Tag: Britney Spears

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2022-34

About:the stories of the world this week 21 August to 27 August, trying to kill a brain, a drying-up Biblical lake, education still being denied, a country loosens-up to the LGBT, chess and tennis, a Dancing Queen, and a music diva sings again.

Everywhere

The Brain

The Russia-Ukraine war reached a grim six-month anniversary, on 24 August, and it’s a dark-tunnel conflict where we are unable to see any light at the end. I think, a lot depends on Russia switching-on a light and declaring some kind of pyrrhic victory.

In a dangerous incident in Ukraine, the World narrowly avoided a ‘radiation disaster’ when the last regular power line supplying electricity to Ukraine’s Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was temporarily cut-off, by shelling. Luckily the diesel generators kicked-in automatically, as programmed, and the Station Staff reacted quickly after the blackout to prevent any damages. What if something went amiss, or if the Plant remains disconnected from the Ukraine Grid? That’s as close as one can get to the next nuclear disaster.

Meanwhile, somebody is trying to get to the ‘brain’ of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This week, the daughter of Russian ultranationalist and political commentator Alexander Dugin – dubbed ‘Putin’s brain’ – died when the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving was ripped apart by a powerful explosion – a car bomb – on the outskirts of Moscow.

Dugin is known for developing an extreme rightwing view of Russia’s place in the world. He is described as a Russian Fascist who has helped shape Putin’s expansionist foreign policy. He is the high priest of a virulent brand of Russian nationalism that has become increasingly influential in Russia: from fringe ideologue to the leader of a prominent strand of thinking that sees Russia at the heart of a ‘Eurasian Empire’ defying Western decadence.

Dugin is the spiritual founder of the term ‘the Russian World’, and helped revive the expression ‘Novorossiya’ or New Russia, which included the territories of parts of Ukraine, before the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. Well, that’s the brain… thinking.

Looks like the bomb was intended to kill the brain, but with the daughter taking the wheel in a last minute brain-wave swap, the brain was saved. And of course Russia was quick to blame Ukraine as the brain behind!

We Need Education

There is another continuing, hard-to-come-to-terms issue, which is almost a year – over 340 days- old: teenage girls in Afghanistan have been kept away from School by the Taliban, simply because of their gender. And this is denial of a basic human right, which almost every other country on the Planet takes for granted.

How do we bring an unflinching Taliban to book?

Oh Jesus!

Lakes are drying up everywhere and it’s the turn of the Sea of Galilee in Northern Israel, which is actually a fresh water lake. It has sustained life for millennia and is Biblically famous as the sea, in and around, where many of Jesus Christ’s miracles were performed. The lake irrigates vineyards and local farms that grow everything from green vegetables to wheat and tangerines. Its archeology, hot springs, and hiking trails bring tourism and livelihoods for local communities.

The climate crisis is causing huge fluctuations in the lake’s water levels. Now it happens to be fairly full, but just five years ago, it hit a record low.

But the Israeli government thinks it has found a solution – its own kind of miracle: It plans to pump water from the Mediterranean Sea, desalinate it, and send it across the country to top up the lake when needed. That should help keep the faith!

It’s OK to be Gay in Singapore, but…

Singapore is repealing a law that bans gay sex, effectively making it legal to be homosexual in the conservative City-State.

When the British colonized Singapore in the 1930s, they introduced penal code 377A, making it a crime for men to have sex with each other. And even after colonial rule ended, Singapore opted to keep the law in place. Men who had gay sex faced up to two years in prison.

But now, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is thinking ‘out with the old and in with the new’. And announced the decision on national TV, which comes after years of fierce debate on the issue.

LGBT activists in Singapore have hailed the move as ‘a win for humanity’. And Singapore is the latest place in Asia to move on LGBT rights, after India, Taiwan, and Thailand.

However, there is a catch, Lee said that though the government will be abolishing the decades-old law, gay marriage is not being made legal, at this point of time. And that the Government will amend the country’s constitution to reinforce the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman. It’s unclear when the change will come into effect, and when Gay-Marriages will also be decriminalised.

That’s equivocating at its best?

Sports

India just hosted the Chess Olympiad and coming on the wings of the Tournament, one of its youngest Grand Masters, 17 yrs old Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu defeated World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen for the 3rd time this year, in the FTX Crypto Cup. Previously he check-mated the Champion at the Chessable Masters in May, and Airthings Masters in February.

The kid is growing-up for sure. And Chess is returning to the country of its birth!

This week, 21-time Grand Slam Champion and this year’s Wimbledon Title winner Novak Djokovic announced his withdrawal from the upcoming US Open Tennis Tournament, which plays from 29 August to 11 September.

Djokovic has remained unvaccinated against Covid-19 throughout the pandemic, and current United States (US) Rules stipulate that any non-US citizen must be fully vaccinated against the virus in order to receive a visa and enter the country. The Tournament Director said, “Novak is a great champion and it is very unfortunate that he will be unable to compete at the 2022 US Open, as he is unable to enter the country due to the federal government’s vaccination policy for non-US citizens. We look forward to welcoming Novak back at the 2023 US Open”.

Previously, he was unable to compete at The Indian Wells and The Miami Open in March due to the same US travel regulations. Djokovic was deported from Australia in January this year, preventing his participation in the Australian Open, due to his refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

Djokovic’s withdrawal has taken place after the start of the qualifiers, hence a ‘lucky loser’ will be included in the draw. The loser better make best of the chance!

Please Yourself

Dancing Queen

In the year 2019, on 10 December, when Sanna Marin, 34, of Finland’s Social Democratic Party was sworn in as Prime Minster, she became the World’s youngest serving State leader and youngest Prime Minister in Finland’s history. Suddenly, the world seemed to grow younger! Old head on young shoulders was what danced in the mind.

You don’t grow old on becoming a Prime Minister (PM), do you? The young do what they do. And last week videos of the young Sanna shaking a leg and dancing while partying with friends in a private setting, leaked to the media. And the Opposition was quick to shake a finger and accuse Sanna Marin for being un-PM like and bringing disrespect to the Office of the PM.

Responding to these accusations, Marin acknowledged partying ‘in a boisterous way’ but said she was angry that the footage was leaked to the media. She said alcohol was consumed but that she was not aware of any drug use at the party.

The world heard and women across the world posted videos on social media of themselves dancing, to support Sanna Marin’s dance show.

She agreed to take a drug test after senior opposition politicians argued there was a ‘shadow of doubt’ hanging over her, despite her insistence that she had never taken drugs and was not compromised beyond drinking some alcohol.

This week, Marin’s office announced the negative results of the drug test, taken after an opposition MP called on her to get tested: no drugs had been found in her system.

Just when the Dance Floor lights were switched off came another accusation. During a party hosted by the PM in her official residence in Helsinki, Kesaranta, after the Ruisrock Music Festival in July, topless photos of guests were leaked. In it, two well-known women influencers can be seen kissing each other covering up their bare chests with an official-looking sign reading ‘Finland’: the photo was taken in the downstairs toilets used by guests.

Sanna Marin again apologised for the topless photo of guests and admitted “the picture is not appropriate, we had sauna, swam and spent time together,” Marin said. “That kind of a picture should not have been taken but otherwise, nothing extraordinary happened at the get-together,” she added.

Trouble never comes alone, does it? It brings its brothers, sisters, and friends, and family along. I’m sure Sanna Marin would get wiser. And what’s wrong with her dance moves?

Britney, Spears Ahead

This week Singer Britney Spears released her first new music since being freed from a conservatorship that controlled almost every aspect of her life for about thirteen years.

‘Hold Me Closer’ – a duet with Sir Elton John – hit music streaming sites marking Spears’ return to music after a six-year hiatus. The song also incorporates three of Sir Elton John’s classic hits.

Fresh out of her conservatorship, Britney Spears, 40, married Personal Fitness Trainer and Actor, Sam Asghari, 28, on 9 June 2022. Her ex-husband, Jason Alexander, tried to crash the event. This is technically her third wedding and second marriage. Britney was married to Jason Alexander in 2004 in Las Vegas for just 55 hours, and then married Kevin Federline that same year. Britney and Kevin have two children, boys Sean and Jayden, from their marriage.

Great to listen and see Britney do it again.

More crashing stories coming-up in the weeks ahead. Dance with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-47

About: the world this week, 14 November to 20 November 2021, bombs smoke, cities smoke, people meet to change the smoke, snails slither, a singer gets freedom, and the mathematics of life.

Everywhere

Terrorist acts such stabbings or firing an explosion seem to be happening with a certain ‘staccato steadiness’, in the United Kingdom (UK). And the Police too are fired-up, and right behind them.

This Sunday a homemade bomb exploded shortly after a taxi pulled up outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital, UK. The passenger, who appears to have brought the device with him died at the scene. The taxi driver, quick on his wits, just about managed a heroic escape from the car, seconds before it was engulfed in flames. Police were able to find leads and have arrested four men, all in their 20s; they have identified a suspect and named him too. A key finding was that the bomb was made with homemade explosive, which had ball bearings attached and could have caused significant injury or death if it had detonated in different circumstances.

What exactly do these guys want? The Police are searching for clues.

This week, India’s capital, New Delhi touched dizzying heights becoming the worst polluted city in the World with an Air Quality Index (AQI) score of 292. The second worst, Lahore, Pakistan, was hid by less dense fog at AQI of 212. India’s Mumbai and Kolkata dusted themselves to the top ten with scores of 163 and 157 respectively.

What do these AQI numbers mean? Let’s check out the scale of unhealthiness of the air we breathe.

On the AQI scale, 0-50 is Good – breathe easy; 51 to 100 is Moderate – don’t start worrying, not yet; 101 to 150 is Unhealthy for sensitive groups – careful; 151 to 200 is Unhealthy for all – time to start worrying; 201 to 300 is Very Unhealthy – time to find a solution, use temporary measures, start covering up; and 301 to 500 is Hazardous – act on a solution, or scoot from the place!

Further, Politicians added noise to the pollution, bickering over the causes: stubble-burning, farm fires, in farms surrounding Delhi was touted as one reason in addition to the ‘must blame’ automobile pollution caused by the city’s dense vehicular traffic, industries, and dust. Even India’s Supreme Court added voice, trying to see through the smoke: hope they do not make a blurred judgement.

Now that we have become experts in handing-out, ‘enjoying’ lockdowns, and wearing all kinds of layered masks in all kinds of places, there is a talk of locking down New Delhi to control the pollution. This, after previous odd and even attempts could not clear the air. With smoke in your eyes, you find new directions every season!

Last week, down South, the city of Chennai was battered by incessant red-alert rains and people tried to find or even make their own shells to hide. This week the shells started moving about only that there weren’t people in them but slimy mollusk fellas, called The Great African Snails– an invasive species. The city became infested by scores of snails seen on walls, gardens, rooftops, and waterlogged roads. The story goes that the Great African Snail, native to East Africa, made its way to Chennai on the Trade Ships during the time India was colonised by the British and other Europeans. The snails then did their own colonising and conquering on touching Indian soil, eating all kinds of plants and crops, and even construction material such as paint.

These snails are hermaphrodites and hence have 100% reproduction skills – both ways. They mate with one another or with themselves laying eggs during the rainy season, which are covered inside mud and hatch during the next spell of rains. The Great African Snail has a life of about seven years and gets into the act quickly, starting to lay eggs by their first birthday. Wow, that’s a quick-gun snail!

There is another rainy angle too: researchers say the shells of these snails offer brilliant information – to those willing to study them – on the rainfall rate of a particular region. The shells grow faster during the rainy season and the bands on their shells hold a lot of data, telling their own stories – living as they are from one rain to another. Amazing what we can learn by just looking deeply as the ‘snail’s space’.

This week, the 26th Meeting of the Conference Of Parties, COP26, ended in Glasgow and in the 11th hour of negotiations, India (and China) had their way on fossil fuels – read as dirty coal. Now, Governments have agreed to ‘phase down’ not ‘phase out’ coal – the largest contributor of greenhouse gas -mostly Carbon-dioxide (CO2)-emissions. Call that tinkering with words-word pollution? This is the first time, at a COP conference, that an overt plan to reduce use of coal, which is responsible for 40% of annual CO2 emissions, has been made. World leaders also agreed to phase-out subsidies that artificially lower the price of coal, oil, or natural gas.

The outcome document, known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, calls on 197 countries to pyramid their progress towards more climate ambition points next year, at COP27, set to take place in Egypt. It was agreed that when countries meet again they will pledge further cuts to CO2 emissions. I reckon, next year you may get a better perspective looking from the top of a great pyramid, climbing up and standing on the dead and buried.

In previous World Inthavaarams, I had talked about Pop Star Britney Spear’s life-shackling conservatorship of 13 years where her father Jamie Spears controlled much of her personal life on issues related to her career, health (making babies too), and wealth, on the grounds that she was incapable of taking care of herself. Then Britney fought for freedom and pleaded with the Courts that her father be removed from the conservatorship. A ‘Free-Britney’ movement was also started by fans in her support. And finally last Friday, a court in Los Angeles, United States, ended the draconian conservatorship. And said, Britney doesn’t need to undergo a mental health evaluation. She is now free to spear-ahead her life, and, baby, we can listen to her sing one more time! Oops, surprising that freedom can sometimes be freely snatched away just like that!

Please Yourself

Reading is the never-ending fuel for writing and to keep-up with my reading goals I ordered by next set of books for the season, on Amazon. They arrived in double-quick time, before the rains could start pouring. And what better way to spend a rainy day, curled-up on your cosiest sofa, book in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in another?

Without making a calculation, I started reading Hardy’s, ‘A Mathematician’s Apology’ and found it to be one of the best possible accounts on what it is to be a creative person. It revealed many equations and theorems on living your life. And also multiplied thoughts from another of my all time favourite books, Ayn Rand’s, The Fountainhead.

G.H. Hardy is one of the twentieth centuries’ finest, ‘pure and real’ mathematicians and is famously known as the one who discovered (described as the most romantic incident in his life) the genius lurking inside India’s brilliant mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan. And gave him the means to exhibit his super-powers by drawing him to England: to tutor, guide, and collaborate with him.

Some of Hardy’s thoughts goes like this, I quote, ‘I do what I do because it is the one and only thing that I can do at all well. It is a tiny minority who can do anything really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.

If a man is in any sense a real mathematician, then it is a hundred to one that his mathematics will be far better than anything else he can do, and that he would be silly if he surrendered any decent opportunity of exercising his one talent in order to do undistinguished work in other fields. Such a sacrifice could be justified only by economic necessity or age. It is quite true that most people can do nothing well. If so, it matters very little what career they choose, and there is nothing more to say about it’.

Think it over: the reference here is Mathematics but I would apply it to any field.

Hardy apologises for not having done anything useful at all except, ‘having created something worth creating – with a question only about its value’, and that he has ‘added something to knowledge, and helped others add more; and these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of’ other creators and inventors…who have left some kind of a memorial behind them.

The candidness and humility of his brilliant mind was oozing through every word of his writing and I was spellbound. He listed the most decisive moment of his life as having collaborated with two other great mathematicians, Britain’s John Edensor Littlewood and India’s Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Hardy says that a serious theorem is one which contains significant ideas with two essentials, a certain Generality – to be widely applied, and a certain Depth – go deep, leading into other domains. Wow, I was awestruck!

On Ramanujan, most of us must have come across the famous incident of the taxi-cab number. Ramanujan lay dying in Hospital and Hardy had gone to visit him, arriving by a taxi-cab. On entering Ramanujan’s room, Hardy remarked, ‘I thought the number of my taxi-cab was 1729. It seemed to be rather a dull number’. To which Ramanujan replied: ’No, Hardy! No, Hardy! It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways’. That was the exact exchange as recorded by Hardy.

Check this out:1729 is the sum of the cubes of 10 and 9 (1000 + 729) and also the sum of cubes of 1 and 12 (1 + 1728).

Ramanujan died of tuberculosis at the young age of 33 in the year 1920. Hardy says that all great mathematicians died young, and adds, ’I do not know of an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty’.

On the sidelines: Hardy was an atheist. He loved cricket-could talk endlessly about it- and often he would carry his mathematics to the stadiums, watching the play and working on the sums. He shunned the limelight and disliked getting awards – hated going on stage and receiving it in front of others. He never married and so did his sister who spent much of her life looking after the great man. Hardy died in December 1947 at the age of 70.

More freedom and mathematics stories coming up in the weeks ahead at more than a snail’s pace. Slide and slug it out with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-26

About: the world this week, 20th June to 26th June 2021. Hardline Iran, Apple Daily in Hong Kong, Space, Cricket, Outbreaks, and Britney Spears.

Everywhere

Iran

Ebrahim Raisi, 60, a conservative hardline Judiciary Chief won Iran’s Presidential Election by a landslide, sweeping-up nearly 62% of the 28.9 million votes.

Raisi, a protege of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sailed to victory in a poll that saw all of his serious rivals barred in the run-up to the race. Many reform-minded Iranians refused to take part in an Election widely seen as a foregone conclusion. Overall voter turnout was about 49%, the lowest since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Flash-back: before that Islamic scoop-up year, Iran was ruled by the Shah of Iran, of the Pahlavi Dynasty, who tried to westernise and modernise the country, but had to flee to live in exile – leaving behind everything – at the end of the Iranian Revolution. That saw the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, from exile, and hardcore Islam.

Raisi has a brutal human rights record and is accused of being responsible for the mass execution – called Death Commissions – of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Amnesty International is still looking to investigate and nail him for crimes against humanity.

On winning, Raisi said, ‘I am proud of being a defender of human rights and of people’s security and comfort, as a Prosecutor, wherever I was’. The good, the bad, and the ugly say the same thing.

Ebrahim Raisi steps into the role of President of Iran in August 2021, taking over from the incumbent President, Hassan Rouhani, who assumed office on 3 August 2013. He, in turn, succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served 8 years in office from 2005 to 2013. Rouhani won re-election in the 2017 presidential election.

In another story on Iran, it failed, yet again, to get its homemade satellite launched into orbit, in a fourth unsuccessful attempt. The launch, conducted on 12th June, comes more than one year after the country’s previous attempt to put a satellite into orbit. In April of last year, Iran launched the NOUR-1 military satellite into orbit after previous failed attempts to launch similar satellites. The United States of America (USA), tracking the Satellite says it is uncontrolled and not operational. Guess, it’s just a ‘hard’ object out there is Space.

No More ‘an Apple a Day’

Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy newspaper was founded by Jimmy Lai, 73, in 1995, with the first edition being rolled-out on 20th June of that year.

In 1994 Lai was audacious enough to call Chinese President Li Peng the ‘son of a turtle egg’ in a weekly magazine that he launched before the daily. This was perhaps the sign of things to come: the strident tone of critical reporting on China.

Jimmy Lai fled China as a child with nothing in his pockets and went on to make it big in Hong Kong, growing into a business magnate, a media-tycoon, and a multi-millionaire.

When the Great Chinese Famine gripped mainland China in 1960, Lai smuggled himself out of the Southern Mainland province of Guangdong and into Hong Kong in the bottom of a fishing boat. He arrived in the city at the age of 12 and dirt poor.

Lai took up odd jobs at a textile factory and lived in the slum neighbourhood of Sham Shui Po, one of Hong Kong’s most impoverished districts – still is.

Within two decades, Lai learned English, worked his way up the factory floor, rising to the position of salesman. He then decided to start his own clothing retail line. On a trip to New York, USA, during fabric sampling season, he bought a pizza. Written on the napkin was the name Giordano. That became the name of his wildly successful, casual men’s clothing chain, which made Lai his first fortune.

Lai then channeled his wealth into starting a publishing company called ‘Next Digital’ with Apple Daily as its flagship Daily Newspaper. It started off as a successful local tabloid, best known for its sensationalist articles and bold catchy headlines. But over the past 26 years, it evolved into one of the city’s loudest pro-democracy voices – one of few that dared to challenge China. Apple Daily went on to become a runaway commercial success.

When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the city was guaranteed its own legal system and certain democratic freedoms until the year 2047, when it will most likely return, in total, to China.

In July 2019 Jimmy Lai met the then Vice President of the USA, Mike Pence, and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, in Washington to discuss the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy over a contentious Extradition Bill that had sparked mass protests. This act was viewed by China as a threat to its national security and interference in the affairs of Hong Kong. It used words such as ‘national scum and Hong Kong sinners’ on Lai’s meeting. The Extradition Bill was later scrapped.

Last year, on 20th June, China introduced a new National Security Law in Hong Kong in response to massive pro-democracy protests that swept through the city, without public consultation or city legislative involvement.

The law essentially reduced Hong Kong’s judicial autonomy and made it easier to punish demonstrators and activists. It criminalises secession, subversion, and collusion with foreign forces with the maximum sentence of life in prison.

Since the law was enacted in June 2020, more than 100 people have been arrested under its provisions. And millions have flooded Hong Kong’s highways in marches against Beijing’s perceived encroachment on the original, treasured, Hong Kong freedoms.

Using the draconian new law, Hong Kong police arrested Jimmy Lai, and others in a city-wide operation. Hundreds of police raided Lai’s Next Digital headquarters, where his flagship Apple Daily is produced and published.

In a well configured sequence of arrest-release on bail-arrest on another charge… Lai was charged on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces and endangering national security, partly from having sought sanctions against Hong Kong, among other charges, and finally jailed for 14 months for taking part in ‘unauthorised assemblies’ during protests in August 2019.

Since the law took effect, Apple Daily has been crippled ‘bite by bite’. With Jimmy Lai already in jail, five of the newspaper’s top editors and executives were accused of the same crime, apparently for using articles to call for sanctions against Hong Kong by foreign countries, and thrown into jail.

Hundreds of police officers twice raided the publication’s newsroom, most recently seizing computers and materials-an alarming development for journalists and their sources in an increasingly sensitive environment. Several Apple Daily journalists had already quit before this month, saying the rewards of their work no longer outweighed the risk of imprisonment.

Even as official pressure piled on the newspaper, public support surged. Last Friday, after the arrest of its top editors, Apple Daily printed 500,000 copies, which sold out.

With a never-ending saga of the might of the State, hanging like the proverbial sword of Damocles upon it, Apple Daily announced on Wednesday that it is folding-up and would publish its final copy this Thursday. And due to an untenable environment in which its journalists have been arrested and millions of dollars in assets have been frozen. Its digital platform will cease operations on the same day.

In the end, an Apple a day could not keep China away!

Cricket

The World Test Championship is a cricket league competition started by the International Cricket Council (ICC), on 1 August 2019, as a premier test tournament. This was in-keeping with a goal of having one ‘Pinnacle Tournament’ for each of the three forms of the game of cricket: Test Cricket, One-Day Matches, and the Twenty-Twenty format That’s quite a spinning range of cricket, from the quick one-liners to the long dialogues.

The first ICC World Test Championship began with the 2019 Ashes series and culminated this week with New Zealand winning the inaugural World Championship Test. That makes them the best in Test Cricket, on the day. Congratulations New Zealand.

New Zealand who were the first to qualify for the finals defeated India in the match played from 18 to 23 June 2021 at the Rose Bowl, Southampton, England. The opening and the fourth day was washed-out by rain and the match went into the reserve day. India, captained by Virat Kohli, came into the match with balls of talent but it was New Zealand’s run day, led from the front by its Captain, Kane Williamson. In the end, very good just wasn’t good for India, though India still remains a great test side. Maybe the weather did not pace itself well? Whatever, New Zealand deserved the win.

The second ICC World Test Championship is scheduled to start from August 2021 and will run till 2023.

Space

NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, is having a rocking time on the Red Planet, with Big Brother Rover, Perseverance, watching closely.

Ingenuity has now flown eight times, travelling further than NASA hoped it would be possible. Originally designed to fly only five times, Ingenuity has exceeded all expectations and has become bolder. Could it become a spoilt-kid, overtime? The early flights by Ingenuity began and ended at the same place, called the Wright Brothers Field. Now it is soaring from one new airfield to another.

Need to dig out more names to name more airfields? Perhaps, that’s NASA’s newest challenge.

An Outbreak Bites the Dust

In a fabulous achievement, the Ebola Outbreak that broke-out in the African country of Guinea in the middle of February this year was declared over on 19 June 2021. It was the first time the disease resurfaced, in Guinea, since the deadly outbreak in West Africa that ended in 2016.

Guinea had declared the outbreak on 14 February 2021 after three cases were detected in the same region where the 2014–2016 outbreak first emerged before spreading into neighbouring Liberia, Sierra Leone, and beyond.

A total of sixteen confirmed and seven probable cases were reported in the outbreak in which eleven patients survived and twelve lives were lost. Shortly after the infections were detected, a swift response was mounted, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), digging deep into the expertise gained in fighting recent outbreaks both in Guinea and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Genome sequencing found that the virus behind Guinea’s just-ended outbreak was similar to that identified in the 2014–2016 outbreak.

WHO helped ship around 24,000 Ebola vaccine doses and supported the vaccination drive. More than one hundred WHO experts were on the ground coordinating key aspects of the response such as infection prevention and control, disease surveillance, testing, vaccination, and treatment using new drugs.

There are two approved Vaccines for Ebola, a single-dose one made by Merck, and the two-dose Vaccine made by Janssen.

Congratulations Team Ebola. This is a sign that we are getting better, faster, smarter in fighting Ebola. We hope innovations, lessons learnt, and the expertise gained are published soon, for the world to get ahead in fighting such disease outbreaks.

The Great Vaccination Sprint

Jabbing India’s 1.39 billion population against the effects of COVID-19 is a staggering, Himalayan task and the Government of India showed serious intent- packed a huge punch, getting off the starting blocks at blazing speed, on the first day of its newly charged-up, free Adult (above age 18 years) Vaccination Drive. In a world record, 8.616 million doses were administered on 21 June 2021, Monday, across the various States of India. That is almost equivalent to the population of Naftali Bennett’s Israel, or twice the population of Jacintha Arden’s New Zealand – all in a single day.

The follow through wasn’t bad with over 5.4 million on Day-2 and 6.4 million on Day-3.

India is now only behind the USA in vaccinations done with over 305 million does given compared to the USA’s 321 million.

With the current pace of vaccination at about 42.6 million per day and looking at between 70% and 85% vaccinated for herd immunity it would take another year to achieve a high level of global immunity. Until then, stick to the basics of COVID-19 appropriate behaviour.

Please Yourself

Overprotected: Till The World Ends?

First, the script: something about conservatorship – also known as a guardianship – happens when a judge (in California, United States) appoints a responsible person or organization-called the Conservator-to care for another adult-called the Conservatee-who cannot care for herself or manage her own finances. Now, over to the soundtrack, and the music.

The world knows Britney Spears as the iconic pop-star, the Princess of Pop, of the 1990s and 2000s. ‘Baby one more time’, ‘Oops… I did it again’, are songs that climbed high on the Music Charts and still reverberate in the air-many times over. More than 20 years later, her debut album (Baby one more time) still remains the best-selling album by a teenage solo artist, at age 16.

At the start of her career, at age 18, Britney Spears famously claimed she was a virgin and was ‘saving herself’ for marriage-waiting for that special someone. But then, it turns out that she was ‘Not That Innocent’ as she wanted us to believe. And kept going with, Baby One More Time…

Over time, her stage outfits became skimpier, her performances racier, her behaviour crazier, and her album sales touched newer heights. She was also linked to singer Justin Timberlake at that time.

In the year 2004, after a fun-filled New Year’s Eve week in Sin City-Las Vegas, Nevada-where she partied hard through the night with childhood friend Jason Alexander, Spears shocked the world by saying, ‘I do’, in Vegas’s, A Little White Wedding Chapel (has a Drive-Thru tunnel of vows) at 5am, the next day, on Sunday 3rd January. Dressed in a baseball hat and ripped jeans Britney married Jason Alexander. ‘They weren’t dressed in wedding attire, but it was very romantic and there was a feeling of love between them. They appeared to be extremely happy. They were laughing, but crying too, during the ceremony. I thought it was a marriage that would last forever’, said the Chapel Owner.

It wasn’t to be, and on the contrary worked out be a Quickie, as 55 hours later, Britney Spears had the marriage annulled. And went out dancing afterwards.

Then, Oops, she did it again! After meeting each other on the dance floor at a Hollywood club, Spears and Kevin Federline announced their engagement in July 2004. The singer famously popped the question to Federline on her private plane. Spears then walked down the aisle, this time in a proper wedding dress, in a proper ceremony.

Two kids, one reality show, and three years later the couple called it quits.

In the middle of 2000s, she had multiple public mental health struggles that media outlets and the paparazzi harped on, from shaving her head to hitting a photographer’s car with an umbrella. And in 2008, she was twice admitted for psychiatric care under an apparent mental health crisis.

During the same year, Britney was put under a Conservatorship largely due to her father, Jamie Spears, who petitioned for a temporary one, that was eventually made permanent, becoming both her personal and financial Conservator. He gained control of much of her life, and had the power to take actions like restricting Britney’s visitors, filing restraining orders on her behalf, negotiating business deals, and overseeing her medical decisions. Britney has being paying a considerable amount from her nearly USD 60 million fortune in legal and Conservator fees, with a significant amount going to her dad for his role as a Conservator.

In response, fans have launched a Free Britney movement, expressing concerns over the singer’s well-being. On her part, Spears was awfully troubled by the conservatorship, for years, but she chose to stay silent about it, in public.

That changed this week when she spoke-up, taking the mike this week and in a testimony to the judge: that her conservatorship is abusive; has prevented her from getting married and having a third child, and that she’s being barred from removing her IUD; that she’s been forced to work against her will; that she’s required to live with the people she works with, without privacy; and she compared her situation ‘to sex trafficking.’

Britney Spears,39, said a lot of things, in that testimony, but most importantly, she’s said that she doesn’t believe anyone will listen. Will she be unshackled from the Conservatorship? The Court’s decision is awaited.

That’s heart-wrenching. Once you establish a person is crazy, everything she says is crazy because she is crazy?

Ooh la la. Have a great week ahead. Enjoy your freedom. Sing your songs.