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The outcome of the meeting of European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker and US President Donald Trump clearly showed that when it comes to diplomacy and maneuvering, old world Europe still has the trump card over the new world United States.

‘I got the money honey, if you got the time.’ That could have been Imran Khan’s pick-up line, before he got old enough to become a serious politician, except that the playboy cricketer did not have to throw money at a willing willowy for the honeypot. Bears knock; bulls barge in.

BHOPAL: Though there are bright chances of electoral understanding between Congress and BSP for the Assembly election, there is going to be much haggling over seat allocation. Madhya Pradesh Congress president Kamal Nath has announced that the Congress will set up candidates in 200 Vidhan Sabha constituencies, leaving only 30 seats to other parties. The MP Assembly consists of 230 members.

LUCKNOW: BSP national president Mayawati and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav are moving ahead cautiously towards an alliance to defeat BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Tom Horn was a tracker of renegade Red Indians and cattle rustlers. He had powerful fists and was a marksman of note. Horn wrote his story and the publishers put on the cover the words ‘Written by Himself’. It was quaint. Now, there are lots of Indian stories, ‘Indian’ not ‘Red Indian’, but what if things told stories and publishers put it on the cover ‘Written by Itself’?

Vigilantism remains the focus. Talking of the cow vigilante, RSS honcho Indresh Kumar speaks like he owns not only the cow but also the human being, those with Indian citizenship – lock, stock and stomach. He consigns the bovine to the idiot category. That the cow “takes in all the poison” and that cow-dung will make do for “cement” and the “A/c”. Why/how? If cow can’t distinguish grass from marijuana, how come she is holy?

Global ratings agency Standard & Poors has expressed disappointment over the pace of reforming the Indian banking sector as part of the programme to address the system’s non-performing assets. The agency noted that although a few initiatives have been announced to reform the sector, very few steps have been taken so far and the follow-through action on the announced reforms has been weak.

Being the world’s largest rail network with 67,368 km of route length spread across the continental-sized country of ours, the Indian Railways (IRs) today is on the threshold of a challenging phase ahead, as it has taken multiple tasks on hand with no matching resources to execute them with tenacity of purpose and result-orientation. With its more than 150 years history and heritage of pre-colonial past, the baggage it suffers, operating as it is as a departmental commercial undertaking of the Government of India under the overall control of the Railway Board, its image as a national common carrier moving passenger and goods over its vast network has suffered a serious dent due to operational ineptitude and the willful wrong use of the system by successive railway ministers for narrow political purposes down the decades.

Indian elections are generally boisterous affairs with the atmosphere of a carnival. However, the chances are that the zing will be absent during the forthcoming state assembly elections and the general election next year.

There is a special kind of Hell for the cow vigilante. It is not a lake of boiling pitch. That is for corrupt politicians. In Dante's Hell, the cow vigilante is hung from meat-hooks. Roasted on slow fire. Cow Vigilante Fry! Malayali Happymon Jacob tweets that the best beef-fry is Kerala’s Beef-PepperFry. He lists Meghalaya. Mizoram. West Bengal and Sikkim among places where beef dishes are “Yummy”.