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On May 25, 2018, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos made an announcement that Colombia has joined North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). He mentioned too that Colombia was joining the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, an international club of creditors of deeply indebted poor countries. Within a few days, Santos was conferring in Brussels with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There is no mistaking the signs: Kerala’s political landscape is all set to acquire a deeper shade of red in the wake of the Chengannur assembly by-election result.

Jocko Street cut short the overseas call. “Shashi Tharoor is in trouble, what will I tell my friends in Thiruvananthapuram? Their hearts will be broken, especially the women.” Alec Smart stabbed a finger in the air: “What happened to Tharoor? Last I heard the man was doing fine?” Jocko rose to his full height, 6’1” in his socks. “They have named him accused in Sunanda’s suicide, abetment something. They will stand him in court and ask him personal questions. How can they do this to Sunanda, such a lovely woman? Sunanda will be heartbroken!”

For India, the case of rising income inequalities deserves special attention. New World Wealth, a Johannesburg-based company, published a report where it claimed that India is the second-most unequal country in the world, with millionaires controlling 54 percent of the wealth. In Japan, the most equal country in the world, millionaires control only 22 percent of national wealth.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on June 6, 2018, for the ninth time, clarified that there’s no “scam in Rafale”. She also reiterated that those shouting “ammunition shortage” should be asking themselves, “Who left the shortage? There was shortage before 2014.”

AURANGABAD: Shiv Sena had called for a Hindu ‘Shakti March’ in Aurangabad on May 19 against the city police and the home department which failed to take action against those responsible for recent mob violence here.

A Kaala war is on in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Karnataka, two states with links to Kaala superstar Rajinikanth, a man whose name recognition in distant shores – Japan to Singapore to sister-city Dubai – is like ‘Hail the Queen’ in the United Kingdom, where films walk through cinema halls in silent progression unlike in Tamil Nadu, where movies pass muster in theatres in vociferous glee as if to the cinema-born, which they are, especially a Rajinikanth-flick.

Mark Zuckerberg must not like the New York Times anymore. The clean-cut CEO of Facebook, social media where friends serenade friends and get high on ‘likes’, was just getting over the profligacy of Cambridge Analytica when the NYT comes out with this report that Facebook had parted with extensive user information to phone makers, from Apple to Samsung to Blackberry, a total of 60 device makers including Amazon. Poor stinking-rich Zuckerberg must maybe now order another suit to go with another tie and shirt. You can’t expect a billionaire to appear at Senate and Congress in the same suit and tie he wore last time, can you?

As in London last April, Narendra Modi participated in a choreographed question-and-answer session in Singapore recently, where one of his responses was apparently to a pre-set query. The difference between the two events was that the BJP aficionado and censor board chief, Prasoon Joshi, managed to camouflage the pre-arranged nature of the show in London with much greater efficiency than what was done in Singapore.

‘Gossip dies when it hits a wise person’s ears’, the Buddhist told the journalist who slapped a sneer and shot back, “What about rumour?” The Buddhist shifted to a different asana: “That, my friend, I'm afraid, will move on unless the wise one opens his mouth and scotches it dead right there and then.” Wonderful talking to a Buddhist except that all Buddhists are now communists and some of them in India don’t mind water-boarding to death a Dalit Christian who dared to be Romeo to an upper caste Christian Juliet!