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Bolivia’s coup regime seems determined to drown the opposition in blood. Protesters demonstrating for the return of elected president Evo Morales have been gunned down in La Paz and while marching on Cochabamba.

For the nuch harassed Hindus and Muslims in Assam suspected of being illegal Bangladeshi settlers, there is now a glimmer of hope: in recent days, authorities have released 20 people held in endless detention long after serving their 3 year sentences, from special camps in Goalpara and Tezpur. Altogether 56 people are to be freed, out of 140 applicants. Most have been treated as prisoners for life, having served out their terms. There was no relief for the rest because their submissions were ‘not in order,’ according to local media reports. However, bowing to the twin pressures of international opinion and an increasingly hostile press, state officials have offered to help the barely literate poor prisoners unable to write out a legible prayer seeking their overdue release.

In a way, the outcome of the presidential election in Sri Lanka, held on November 16, was decided as far back as April 21, Easter Sunday, when Islamist terrorists killed 259 persons in a series of attacks on three churches, three luxury guest houses and a housing complex. The Sinhala public opinion turned decisively against the Muslims. They wanted a “strongman” like Gotabaya Rajapaksa. A former lieutenant colonel in the Sri Lankan army and later the country’s Defence Secretary, it was Gotabaya who decimated the LTTE with ruthless ferocity. Not only was the founder and leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran shot dead, even his twelve-year-old son Balachandran was also riddled with bullets.

With the executive, legislature and judiciary more or less on the same page, the BJP can be said to be on a dream run. But the oddity is that it isn’t. The reason is that democracy allows hoi polloi to follow a line of thinking which may not tally with the views of the powers-that-be. Hence, the BJP’s setbacks in Maharashtra and Haryana.

If the centre wants to disinvest its entire 53.3 percent stake in Bharat Petroleum, a ‘Fortune 500’ company, it’s the government’s call. Nobody, except probably its 12,000-odd employees, is really opposed to it. BPCL’s total assets are valued at Rs.1,36,930 crore or worth US$20 billion. But doing this on the ground that “the government has no business to be in business,” as recently reasoned by the union petroleum minister, sounds absolutely pretentious. The government is in business all over the world, including a host of capitalist countries such as the USA, Germany, Japan, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Israel, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. They control enterprises with state ownership upto 100 per cent. Some of them even own assets totally outside the core sector such as Hotels and casinos. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are playing an important role in Europe’s economies, especially in the energy, telecommunications and transport sectors. No one denies that SOE governance frameworks are partly weak and need to be strengthened. Experts suggest that they could be along three important lines such as fleshing out a consistent ownership policy; giving teeth to financial oversight; and making SOE boards more professional.

Dharamshala: The Sub-Junior boys of Tamil Nadu were the only top-seeded team that survived with sheer consistency to enter the final of the UTT 81st Cadet and Sub-Junior National Table Tennis Championships at the Indoor Stadium here today.

Hyderabad: Bengaluru’s Sawan Satyanarayanan, Mumbai’s Ashi Hanspal and Delhi’s Jashmehar Jubbal hogged the limelight winning their respective categories in the 2nd round of the Sodi Kart Sprint of the JK Tyre FMSCI Naional Karting Championship, in Hyderabad.

New Delhi: Commonwealth Games champion Shreyasi Singh shot 42 out of 50 birds to win the Women’s Trap title in the 63rdNational Shooting Championship at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range (KSSR) here on Monday.

New Delhi: Indian women boxers hogged the limelight on the last day winning all the five gold on offer as the team bagged 12 medals at the ASBC Asian Youth Men and Women Boxing Championships in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on Sunday.

Dharamshala: Top-seeded West Bengal went down tamely to Maharashtra in Cadet Boys as the latter won 3-1 to book their place in the quarterfinals of the UTT 81st Cadet and Sub-Junior National Table Tennis Championships at the Indoor Stadium here today.