1 Dumping
India’s ‘VIP culture’ (Jason Burke in The Guardian) The former tax inspector and activist
who is to be Delhi’s new chief minister, the top elected official in the
metropolis, has refused police protection, saying that his “biggest security”
is God. Arvind Kejriwal, leader of a new populist political party “dedicated to
improving the lot of the common man”, announced on Monday that he would form a
government to run the sprawling, troubled and increasingly wealthy city of 15
million people.
The 45-year-old
novice politician, who has vowed to end the “VIP culture” of the capital, also
said that new ministers would refuse to accept the large government bungalows
that are customary perks of such posts as well as cars that use flashing red
beacons to force their way through traffic. Even minor dignitaries in the
capital travel with a large police escort, adding to the already acute
congestion and enraging ordinary citizens.
Kejriwal’s Aam
Admi (common man) party stunned political analysts and established parties when
it won 28 out of 70 seats in local assembly elections in Delhi earlier this
month. The newcomer to the capital’s cutthroat machinations, who launched his
party a year ago, beat the former chief minster of the city, a veteran of the
ruling Congress party who had dismissed his challenge as “not even on our
radar”. Congress suffered a catastrophic defeat, being reduced to eight seats.
Almost all the
candidates of the AAP were political debutants and included a rickshaw driver,
a lawyer and a TV actor. Their key pledge was to clean up politics and the
endemic corruption that has crippled the provision of public service for the
many millions who cannot afford to pay for private healthcare, schooling or
even basics such as water.
The party’s
message and symbol – a broom – proved popular with urban voters also struggling
with runaway inflation, chronic youth underemployment and slowing economic
growth. Kerjiwal, who called the party’s victory a historic win, had initially
said it would not form a minority government. But after lengthy negotiations in
recent days, Congress has now decided to support the AAP in the Delhi local assembly.
2 End of
China’s one-child policy (Straits Times) Changes to China’s strict one-child policy, which will
allow more parents to have a second child, will begin to roll out early next
year, the country’s family planning commission told official media. The policy
change is expected to go into force in some areas of China in the first quarter
of 2014, Yang Wenzhuang, a director at the National Health and Family Planning
Commission told China’s official Xinhua news agency.
Beijing said
last month it would allow millions of families to have two children, the most
radical relaxation of its strict one-child policy in close to three decades.
The move is part of a plan to raise fertility rates and ease the financial
burden of China’s rapidly ageing population. Authorities are in the process of
calculating the number of eligible couples and their situations before specific
regulations are approved, Yang said.
3 AK-47 founder
Kalashnikov no more (Sydney Morning Herald) Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the world’s most
popular assault rifle, the AK-47, a simple and durable weapon of war used by
tens of millions in about 100 countries, has died. He was 94. He lived in
Izhevsk in the Ural Mountains, the town that produces his rifles.
The Automatic
Kalashnikov – Avtomat Kalashnikova, or AK-47, for the year its design was
finalised – became prized by governments and rebels alike for its low cost,
ease of use, light weight and resistance to corrosion and jamming. The Soviet
Army made the weapon standard issue in 1949, as did most Warsaw Pact countries
and dozens of liberation armies in Africa, Asia and Latin America during the
Cold War.
The AK-47 was
used in at least 40 of 60 large armed conflicts since 1945, Alexander Uzhanov,
an associate fellow at the Academy of Military Science in Moscow, wrote in a
2009 biography of Kalashnikov. More than 100 million AK-47s have been sold
worldwide, half of them counterfeit, according to Rosoboronexport, Russia’s
state arms exporter.
Al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden posed next to the rifle in videos he released to the public before
he was killed in 2011. Mozambique, an African nation that endured a long civil
war after gaining independence from Portugal in 1975, includes an image of the
AK-47 on its flag.
Kalashnikov
said he came up with the AK-47′s design while recuperating from wounds suffered
when invading Germans shelled the tank he was driving during the Battle of
Bryansk in 1941. He long insisted that his goal had been to design a rifle to
help the Soviet Union fend off a German invasion – not to arm extremists or
criminals.
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