Ø Ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed
visit to India on Republic Day, Secretary of State John Kerry and Ambassador to
India Kathleen Stephens will attend the three-day Vibrant Gujarat Summit from January 11. The U.S. India Business
Council has already agreed to join the mega event as the official partner
organisation. Heads of several large corporations, including the U.S. India
Business Council and MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, are scheduled to attend the
Summit. The government said eight nations would participate as country
partners, while the U.S. contingent would comprise 90 delegates.
Ø A film by a Pune-based director on the daily
struggles of four sisters against the backdrop of farmer suicides in Vidarbha
in Maharashtra has made it to the longlist in the “best picture” category of
the 87th Academy Awards, popularly called the Oscars. The American Academy of
Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences recently disclosed the final list of 323
films. Kapus Kondyachi Goshta ( The Unending Story), directed
by Mrunalini Bhosale, has been adapted from the real-life story of four sisters
in a small village near Nagpur.
Ø On a chilly winter day in Peshawar, parents
rushed to prepare their children for their last journey before sunset. School
uniforms with green blazers and grey flannel trousers soaked in blood were cut off
from young bodies brought home, before they were bathed and wrapped in white
burial shrouds and put into coffins, which then headed for the local
graveyards. Tuesday was examination day at the Army Public School in Peshawar
when six militants of the Tehreek-e-Taliban stormed the premises and shot dead
about 141 people, 132 of them students, going from classroom to classroom
seeking their prey. Children who escaped saw their teacher being set on fire
tied to her chair. As many as 250 lay wounded in a crime so heinous and
horrific that within a few hours, most world capitals reached out to Islamabad.
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