala serial murders, was a busy man on Saturday. He started the day by meeting a high-profile visitor at his office in Vadakara town: Loknath Behera, the state police chief, who had come to discuss the investigation strategy for the case of Jolly Joseph, the 47-year-old woman suspected of using sodium cyanide to kill her husband Roy Thomas and five other family members over a period of 14 years in a small village called Koodathayi. 

After the meeting with Behera, Simon then held discussions with the inspector general of police and four IPS officers. At the end of the day, he sat down with HuffPost India for an in-depth conversation about the case.

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The case, which has kept people inside and outside Kerala hooked with its sensational revelations and daily leaks, poses a stiff challenge to 59-year-old Simon, who will retire next year.

But a conversation with him indicates that the police’s case is centred primarily around suspicion, circumstantial evidence and the confessions of Joseph and the two other accused, which may not hold up to court scrutiny. The law says that confessions made in police custody are admissible in court only if recorded before a magistrate. Even as many media reports make it seem like the case is watertight, there appear to be several missing links.

Six deaths, one suspect

Simon said it was pure luck that led him to the case. In August, an online petition to the Kerala Crime Branch filed by Rojo Thomas, raising doubts about the death of his brother Roy in 2011, landed on Simon’s desk. Rojo, who lives in the United States, attached a copy of a post-mortem report that pointed to the presence of sodium cyanide in Roy’s body. Despite the report, the police had, eight years ago, ruled that Roy died of “natural causes”.  

“The post-mortem report mentioned cyanide,” Simon said. “It was our responsibility to investigate how cyanide reached a home in rural Kozhikode.”

Sodium cyanide is a fast-acting poison. Ingesting even a small amount blocks oxygen flow and can cause death, with vomiting and coma as common symptoms. According to Simon, it costs Rs 1,500-2,000 a kg. 

The investigation led Simon to five other deaths that roused his suspicions – Roy’s mother Annamma Thomas in 2002, his father Tom Thomas in 2008, his uncle Manjadiyil Mathew in 2010, Alphine Shaju, the two-year-old daughter of Roy’s cousin Shaju Skaria, in 2014, and Alphine’s mother Sily Shaju in 2016. The police say all five showed signs of sodium cyanide poisoning. They believe the suspected murders were committed by Joseph, who was married to Roy for 14 years and is now Shaju’s wife.

Joseph was arrested on October 5, a day after the police exhumed the remains of Annamma, Tom, Mathew, Alphine and Sily from the local cemetery. The forensic examination is yet to be conducted.

‘Suspicious behaviour’

Simon said the police zeroed in on Joseph after catching her lies. Joseph claimed Roy had fainted in the bathroom of their home and died of cardiac arrest. She also said he had not eaten before his death. But the post-mortem report showed traces of food in his stomach. “We wanted to know why she lied,” said Simon. 

They grew more suspicious when they “realised she had lied about her place of employment,” Simon added. 

Joseph, a commerce graduate, had told her family and neighbours she was a BTech graduate who taught at the National Institute of Technology, 20 km away from her house. “NIT officials inspected their employment records starting 2000 and reported back that no one by that name was ever employed in the institute,” Simon said. He added that Joseph also refused to take a polygraph test when first called in for questioning—these can only be administered with the consent of the accused, and cannot be considered “confessions”, but Joseph’s denial added one more twist to her media trial. 

There were “eyewitness statements” as well. “We heard from witnesses, including relatives and neighbours, that Annamma, Tom, Mathew, Alphine and Sily had vomited, experienced respiratory congestion and fainted before they died,” Simon said. “The symptoms were similar in Roy’s death. This led us to the conclusion that the other deaths were also caused by cyanide poisoning.”

But was all this enough to convince the police that Joseph was their prime suspect? It all came down to “suspicious behaviour,” explained Simon. “We did not consider any other suspects because there was no reason to,” he added. 

“In all the cases, Jolly was the only person who was around during the time of death. This led us to suspect her more than anyone else.”

Simon had more examples of Joseph’s “suspicious behaviour”.

“When we started investigating, Joseph approached her husband’s family and their friends, asking them to withdraw the case. She tried to convince the parish priest [of her church] that the bodies should not be exhumed, citing religious reasons. This raised further suspicion and we had enough on her to make the arrest.”

After her arrest, Joseph admitted to all six murders—but later retracted her confession of having killed Alphine, Simon said. He explained the motives behind her actions: “According to her confession, Jolly killed Annamma to gain control of the household affairs and accounts. Tom Thomas was killed because he decided to give his property away to his other two children. Manjadiyil Mathew was killed because he suspected Roy’s murder. Sily was killed because Jolly wanted to marry Shaju.” 

According to the police, Joseph’s call records led them to the other two accused—MS Mathew, a jeweller and relative who procured the sodium cyanide, and Prajikumar, a goldsmith who supplied the poison. “When we questioned Prajikumar, he made a call to Mathew and we found the link,” said Simon.

The two men have admitted to supplying Joseph with sodium cyanide, the officer said.

Simon said the police have filed six first information reports and set up six teams to investigate each case.

Missing links, mystery

While the police seem confident of finding more evidence against Joseph, it may be easier said than done. Kerala DGP Behera admitted as much, saying that “It will be difficult to gather scientific evidence.” 

Simon, too, said that a three-day evidence collection drive last week, during which Joseph was taken to the alleged murder spots, had resulted in “nothing identifiable” being found. “We found two bottles that contained a powder [in Roy’s ancestral home where Joseph still lived],” he said. “We have not sent the bottles for testing, though we suspect they contain sodium cyanide.” 

Two weeks since Joseph’s arrest, some aspects of the case have already come into question. Reports now say that, contrary to Joseph’s first confession that she killed all six people with cyanide, Annamma died of “pesticide poisoning”, with cyanide nowhere in the picture. It is not clear whether the police initially missed this detail, or if Joseph revised other parts of her earlier confession.

The police are also yet to reveal the details of their investigation into Shaju Skaria, whom Joseph married in 2017. HuffPost India reported on October 10 that Shaju had overruled doctors to refuse a post-mortem examination of his first wife Sily in 2016. He had similarly refused an autopsy for his daughter in 2014. The police called Shaju for questioning several times, twice along with his father Skaria, the younger brother of Tom Thomas.

“Skaria and his son Shaju Skaria may not be as innocent as they claim to be,” said Simon. “Jolly has confessed to revealing details of the murders to Skaria.” 

When asked why Joseph would confide in her father-in-law, Simon declined to comment. Skaria told HuffPost Indiaearlier that he had no knowledge of the crimes.

The police are also yet to find where Joseph went when she claimed she was teaching at NIT. 

“We found she would go to the nearby town, any marketplace, a beauty parlour and a church,” Simon said Joseph told the police. But the police have not yet found witnesses placing her at these spots. Suleikha Majid, the owner of the beauty parlour, said in her statement to the police that Joseph came to her parlour for cosmetic treatment but was not a frequent visitor. 

Simon also had no answer to why Joseph, who was aware of the investigation since September, would leave two bottles allegedly containing sodium cyanide in her home for the police to find when they searched for evidence. “The matter is under investigation,” he said. 

Too many holes?

While the tantalizing leak of confidential details is helping to maintain the suspense essential for media hype, it does not always help the prosecution’s case in the courts, an experienced criminal lawyer who has studied similar cases told HuffPost India. 

“None of the confessions to any police officer will be admissible in court,” said B. Raman Pillai, who practises at the Kerala High Court. “If the confession is to a third party other than a police officer, it could be admitted in court.”

When HuffPost India asked Simon if this is why the police claim that Joseph confided in Skaria, he refused to comment.

Even if Joseph did confess to Skaria, the missing links will still hurt the prosecution’s case, Pillai said. “Circumstantial evidence can be admissible only if they form a neat interlinking chain,” he added. “If any of the links are missing, it will be difficult for the prosecution to establish the case.”

The recovery of items mentioned in the confession, for instance, is important. “Even if the co-accused confessed they provided the article for murder, the police should be able to make a recovery of the said item,” the lawyer explained, “And only that part of the confession that speaks of this recovered item will be admissible in court.” 

While the gaps remain, the buzz around the case is getting louder. Last week, relatives of Tom Thomas accused Joseph of involvement in the deaths of two young men  in their families—Vincent, who died in a motorcycle accident in 2002, and Suneesh, who reportedly committed suicide in 2008. Meanwhile, Simon’s office remained busy with 15 IPS officer trainees coming in over the weekend “to study the serial murder case”.

Gurugram of Haryana is often referred to as the millennium city of India. However, behind the shine and glitter lies an ailing population. Soaring levels of air pollution in the city have become a serious threat to human health.

“My father is a living example. He is suffering a lot due to pollution. His problem with asthma is due to this. There are other people also, small growing kids who have got asthma and other breathing problems just because of this pollution,” said 29-years-old Navika, a resident of Gurugram.

In a report by IQAir, a global air quality monitoring platform, and Greenpeace, Gurugram was declared as the most polluted city of the world in 2018 and its air quality was 17 times poorer than the prescribed safe limit by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Data reveals that the city had only three days in the whole year when the air quality was safe.

Despite this, the government and political leaders have shown a lax approach to deal with the issue. The political apathy on the subject can be gauged from the fact that none of the mainstream political parties in the fray for the 2019 Haryana assembly elections is building their campaign on this critical issue.

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Elections to the 90-member Haryana assembly are scheduled for 21 October 2019, and the results will be declared on 24 October.

Haryana has 10 Lok Sabha seats and one of them is Gurugram which has nine assembly seats. The area has a population of over two million. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dominated the legislative assembly elections in 2014 and registered a resounding victory but the representatives of the ruling party say the pollution of Gurugram is a creation of non-governmental organisations and media. Faridabad city, adjacent to Gurugram, is another highly polluted town.

“These reports (of Gurugram being polluted) are not correct. I do not know what is the basis of their saying that Gurugram is polluted. We all live here. I am living in Gurugram from childhood. I don’t see any pollution here,” said BJP leader Umesh Agrawal, who is also the sitting legislator of Gurugram.

However, the principal opposition party in the state, the Indian National Congress, had promised to address the issue of air pollution. In their manifesto for the Haryana legislative assembly elections, they have promised to work “towards the goal of making Gurgaon, Faridabad and other NCR areas pollution-free.”

It also promised to deal with stubble burning to tackle air pollution. “At present, the stubble that is left after Rabi and Kharif crops are harvested is burnt by farmers. We will make modern equipment available to farmers to ensure that no stubble remains. If there is stubble left in the fields, in order to avoid their burning, we will give compensation to farmers for each quintal of stubble. This will also ensure a pollution-free environment,” Congress promised.

However, people are miffed with the leaders for their ignorance.

“When they need our vote, they come and make all the promises but they do absolutely nothing after the elections are over. Therefore, I now think that it is useless to vote in the election,” said 48-year-old Durga Devi, a resident of Gurugram.

Indian cities dominate the list of most polluted cities across the world and in the past few years, there has been a campaign against it. Courts have also pulled up the central and state governments for not doing much on the subject to tackle it. To change that and treat it as a national issue, the central government recently launched a National Clean Air Plan (NCAP).

At present, Gurugram has only two monitoring stations to check the air quality of the city. However, the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) has now decided to install two more air quality monitoring stations. The HSPCB officials told Mongabay-India that a “comprehensive” clean-air programme has been prepared for the city after discussing it with all stakeholders and the board which will ensure strict compliance of norms.

“In the proposed clean air programme for Gurugram, we have provisions to curb pollution from construction activity and road dust. Besides we have made rules to control emissions from industries, biomass burning or any other kind of pollution,” Kuldeep Singh, the regional officer of HSPCB, told Mongabay-India.

Gurugram is home to offices of many big national and international companies due to which there is a high vehicular movement in a small radius of the area resulting in high levels of air pollution. It is also a hub of more than 300 big and small industries that often flout the air pollution norms. The massive construction activity in the region also aggravates the dust problem.

Diesel generators are worsening air quality in Gurugram

Another problem is the use of a large number of diesel generator sets. Besides shopping malls, markets and offices, thousands of residential apartments run on diesel generators as well.

It is estimated by Haryana government authorities that, at present, more than 14,000 diesel generator sets are running in Gurugram. The government’s reply to a query under the Right to Information Act 2005 had revealed that more than 10,500 such generator sets were running in the city in 2017. A study by Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in 2018 had said that the use of diesel generator sets increases the level of Particulate Matter 2.5 and PM10 in Gurugram by 30 percent.

“In Gurugram there are several dozens of societies (residential apartments) having no electricity connection. When I say society, it doesn’t mean that 20 or 30 houses. There is no society having less than 200 homes. In these apartments (diesel) generators run round the clock. The pollution caused by it is a great trouble for everyone,” said RTI activist Harinder Dhingra. 

It is the case because in some societies the builders have not fulfilled all the requirements and have not got a completion certificate. In the absence of this, the society is not provided with an electricity connection and entire power supply is from diesel generators.

Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority (EPCA) had issued directions that a ban will be imposed on generators in Haryana after 15 October but the state government has said that the ban is only when the air quality drops to “very poor” and “severe” category.

So it remains to be seen, especially with Diwali coming up, how effectively the ban is imposed.

Environmentalists argue that the city has lost all its green cover to massive residential and commercial construction. They state that even as politicians live in denial, a few citizen groups are making efforts to revive and protect the greenery in the town. What worries them the most is the destruction of the Aravalli hills by illegal miners as it provides some protection to the millennium city and other adjoining areas around it from dry winds coming from the Thar desert. They fear that if this last barrier falls the condition of air pollution in the city would worsen.

“Gurugram, Faridabad and Delhi together have more than 56,000 acres of Aravalli. Such a big landmass with good forest cover with millions of trees acts as a massive green lung. Our air quality would have been much worse in its absence,” said environmental activist Chetan Agrawal, who has been demanding the government to declare Aravallis a protected zone.

Aravalli is also important as it acts as an anti-desertification barrier for the whole Delhi-NCR region.

“When we look at the Google Earth images of Aravalli in the western flanks, there are big deposits of sand or sand-dunes. So, basically, all the hot winds which come from the west and carry sand with them, they get deposited at the western flank. So, from that perspective as well, Aravalli is very important,” said Agrawal.

This was first published in Mongabay-India.

Five siblings and a man believed to be their father have been discovered living in a secret room on a Dutch farm for nearly a decade while they waited for the “end of the days”.

The group was discovered near Ruinerwold, a village in the northern province of Drenthe, after the eldest brother wandered into a local bar 11 days ago and “ordered and drank five beers on his own”.

He returned a few days later looking scruffy and bewildered and said he had not been outside for nine years, Reuters reports. 

“You could see he had no idea where he was or what he was doing,” the cafe owner, Chris Westerbeek, told RTV Drenthe. “He said he had run away and that he urgently needed help.”

After police were called, the five, estimated at 18 to 25 years of age, and a man they identified as their ailing father, were found living in makeshift rooms inside the farm and survived partly on vegetables and animals from a secluded garden on the property.

“We found six people living in a small space in the house which could be locked, not a cellar. It is unclear if they resided there voluntarily,” local police said in a statement.

“They say they are a family, a father and five children,” police added.

Earlier, local Mayor Roger de Groot said a 58-year-old man, not the father of the children, had been arrested. His role was unclear.

Police confirmed they had arrested a man who was renting the farm but would not comment on his identity.

The Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad daily identified the man as “Joseph B.,” an Austrian carpenter.

Officials did not confirm local TV reports that the family may have held “end of days” apocalyptic beliefs.

The children’s mother had apparently died before they moved to the Dutch farm, the mayor said. None of the family members were registered as residents with the municipality, police said.

“I understand there are a lot of questions,” De Groot said. “We have many too. The police are investigating all possible scenarios.”

The last day of hearings in the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case in the Supreme Court was a dramatic one. High drama ensued as Rajiv Dhavan, the senior advocate representing the Muslim parties, tore up a pictoral map in court. 

The news soon became viral, taking centre stage on the last day of hearings. 

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Dhavan reportedly asked the court “Can I have your permission to tear it” before shredding the pictorial map that showed Ram’s birthplace. 

A PTI report said that Dhavan objected when Vikas Singh, representing the All India Hindu Mahasabha attempted to refer a book on Ayodhya written by former IPS officer Kishore Kunal, saying such attempts should be disallowed.

Reports said that while answering Dhavan’s question, the Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said he could shred it into pieces if he wanted. 

While there was much outrage over the issue, The Indian Express reported CJI Gogoi clarifying that he indeed had allowed Dhavan to tear the pages.

However, NDTV reported that while there was commotion after the pages were torn, the court said, “Decorum has been spoiled, decorum is not maintained. If proceedings continue in this manner, we would just get up and walk out.” 

Meanwhile, a Hindu party told that court that Sunni Waqf Board and other Muslim litigants had failed to proved that Mughal emperor Babur constructed the Babri Masjid at the disputed site. 

The hearings in the dispute have been going on for the past 39 days. Advancing its earlier deadline of October 17 by a day, the court said, “This matter is going to be finished today by 5 PM. Enough is enough.”

PTI reported that the bench also rejected a plea of a party that sought to intervene in the ongoing hearings. 

(With PTI inputs)

NEW YORK — India’s public sector banks had the “worst phase” under the “combination” of former prime minister Manmohan Singh and ex-RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, and giving the ailing banks a “lifeline” was her primary duty now, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said.

The public sector banks have been grappling with bad loans and the government has been taking measures to address the issue. In August, the government announced upfront capital infusion to the tune of Rs 70,000 crore into the public sector banks. Besides, 10 public sector banks are being consolidated into four.

Delivering a lecture at the prestigious Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs on Tuesday, Sitharaman said: “While economists can take a view of what prevails today or prevailed years ago, but I will also want answers for the time when Rajan was in the Governor’s post speaking about the Indian banks, for which today to give a lifeline is the primary duty of the Finance Minister of India. And the lifeline-kind of an emergency has not come overnight.

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“I do respect Raghuram Rajan as a great scholar who chose to be in the central bank in India at a time when the Indian economy was all buoyant,” she said during the lecture organised by the Deepak and Neera Raj Centre on Indian Economic Policies of the Columbia University.

Asked about the ex-RBI governor’s comments during a recent lecture at Brown University in which he had apparently mentioned that in its first term, the Narendra Modi government had not done better on the economy because the government was extremely centralised and the leadership does not appear to have a consistent articulated vision on how to achieve economic growth, the minister said instead there were major issues with bank loans during Rajan’s tenure as the central bank head.

Responding to the question, Sitharaman further pointed out that if there is a feeling that there’s been a centralised leadership now, “I’d like to say that very democratised leadership led to a whole lot of corruption. Very democratised leadership. The Prime Minister, after all, is the first among equals in any cabinet”.

“You need to have a country as diverse as India with an effective leadership. A rather too democratic leadership, which probably will have the approval of quite a lot of liberals, I’m afraid, left behind such a nasty stink of corruption, which we are cleaning up even today,” she said.

“It was in Rajan’s time as Governor of the RBI that loans were given just based on phone calls from crony leaders and public sector banks in India till today are depending on the government’s equity infusion to get out of that mire,” she said.

“Dr Singh was the Prime Minister and I’m sure Dr Rajan will agree that Dr Singh would have had a ‘consistent articulated vision’ for India,” the minister said amid laughter from the audience.

“With due respect, I’m not making fun of anybody but I certainly want to put this forward for a comment which has come like this.

“I have no reason to doubt that Rajan feels for every word of what he is saying. And I’m here today, giving him his due respect, but also placing the fact before you that Indian public sector banks did not have a worst phase than when the combination of Singh and Rajan, as Prime Minister and the Governor of the Reserve Bank, had. At that time, none of us knew about it,” she said.

Sitharaman said while she is grateful that Rajan did an asset quality review, but people should know what makes the banks ailing today.

“I am grateful that Rajan did an asset quality review but I’m sorry, can all of us put together also think of asking what ails our banks today. Where has it been inherited from,” she said.

According to RBI data in June on global operations (provisional data for the financial year ending March 2019), Gross Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) of Public Sector Banks have declined by Rs 89,189 crore from the peak of Rs 8,95,601 crore in March 2018 to Rs 8,06,412 crore in March 2019 (provisional data).

The event was also attended by former NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya, professor and eminent economist Jagdish Bhagwati and India’s Consul General in New York, Sandeep Chakravorty.

The situation in northern Syria is complex and changing by the day. The Kurds have effectively switched sides, Turkey has invaded and Russians are filming themselves touring military bases that just hours before were filled with US troops.

The country, already torn apart by a civil war that has raged since a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad during the Arab Spring in 2011, has long been the site of proxy wars between various other countries, all with their own competing aims.

Now, the events in Syria could well influence the power dynamics of the Middle East for years to come.

What’s the latest?

Turkish forces are currently on a collision course with the Syrian army as they both advance into an area of Syria that had been, until recently, been relatively peaceful.

Russia has said it is working to prevent a conflict between the two sides, but one Turkish soldier has been killed. Dozens of civilians are dead and 160,000 have been forced to flee their homes.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump announced new sanctions against Turkey on Monday to try to pressure Turkey to accept a ceasefire, and Vice President Mike Pence has flown to Ankara for talks.

“They say ‘declare a ceasefire’. We will never declare a ceasefire,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told reporters after a visit to Baku.

OK, give me the background.

The situation on the ground is incredibly complicated and involves multiple groups with different aims, objectives and alliances.

It might help to begin with a map. The single country of Syria currently has roughly eight different power-brokers, though their influence varies dramatically. 

Who are the good guys I can get behind?

Hmm, there aren’t any really aside from the civilians caught up in the violence, at least 50 of whom have been killed in recent days.

It’s probably more helpful to talk about winners and losers.

What about the Kurds?

The Kurds are an ethnic group some 40 million strong, scattered across Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria but without their own country.

They have long fought for an independent state, but their host countries have resisted – particularly Turkey, which has even gone so far as banning the Kurdish language in an attempt to suppress their ethnic identity.

This struggle has at times manifested into open war, and in 1978 some Kurds formed a militant wing called the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in order to fight these battles.

As you can see in the map, the Kurds control a large part of northern Syria, but this has made Turkey nervous, as it views the area as a safe haven for what it deems terrorists.

A “safe zone” patrolled jointly by Kurdish and American forces had until recently created a buffer zone between Turkey and the Kurds, which had helped to maintain relative peace in the area.

Is this where Donald Trump comes in?

It is indeed. After a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this month, Trump upended US policy in Syria and said he would withdraw US troops from the “safe zone”, essentially giving Ankara a green light to take control of the region by force.

In the face of criticism from just about everybody, including members of his own party, Trump has spent the last few days desperately backtracking in a futile attempt rein in Turkey’s military assault on the region.

What were US troops doing there in the first place?

American forces have been working alongside Kurdish forces to destroy the so-called Islamic State that had taken advantage of the chaos in Syria and controlled great swathes of territory by 2015.

Isis now controls barely any territory, but there are legitimate concerns they could regain some of their former strength in the chaos currently unfolding – hundreds of Isis-affiliated prisoners are reported to have already escaped from camps where they had been detained.

So the US comes out of this looking pretty bad, right?

Right. And this is compounded dramatically by the two people empowered by Trump’s decision: Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

What are the Russians doing in Syria?

Speaking to the Today programme on Wednesday morning, Russian Lieutenant General Evgheni Berschinski claimed the “ultimate goal of Russia is to end the war in Syria”.

He added: “Russia is not interfering. Russia is there on the official invitation of the legitimate Syrian government.”

But this isn’t the whole story. Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2015 at the request of Assad who, at the time, was barely holding onto power as rebel forces approached Damascus.

Putin’s interests in the country were two-fold. Firstly, Russia’s only warm-water naval base in the world is in the Syrian port of Tartus, under an agreement with the Assad government, and the toppling of the dictator would have threatened this strategically vital facility.

Secondly, and more importantly, is the matter of prestige.

Trump’s decision to pull out of the northeast has cemented Moscow’s central role in shaping Syria’s future and given it an even stronger foothold in the Middle East – elevating Russia’s standing on the world stage.

It’s also resulted in surreal videos being posted to social media, which show Russian forces entering bases the US had occupied mere hours earlier, a situation unthinkable just a couple of weeks ago.

What about Assad?

Assad largely kept out of the Kurdish region as he concentrated his forces on strategic sites like Aleppo. With the help of Russian forces, he crushed opposition forces which now only remain in the north-western corner around Idlib.

To achieve this, Assad has gassed his own people and committed multiple war crimes.

Assad’s army, however, has been weakened by the prolonged conflict, and now relies heavily on Russia, Iran and Iran’s Shi’ite militia allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

The Russians have behaved just as appallingly, using airstrikes to target civilians and destroy hospitals. Russia’s defence minister has even bragged about how many new weapons his military has had the opportunity to test whilst doing so.

Why are the Kurds now in an alliance with him?

The Kurds, through absolute necessity, have now invited Assad’s forces into the area under their control in a bid to protect themselves from the invading Turkish forces.

Assad would never have had the manpower to take control of the region using force, so Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops is a godsend – an opportunity to seize back resource-rich territory he abandoned years ago.

The area includes oil, farmland, water resources and the hydro-electric dam at Tabqa – vital assets that will better position the government to cope with the impact of Western sanctions.

But are they going to have to fight Turkey?

Not if Russia can help it. Exploiting their newly-increased influence in the region, Moscow is now the de-facto power-broker.

“There are Turkish-Russian talks ... to set the tempo for northern Syria, particularly east of the Euphrates,” a regional pro-Damascus source told Reuters. “They are the ones moving all these plans.”

A Turkish official said Ankara is “working in very close cooperation with Russia”, and Erdogan pointed on Monday to Russia’s importance when he said that Putin had shown a “positive approach” to the situation.

The two countries may be able to forge an agreement dividing the northern border into new control zones and prevent their local allies – the Syrian government on the one hand and anti-Assad insurgents on the other – from going to war.

So who’s the biggest winner?

Arguably Putin.

Although Assad will be happy with developments, Russia hasn’t been assisting for free, and arguments over war debts are already tearing the Assad family apart. Despite being nearly victorious in Syria’s civil war, he is far weaker than he was before it began and totally reliant on Putin to stay in power.

As for Erdogan, his military operation looks set to be successful, but his international standing has been seriously damaged, particularly among Nato allies. 

But Russia’s indispensable role in Syria reflects a larger shift in the Middle East from Damascus to Riyadh, as showcased by Putin’s Gulf tour this week, including his first visit to Saudi Arabia in more than a decade.

Baby Archie is ginger-bred, man!

The 5-month-old son of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry has red hair, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex reportedly confirmed at an event in London on Tuesday.

Appearing at the WellChild Awards to pay tribute to sick children and their caregivers, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex told a mother during a conversation that Archie has indeed inherited the prince’s flaming locks, according to severaloutlets.

Angela Sunderland and her daughter Milly, 11, explained to the press later that they asked the royal couple during the event if the baby has red hair.

“Meghan said he has and Harry said he definitely (has), you can see it in his eyebrows,” the mother said. “Harry said he’d had no hair for five months, but Meghan told him she had taken him to the playgroup and she said there were other children there with the same amount of hair or even less.”

Recent photos of the lad appear to show tiny strands of ginger.

Rest assured, Archie, you’re in fine redheaded company, including your dad’s pal Ed Sheeran and movie director Ron Howard. 

I’d never seen anything like it.

Nothing but people for blocks ― miles on end. People of all ages waving rainbow flags, holding posters and wearing shirts with messages of Pride. “Love is love,” one poster said. “Stop killing us,” read another. That one reminded me of home.

It was my first time in New York City. I had come for World Pride, the first Pride march I’d ever attended. I fled my hometown in Chechnya just a few years earlier, barely escaping with my life. I could not have imagined then that I would one day be on a float, traveling down Fifth Avenue, dancing to Lady Gaga and just being myself alongside millions of other out and proud LGBTQI people.

Growing up in Chechnya, there were two of me. There was “straight” me, whom my parents, brothers and most other people knew. And then there was “secret” me, whom only a few close friends had met. “Secret” me used fake names and met up with other gay people in hidden places. If anyone found out about “secret” me, I knew my family would disown me, I would be shamed out of town, beaten or worse ― killed because of who I am. Coming out was impossible. Coming out almost certainly meant death.

In 2017, “secret” me was outed to state authorities. I still don’t know how or by whom. I can only guess that the police tortured someone I knew until they gave me up. I believe this because I, too, was tortured. Kidnapped from my place of work. Beaten. Electrocuted. Starved. Held with a gun to my head and told to give up other “secret” people. I refused, ready to die.

To my surprise, I wasn’t killed that day. At least, not in body. Instead, the police brought my family to the place I was being held captive and told them I was gay. “You should take away your shame,” the officials told my family. What they meant was that my family should kill me, their son and sibling. “Honor killings” were common in Chechnya. Families would rather live with the grief of a dead child than the shame of having a gay son and brother.

I wasn’t killed in body, but part of me died that day. 

After being outed, I had no choice but to leave Chechnya. If my family wouldn’t kill me, it was only a matter of time before someone else would. Through networks, I found temporary refuge with the Russian LGBT Network before finally meeting the group that would help me escape to safety, Rainbow Railroad. Finally, there was a way forward. A way out.

Two years later, I joined Rainbow Railroad at World Pride and marched alongside other LGBTQI people whose lives the organization helped to save. For each of us, Pride was something we had never experienced ― we couldn’t believe what we were seeing as the sea of people lining the streets cheered and openly celebrated who they are. In that moment, I finally knew what it really meant to feel proud.

But I felt something else, too. I felt guilty. Guilty that I had survived and gotten out when so many others hadn’t. Guilty that as I danced, others still suffered in silence. Others still lived in the constant fear that, one day, their “secret” self would be exposed to the world.

So I decided to do something to help others out and make sure LGBTQI people in Chechnya and places like it aren’t forgotten ― to make sure that Pride isn’t something I just enjoy for myself but something I help make a reality for others, for those who can’t come out because they live in places where being LGBTQI is dangerous or a death sentence. 

That’s why for National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11, I am joining Rainbow Railroad to remind others that for countless LGBTQI people in nearly 70 countries around the world, coming out comes with grave danger. 

Of course, that’s not to say coming out isn’t important or shouldn’t be celebrated. In fact, it’s the coming-out stories of LGBTQI people from all around the world that transcend borders and ultimately lead to the culture shifts necessary to change laws in countries that are still unaccepting. It’s those stories that lead to understanding and create public pressure to demand something different. 

But as we celebrate, we must also remember ― remember those still forced to live in the darkness of danger. 

Their lives depend on it.

Amin Dzhabrailov is a Chechen refugee who, with the help of the international nonprofit Rainbow Railroad, fled the region’s “anti-gay purge” in 2017. Learn more about his story and take action to #HelpOthersOut at RainbowRailroad.org.

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LOS ANGELES — Tom Holland says more than performing to Rihanna’s “Umbrella”, dealing with the almost breakup of Disney-Marvel and Sony over his character, Spider-Man was “most stressful” time for him.

It was the actor who saved the day by convincing the studios to keep the webslinger from leaving Marvel Cinematic Universe with an 11th hour appeal.

Holland’s latest comments came while he was speaking at a panel with his Far From Home co-star Jake Gyllenhaal as part of the ACE Comic Con Midwest, reported NME.

Asked if dancing to the hit Rihanna track as part of Lip Sync Battle was the “most stressful week” of his life, the young star offered his two cents on the potential split.

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“Well... Maybe the whole Disney/Sony thing when that happened. That was a bit of a stressful week,” he said after some time.

“I’m sure there’s some contractual obliged thing where I can’t say anything about anything, so I’m just going to keep my mouth shut,” Holland, infamous for giving out spoilers, said.

As reported previously, the new “Spider-Man” project is scheduled for a 16 July, 2021 release, with Jon Watts in negotiations to return as director.

Disney/Marvel and Sony were engaged in discussions to renew the deal that enabled the web slinger’s appearance in the money-minting MCU.

Disney, which owns the Kevin Feige-led Marvel Studios, had demanded that it wanted to split future Spider-Man movies in a 50/50 co-financing arrangement, that also meant a 50/50 split in the profits.

In August, after Sony declined to agree on the new terms, Disney removed MCU head Feige and Marvel as producers of the future projects, breaking it off with the former.

Later, as per reports, the actor made multiple appeals to Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger and Sony film chairman Tom Rothman to reach a resolution less than six weeks after a very public breakup.

Holland’s perseverance paid off and in a shocker, on September 27, the two companies announced that a deal was struck to bring out a third “Spider-Man” film together, and for the character to appear in at least one additional Disney-Marvel film.

Iger recently confirmed Holland about reaching out to him in a desperate bid to keep Spider-Man from leaving MCU after the D23 expo in August, adding the actor “cried on the phone” while making a case for friendly neighbourhood superhero.

Zach Galifianakis has one fond memory of his very short-lived stint at “Saturday Night Live” circa 2000.

And it involves “SNL” alum Tina Fey.

The comedian told the story in an interview of how a sketch he’d written about Will Ferrell becoming a bodyguard for pop star Britney Spears’ belly button totally bombed during a table read.

“It was so silent, I remember hearing the AC, schhh, like it shut down during the middle of the sketch,” Galifianakis recalled in a September episode of “Off Camera with Sam Jones” that’s now going viral.

Galifianakis ― who said he was unclear of his role at “SNL,” which lasted only two weeks ― said he would “never forget” how Fey, sitting next to him, put her hand on his shoulder in what he interpreted as a comforting gesture.

“It didn’t feel sarcastic,” he explained. “It could have been, but in my mind it was her going ‘It’s OK.’ I mean, obviously, human beings don’t like when they say something and people are like ‘What?’”

Check out the interview here:

Do the suspicious deaths of six members of a family in Kerala’s Kozhikode district all boil down to the “murderous instinct” of prime suspect Jollyamma Joseph? The Kerala Police may be pushing this narrative, but two documents that are part of their investigation call this theory into question. The documents—two versions of a will left by the patriarch of the family, Tom Thomas—have given rise to accusations of forgery and reveal a deep-rooted property dispute between Joseph and her late husband’s family.

Forty-seven-year-old Joseph is suspected to have killed her mother-in-law Annamma Thomas in 2002, father-in-law Tom Thomas in 2008, husband Roy Thomas in 2011, Roy’s maternal uncle Manjadiyil Mathew in 2014, and the infant daughter and wife of her current husband, Shaju Skaria, in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Joseph married Shaju, Roy’s cousin, in 2017. The police believe she used sodium cyanide to kill five of them while Annamma was given pesticide-laced food. 

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The suspected murders came to light after Rojo Thomas filed a police complaint in August seeking an investigation into his brother Roy’s death. He attached a copy of a post-mortem report that pointed to the presence of sodium cyanide in Roy’s body, along with details of his father’s will that he alleged had been altered by Joseph.

Two wills?

After Tom’s funeral at the Lourdes Matha Church cemetery in Koodathayi village in 2008, Roy and Joseph presented Tom’s will to Rojo and his sister Renji Thomas, according to an eyewitness. HuffPost India has a copy of the will, a neatly typed document in Malayalam that has Tom’s photograph and what is purportedly his signature. An English translation of the document reads, “I am being looked after by my son Roy Thomas and his wife Jolly Roy. I am writing this will because I am certain that they will provide for me even henceforth. After my death, the existing ownership of the property will be transferred to Roy Thomas and Jolly Roy… This will, will be effective only after my death…”

The property mentioned is 38.5 cents of land on which the family’s two-storey home stands (cent is a unit measurement of land used in India’s southern states with one cent equal to 1/100th of an acre).

Joseph produced a slightly different version of Tom’s will after Roy’s death in 2011, Rojo alleged in his police complaint.

Mohammed Bawa, a neighbour, also said he’d seen Joseph present the allegedly altered will to Rojo and Renji at Roy’s funeral. “The second time, the will had additional signatures of witnesses and revenue stamps,” he claimed.

The second document, of which HuffPost India has a copy as well, has the same text in Malayalam and additionally, three signatures — of two witnesses and one notary public. Bawa, who is aiding the police investigation, claimed the wills were forged with the intention of cutting off Rojo and Renji from their father’s property.

“Rojo and Renji grew suspicious but did not report the matter to anyone else because they feared Roy’s good name and the family’s reputation would be affected,” he said.

The police have not verified the authenticity of the documents and of Tom’s signature. It is also unclear if the witness signatures were added after Tom’s signature was taken, as is reportedly the practice in many small towns in Kerala.

Tom bought the house and land about 50 years ago when he moved his family to Koodathayi from Kottayam. At the time, Roy and Rojo were children while Renji had not been born yet, said another neighbour, Aiysha. Under the Indian Succession Act, 1925, the property would have been divided equally among Tom’s children had there not been a will. But in the presence of a will, the law states that the property belongs to those named as heirs in the document.

Property dispute

The doubts over Tom’s will lead to the question of whether the case started off as a family dispute over property that snowballed into a major murder investigation. The events following Roy’s death suggest the fight between his siblings and Joseph began in earnest when she staked her claim to his property. Her two sons were minors then.

Here’s what happened after Roy’s death in 2011. When Rojo, who lives in the United States, came home for the funeral, he suspected Roy had not died simply of cardiac arrest, as Joseph had claimed. A post-mortem examination had been conducted. He requested the police for a copy of the report but was turned down, Bawa said. Much later, Rojo managed to get hold of the report.  

Rojo and Renji, who lived in Sri Lanka, spent the next few years negotiating the terms of Tom’s will with Joseph, Bawa said. All this while, they suspected the authenticity of the document, he added.

Things changed after Joseph married Shaju. Bawa said Rojo and Renji decided Joseph no longer had any right to the property, though they acknowledged her sons as rightful legal heirs. “We realised Jolly need not be protected anymore as she was already married to Shaju,” said Bawa. “Rojo challenged Roy’s death at the Thamarassery deputy superintendent of police office [in August 2019]. The forged documents were also handed over to them.”

A preliminary investigation by the Thamarassery police said Roy’s death could be a case of suicide. The same police station had in 2011 ruled that Roy had died a natural death. The crime branch took up the case and a month later, it was handed over to Kozhikode Rural Superintendent of Police KG Simon. Simon’s team arrested Joseph on October 5.

Coinciding with the investigation, Joseph reached an agreement with Rojo and Renji in September to divide the property and another 50 cents of land equally between the two siblings and her children, Bawa said. A civil case to this effect was concluded in August. However, Joseph insisted Rojo drop his demand for an investigation into Roy’s death, Bawa added. “She threatened to pull out of the land deal and refused to sign the partition papers,” he alleged. “Rojo and Ranji convinced her they’d dropped the case and only then did Jolly sign the papers. Now the property is registered with equal shares for Rojo, Ranji and Roy’s two children.”

Simon confirmed the property dispute had been settled by the time he took charge of the investigation in September. He also said he had inspected both the versions of Tom’s will. He added that the police were not looking at the property row in detail “because, as per Jolly’s confession, Tom Thomas alone was killed for property. The others were killed forother reasons, which basically means she has a murderous instinct”.

Simon denied that the motive behind Rojo’s demand for an investigation was the property dispute with Joseph. “Rojo challenged only Roy’s death, it was our investigation that led us to realise Jolly had killed other members of the family,” he said.

The top priority for the police, therefore, seems to be to prepare for a long-haul legal battle against Joseph, which seems imminent.

Despite numerous attempts, Rojo and Renji could not be reached for their comments.

US President Donald Trump warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to be a “tough guy” or a “fool” in a letter sent as Turkey launched its invasion on northern Syria.

A senior White House official has confirmed that the Oct. 9 letter, released Wednesday, is authentic.

“Dear Mr. President: Let’s work out a good deal! You don’t want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy ― and I will,” the letter begins, before going on to say that the Kurds are willing to negotiate.

Trump finalizes the letter by urging the Turkish leader to deal with the issue in the right and humane way, concluding with: “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool! I will call you later.” 

The letter was written on the same day as Turkish military began attacking Kurdish forces, which were allied with the U.S. in the battle against the self-described Islamic State. Days earlier, Trump had ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region, a decision which was met with bipartisan condemnation.

In an Oct. 6 statement, the White House announced the decision, saying that Trump had spoken with Erdogan over the phone.

“Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria,” the statement from the White House read. “The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area.”

The following day, Trump addressed his decision via tweet, warning Turkey not to do anything that he considered to be “off limits” ― and threatening to destroy its economy if it did so.

He defended his widely condemned decision to effectively greenlight Turkey’s invasion, which severely jeopardizes the lives of the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces and risks the re-emergence of ISIS, by saying that it was now up to Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds to “figure the situation out.”

“Fighting between various groups that has been going on for hundreds of years. USA should never have been in Middle East,” he wrote in a string of tweets. “The stupid endless wars, for us, are ending!”

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions and visa bans on top Turkish officials as a mode of punishment for their invasion of Syria. He said he had also increased tariffs on Turkish steel imports and would immediately halt negotiations on a major trade deal with the country. He also said a small number of U.S. troops would remain in Syria.

The Senate is working to introduce its own sanctions bill against Turkey, saying that Trump’s orders are insufficient.

Before the release of the letter Wednesday, the president muddied the waters further, undercutting the longstanding alliance between the Kurdish forces and the U.S. during a news conference, in which he said the Kurds are “not angels” and that Turkey’s invasion of Syria was “not our problem” ― even as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were scheduled to travel to Turkey that day to negotiate a ceasefire. 

In a meeting earlier in the day with Democratic leaders in Congress to discuss the president’s handling of the Turkey crisis, Trump bragged about the “nasty” letter he sent to Erdogan, according to a senior aide cited by NBC News.

When asked in the meeting by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) what his plan was to contain ISIS and whether it entailed relying on the Syrians and the Turks, Schumer said the president replied, “To keep the American people safe.”

Erdogan said Wednesday that he would not meet with Pence and Pompeo unless Trump came, but his communications director later clarified that he would meet with the U.S. delegation.

Erdogan vowed to press on with the offensive in northern Syria until his mission to create a “safe zone” was complete and the region was cleared of Kurdish forces. He maintained Tuesday that Turkey would “never declare a ceasefire,” saying that he was not worried about any sanctions.

S.V. Date contributed reporting.

Former United States president Barack Obama has endorsed the re-election bid of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

Obama made the announcement on Twitter Wednesday, touting Trudeau as a “hard-working, effective leader” who takes on big issues like climate change.

“The world needs his progressive leadership now, and I hope our neighbors to the north support him for another term.”

The Liberal leader later tweeted: “Thanks my friend, we’re working hard to keep our progress going.”

Obama served as U.S. president from 2009 until January 2017. Canada was the first nation Obama visited as president in February 2009, and polls have long suggested he remains popular in this country.

Obama invited Trudeau to a state dinner at the White House in 2016, the first time a prime minister had been so honoured in 19 years. 

In June 2016, nearing the end of his presidency, Obama also addressed the House of Commons. Trudeau introduced him that day with a joke about their budding “bromance.”

Watch: Barack Obama calls Canada “special” in speech to House of Commons.

Though the chamber was filled with MPs of all stripes, Obama used the occasion to praise the “new energy and hope” Trudeau’s leadership had brought to Canada and “to the alliance.”

He also praised the Liberal government’s efforts to welcome Syrian refugees fleeing persecution and violence.

“We’ve seen your prime minister welcome new arrivals at the airport, and extend the hand of friendship and say, ‘You’re safe at home now,’” he said at the time.

Obama also painted a picture that day that a torch was being passed.

“My time in office may be nearing an end, but I know that Canada — and the world — will benefit from your leadership for years to come,” he said at the time.

Since leaving the White House, Obama has made several visits north to speak to crowds in Canadian cities, including Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary.

In a few different occasions, Trudeau has caught up with his former U.S. counterpart for a private dinner or a beer.

Canadians head to the polls on Oct. 21, but an estimated 4.7 million Canadians voted in advance polls over the weekend.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff unleashed blistering criticism of Facebook during an interview on Wednesday, saying the social media giant had grown so large and acquired so much data that it’s time the tech behemoth is broken up.

“It’s addictive, it’s not good for you, they’re after your kids, they’re running political ads that aren’t true. And they’re also acquiring other companies and co-mingling their data into theirs,” Benioff, who is on a media tour for his new book, told CNN’s Poppy Harlow. “I think at that point, because they’re now doing that, that they probably should be broken up. Because they’re having an undue influence as the largest social media platform on the planet.”

Facebook has been under increasing scrutiny for its recklessness with user data, which has resulted in several massive security breaches. The company was fined a record $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations related to the Cambridge Analytica data-mining operation, although that figure is unlikely to make a dent in the company’s massive revenues.

The social media network has also come under fire for refusing to take down false election ads. The company’s vice president of global affairs said last month that Facebook doesn’t believe “it’s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny.”

Benioff pointed to that decision on Wednesday, saying he was concerned about Facebook’s failures to instill trust in its users.

“We’re in a world where very advanced technologies are at our fingertips, and where we can do magical things,” Benioff told CNN. “But that also means that trust must be our highest value. And you have to ask yourself: Is trust your highest value? If it’s not your highest value, then what is it?”

Later on Wednesday, Benioff tweeted that Section 230 of the U.S. Code should be abolished. The provision, which is part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, says online platforms are not liable for content posted by users. Getting rid of the rule is controversial.

Benioff has long been outspoken about the power of his own industry. Earlier this year, he blamed the tech sector for rising inequality in America, particularly in San Francisco, which has seen housing prices and personal salaries skyrocket for some residents while thousands of others remain homeless.

“In some ways, San Francisco is the canary in the coal mine,” Benioff said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. “We have to look at San Francisco and say here’s the best technology example in the world and yet the worst homelessness.”

The CEO was also one of the most vocal supporters of San Francisco’s Proposition C, which taxes the city’s richest companies to fund programs for the homeless population.

LUCKNOW — The Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday issued an order saying officials on “field duty” will not be granted leave till November 30, attributing its decision to the festival season and security concerns ahead of the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict.

The instructions came on the last day of the Supreme Court hearing in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute case. The judgment in the matter is to be pronounced by November 17.

While an earlier official order stated that the decision was related to the festival season, a fresh note said the Ayodhya verdict was also a concern.

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NEW DELHI — The Supreme Court-appointed mediation panel to resolve the Ram Janmbhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute in Ayodhya is believed to have filed a report in the apex court on Wednesday in a sealed cover which sources said is a “sort of a settlement” between the Hindu and the Muslim parties.

Sources close to the mediation panel said the Sunni Waqf Board, Nirvani Akhada, Nirmohi Akhara, Ram Janmabhoomi Punruddhar Samiti and some other Hindu parties are in favour of settling the contentious land dispute.

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A 53-year-old Indian-American techie was arrested after he walked into a Northern California police station in the US, along with a dead body in his car on Monday. 

Media reports from the US said that Shankar Nagappa Hangud, a resident of Roseville, California is said to have killed three other people, all of whom are reportedly related to him. 

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PTI reported Roseville Police Department Captain Joshua Simon as saying Hangud was in custody at the South Placer Jail after city detectives brought him back from Siskiyou County on Monday night and would face four charges of murder. 

The report said the he told the police he had killed people at his apartment in the Placer County city of Roseville after he drove to the police station in Mt. Shasta a little after noon on Monday.

While the police said that the exact motive of the murder is not known, reports say it could be finance related. 

The Modesto Bee reported that Hangud’s tax record showed that he faced a federal tax lien of $178,603 from the Internal Revenue Service this year.

Hangud’s LinkedIn profile revealed that he was a a data specialist and had worked for several companies in the Sacramento area, PTI reported.

The police said that Hangud may have driven around in unknown places on Northern Carolina before landing up at the Mt Shasta police station. 

Simon was quoted by The Sacramento Bee as saying, “This incident has touched the lives of many in the area... It’s a very sad, sad situation.” 

“The suspect himself drove to the Mt Shasta Police Department with one of the victims in his car and made a confession to them to start off this investigation,” Simon said

Mt. Shasta Police chief Parish Cross said he and another officer went outside to the car to verify what the man had said was true. 

“These are things that just don’t happen everyday and when they do it is upsetting,” said Cross.

While the Hangud’s victims have not been named by the police, reports say that two of them could be minors. 

Hangud was produced in court on Wednesday, wearing a safety suit, where he first refused an attorney and wanted to represent himself. However, on the advice of lawyers he accepted to be represented by a public attorney. 

Martin Jones, an attorney with the Placer County Public Defender’s Office, said that Hangud’s confession had already complicated his defence. 

The Sacramento Bee quoted Jones as saying, “He wanted to represent himself. I told him that’s not a good idea... We all believe it’s a bad idea considering the potential consequences.”

Hangud, who has been taken back to Placer County and booked into jail, was the sole suspect in the killings and there appeared to be no ongoing threat, police said.

(With PTI inputs)

Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon are getting their share.

The two actors are earning $2 million per episode on their new Apple TV Plus dramedy “The Morning Show,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The stars’ salaries are a big jump from what they’ve received in television. Aniston didn’t earn $1 million per episode on “Friends” until the last couple of seasons in 2003 and 2004, and that was a headline-grabbing sum back then. Last year, Witherspoon negotiated a hefty raise to $1 million per episode on HBO’s “Big Little Lies” and was credited with correcting the cable channel’s gender pay gap.

Not that Aniston and Witherspoon were hurting for cash. The two reportedly have networths well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And their “Morning Show” contracts amount to even more moolah with producing fees and ownership points, per the THR.

Apple’s investment in its behind-the-smiles look at morning TV shows ― in which Aniston plays the veteran host and Witherspoon the newbie ― is pretty staggering. The 20 episodes on order will cost $15 million each for a total of $300 million over two seasons, THR noted.

“The Morning Show” premieres Nov. 1 on the Apple TV Plus streaming service.

Whether it’s a quickly chugged-down morning cup, a lukewarm afternoon jolt from the coffee machine at work, a pumpkin spiced latte in the fall or a specialty cold brew in the summer, coffee has cemented itself as an important ritual in the lives of many Americans. 

But what the latest generation of coffee lovers may not know is that the coffee industry is in crisis. Even as we get used to what seems like an ever-expanding range of coffees, this diversity of taste and flavor could disappear. Poverty, the impact of climate change and the spread of disease are driving small coffee farmers out of business ― and leaving your morning brew in the hands of mass producers.

Once diversity is gone, it won’t be replenished. Earlier this year, researchers revealed that 60% of all wild coffee species are under threat of extinction due to deforestation, climate change, and the increasing severity of fungal pathogens and pests.

But an oversupply has helped push global coffee prices close to their lowest level in a decade. With dropping prices, farmers ― particularly those operating the small farms that make up much of production in developing countries like Honduras and Burundi ― are struggling to stay afloat. 

According to Fairtrade, around 60% of producers are now selling their coffee at prices below the cost of production. Today’s market price of less than $1 per pound is significantly below the $1.20 to $1.50 that Kettler said growers in poorer countries such as Honduras need to break even.

Low prices mean small farmers have less ability to protect their crops against rising climate threats such as more frequent and longer-lasting droughts and the spread and growing severity of devastating fungal pathogens, including coffee leaf rust and coffee wilt disease. 

The double whammy of grinding poverty and climate change is reportedly driving Latin American coffee growers to leave home and emigrate northwards in search of employment. While small farms in poorer countries like Honduras go out of business, Kettler said the bigger operations in Brazil and Vietnam are becoming more dominant.

In some parts of the world, he said, “coffee is grown in mountainous regions where large-scale coffee farms can’t be developed. These farmers can’t compete or adapt as well” to threats like climate change and disease.

Big Agriculture tends to embrace the commercial benefits of monoculture: In the short term, it can be more efficient to grow a lot of a smaller range of plants. The global coffee trade currently relies on only two species: Arabica, which makes up around 60% of the coffee produced, and Robusta, which accounts for around 40%.

But those coffee species that the large operations ignore and that are at risk of extinction could be key to the world’s future coffee supply. To breed resistance to climate and disease threats, researchers say other coffee species are likely to be needed. 

This extinction story, and the damage it brings, is not limited to coffee. Diversity is narrowing across our food system. Despite the existence of an estimated 30,000 plant species that humans could eat, 60% of our plant-based calories come from just three: wheat, corn and rice. 

Globally, 90%-95% of vegetables and 80%-90% of fruits have already gone extinct since 1950, according to “Lost Feast,” a new book by Lenore Newman, a professor in food security and the environment at the University of the Fraser Valley, Canada.

“It’s like we had a library of books and burnt most of them,” Newman told HuffPost. 

The first step in solving this problem is recognizing the value of diversity, Newman said. “Shrinking the gene pool” doesn’t just mean a loss of tastes and flavors, she said, but also a loss of species with which to fight climate change and disease. 

Newman pointed to the devasting impact of banana monoculture. The Cavendish banana, which accounts for virtually all those eaten in the U.S., is now under threat from two devastating diseases. But because large growers have invested so heavily in just one type of banana, there are no other types resistant to these diseases that they can easily switch to. 

Retailers, governments and consumers should be encouraging and supporting local production of food. “Seasonal and regional production is crucial for maintaining diversity, rather than always relying on food shipped around the world,” said Newman. “Individuals should try to support anyone growing food in their neighborhood as they are the ones maintaining that diversity.”

For coffee, any lasting solution must include getting more of the money consumers pay for their latte back into the farmers’ pockets, said Kettler. “The coffee market was set up as a way of extracting as much money as possible from the Global South,” he said. “It works on a commercial level as it’s generating revenue, but it’s skewed against farmers.”

Kettler pointed to a report published this month by economics professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University that called for minimum prices for coffee growers and assistance to help them sell directly to consumers. With more revenue, those farmers would be better able to adapt to the threats of climate change and more willing to keep growing coffee. 

Alternatively, if we sit back and let more coffee producers go out of business, then we’ll wake up to a future of far more limited choice. “Unless something changes,” Kettler said, “in 20 years you’ll only have two choices of coffee when we walk into a cafe: Brazilian or Vietnamese.”

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