News18.com Daybreak: The 'Silence Breakers', India Sends Belgium Packing, 'Kinflict' and Other Stories You Might Have Missed
In case you missed it
Time has chosen its 2017 Person of the Year. It is the "Silence Breakers"— the women and men who have come forward to shed light on sexual harassment and abuse in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein fallout. "This is the fastest moving social change we've seen in decades, and it began with individual acts of courage by hundreds of women — and some men, too — who came forward to tell their own stories," TIME editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal told NBC's "Today" program. On the 25th anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition, Al-Qaeda's Kashmir faction, Ansar Ghazwatul Hind, released an audio clip calling all Muslims in India to join jihad. The voice in the audio clip said that the Babri Masjid demolition was an "unforgettable crime of Hindu extremists."
A 5.5 magnitude earthquake jolted the National Capital Region at 8:49 pm on Wednesday. The epicentre was reported at Rudraprayag district in Uttarakhand. The depth of the quake was 30 km.
India couldn't have asked for a harder opponent in the quarter final match of the Hockey World League Finals. But the way Indian forwards kept on creating chances right from the very start of the match, it was a spectacle. India entered the semis of the tournament after knocking out Belgium 3-2 in the shootout.
After the Jawaharlal Nehru University administration cancelled BJP MP Subramanian Swamy's talk on Ram Mandir, the leader claimed that the Left wing is threatened by his counter on the issue. "I am not surprised. JNU is fearful that my ideas will influence the youth. The Left is threatened by my arguments. My arguments on Ram Mandir are so powerful that they won't be able to stand it," the BJP MP said.
Hunger forced a father to sell his eight-month-old daughter for Rs 200 to another couple in Tripura's remote Peliamora village. The incident sent ripples across the state administration, who immediately sent a team of officials to the village to look into the matter. The newborn was returned to the family.
For India, this was a deeply unsatisfying way to end a sequence of 16 Tests on home soil, spread across two seasons. They won as many as 11, but were stymied in Delhi – as they had been in Rajkot (England) and Ranchi (Australia) – by a combination of defiant opposition, a comatose pitch and their own lapses.
The fallout between Tehseen and Shehzad Poonawalla reminds us of how close relatives have often worked for different political parties going against each other's interests. However, not all brothers go through ugly feuds. Will the Ram Mandir politics determine who wins Gujarat? Watch the debate on Face Off@9 with Zakka Jacob.
Snapdragon 835-powered PCs are finally a reality. At the opening day of Qualcomm's second annual Snapdragon summit, Microsoft's Terry Myerson has officially announced 'The Always Connected PC'. And, it wants to be your next Windows 10 phone.
Watch out for
Today is the last day of campaign for the first phase of Gujarat elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP's top leaders are holding several rallies across the state. Will the Ram Mandir be the discourse on the last day of the campaign?
Agree or disagree?
Raja Sekhar Vundru's book 'Ambedkar, Gandhi and Patel: The Making of India's Electoral System' argues that the experience of the current electoral mechanism of reserving constituencies for the Scheduled Castes has failed to address, represent, and protect the interest of those for whom the constituency has been reserved. There is a need for some reforms in the electoral mechanism.
India is getting ready to host the 15th RIC (Russia, India, China) foreign ministerial meeting next week. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov will also be holding bilateral talks with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines. While, India is projecting the meeting as one that reflects its 'strategic autonomy', the perception that the RIC engagement also became necessary after talks of containing China through the 'Quad' between India, Japan, US and Australia is also apparent.
On reel
Russia's Olympic team has been barred from the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This was the International Olympic Committee's way of punishing Russia for the doping scandal. Here's a look at the scandal and the politics behind it.