And the Rest of It

Hugs are for good dogs.

How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump have signalled their affection for each other so regularly it might be easy to miss rising fears that the head-spinning diplomatic engagement of the past two years is falling apart.

Pyongyang has issued increasingly dire warnings to Washington to mind a year-end deadline to offer some new initiative to settle the nations’ decades-long nuclear standoff.

Failure could mean a return to the barrage of powerful North Korean weapons tests that marked 2017 as one of the most fraught years in a relationship that has often been defined by bloodshed, deep mistrust and regular threats.

A seldom-mentioned but important problem in India:

Like most tourists in Agra, I visited the Taj Mahal, presented to all as the world’s greatest “symbol of love,” the homage of a mourning husband for his beloved late wife. Certainly, but imperial projects of that size are rarely launched for only sentimental reasons. A Muslim emperor built a massive Islamic mausoleum, with accompanying mosque, on the banks of the Yamuna River — second in holiness to the Ganges for India’s Hindus — with unfulfilled plans for a matching onyx Taj Mahal on the other bank. Might this have been aimed at inspiring awe and fealty to an Islamic ruler in what is not a majority Muslim country?

Several centuries later, that India’s most famous monument is a magnificent example of Islamic art and architecture rankles some in the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a force for Hindu nationalism that has some rather sharp words for India’s religious minorities. At about 180 million, India’s Muslims would themselves constitute one of the larger countries in the world, but in India, they remain very much a minority, about 14 per cent of the population.

One occasionally hears sniping from the BJP about the Taj Mahal itself, with local BJP officials going so far as to remove it from some tourist guides. A sound-and-light history pageant I attended in nearby Jaipur painstakingly rehearsed a millennium of local history but somehow managed to leave out entirely the emperor of the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan. Not by accident, I expect. ...

The Supreme Court released an important judgment in another case of religious violence this week. It arose from the 2008 fearsome massacre of Christians in the eastern state of Odisha. A prominent Hindu holy man had been assassinated. Though the likely culprits were Maoist terrorists, Hindu extremists whipped up an anti-Christian frenzy, which went on for weeks with minimal police intervention or even complicity. The military did not arrive for more than a month.

The scale of the anti-Christian riots was astonishing. Roughly 100 people were killed, more than 15,000 injured, 300 churches and 5,600 homes destroyed, and 50,000 people displaced, many forced to hide in nearby forests. There more people died of hunger and snakebites.

To add insult to massive injury, seven Christians were tried and convicted for the original murder. The matter was plagued by serious and repeated irregularities, and the Christian community universally believes that the men are innocent and have been wrongfully convicted. Their appeal has languished in the Odisha high court for more than five years; the men have been imprisoned for more than 10. The Supreme Court finally granted them bail, a highly charged decision as it implies that the convictions being appealed are indeed suspect.

Extraordinary:

A firefighter in southern France is winning viral acclaim for rescuing a four-month-old baby from a home surrounded by raging floodwaters.

The rescue played out on Nov. 23 in Pegomas, a community in southern France, after the nearby Siagne River overflowed its banks and washed into the streets.

The viral image shows firefighter Gilbert Baldicchi standing in a planter to avoid the churning brown floodwaters with baby Gabriel held tight in his arms. Baldicchi was one of several firefighters conducting a rescue at the home, and another member of the crew captured the photo. ...

Baldicchi downplayed his actions in an interview with news station France 3 on Thursday.

“It could have happened to anyone,” he said. “It happened to me, but dozens of men saved lives that night.”

Some rather welcome news:

It started with a simple tweet from a Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Twitter account asking for holiday greetings, but personnel say the response and support from residents across the country have been extraordinary.

“When we see the bins, we are kind of (like), ‘Oh my God,’ but every single letter that we look at, we say, ‘Yeah, that’s somebody else that thought about us,'” Cpl. Nicolas Lefrancois, who is assigned to the Canadian Forces postal unit at Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Trenton, told Global News on Thursday.

“It’s nice to see that the Canadian people have knowledge of what we do and what we are sacrificing.”

Wow:

Something’s in the Missouri water. Just in time for American Thanksgiving, a dozen families have much to be thankful for.

Setting a possible record, St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City welcomed not one, but 12 sets of twins.

Just in time for Christmas:

A fragment of wood reputed to be from the manger where Jesus was laid after his humble birth went on display in Jerusalem on Friday, ahead of its transfer to Bethlehem for the official launch of the Christmas season.

The wood piece, just a few centimetres (inches) long, was once kept in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. It was handed over earlier this week to the custodian of the Bethlehem church, who said it brought "great honor to believers and pilgrims in the area".

It was unveiled to the public at the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center, encased in a silver-colored ornamental table-top stand, and will later be taken to Bethlehem, known to Christians as the birthplace of Jesus.