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Rohingiya Muslims continue to face a nightmare without end in South Asia. With Bangladesh and Singapore repulsing desperate refugees looking for help and squeezed mercilessly by the Myanmar government at home, the Rohingiyas truly have nowhere to go. Theirs must be a unique situation without parallel in the world, according to observers.

Poor Chautala and company! Lodged inside Delhi’s Tihar Jail upon conviction by a special CBI court in over Rs.100-crore corruption and bribery in the junior basic trained (JBT) teacher recruitment case in Haryana, former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, his son Ajoy and 51 others, including two IAS officers, must be cursing the Prime Minister for setting the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) under his charge at them to investigate into the allegations and chargesheet them for an offence which is commonly practiced by ruling political parties and their official henchmen by governments at states and the centre for years.

If the Congress had choreographed the coronation of the Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi perfectly and built up an atmosphere of bonhomie in Jaipur last week, the BJP has failed to show a smooth transition of power in the party. In a dramatic anticlimax, the BJP chief Nitin Gadkari lost out to get a second term after the income tax raids on the Purti group, which triggered a rethink on the part of the BJP.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.… Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.”
- President Barack Obama, Inaugural Speech, January 21, 2013

BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party seems to have decided to woo the young voters. The state is to elect its new Vidhan Sabha in the month of November this year and since the last elections (2008), at least 30 lakh new, young voters have been added to the electorate. Besides youth the BJP has also announced a series of schemes to win over urban voters of the state.

Striking a hopeful note, IMF sees a “gradual strengthening” of global economy in the new year, as constraints on economic activity “start to ease”, and projects global growth at 3.5 per cent in 2013 from 3.2 per cent last year. In a New Year update, IMF, however, maintains broadly its earlier forecasts except in the euro area where mild recession will continue into 2013.