The number of people diagnosed with the novel coronavirus on the quarantined  Diamond Princess cruise ship nearly doubled to 130 on Monday, Japan’s national broadcaster NHK said. Sixty-six new infections of the coronavirus have been confirmed on board, the ship’s operator, Princess Cruises, said in a statement.

The Diamond Princess has been in quarantine since February 4, when it arrived off the Japanese coast, after the virus was detected in a former passenger who got off the ship last month in Hong Kong. 

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The cruise ship has between 138 and 160 Indians among its 2,666 passengers and 1,045 crew members, according to reports.

One of the Indian crew members had posted a Facebook video on Friday, appealing the Indian government to evacuate them from the ship.

“We are in a grave, dangerous situation. Yesterday, 21 passengers tested positive for coronavirus. Today, the number went up to 62. As many as 41 passengers and two were quarantined just now. There are 160 Indians among the crew members. Panic over coronavirus is growing,” Binay Kumar Sarkar said in the video.

“All we want from the Indian government is that we are taken out and kept at an isolated place. Family members are worried. We are scared. We just want to disembark somehow. Please help us,” he said.

Last week, foreign minister S Jaishankar said none of the Indians on the ship had tested positive for the virus and the ministry was closely following developments.

On Monday, the Indian Embassy in Tokyo tweeted out an email ID for queries regarding the Indians on the quarantined ship:

AFP reports that when the boat arrived off Japan, authorities initially tested nearly 300 people for the virus of the 3,711 on board, gradually evacuating dozens who were infected to local medical facilities.

The ship’s two-week-long quarantine ends on February 19. 

For some, the quarantine could be even longer. A World Health Organization statement late on Sunday said the period could be extended “as appropriate” for close contacts of newly confirmed cases.

“Lots of the passengers now are getting a bit of cabin fever,” British passenger David Able said in a video posted on Facebook. “Depression is starting to set in.”

Another said he hoped assurances about the effectiveness of quarantine and ventilation on board would prove true.

“I will get nervous if we pass 200,” said the 43-year-old Hong Kong resident quarantined on the boat with his wife, child and several others of his family.

The quarantine has made life on board the ship difficult, particularly for those in windowless interior cabins and a significant number of passengers who require medication for various chronic conditions, AFP reports. 

According to Reuters, small groups are allowed out on deck every other day— with priority given to those whose rooms don’t have windows—but must wear masks and stay well away from other people. People have been given thermometers to regularly monitor their temperatures. 

The disease has killed 908 people, chiefly in mainland China, and infected more than 40,000.

Students of Delhi University’s Gargi College held a protest on Monday, days after a group of men allegedly entered the campus and sexually harassed them during the annual cultural festival. They have demanded strict action against the intruders.  

The Delhi Police said it has launched a probe into the incident and is scanning CCTV footage to gather evidence. The police has also registered a case at Hauz Khas police station after receiving a complaint from college authorities.

The incident happened on 6 February, the last day of the three-day college festival ‘Reverie’, but came to light only after some students narrated their experience on Instagram.

The protesting students, PTI reported, said that the college management did not take any action even after the students reported the matter to them. They also said that Rapid Action Force and Delhi Police personnel were deployed close to the gate from where the men entered the college, but they did nothing to control the unruly crowd.

The students alleged that they were threatened by the intruders, who also made objectionable remarks. A student told PTI that they took up the matter with the teachers and college management on 7 February itself. 

“The management said they had ‘taken note’ of it. They didn’t promise to take any action, after which many students shared their horrific experiences on Instagram,” the student said.

Acting Principal Promila Kumar had said on Sunday that the event was open for boys studying in other DU colleges and police, commandos and bouncers were present on the campus. She also seemed to imply that it was the students’ fault that they were molested.

“There was an arena in the campus meant only for girls. If they were outside that, it was their personal choice,” she had told The Indian Express.

Kumar also told IANS that “No one approached us to report any such incident. We were making rounds in the crowd. No doubt there was a large crowd but we were very vigilant and couldn’t see anything of this sort happened.” 

Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal reached the college on Monday to take stock of the situation. The DCW has issued a notice to the college and the Delhi Police for inaction.

Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, in a tweet, demanded strict punishment for the intruders. 

The matter was also raised in the Lok Sabha, with HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal saying that outsiders were behind the incident and the administration of the college has been told to take action.

(With PTI inputs)

Actor Ray Romano sent the censors scrambling for the bleep button during Sunday night’s Oscars broadcast as he told a story about working with Joe Pesci on “The Irishman.” 

While presenting the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling with Sandra Oh, Romano paid tribute to those who work in the category by sharing his experience on the set of the Martin Scorsese flick. 

“I would just sit there and be amazed,” Romano said. “And then Pesci would come in and say, ‘Get the fuck outta my chair.’” 

Oh raised her eyebrows as Romano dropped the f-bomb. 

“I think they’re gonna bleep that,” she said. “Not everything is Netflix, Ray.”

Indeed, he was bleeped, yet the unfiltered version quickly went viral online:   

The award went to Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker for their work on “Bombshell.”

1. First up, the big one: Parasite is the first non-English-language film to ever be awarded Best Picture at the Oscars

It’s taken 92 years, but Parasite is the first film that isn’t in English to receive the top honour at the Academy Awards. Parasite had already made history as the first South Korean film to be nominated in that category, too.

2. Bong Joon-ho is also the first South Korean filmmaker to win Best Director and Best Original Screenplay 

In his acceptance speech, the director paid homage to fellow nominees Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, for inspiring and championing his work, respectively. He also made what we assume was an accidental Mean Girls reference, when he said he wished he could cut the award into five and share it with the rest of the nominees.

3. Taika Waititi is the first Māori person to win an Academy Award

Originally from New Zealand, the Jojo Rabbit director is also the first indigenous filmmaker to win an Oscar, after picking up Best Adapted Screenplay. Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie was the first indigenous person to ever win an Academy Award in 1982, triumphing in the Best Original Song category.

After winning his award, Taika dedicated it to indigenous children around the world who want to create art.

4. Hildur Guðnadóttir is the first Icelandic person to ever win an Oscar

It’s been a busy few months for Hildur, who has picked up an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Grammy for her work on both the TV series Chernobyl and the hit film Joker.

She was awarded Best Original Score for her musical contributions to Todd Phillips’ film, becoming only the fourth woman to emerge triumphant in this category.

After accepting her award, she dedicated it “to the girls, to the women, to the mothers, to the daughters who hear the music bubbling within”, urging them: “Please speak up, we need to hear your voices.”

5. Brad Pitt finally has an acting Oscar

It’s been 24 years since Brad Pitt was first nominated for an Academy Award, for his performance in 12 Monkeys.

Since then, he’s been nominated a further three times in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories, but 2020 would finally be the year he would land a win, after his performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Brad does already have an Oscar, though, as he was one of the producers of 12 Years A Slave, which won Best Picture in 2014.

6. And Bernie Taupin has had his first win too

Although Elton John already had an Academy Award, his usual songwriting partner did not, as the chart-topping musician’s contributions to the Lion King soundtrack saw him team up with musical theatre composer Tim Rice.

This is no longer the case, though, with Elton and Bernie’s new song for the biopic Rocketman being awarded Best Original Song at the Oscars in 2020.

“This is justification for 53 years of hammering it out,” Bernie said, noting that it was a fitting moment as Rocketman essentially told the story of their friendship and professional relationship.

7. Laura Dern has earned Netflix its first ever acting award

The streaming service has had some success at the Oscars in the last few years, with Roma being awarded Best Foreign Film and Best Director, Icarus receiving Best Documentary Feature and two past wins in the Best Documentary Short category.

In 2020, Laura Dern probably earned Netflix its most high-profile Oscars victory yet, bagging Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Marriage Story.

This also marks Laura’s first win at the Oscars, after receiving her first nomination in 1992.

But there’s one big first that’s proved to still be out of reach...

Diane Warren now holds a record for most Oscar nominations without a win

Following her recognition in this year’s Best Original Song category, Diane now has 11 nominations without ever having won an Oscar, more than any other woman in history.

The songwriter’s first nomination was back in the late 1980s, for her contribution to the Mannequin soundtrack, and since then she’s been nominated for collaborations with Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan and Aerosmith, but none of them have resulted in an Academy Award.

Still, there’s always next year, right?

Results for the bitterly-contested Delhi assembly elections are expected on Tuesday as counting of votes begins at 8 am.

Elections to the 70-member Delhi Assembly were held on Saturday.The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is hoping to come back to power with a third term for chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. 

In 2015, the AAP won a whopping 67 out of 70 seats in the Delhi assembly, leaving just three for the BJP and none for the Congress.

Here are the live updates:

9.14 am: Celebrations begin at AAP office

9.06 am: Election Commission’s first trends at 10 am

8.59 am: Trends put AAP in the lead in over 50 seats

One hour into counting, trends show AAP leading in a majority of the seats. 

Express and Times of India put AAP in the lead in 53 seats, while NDTV shows the party leading in 51 seats. 

8.56 am: Congress leads in Ballimaran

According to Express, Congress is leading in Ballimaran constituency which recorded the highest voter turnout of 71.6% in the capital during polling on Saturday.

8.48 am: AAP’s Amanatullah Khan leads in Okhla

Shaheen Bagh and Jamia Nagar fall under the Okhla constituency includes. Shaheen Bagh has been the epicentre of anti-CAA protests in Delhi, with its indefinite sit-in demonstration running for over 50 days straight.

8.46 am: Sisodia at the Akshardham counting centre 

8.40 am: BJP’s Kapil Mishra trailing

NDTV reports BJP’s controversial Model Town candidate Kapil Mishra is trailing. Mishra is up against AAP’s Akhilesh Tripathi and Congress’ Akanksha Ola in this seat.

Tripathi is in the lead right now, according to Times ofIndia.

8.37 am: AAP leads in Chandni Chowk,  BJP in Dwarka

As of 8.30 am, AAP is leading in the Narela, Vikaspuri, Hari Nagar and Chandni Chowk seats while the BJP leads in Najafgarh, Bijwasan, Karawal Nagar, Dwarka and Kondli seats, Indian Express reports.

8.31 am: Atishi leads, Bagga trails

AAP’s Atishi is leading from the Kalkaji seat while BJP spokesperson Tajinder Bagga is trailing from Hari Nagar, Times of India reports.

The daily says AAP’s Raghav Chadha is also leading from Rajinder Nagar.

8.27 am: BJP’s mood contrary to optimism of its leaders

According to PTI, exit polls have dampened spirits of the BJP with no arrangements made to celebrate a victory on Tuesday.

The mood in the party was different from the one after voting in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Orders for special ‘Motichoor Cake’ and ‘Kamal Barfi’ had been made in advance to celebrate party’s victory after the announcement of results.

However, a top party leader told the news agency, “I do not think celebrations need elaborate arrangements. It’s only that we have decided to wait for the announcement of results this time. Celebrations can be arranged within minutes.”

8.17 am: Early trends show AAP lead

8.11 am: Visuals of counting underway at Maharani Bagh 

The counting centres are located across 11 districts, including at CWG Sports Complex in east Delhi, NSIT Dwarka in west Delhi, Meerabai Institute of Technology and G B Pant Institute of Technology in southeast Delhi, Sir CV Raman ITI, Dheerpur in central Delhi, and Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Bawana in north Delhi.

8.03 am: Counting begins

An EC official said the counting of votes has begun. 

7.59: Traffic restrictions today

7.56 am: Sisodia says AAP will win because of their work 

7.47 am: Manoj Tiwari’s number keeps going up

Tiwari, at the end of polling on Saturday, said he was sure BJP would win 48 seats. On Tuesday morning, he told the media, “Don’t be surprised if we win 55.” 

7.40 am: Why BJP confident of win, contrary to exit polls predictions

Despite exit polls favouring an AAP win, Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari said he was confident the saffron party would win more than 45 seats and form government.

“Our confidence is based on a micro analysis of all the seats. The exit polls are rough estimates, I am confident that the BJP will form the government in Delhi with full majority,” he said.

Delhi BJP’s media relations head Neelkant Bakshi told PTI, “Our own feedback and analysis is contrary to the exit poll results. The exit polls were based on 39 percent votes polled till 3 PM and did not consider votes cast in last three hours.

“The exit polls missed the pulse of the people as they did not consider half of the total 62.59 percent votes polled on Saturday,” he said.

7.35 am: No fireworks for AAP

AAP chief and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has asked AAP volunteers not to burst firecrackers during victory celebrations to prevent air pollution.

Party functionaries told PTI preparations are underway at the party headquarters in ITO to celebrate victory in the polls.

7.26 am: How votes will be counted

The Delhi CEO has said counting will begin at 8 am sharp and will be held in multiple rounds. “The postal ballots will be counted first till 8.30 am and then the votes cast through EVMs will be counted,” he said.

“The CUs (controls units) of the EVMs will be transported on Tuesday morning to the counting centres before the beginning of the exercise. The centres are spread across 21 locations, spanning the 70 constituencies. Each centre will have several counting halls, equal to the number of constituencies falling in that district,” Singh said.

Each EVM consists of a ballot unit (BU), a controls units (CU) and a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT.)

From every assembly constituency, five VVPATs will be randomly selected and they will be counted, he said.

The campaign

AAP had tried its best to fight the elections on the agenda of governance, citing its record on health and education to convince voters to give it another chance.  It mostly tried to steer clear of taking a stand on the anti-CAA protests in the capital, as well as the student protests against police brutality on campuses.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had tried its best to make Shaheen Bagh a talking point ahead of the election, trying to polarise voters on religious lines. Hate speech dominated the party’s campaign, with incendiary slogans raised by a Union minister and senior BJP leaders at poll rallies. The Election Commission banned Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Singh Verma, and Kapil Mishra from campaigning for a few days. It also sent a notice to UP CM Ajay Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath for comments made on Shaheen Bagh and Kejriwal.

Key candidates

AAP chose to field most of its MLAs again, with just 24 new faces. 

While Kejriwal fought from the New Delhi constituency, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia was fielded from Patparganj.

Atishi, who had lost to former cricketer Gautam Gambhir from East Delhi in Lok Sabha elections, is contesting the election from Kalkaji. 

Among BJP’s candidates for this election are two controversial names—spokesperson Tajinder Bagga contesting from Hari Nagar and Mishra from Model Town. Mishra led a pro-CAA rally in December and was caught on camera shouting incendiary slogans. 

Voter turnout and exit polls

The Election Commission on Sunday said the final voter turnout in the Delhi polls had been 62.59%, down from the 67.47% polling recorded in 2015 elections. The highest turnout of 71.6% was reported from the Ballimaran constituency, while the lowest turnout of 45.4 % was reported in Delhi Cantonment.

The exit polls on Saturday predicted an easy win for AAP.

The India Today-Axis My India exit poll predicted 59-68 seats for AAP, 2-11 for BJP and none for the Congress.

The Times Now-Ipsos exit poll predicted Kejriwal will retain his chair with the AAP winning 44 seats against 26 for the BJP.

The TV9 Bharatvarsh-Cicero predicted 54 seats for the AAP, 15 for the BJP and one for the Congress.

Sharon Choi, a filmmaker and fellow director Bong Joon Ho’s interpreter during this awards show season, is the true winner of the 2020 Oscars.

Mentions of Choi blew up on social media on Sunday when she took the stage several times throughout the 92nd Academy Awards to translate the Parasite director’s acceptance speeches.

Additionally, interviews cropped up of the 25-year-old Korean American talking about her directing aspirations as well as Bong calling her a “great filmmaker.”

In one post-show interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Choi shared how translating on such a large stage made her “super anxious,” but that it’s “been great.” When she was pressed about her own ambitions, Bong stepped in to say, “She’s perfect, and we all depend on her. She’s also a great filmmaker.”

Bong was asked in another post-show interview whether he would help Choi with her film work in the future.

“You already know she’s a filmmaker. She studied film in the university. So, I’m so curious about her script. Actually, she’s writing some feature-length script. I’m so curious about it,” the director said, while Choi blushed and laughed by his side.

Choi, who lives in Seoul, has reportedly only been working with Bong since May 2019, according to The Guardian. She was “an indispensable part of his team” at the Cannes Film Festival, where Parasite won the Palme d’Or, per The Guardian.

It’s unclear what the script she’s writing is about, but it seems that she’s already quite beloved on social media. In one of the many posts about her on Twitter on Oscars night, someone even made a composite of some of her awards season appearances:

We can only hope that we’ll see more of Choi, perhaps all on her own, during the next awards season.

The mood in BJP was different from the one after voting in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Orders for special ‘Motichoor Cake’ and ‘Kamal Barfi’ had been made in advance to celebrate party’s victory after the announcement of results.

However, a top party leader told the news agency, “I do not think celebrations need elaborate arrangements. It’s only that we have decided to wait for the announcement of results this time. Celebrations can be arranged within minutes.”

Why BJP said it was confident of win

Despite exit polls favouring an AAP win, Tiwari said he was confident the saffron party would win more than 45 seats and form government.

“Our confidence is based on a micro analysis of all the seats. The exit polls are rough estimates, I am confident that the BJP will form the government in Delhi with full majority,” he said.

Delhi BJP’s media relations head Neelkant Bakshi told PTI, “Our own feedback and analysis is contrary to the exit poll results. The exit polls were based on 39 percent votes polled till 3 PM and did not consider votes cast in last three hours.

“The exit polls missed the pulse of the people as they did not consider half of the total 62.59 percent votes polled on Saturday,” he said.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Amanatullah Khan is trailing in Okhla constituency with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Braham Singh leading by a margin of just 194 votes.

Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of protests against the Centre’s discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and Jamia Nagar are part of this constituency.

The BJP had tried to make the protests at Shaheen Bagh a major poll point in this election with party leaders, including Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath, trying to discredit the peaceful sit-in. 

READ: Delhi Election Results LIVE: Early EC Trends Show AAP Surging Ahead Of BJP

Last year, the Delhi Police, in December last year, had entered the Jamia Millia Islamia University campus and beat up students and staff members. Khan had met the Jamia students and in an interview with HuffPost India’s Akshay Deshmane, Khan had said, “The way in which the police entered the university premises, attacked boys and girls studying there, is wrong. It cannot be tolerated. There should be a judicial inquiry into this, And whoever is faulty should be revealed”.

Khan had won from Okhla in the 2015 Assembly elections, defeating Singh with over 60,000 votes. 

As AAP seems likely to sweep the assembly elections in Delhi, a look at how the constituencies that saw anti-CAA protests in the last two months have fared in the poll results.

While Ballimaran recorded the highest polling of 71.6% in all 70 seats of Delhi, Mustafabad, Matia Mahal and Seelampur were among seats that recorded some of the highest voter turnouts.

Seelampur — AAP’s Abdul Rehman is leading by 4253 votes over BJP’s Kaushal Kumar Mishra and Mateen Ahmed from Congress

The seat is currently held by AAP’s Mohd Ishraque, who won the seat in 2015 by over 27,800 votes. 

Delhi Election Results: Read Live Updates Here

Okhla — AAP’s Amanatullah Khan is leading by a margin of over 5700 votes ahead of BJP’s Braham Singh in the constituency which includes the Shaheen Bagh and Jamia Nagar areas. He had won the seat by over 65,500 votes in 2015. Read more

Mustafabad — BJP’s Jagdish Pradhan, the incumbent MLA, is leading by a huge margin of 26,656 over AAP’s Haji Yunus. His margin for the 2015 win was just over 6000 votes.

Matia Mahal — AAP’s Shoaib Iqbal is ahead of BJP’s Ravinder Gupta with a comfortable margin of 12,849. The seat was won by AAP’s Asim Ahmed Khan last election.

Ballimaran — Incumbent MLA Imran Hussain has a lead of 15,500 votes against BJP candidate Lata. He won the 2015 election with a margin of 33,877 votes.

Congress is yet to open its account in the 2020 Delhi elections. According to Election Commission trends, the party is leading in exactly zero seats and its vote share at present is 4.25%. The trends are in consonance with exit poll results where most pollsters had predicted 0-1 seats for the Grand Old Party. 

The Election Commission trends show that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is leading in 58 seats and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 12 seats as of 1.10 pm.

In the 2015 assembly elections in Delhi also Congress had not managed to win any seats and its vote share was 9.65%.  

Prominent Congress candidates — Alka Lamba and Arvinder Singh Lovely — are also trailing in their respective constituencies. Lamba, who is contesting from Chandni Chowk, has only gotten 1,234 votes as compared to AAP’s Parlad Singh Sawhney who has over 23,000 votes. In Gandhi Nagar, BJP’s Anil Kumar Bajpai is leading while Lovely is likely to finish third. 

READ: Delhi Election Results LIVE: AAP Now Leads In 57 Seats, BJP In 13

Congress leaders have accepted defeat with Delhi party chief Subhash Chopra saying that he takes responsibility for the party’s performance. Talking to ANI, he said that the drop in the party’s vote percentage “is the politics of polarisation of both the BJP and AAP”.  

Congress leader Sharmistha Mukherjee conceded that the party has been decimated in Delhi. “Inordinate delay in decision making at the top, lack of strategy and unity at state level, demotivated workers, no grassroots connect, all are factors,” she tweeted. 

Meanwhile, some other Congress leaders are more concerned about BJP’s performance. 

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, while talking about the Congress’s performance in Delhi, said, “We were already aware of it. The question is, what happened to BJP which was making big claims?”

Abhishek Manu Singhvi also told NDTV, “I am happy to the extent that BJP is not winning it. AAP’s victory is less disappointing to me. AAP has done some good work in education.”

Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the Delhi Assembly election was a fight between “a giant and a pygmy” and AAP is winning it despite the NDA government using all its might to wrest power in the national capital.

“The common people have decided they will choose either BJP or AAP. It’s a vote for the development agenda. The entire government, along with all its entire machinery, had been deployed in Delhi to win this election. From the Prime Minister to grassroots workers, it’s been a fight between a giant and a pygmy and the pygmy has won,” he was quoted as saying by PTI. He made no mention of his own party’s performance.

The memes on Congress’s performance in Delhi were not far behind. 

NEW DELHI ― The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is set to form the government in Delhi for the third time in six years with Arvind Kejriwal returning as the Chief Minister. 

AAP is leading in 59 of the national capital’s 70 Vidhan Sabha seats in Delhi. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is ahead in 11 seats, up 8 seats from its 2015 tally, according to the Election Commission’s website when this story was last updated. The Congress, like last time, looks set to walk away with no seats at all.

AAP’s win capped a months-long campaign that highlighted the party’s achievements which included free neighbourhood clinics, a focus on Delhi’s government-run schools, free travel on public buses for women, and sharply reduced tariffs on water and electricity. The party, born out of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, also reminded voters that it had run a largely scam-free government.

Its chief rival, the BJP, ran a divisive and mostly joyless campaign focused around the presumption that the integrity of the Indian republic was compromised by a group of peaceful demonstrators camped out on a national highway, near the neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh along Delhi’s south-east border. Much of the BJP’s campaign was focused on the controversial new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), that critics say violates the secular tenets of India’s Constitution by making religion a basis for citizenship and the BJP claims is in national interest.

The BJP’s campaign appears to have struck a chord, with the party’s lead rising sharply from 3 seats in 2015 to 13 seats in 2020, but it is unclear if the hard-edged campaign brought out the base or scared off swing voters.

ALSO READ: How Anti-CAA Protests Sites Fared In The Delhi Election

The Congress Party, which ran Delhi for 15 years from 1998 to 2013, was rendered irrelevant in this election, ending up with zero seats again. There were a few rallies that Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi addressed, but these barely registered with voters. 

At one such rally, while trying to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the unemployment crisis in India, Rahul Gandhi said the youth of this country would start beating him with a stick in six months. Gandhi’s remark, like his ’chowkidar chor hai’ jibe at the PM in the Lok Sabha election in 2019, failed to resonate and was not well received.

Congress sources did not confirm if the party had decided not to run a full campaign as a matter of strategy, but they did say cutting AAP’s vote was deemed a bad idea. 

Neither the BJP nor the Congress were able to project a chief ministerial candidate against Kejriwal, an Indian Institute of Technology graduate, a former Indian Revenue Service official and an anti-corruption activist, who won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2006 for his contribution in bringing about the Right to Information legislation. 

ALSO READ: Congress Celebrates BJP’s Loss In Delhi, Doesn’t Care About Its 0 Seats

As a rookie politician in 2013, Kejriwal defeated Congress veteran and three-time Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit by a margin of over 25,000 votes. 

Famously, Dikshit, who passed away last year at the age of 81, had said on the day of voting, “Who is Arvind Kejriwal? What is AAP?”

While Kejriwal steered clear of the BJP’s virulent anti-Muslim rhetoric, he was careful to ensure his Hindu credentials were not questioned. He declared himself a devotee of Hindu god Hanuman, prayed with his wife at the Hanuman Temple in Connaught Place, and recited the Hanuman Chalisa on a television channel, ahead of the election. 

In the meantime, he insisted that Delhi’s voters would reward his party for the work he had done over the past five years. 

Kejriwal’s measured approach, neither Left nor Right, but not quite Centre, say analysts, could be the only way to challenge the BJP in the present political climate of Hindu majoritarianism. 

What do the results mean? 

While AAP’s victory is not a widespread endorsement of the protests at Shaheen Bagh, or the vociferous anti-CAA movement in Delhi; it does show the limits of Hindu nationalism at a time when the ruling BJP is under fire for mismanaging the national economy.

At least in state elections, the results suggest, credible local leaders focused on local issues can prevail over the BJP’s tried-and-tested tactic of religious polarisation.

Less than a year ago, AAP did not win even one of Delhi’s seven seats in the Lok Sabha elections, even though it fielded candidates like Atishi, a Rhodes scholar, who was an advisor to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and is widely credited with improving Delhi’s government schools. 

Atishi lost to former cricketer Gautam Gambhir, fielded by the BJP in East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency. In fact, all seven BJP candidates secured more than 50% vote share in the 2019 parliamentary election, an even higher margin than the Hindu nationalist party’s seven-seat sweep in 2014. This time around, Atishi is contesting from the Kalkaji constituency where she is engaged in a close contest with her BJP rival.

Given that the BJP has only been in power once in Delhi, from 1993 to 1998 (Sushma Swaraj was chief minister in 1998 but only for 52 days), its parliamentary victories were attributed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity,  or, as it was called, the “Modi wave” and the “Modi wave 2.0.” 

Following BJP’s Lok Sabha victory in Delhi in 2014, AAP swept the Delhi election in 2015, winning 67 of the 70 seats in the Assembly. Then, in 2017, the BJP swept the Municipal Corporation Development (MCD) election. 

AAP’s loss at the time was largely attributed to public anger at Kejriwal, who, for the first two years after coming to power, was seen locked in squabbles with the Narendra Modi government, which controls the Delhi Police, and the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, who represents the Centre in Delhi. For the first half of his term, Kejriwal demanded full statehood for Delhi, and accused the Modi government for interfering with appointments of bureaucrats, targeting his ministers with baseless allegations, and not letting his government function. 

There was internal strife as well. Two founding members of the party, Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, were forced out of the party after Kejriwal accused them of planning a coup against him. They accused him of behaving like a dictator and compromising the values of the party. 

Kejriwal’s attempt to expand in Punjab and Goa in 2017, instead of focusing on Delhi, also irked the public. 

It took almost three years for Kejriwal to settle into his role as the Chief Minister of Delhi.

In a conversation with HuffPost India in 2019, Ankit Saxena’s father, Yashpal Saxena, who was hailed for now letting his son’s murder by his Muslim girlfriend’s family become a flashpoint for communal violence, said that he would vote for Modi in the Lok Sabha election and for Kejriwal in the Assembly election.

“Cheap electricity and free water is a godsend” he said at the time. “People forget that Kejriwal was a newcomer in politics. He fights, he falls, but he does something.”

Subramanian Swamy’s prediction 

BJP’s loss in Delhi on Tuesday follows a string of defeats in Assembly elections in the country. Last year, nearing the end of BJP’s five years at the centre and ahead of the parliamentary election, the party lost Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh. 

This year, following the BJP’s huge victory in the parliamentary election, even as the Modi government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status and the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Hindu parties in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute case, the party lost Maharashtra and Jharkhand and failed to get a majority in Haryana. 

Speaking to HuffPost India in November, BJP leader and Rajya Sabha lawmaker Subramanian Swamy said the economic slowdown would eclipse the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid verdict, and hurt the party’s chances in the Jharkhand and Delhi Assembly elections. 

“Unemployment will supersede every other thing including the Ram Mandir,” he said. 

Subramanian had also said the BJP could salvage the Delhi election “if we put a good chief minister’s candidate.”

Yet as the day of results grew closer, he seemed to change his mind.

Only to flip again:

BJP’s blitzkrieg on Shaheen Bagh

The BJP did not put up a chief ministerial  candidate, and its star campaigners including Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ajay Bisht, who goes by the name Yogi Adityanath, relied almost solely on misinformation and preyed on Hindu insecurities to drum up support for the party. 

At one rally in Delhi, Bisht falsely said that Kejriwal “is feeding biryani” to the protesters in Shaheen Bagh. At another, Shah called on voters to choose between Modi and Shaheen Bagh, and publicly lied, claiming that protestors were demanding “Jinnah wali azadi.”

At a third, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur said, “Desh ke gadaron ko…” and the crowd responded, “Goli maron salon ko.” At a fourth, PM Modi said the anti-CAA protests were politically motivated. At a press conference, Union Minister for Environment Prakash Javadekarsaid that Delhi would have to choose between “Jinnah wali azaadi” and “Bharat mata ki jai.” 

This polarising campaign seems to have worked in places, cutting into AAP’s tally.

While on Saturday, the day of the polling, the voter turnout appeared to be below average, the Election Commission of India on Sunday said that it was recorded at 62.59%. 

The AAP questioned why it took the ECI so long (almost a day after the polls closed) to calculate the voter turnout. 

“This has never happened in the history of India,” Sanjay Singh, a national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha lawmaker for AAP, toldIndia Today. “What is wrong, they should say?” 

Eye on the ball 

CM Kejriwal resisted getting drawn into a conversation about the CAA, or a war or words despite the BJP’s repeated provocations, focusing instead on his party’s work in the past five years. 

On the one hand, Kejriwal was chastised by liberal commentators for not speaking against the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s constitutional status, the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid verdict, the CAA, and the recent violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University. 

On the other, the BJP leaders accused him of “feeding biryani to the protesters” at Shaheen Bagh. 

On Kashmir’s special constitutional status, Kejriwal said that he supported the Modi government’s decision to abrogate it and divide the then Jammu and Kashmir State into the Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh. 

The Congress came out against the sudden abrogation of J&K’s special status, which some legal experts say was unconstitutional. 

Kejriwal did not visit Shaheen Bagh. Neither did Congress’s Rahul Gandhi. 

While Kejriwal has called for Shaheen Bagh to be cleared up, the Congress’s stand is ambiguous. 

Even though Rahul Gandhi has not visited Shaheen Bagh, Congress leaders like Shashi Tharoor and Mani Shankar Aiyer have addressed the protestors. 

In his first public rally for the Delhi election, Kejriwal told workers of both BJP and Congress to remain with their parties, but cast votes for AAP, “so that the pace of development doesn’t suffer.” 

For the latest news and more, follow HuffPost India on Twitter, Facebook, and subscribe to our newsletter.

The Aam Aadmi Party is heading towards a resounding victory in Delhi, where voters have rejected the divisive campaign run by the BJP. 

Latest numbers by the Election Commission show that the AAP is leading in 62 seats and the BJP’s lead has dropped to only 8 seats. 

While the BJP had claimed it could form a government on the back of its communal campaign, they have only managed to increase their tally by around five seats from 2015. 

Now, after the results, people are taking to Twitter to make jokes about the BJP and its leaders. 

Here’s what people said: 

Many Twitter users made fun of the Congress because for the second time in a row, it failed to even get leads, let alone win, in one seat. 

Renée Zellweger won her second Academy Award and Parasite director Bong Joon-ho made history with his Best Picture triumph, but there was one person who was having a better time on Oscars night than all of the A-listers in attendance put together.

Derry Girls actress Nicola Coughlan was absolutely living her best life after flying out to Los Angeles to attend Elton John’s annual viewing party.

Nicola was invited to the exclusive bash as a guest of Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness, who she has become close friends with over the past year.

And if you thought she wasn’t going to unabashedly share every aspect of the night on social media, you’d be very much mistaken...

She’d got all dolled up for the occasion, looking and feeling like a million dollars

And not only did JVN get her in, he even managed to bag an invite for Nicola’s best friend too

Here she is with JVN himself

She finally got to meet his pals, and we can safely guess she had a complete fan girl moment

Her tales of which A-listers she spotted were excellent

And she gives zero fucks if you think she is name dropping

She made great use of the boujie port-a-loos

Although she was left a little confused by the (very LA) menu

She lost her mind when the host turned up at his own party fresh from his Oscars win and regaled his guests with some of his hits

But the early flight home the following morning was less than ideal 

During her trip to Hollywood, Nicola also recorded an episode of Jonathan Van Ness’ hit podcast, Getting Curious, in which she opened up about her career.

As well as a third series of Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls, Nicola will also be seen in new Netflix show Bridgerton, which is created by the woman behind Grey’s Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes.

An AAP party worker was killed after unidentified people opened fire at newly-elected MLA Naresh Yadav’s convoy in southwest Delhi’s Kishangarh village late Tuesday night, police said.

The MLA and his supporters were returning home after visiting a temple in Yadav’s constituency Mehrauli, they said.

The party tweeted about the attack, saying:

“Volunteer Ashok Mann has passed away in the attack at AAP MLA Naresh Yadav. Today we have lost one of our family member. May his soul rest in peace,” the party said.

Additional DCP (South West) Ingit Pratap Singh told the Indian Express that the assailant came “from Kishangarh side” on foot and fled after firing, The MLA was not injured in the attack, but another party volunteer was injured.

Mann was taken to Fortis Hospital where he died, Express reported.

AAP’s social media in-charge Ankit Lal tweeted that multiple shots had been fired at the MLA and the volunteers who were accompanying him. 

AAP leader Sanjay Singh said the attack showed the rule of law in effect in Delhi. Law and order in the capital is under the Union home ministry.

The attack comes on the day AAP was celebrating its sweeping victory in the Delhi assembly elections, where it came back to power with 62 seats.

Naresh Yadav had defeated BJP’s Kusum Khatri in Mehrauli a margin of 18,161 votes.

Thodupuzha, KERALA — On July 4, 2010, T.J. Joseph was returning home from Sunday mass with his family in Kerala’s Idukki district when a group of seven menstopped his car, dragged him out and chopped off his right hand at the wrist. The attackers accused Joseph, a Catholic and the head of the department of Malayalam at Newman College in Thodupuzha, of blasphemy and of insulting Prophet Mohammed in a question paper he had set. The gory incident made national and international headlines and was widely condemned.

According to the National Investigation Agency, the men who attacked Joseph “with deadly weapons and explosive materials” were members of the Popular Front of India (PFI). This organisationcalls itself a social movement for the empowerment of minority communities, but is often labelled a radical outfitsuspected of political killings and links with the Islamic State militant group. Most recently, in December 2019, several of its activists were arrested for allegedly instigating violence against the Citizenship Amendment Act in multiple states.        

Joseph’s severed hand was surgically reattached within hours of the attack, but his life was never the same. Now, almost a decade to that day, his autobiography is making ripples in Kerala society and re-igniting the debate on religious intolerance. Not because it touches on the Islamic fundamentalists who targeted him but primarily because of his scathing account of the injustice he says he suffered at the hands of his own religious community and its leaders. Published by DC Books and released onJanuary 29, 2020, the Malayalam language book is titled Attupokatha Ormakal, which roughly translates as Un-severed Memories.

ALSO READ: Mata Amritanandamayi’s Math Is Smothering Kerala’s Environment With Violations, Documents Show

“Islamic fanatics attacked me once,” Joseph told HuffPost India in an interview shortly after his book’s release. “The Christian denomination to which I belong ruined my life by excommunicating me and terminating me from my job without giving any valid reason. Unable to withstand the isolation and financial crisis caused by the loss of my job, my wife died by suicide.”

Calling himself a “living martyr of Christian fanaticism”, the 63-year-old accused the church of making him a scapegoat to avoid a direct confrontation with the Muslim groups that attacked him.

“The church is not ready to interfere in the right of any individual to write any kind of book.  Mr Joseph and his readers can reach any conclusion. As far as the church and the college management are concerned, we have always followed the rules, regulations and procedures,” Fr Varghese Vallikkatt, chief spokesperson of Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference, told HuffPost India. “In the book, he is finding no difference between those who chopped off his hand and those who tried to obey the rules and regulations prevailing in this country. He has every right to do so but the church has its own reasons to believe that it followed only rules and never tried to make the professor a scapegoat.” 

This is the second book in recent times to drag the Syro Malabar Church into a sticky situation. As reported by HuffPost India in December, expelled nun Lucy Kalapura’s memoir, also published by DC Books, was a scathing commentary on the church.  

ALSO READ: Expelled Kerala Nun’s Memoir Sheds Light On Abuse And Harassment In Catholic Church

A question paper and a blasphemy charge 

Joseph set the controversial question paper in March 2010 for an internal exam for second-semester BCom students. To test them on grammar, he selected a passage from a book on cinema written by P.T. Kunju Muhammed, an award-winning director affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In the passage, a schizophrenic man asks Padachon – Malayalam for “Allah” or “god” – an inane question. God responds by calling him the son of a dog, a common insult in Malayalam.

While the man is unnamed in the book, Joseph gave him the name Muhammed in the question paper. Joseph said he named him after the book’s author. He also pointed out that the question paper was approved by his superiors, and that the book was in the recommended reading list for graduate and post-graduate students of Malayalam.

Trouble started after the paper was reportedly leaked to a section of the media. A prominent Malayalam television channel, now defunct, aired an “exclusive” report, alleging that the Muhammed in the question paper alluded to the prophet and founder of Islam, and accused the professor of insulting him. The media storm that followed sparked outrage amongst Muslims, with moderate parties as well as radical organisations such as the PFI organising massive protests across the state. 

As the controversy snowballed, Joseph went underground, fearing arrest. While the police went about arresting his attackers, they registered a case against him for causing communal hatred. Joseph ran from city to city. Refused accommodation almost everywhere he went, he finally found shelter in a lodge run by a Muslim proprietor in Palakkad district. It was from here that he was arrested on April 12010.

Joseph wasreleased on bail soon after. But he had no job to return to. The college had suspended him in March that year on the grounds that he had created enmity between two religions and had engaged in blasphemy. In the following months, Joseph said, a group of men appeared at his house on three separate occasions under various pretexts. Joseph avoided them, but on the fourth attempt, the attackers severed his hand.

“In the beginning, when the question paper controversy erupted, the Syro Malabar Church and the college management under it gave me their full support, vouching for my integrity,” Joseph recalled. “However, a high-level meeting of church authorities in Kerala was held and thereafter, everybody changed their stands. At the meeting, a decision was taken to not antagonise the PFI and other radical Islamic outfits. Thereafter, I was all alone.” 

The meeting, Joseph said, was held in the second week of March 2010.

“It was the stand of the church supporting Islamic fundamentalism and the canard against me that resulted in the PFI attack and the loss of my hand.”

From crisis to crisis

The attack left Joseph’s right hand permanently damaged and he said he used his left hand to write the manuscript. The 431-page book gives a detailed account of the ordeals he faced, even long after the controversy died down.

After supporting him initially, the church excommunicated Joseph. This means the church officially declared that Joseph was no longer its member.  His wife, two children and aged mother were also marginalised as the members of a family of an excommunicated devotee.  

“For reasons best known to them, the church authorities attempted to portray me as a terrorist with heavy doses of Islamophobia,” he said. “They excommunicated me and prevented priests and laity from visiting me and extending any help. There began the crisis that still engulfs my life.”

On September 1, 2010, the college sacked Joseph for allegedly insulting another faith. And on September 12 that year, 120 churches in the region read out a pastoral letter at mass that said the assault on Joseph did not absolve him of his wrongs.

Three years later, a trial court acquitted Joseph in the communal hatred case. But even then, the college refused to take him back.

Joseph said the decisions taken by the church and college authorities pushed his wife Salomi into depression. In the four years that followed the attack, his legal battle against the college for reinstatement severely dented the family’s savings. In March 2014, a week before Joseph was officially due to retire, Salomi died by suicide at home. 

Her death caused widespread public anger against the church and the college, especially within the Christian community. As a result, the college allowed Joseph to return to work for just one day, ensuring he would receive his retirement benefits.

According to Joseph, he used those retirement benefits to renovate his house and educate his son and daughter. “My children lost their mother. She will not return,” he said. “I have regained everything else with sheer determination and courage.”

Moving on

Standing by Joseph at the book release event in Thrissur, film-maker Kunju Muhammed said the retired professor was a victim of the most brutal terror attack in Kerala’s history.

Joseph, on his part, identifies himself as a “victim of false media manipulation propelled by both Christian and Islamic fundamentalist groups.” He explained, “I am sure the Muslim organisation was misled by false propaganda. But my own people terminated me from my job, excommunicated my family, knowing fully that I am innocent. The treatment by my college and the church was worse than the punishment meted out by the fundamentalists.”

In 2015, the incident received legal closure. The trial court convicted 13 accused and handed out  jail terms ranging from three to eight years. It acquitted 18 others. Some loose ends remain, with a few key accused still to be apprehended. One of them  surrendered before the court in 2018.

But Joseph says he has long since forgiven his assailants. “The youths who attacked me were just tools,” he said. “They were brainwashed souls who acted at the behest of some sick minds. Why should I blame them?’’

His book, he said, is an attempt to make his stand clear. “There are people who still misunderstand me and my intentions,’’ he explained. “I have never been against Islam and never attempted to disregard [the] contributions of the Prophet. If the church authorities were ready to give face value to my explanation and convey it clearly to the Islamic groups agitating against me, my hand might have been saved. Instead, the church portrayed me [as] a villain and facilitated the extremist attack on me.”

According to academic and writer Shaji Jacob, the attack on Joseph was a wake-up call to Kerala on religious intolerance. “After Joseph’s hand was chopped off and his wife died by suicide, Kerala society started treating religious fundamentalism as a matter of utmost concern,” he said. “Now, his autobiography proves beyond doubt that no religious group is free from intolerance and obscurantism. The Catholic Church has treated him badly even after the courts exonerated him from the blasphemy charge.”

The new coronavirus that has killed over 1,000 people in recent weeks has been named Covid-19, the World Health Organisation has just announced.

While this may seem a strange thing to trumpet at this late stage in the outbreak, there is a very good reason for it – potential stigma.

The director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a press conference a name was decided that “did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease”.

He said: “Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatising.

“It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks.”

The Covid-19 outbreak is the first that has tested new WHO guidelines on naming such viruses.

Previous outbreaks such as MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) and swine flu led to the stigmatising of geographical areas and certain animals.

In 2009, Egyptian officials ordered the culling of all pigs even though the animals didn’t spread the virus.

And MERS wasn’t exactly a great form of advertisement for countries in the Middle East even though it was reported across the globe.

What the WHO was trying to avoid by the naming of Covid-19 was the moniker of Chinese flu or Wuhan flu sticking, which can potentially lead to the stigmatisation and ostracisation of people from China or Wuhan – something that has been seen already regardless. 

This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Follow HuffPost UK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

GUWAHATI — All data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has been made offline from its official website due to non-renewal of contract with the IT firm Wipro, prompting the Opposition Congress to doubt it as a “malafide act”.

The complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on its official website ‘www.nrcassam.nic.in’ after the final list was published on August 31, 2019.

However, the data was not available for the last couple of days and it created panic in the public, mostly among the people excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.

For the latest news and more, follow HuffPost India on Twitter, Facebook, and subscribe to our newsletter.

He informed that the state coordination committee had decided to do necessary formalities in its meeting on January 30 and wrote to the Wipro during the first week of February.

“Once Wipro makes the data live, it will be available for the public. We hope that people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days,” Sarma said.

Reacting to the development, Leader of the Opposition in Assam Assembly Debabrata Saikia wrote to the Registrar General of India and requested him to look into the matter urgently.

“It is a mystery as to why the online data should vanish all of a sudden, especially as the appeals process has not even started due to the go-slow attitude adopted by the NRC Authority. There is, therefore, ample scope to suspect that the disappearance of online data is a malafide act.

“Indeed, the deletion of data from the NRC website at a time when the appeals process is yet to start, is prima facie a deliberate violation of the directive issued by the Hon’ble Supreme Court.

“This act also violates the rules pertaining to the NRC, which stipulates various processes post publication of the NRC,” Saikia wrote in the letter.

It was the biggest night for mom’s spaghetti in years.

At the 92nd Academy Awards on Sunday, following a montage of iconic songs from film history, Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, came onstage and rapped “Lose Yourself” from his early 2000s movie “8 Mile.”

And everyone was left with one question: “Why?”

This wasn’t a special anniversary. The movie, featuring a climactic rap battle where Eminem’s character B-Rabbit reveals that the parents of his rival Papa Doc (Anthony Mackie) have a real good marriage (a true death blow), came out in 2002.

“Lose Yourself” did win the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 2003 Oscars, but Eminem didn’t even show up to accept the award. And that was an odd 17 years ago. Is it just that Eminem is like a cicada, coming out every 17 years to make a bunch of noise?

In a tweet following the performance, Eminem said he was sorry it took 18 years to get to the Academy, and on Monday, the rapper explained more to Variety:

I kinda figured maybe since I didn’t get a chance to do it at the time, maybe it would be cool. Back then, I never even thought that I had a chance to win, and we had just performed “Lose Yourself” on the Grammys with The Roots a couple of weeks before the Oscars, so we didn’t think it was a good idea. And also, back at that time, the younger me didn’t really feel like a show like that would understand me.

But then when I found out I won, “That’s crazy!” That to me shows how authentic and real that award is — when you don’t show up and you still win. That makes it very real to me.

“8 Mile” was already set to be in the movie music montage, according to the magazine, and Eminem says he was approached to perform.

“It was cool because we just put out an album, so we said maybe that’ll make sense with the timing of the new album,” he said.

The performance was presented to the rapper as being secretive, so he just went with it.

“I said, ’Oh that’s kinda dope, to not even announce it,” he explained.

At least we know why the performance worked for Eminem. Why it worked for the Academy is another question. Eminem did get a standing ovation, though, so maybe that’s the answer.

Also as an added bonus, Martin Scorsese seemed to get the best sleep of his life.

You can watch Eminem’s Oscar performance below, or perhaps just wait another 17 years.

Read the full interview at Variety.

NASA wants everyone to know that “basic physics” ― not some mythical fluctuation in gravity ― is the reason a broomstick can stand upright on its own.

The government space agency shared a video of NASA astronaut Alvin Drew and scientist Sarah Noble answering the trending Twitter #BroomstickChallenge on Tuesday ― a day after what was purported to be the only day of the year the feat could be accomplished. 

“Did you do the Broomstick Challenge yesterday?” asks Noble in the video. “Well, turns out you can do it again today.”

“It’s just physics,” responds Drew.

In case you missed the #BroomstickChallenge hype, it began on Monday, when someone shared a video on Twitter claiming NASA had said that Feb. 10 was the only day of the year when a broom could stand up on its own “because of the gravitational pull.” 

The video then shows the tweeter standing a broom upright on the floor, where it remains even after the person removes her hands. 

The tweet garnered thousands of responses as others around the globe rushed to grab their brooms and try the trick for themselves. 

However, there’s no evidence that NASA had ever said anything about broomsticks, Feb. 10 and gravitational pull until the challenge went viral.

That’s when NASA pointed out that brooms can stand up on their own any day of the year. A household broom’s center of gravity is low and the bristles often are wide enough to act as a base to support the handle.

NASA Earth’s account also tweeted about the challenge in response to NASA’s master account, explaining that “there’s no special gravity that only affects brooms.” 

As a CNN video from 2012 explains, the broom myth is a variation of an old wives’ tale that eggs can balance on their ends only on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Like brooms, eggs can always do that.

So, rejoice broom-believers. You can play with your broom any old time.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) saw a resounding victory in the Delhi Assembly elections winning 62 out of 70 seats and Arvind Kejriwal coming back to power.  The BJP won only 8 seats, which was more than double of what it had won in 2015. 

The BJP had led an aggressive, communal and divisive campaign on the grounds of religion in the face of massive anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests in the capital. 

While students of Jamia Millia Islamia University were attacked by the Delhi police inside their campus and students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) were attacked by people from outside their campus, the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre had dubbed these students as “tukde tukde gang”. 

As the women of Shaheen Bagh took to the streets, protesting day and night, making the area the epicentre of anti-CAA protests, BJP leaders campaigning in Delhi, including home minister Amit Shah, made communal remarks against them in a bid to consolidate the Hindu vote. While AAP concentrated on bijli, paani and shiksha, the BJP’s rhetoric was Hindutva. From “goli maaro” to “current” for Shaheen Bagh, BJP’s campaign often used hate speech. 

With AAP coming back to power, there were puns galore in headlines on Wednesday morning. The Telegraph, know to be a vocal critic of the Modi government, went with “Currentjriwal” taking a dig at Shah’s comments. 

Times of India called Arvind Kejriwal “Bullet-Proof In Delhi” taking on the “goli maaro” slogans. 

Here’s a look at what the major English dailies said about AAP’s victory. 

Hindi Newspapers

Among the Hindi dailies, Dainik Jagran went with the headline “Fir Aap Ki Hui Dilli” which loosely translates to Delhi has become AAP’s again. Dainik Jagran said on its front page how the people of Delhi put their faith on the “development” that AAP had brought to Delhi. 

Dainik Bhaskar went with a line from the Hanuman Chalisa which is also a pun on the word AAP — “Aapan Tej Samharo Aape” which translates to “only you can deliver from your own might”. The line from Hanuman Chalisa is also a reminder that AAP convenor Kejriwal is a follower of Lord Hanuman and even visited Delhi’s famous Hanuman Temple right after his victory was confirmed.

Bengali newspapers

While Anandbazar Patrika called it the loss of divisive politics, Bartaman went with the headline “Dilli teo dublo BJP” which means “BJP drowns in Delhi as well”. Bartaman said that this verdict by the people was also a verdict towards the citizenship law. 

Malayalam newspapers

The Delhi editions of both Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi, which had been covering the election campaign closely, devoted the lion’s share of their front pages to the results. Both newspapers also had huge, eye-catching cartoons accompanied by clever headlines. Manorama had a cartoon of Kejriwal as a cricketer using a broom to smack a lotus-illustrated ball over the boundary with the headline ‘AAP-TRICK’. The cricketing metaphors made their way to a mock scorecard as well, which said:

Aam Aadmi Party (Not out) 62*

BJP (Run out) 8

Congress (Clean-bowled) 0

Mathrubhumi depicted Kejriwal standing on what seemed like an urn flanked by brooms, holding up a placard saying ‘AAP KA MAGIC’. It also made some space for a photo of a dejected-looking Manoj Tiwari, Delhi BJP chief, who seemed to have shrunk in front of his rival’s impressive performance.

Both newspapers also devoted at least four pages to detailed coverage of the results, including photos and news about ‘Baby Kejriwal’, who had kept news cameras rapt on counting day.