Dolby

This is the problem, we don't have an escalation ladder. You annex Crimea, no problem pass us some more of the Vodka while we enjoy the Football World Cup. You do peacekeeping in Donbas, aah tough luck Ukrainians, busy booking my tickets to Moscow. Tanks surrounding Kyiv, that is it. No Russian shall even think of sports. Also, need to figure out how to allow local protests while maintaining sports code. For example, for us tanks surrounding Kyiv is war of conquest but I am sure for Ukrainians even Crimea was war of conquest. And what if some nation wants to boycott another nation for some other things. Take for an example, if some nation wants to boycott Qatar WC, should they be allowed to do so? What should be the sanctions, if any, they face? IOC even threatened consequences if a nation skipped Tokyo Olympics. (Not sure if they followed up on it or not).

Sadly there appears to be some truth in this. Seen too many videos and testimonies from many Indian and African students alleging racial discrimination. Disappointing.

And Iran has faced bans for that. Iran can't even think of hosting any prominent sports where there is a good chance Israelis would qualify. Also, the general consensus among sports fans is that Irani policy is wrong. I am ok with Russia being banned but then we can't suddenly say that don't mix politics and sports when India denies visa to Pakistani sportspersons or an Irani athlete refuses to compete against Israeli.

I can understand people's emotions but this is setting a precedent, which will be used in future. Iran will claim that Israel is at war with it and hence they are within their rights to deny their athletes visa, which is much lower than banning Russia. Same with India-Pakistan Serbia-Kosovo and many others.

There are an estimated 15-20K Indians stuck in Ukraine. Indian embassies are working really hard to evacuate all of them. And from all accounts, we are receiving exemplary support from all the neighbours, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. We are thankful to all of you. Till now around 1000 Indians have been rescued.

I have seen some videos of Indian students alleging discrimination from Ukrainian official but I would personally give them benefit of doubt because of the volatile situation. I think the reality is a combination of many different things, where some official must be angry at India and discriminated against some students, tense students mistaking the delay as discrimination and a variety of other issues.

Time to rewatch Yes Prime Minister

He blamed Lenin for creating Ukraine. He sees himself as a successor of Nicholas II and not Yeltsin.

Unless there is expansion, don't see Americas deserving a third spot. Oceania, Africa already have bare minimum spots. So, any additional spot for Americas have to come from either Asia (3) or Europe (7). Americas doesn't deserve more spots than Asia. One can argue that almost 50% of spots for Europe is high but then Europe does have a large number of good teams. In fact, except Argentina and occasionally Canada, none of the other American teams have been competitive at World stage. Asia on the other hand has in 5 decent teams and 3 spots. I would prefer a system with 5 spots for Europe instead of 7 and remaining spots to go to a World tournament.

For the past one year, so many Canadian politicians, including Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, have been supporting such protests in India. Hopefully, these protests show them how wrong they were and they think twice before supporting anarchy in other democracies.

Come on guys, lets be realistic. AO organizers wanted Novak to play. So, they gave him a medical exemption. Australian officials had no problem, so they gave him a visa. There was public outcry over this exemption, so politicians do what they always do: backtrack to save their ass. All this talk of procedures is simply for public consumption and to give themselves reasonable defense in case of any legal action.

From what I can gather, Mulyo's contract with Singapore team is till Jan or Feb. Only after that is over, we will get an official confirmation on where he is headed next. P.S. Double Olympic medallist Yong Sung Yoo has joined Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy as head coach.

Honestly I would blame AO authorities more than Djokovic. Djokovic is a known anti-vaxxer so his participation would have raised questions for sure. The first question he would have been asked would have been about his vaccination status. So, he keeping silence about it was not possible. Also, he is fully within his rights to try and play. It is the job of organizers to be firm and unbiased. You want Djokovic to play, either convince him to get vaccine (which is not happening) or drop the vaccine requirement from your side. Simply say, anyone who can get Australian visa is eligible for the tournament. You can't give exemption to Djokovic while denying others. And it is clear that Australian authorities must have given verbal green light to organizers about Djokovic visa before the announcement. But they changed their stance after public outcry. Well, politicians have to win elections. They care more about their votes than Djokovic and tennis world's opinion. Organizers should have known this. Lastly, it is really sad that one of the biggest sporting player of our times, a legend of the game, a player who I enjoy watching is an anti-vaxxer. I understand that it is his choice and it doesn't take anything away from his achievements but it is just sad.

An Indian junior tennis player also applied for exception citing the fact that India has not started U-18 vaccinations. He was denied. Well being a legend of the game has its perks.

A) Jesus was born on this day B) Saturnalia C) Sol Invictus festival D) Winter Solstice

It seems his return to India is almost confirm, alongside Tan Kim Her. Hopefully they stay longer this time.

It would be interesting to see how he performs next year when there would be more pressure on him, opponents would have analysed his game more and he won't be coached by the legendary Mulyo. But, inspite of all this, I am sure he will be among the elite players for years to come. LKY was simply phenomenal this championships and fully deserved to be World Champion.

I honestly want to know how in the world do you know about her.

What are the chances that a certain Tongan flagbearer will start swimming in Seine?

In India, we have Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist) as mainstream national parties. CPI(M), in alliance with CPI and other parties, even rules the state government in Kerala and is a major player in some other states.

Once pirates join the government, do they remain pirates?

Qatar is hosting WC. Emirs are buying Football clubs. I am sure that if they throw enough money at IOC, they can get Olympics as well. In fact IOC will showcase it as an important step in fight for human rights.

Regarding Badminton, post-COVID struggles aside, Lakshya Sen is a super talent. He had already started winning tournaments (lower levels) in his first year in Senior circuit. So, I have high hopes from him. Apart from him, I think we have a host of players who would be in 20-50 ranking range. Basically, same as now. In WS, I don't have much hopes on any of the youngsters. If you are still playing in Junior circuit at 18-19, it is a clear indication that you are not going to be the next superstar. Tasnim looks promising but not enough dataset to make a prediction about her. MD seems to be our deepest category now. Satwik/Chirag are monsters. Arjun/Dhruv have been the only ones who gave some fight in both the ties in Sudirman Cup. Then, we also have Krishna/Vishnu pair who also seem promising. In WD, we have 3 very good pais: Tanisha/Rutuparna, Ashwini/Sikki and Gayatri/Treesa. Ashwini has been our best WD player for quite some time but I don't think it makes much sense in pairing her with Tanisha or another youngster. Teams should be made keeping Paris in mind. Considering that we have a decent pool of young doubles players, having decent XD teams is doable. BTW, really disappointed at our performance in Sudirman Cup. Tanisha/Rutuparna won the trials ahead of Ashwini/Sikki but still didn't get to play WD. What is the point of having trials then? Srikanth/Sai are in horrible form. They both should seriously take a long break and return in lower tournaments to get some match practice. Also, what is this fascination of playing Singles players in Doubles. Couldn't Dhruv or Arjun played in XD? Ashwini/Dhruv even played a couple of tournaments together this year.

Yes, I mean of those eligible. 30-35% of India's population is under 18, so impossible to cross 60% of total population before kids vaccination starts. Although Zycov-D has been given emergency approval for 12-18 group about a month back, it has not been launched yet. I am expecting rollout for kids by November end. By that time, we should have a decent amount of Zycov-D vaccines available and also stress on delivery system will also be less.

We should cross 600 million atleast partially vaccinated citizens and 200 million fully vaccinated citizens by tomorrow. Considering that we are averaging 5-6 million vaccinations per day, I am hopeful that we should cross 90% partially vaccinated mark by November end. By the way, today is a mega vaccination drive in India. To celebrate PM Modi's birthday, there are extra efforts on part of ruling party members to get maximum vaccination done. We are nearing 10 million vaccinations already and the pace at which it is going I am expecting it to near 20 million vaccinations for the day. If anybody is interested in the vaccination statistics for India, you can find them here: https://dashboard.cowin.gov.in/