MUZAFFARPUR, Bihar — With the health crisis showing no signs of abating in Muzaffarpur, and public outrage against the Bihar government growing, a “prisoner ward” with 36 beds at the Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH) has been converted into a children’s ward to accommodate patients who have Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES)

The four Paediatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) had a total of 34 beds. There were two, sometimes three children to one bed. 

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Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who visited the hospital for the first time on Tuesday announced that the number of beds in the hospital would be increased from 600 to 2,500 in the next one year. He also promised that beds in the PICU would be increased to a 100. 

Kumar visited the hospital following visits by Union Minister Harsh Vardhan and State Minister Mangal Pandey. 

Hospital officials told HuffPost India that prisoners were housed in the ward until as late as Tuesday. The prisoners have now been transferred to the Sadar district hospital, which is about six kilometres away from SKMCH.

They did not say how many prisoners were in the ward.

Earlier, doctors at the Sadar district hospital told HuffPost India that they had a ward equipped with eight beds to accommodate AES patients, but only one  paediatrician.

Doctors at Sadar did not say how many prisoners had arrived at the district hospital, saying they were being “processed.” Sadar District Hospital presently has no AES patients.

The prisoner’s ward at SKMCH appears to be in poor condition. Guards posted outside its dirty door are not letting journalists enter the ward. Following a rampage by TV journalists inside the hospital on Tuesday, guards have been posted outside  the PICU rooms with AES-hit children.

Guards are also not allowing journalists to enter the office of SKHMC’s Medical Superintendent Sunil Shahi, who was until Tuesday accessible to the media.

The number of AES patients admitted to SKMCH stands at 365 as of 19 June. Ninety-six children have died at this hospital since January, 2019.

NDTV reported that AES has killed 130 children across Bihar so far.  

The dust has barely settled in King’s Landing but HBO is busy pushing forward with Game Of Thrones prequel plans, with filming for one show beginning in Northern Ireland.

Entertainment Weekly reports that the cast and crew of the currently untitled programme have assembled in the country, which was where production on the main series took place.

The new series has previously been referred to by two separate names, with Bloodmoon used as a working title, while George RR Martin also hinted it could be called The Long Night.

HBO previously announced events will take place “thousands of years” before Game Of Thrones, with a summary that explained: “The series chronicles the world’s descent from the Golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour.

“From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend, only one thing is for sure: It’s not the story we think we know.”

The all-star cast will feature Naomi Watts, John Simm, Miranda Richardson. Naomi Ackie (Lady Macbeth), Jamie Campbell Bower, Denise Gough and Richard McCabe (Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams), among plenty of others.

Jane Goldman and Thrones author George will be credited as the creators of the show and both will hold executive producer titles too.

It isn’t the only spin-off in the works though, as George previously revealed three others “remain in the script stage but are edging closer”.

Find out more about the other Westeros-related shows in development here. 

On Monday, Taylor Swift dropped the music video for her latest single, “You Need to Calm Down,” drawing attention not only for its pro-LGBTQ message, but her evident reconciliation with former frenemy and fellow pop star Katy Perry.

In a BBC Radio interview that aired Tuesday, Swift revealed that it all started with a text.

“When I thought of this concept for the video and I wrote the treatment, I thought, ‘I’m just gonna ask her if she’d be interested in this, but I would be totally fine if she’d rather keep it private,’” she recalled.

To her delight, Perry accepted.

“I sent it to her and she was like, ‘I would love for us to be a symbol of redemption and forgiveness!’”

At the end of the three-and-a-half-minute video, Perry and Swift ― who are dressed as a burger and fries, respectively ― are all smiles as they embrace each other with a warm hug, an evident end to their multi-year feud.

However, Swift admitted the makeup happened long ago.

“We have been on really good terms for a while,” she said. “The first time we saw each other was at this party, and ... it was just very clear to both of us that everything was different, that we had grown up. ... Both of us have been in a really good place for a while, but I don’t think either of us really knew if we were ever going to talk about it publicly.”

As for the duo’s whimsical costumes, Swift said she drew her inspiration from Perry’s Met Gala burger outfit, which she donned for this year’s “camp” theme celebrating exaggeration and artifice.

“I was like, ‘That is amazing,’” Swift said of the moment she saw Perry’s outfit. “I was thinking we’re going to have this moment in the video ... and if it’s too us wearing normal clothes and hugging, it won’t really fit into the video ... So I was like, ‘Can we do a a burger and fries as a metaphor for two people who belong together and people who are a perfect pair?’ And she thought it was really funny, and so we did it.”

You’ll have no reservations laughing at James Corden and Chris Hemsworth competing to be the best waiter.

The late night host and the “Men in Black: International” star matched skills at The Northall, a posh London restaurant, on Tuesday’s “The Late Late Show.” They proved to be a bit unseasoned.

From Corden repeatedly yelling out a woman’s walnut allergy to Hemsworth bottle-feeding wine to another patron, the duo provided crap service and vintage laughs.

Cheers, mates. But keep your day jobs.

MUZAFFARPUR, Bihar — Every day this month, Sanjay Kumar has ferried the body of at least one dead child from the big government hospital in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur to their homes. On some days, said the 30-year-old ambulance driver, the number is higher.

He often sleeps in his ambulance, and tries to take a bath between stops. Even when he is dead tired, Kumar finds it hard to refuse parents who have lost their children. “When I see them crying, I cannot say no. My mood changes and I am compelled.”

But even as swarms of reporters camp out in Muzaffarpur, taking bytes from overworked doctors and nurses and tracking VIP visitors, he’s convinced of one thing.

“In another month, all you media people will be gone. You see, these ministers who are coming, they are coming because of the media, not for the children,” he said.

It took 126 deaths for Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to make an appearance in Muzaffarpur on Tuesday, where he was met by angry protestors yelling ‘go back’. State health minister Mangal Pandey has been keeping news channels busy with one gaffe after another, including asking for cricket scores during a meeting to discuss the crisis.

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During the four-hour long journey from Shri Krishna Medical College Hospital (SKMCH)—where 3-4 children sometimes share a bed meant for one, and which has reported the majority of the recorded death toll—to Raja Pakkar village and back, one question kept coming back to Kumar.

“Why is the government never prepared?”

It is the question that everyone is asking, now that hundreds of children are dying of a deadly brain fever called Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES).

AES kills children in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh every year, but the massive death toll this year has drawn attention to the poorest and most vulnerable victims of this tragedy.

As he swerved wildly to avoid a series of potholes on the village road, Kumar said, “No one cares about dying children in this country.”

And as he sped up on the main road, he added, “Bihar has 4G network but parents cannot get their children to the hospital in time to save their lives.”

The hardest part

Kumar, who belongs to Bhatchaura village in Madhubani, 100 kilometres from Muzaffarpur, had never imagined that he would end up as an ambulance driver, spending day after day ferrying the dead.

He was working as a cleaner at a cyber cafe equipped with 400 computers in Delhi when his family asked him to move closer to home. A relative found him a job at SKMCH, where he is one of seven ambulance drivers working round the clock to cope with a health crisis that is spiralling out of control.

Kumar never had childhood ambitions of becoming a teacher or a cricketer, but he had wanted to complete his education. Forced to support his family at a young age, he dropped out of school after Class IX and went to Mumbai, where he worked as a truck driver’s assistant, loading chemicals.

“We are poor, very poor, which does not leave you with many choices,” Kumar said. “I did not want to be a driver.”

A contract worker, he earns Rs 8,000 per month driving an ambulance without a working air conditioner.

To save money, Kumar has not rented a room in Muzaffarpur. On most days, he sleeps in the ambulance.

The hardest part of his job, he says, is hearing parents cry over their children as he drives them home.

“Hearing them cry kills my spirit,” he said.

Transporting dead children, Kumar insists, has not affected his mental makeup over the years. He has learnt to steel himself. If parents cry for too long or too loudly, he asks them to stop.

But even forcing himself to stay firm and dispassionate doesn’t always help.

While stopping to fill a green plastic bottle with water at a roadside dhaba, Kumar recalled how a father, who had lost his son, had jumped out of the ambulance and declared that he was going to kill himself.

“It was on June 10. He was Muslim. We had stopped to get water when he said, ‘I don’t want to live anymore,’ and started running away.

“I ran after him. He said that he had tried so hard to save his son, but he had failed. He was in so much pain. I calmed him down. I said, don’t be tense. I said perhaps the government will give something. I told him that he should not give up on life,” he said.

The Nitish Kumar government has announced Rs 4 lakh as compensation for the family of each dead child.

After driving in silence for a while, Kumar said, “I think he was that man’s only son. You can imagine how losing him would break him.”

A name to remember

The child that Kumar was dropping off at Raja Pakkar village was Khushi, a three-year-old who had died within a few hours of getting sick in the morning.

“It’s a beautiful name. There are so many children that I’m taking back to their villages that I forget their names, but I will remember this name,” he said.

Khushi may have lived if she had received proper medical care in time. It took five hours for her desperately poor parents to find the money and affordable transport to take her to SKMCH. They weren’t aware that they had the option of taking her to a nearby primary healthcare centre.   

After the ambulance reached its destination, Kumar stood for a while gazing at Khushi’s mother, who was sitting outside her thatched hut, her daughter in her arms, crying inconsolably.

Turning abruptly, he returned to the ambulance and rummaged around in the dashboard, pulling out a notebook and a black ballpoint pen.

“I have to record details of all the dead children,” he said. “This is very important.”

With the circle of mourners around Khushi’s mother growing, Kumar realised it would be impossible to speak to her. He turned to her father instead. 

Both men walked away from the crowd of wailing women and children, and found themselves a quiet spot to squat on the ground.

Even though he was in a hurry to return to SKMCH, Kumar offered words of comfort and some advice to the 25-year-old father.

“You have more children, you must take care of them. The most important thing is don’t let them eat litchis,” he said.

Kumar was referring to recent conjectures about litchis being the cause of the AES outbreak.

The Bihar government has issued an advisory against eating litchis, but health experts are divided on whether the fruit is to blame.

When Khushi’s father said that she had not had any litchis, Kumar was adamant. “This is happening because of litchis.”

Later, while driving back to SKMCH, Kumar said that the government was not doing enough to spread awareness about the basic steps that were required to protect children against AES.

So it fell to ambulance drivers like him, often the primary point of contact for distressed parents, to educate parents.

When he goes to drop off bodies, Kumar makes sure he relays this information to the villagers that he meets. “I say that AES is going on, protect your children. Don’t let them sleep on an empty stomach. Keep them out of the sun. Boil drinking water. Don’t let them eat litchis. Don’t let them eat mangoes… I try to make them understand, but it is for them to understand.”

Khushi’s father, who was looking at his wife wailing in the distance, listened to the ambulance driver without saying a word.

Then, after a few minutes of silence, Kumar opened up his notebook.

Pressing down the ballpoint pen against a dusty page, he asked, “Name…father’s name… mother’s name...name of village…”

As he pulled out of the village, back to SKMCH, Kumar said, “There is no God in Bihar.”

Then, as if that statement was unable to express the magnitude of his feelings, he added a second later, “There is no God on earth.”

WASHINGTON — As a House committee prepared to hold a hearing on reparations for African Americans on Wednesday, the top Republican on Capitol Hill demonstrated why the hearing might be a good idea.

“I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday.

“We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation,” McConnell went on. “We’ve elected an African American president.”

McConnell spoke as if the abolition of slavery in 1865 resulted in an ongoing series of good things for African Americans, culminating in the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. But that’s not what happened.

Freed slaves and their descendants were subjected to re-enslavement, terrorism and disenfranchisement. In the 20th century, they were initially excluded from programs such as Social Security retirement insurance and welfare. Federal policy segregated schools and neighborhoods, and unequal treatment by mortgage lenders has continued right through to today.

The disparate treatment has resulted in dramatically worse economic circumstances for African Americans, including less household wealth and a consistently higher unemployment rate that cannot be explained away by differences in education or occupation.

The hearing this week is not even about whether the U.S. ought to pay reparations. It’s about whether to pass a bill that would create a commission to study how reparations could be paid. Appointing a commission instead of taking decisive action is one of the most cautious things lawmakers can do. (And they do it often, having set up more than 100 commissions over the past three decades.)

McConnell also said it would be “pretty hard to figure out who to compensate” ― but that’s another reason for an officially sanctioned expert panel to study the problem and suggest solutions.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties hearing is on H.R. 40, a bill that former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced in every Congress for years. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) introduced the current version.

The bill would task the commission with studying U.S. slavery itself, as well as subsequent “laws that discriminated against formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants who were deemed United States citizens from 1868 to the present,” and what form of compensation “should be awarded, through what instrumentalities and who should be eligible for such compensation.”

The top Republican on the committee, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), said that while slavery was horrific, it had been perpetrated by a “small subset of Americans from many generations ago,” and that many of today’s white Americans descended from immigrants who arrived in the U.S. after abolition. He also said reparations would be unconstitutional and overly divisive.

“Many people of good conscious believe they will distract from the many persistent causes of racial disparities,” Johnson said.

He added that passing the resolution to study reparations would be contrary to ideals of self-reliance that Johnson said had been articulated by black leaders in the past.

“Would it propagate a worldview that says external forces from a century and a-half ago are directing the fate of black Americans today?” Johnson said. “It’s an honest question that some people ask.”

One of the committee’s witnesses, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates ― whose 2014 essay on reparations drew much wider attention to H.R. 40 ― said McConnell’s claim that nobody currently alive has had anything to do with slavery “proffers a strange theory of governance that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations.”

Coates noted that the U.S. still paid a Civil War veteran’s pension well into the 21st century, and that the U.S. still honors treaties signed by no currently living person. And he noted that McConnell himself was alive for many of the sorts of events that the reparations commission would evaluate. 

“Majority Leader McConnell cited civil rights legislation yesterday, as well he should because he was alive to witness the harassment, jailing and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by a government sworn to protect them,” Coates said. 

This story has been updated to included quotes from Ta-Nehisi Coates. Please check back for more updates.

Like almost any movie involving time travel, if you look hard enough at “Avengers: Endgame,” you will probably find plot holes. It’s just that the supposed error exposed on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” wasn’t one of them.

Last month, the cast of “Spider-Man: Far From Home” went on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show and were apparently stumped when the host grilled them on a supposed “Avengers: Endgame” error.

Since “Far From Home” takes place five years after Thanos initially snapped half of life out of existence, Kimmel asked the cast, “Why, then, are you all still in high school?” After all, with the time jump, surely some of the cast would have to be older.

They were flummoxed.

“Why … why are we still in high school?” said Tom Holland. 

Jacob Batalon added, “It might be one of the biggest plot holes of all time.”

Headlines didn’t really question it, saying Holland didn’t understand the “plot hole” and the cast was stumped by the apparent faux pas. 

But wait, isn’t this answer already out there?

At the end of “Avengers: Endgame,” once the previously snapped people are brought back to life, you see Holland’s Peter Parker reunite with Batalon’s Ned at school, making it appear that they both had been snapped away and have now returned to be the same age. “Far From Home” director Jon Watts also already confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that Zendaya’s MJ and Tony Revolori’s Flash were snapped and brought back too.

So it seems clear why the characters haven’t aged in the meantime, something the cast should be aware of. If that’s the case, what was going on in that Kimmel interview?

Watts confirmed the cast was just playing coy.

“I think they were just afraid of spoiling it. They didn’t know what they were allowed to say and not say,” he told HuffPost.

The director was actually at the taping of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” but he was in the audience and couldn’t do anything to clear up the confusion.

“I was like, ’Guys, come on. Explain it. It sounds like you don’t know what we’re talking about.’”

Dealing with the fallout from the five-year time jump in “Endgame,” Watts had to consider many more conundrums besides just keeping his main cast the same age.

“There are so many ideas we had,” he said, “I was talking to [‘Endgame’ writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely] about twins. We were talking about what would happen if one twin blipped out. It’d still be twins, but one of them would be five years older, which would be really strange.”

He added, “Thanos said all living entities, all living beings, half of all of them, so does that include bacteria? Did half of the stomach bacteria inside of you disappear and people get really sick?”

There were also other potentially more gruesome questions to consider.

“What would happen to people in motion, if you’re in a car or in an airplane?” said the director. “Obviously, they didn’t blip back in the middle of the sky and fall to the Earth because so many people would die.”

Watts said, “There are so many questions, but we just stuck with the ones that made sense in our story.”

So what would happen to people who came back who were previously in an airplane?

“I was like, you know what, I’m not going to touch that one,” Watts joked, explaining the idea was really that everyone came back in one piece.

“That’s the thing. Everyone arrived back safely somehow. I don’t think suddenly people were raptured back to Earth and plummeted into the ocean. That would not be the happy ending that [Tony Stark] was planning.”

It seems like Greta Gerwig fans will be marching into theaters to see “Little Women” this December.

On Wednesday, Vanity Fair published an exclusive first look at the director’s remake of the classic 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott. The film features Saoirse Ronan (Jo March), Emma Watson (Meg March), Timothée Chalamet (Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence), Laura Dern (Marmee March), Meryl Streep (Aunt March), Florence Pugh (Amy March) and Eliza Scanlen (Beth March) — and when the still images of the stars made their way to Twitter, fans completely freaked out.

Gerwig, who was nominated for an Oscar in 2018 for “Lady Bird,” isn’t the first to make a film adaption of the book. Katharine Hepburn starred as Jo in 1933, and Winona Ryder portrayed the fierce writer in 1994. But Gerwig’s version of the March sisters’ story seems like it will be a fresh take on the material — especially in regards to gender.

“Jo is a girl with a boy’s name, Laurie is a boy with a girl’s name,” Gerwig pointed out to Vanity Fair. “In some ways, they are each other’s twins.” Another subtle parallel the film will take with the two friends is that their characters will trade articles of clothing throughout the film.

Ronan and Chalamet, who will play Jo and Laurie, also played romantic interests in Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” and Ronan decided to take a fun shot at her co-star during her interview with Vanity Fair.

“I loved that in ‘Lady Bird,’ he was the one that broke my heart, but I got to break his heart in ‘Little Women,’” Ronan told the magazine.

To check out more images from the film, head over to Vanity Fair, and to read more of fans’ amped-up reactions to the mere release of still images, check them out below.

It’s easy to get swept up in the glossy jargon surrounding Facebook’s latest capital-i Idea. The social network is offering the world something called Libra that will not only serve as a “decentralized blockchain,” but also a “low-volatility cryptocurrency” and ― of course ― “a smart contract platform,” all at the same time.

In a world of “high-fidelity communications,” Facebook claims, Libra will allow more people to access “the financial ecosystem.” This is, supposedly, innovation with a conscience, an alternative to “payday loans” and the “high and unpredictable fees” of the banking system. Above all, it is new, new, new.

In fact, what Facebook is proposing is a really stupid investment scheme masquerading as a digital currency. It’s a proposal that immediately demands regulatory scrutiny of Facebook from every financial authority in the world. For a company that has spent the past two years engaged in mass privacy violations, accidental corporate alliances with authoritarian agitators and livestreams of outright terrorism, Facebook’s attempt to enter the world of high finance with so slipshod an idea can only be described as delusional.

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg clearly haven’t thought this through. Much of the so-called “white paper” describing Libra’s structure and standards consists of vague generalities. For all its cutting-edge verbiage, the outline for Libra relies on the ideas behind the gold standard that prevailed at the turn of the 20th century. Under this monetary regime, governments guaranteed that their currencies could be exchanged for a specific quantity of gold. If you had in your possession a $1 bill, you could exchange that piece of paper for 23.22 grains of gold at the U.S. Treasury, no questions asked.

Today, of course, nostalgia for the gold standard is for cranks, so Facebook is proposing to make Libra exchangeable not for gold, but rather “a basket of currencies and other assets.” How much of what currencies and assets? Facebook doesn’t say, specifying only that Facebook will always keep enough assets in reserve to pay out every single Libra in circulation.

This is where things start getting genuinely weird. Facebook claims its reserves will include “low-risk assets,” and that Facebook will keep the interest earned on these assets for itself. Actual holders of Libra coins will leave this profit on the table.

This raises some rather obvious questions. Why not just buy those assets directly and actually get paid the interest? Why give away your returns to Facebook? Why would a financial regulator allow Facebook to operate as an investment fund manager who keeps all the interest from his clients’ investments for himself? Facebook doesn’t say.

But let’s imagine you do want to give Mark Zuckerberg free money, so you sign up for Libra and fork over some dollars. How will you cash out your Libra when you eventually decide you don’t want it anymore? What exactly does it mean to be able to cash out one Libra for various fractions of unspecified government bonds and foreign currencies that make up Libra’s reserve?

It turns out Facebook won’t actually let you get your hands on those “reserve” assets. Facebook says “users can have confidence that any Libra coin they hold can be sold for fiat currency.” In other words, the interest-generating bonds will stay in Facebook’s vaults; the company will let you access some amount of dollars or euros instead. How much? Facebook doesn’t say. How will it make sure? Well, you can always trade in your Libra “when a competitive market for exchanges is present.” How do you know this “competitive market” will, in fact, be “present?” Facebook doesn’t say. What if there’s a run on Libra? Facebook doesn’t say. 

To summarize Facebook’s sales pitch: Dear users, if you let us invest your money and harvest the returns, you may or may not be able to cash out ― depending on some details we have not yet determined.

No credible financial institution would participate in this scheme ― not even the banks that brought you the subprime mortgage meltdown. No sober financial regulator would approve it. Indeed, they’re already crying foul, all over the world.

In the 24 hours or so since Facebook unveiled Libra, policymakers and thinkers have issued grave warnings about the danger of granting Zuckerberg’s company the powers of a central bank. These are well-meaning and reasonable complaints. Money is an inescapably political commodity, and a true international currency managed by a private entity without any democratic accountability would indeed be a threat to international stability.

But the truth is, Libra is too stupid to be dangerous. Regulators can’t and won’t let it get off the ground. Libra isn’t a sign of Facebook’s expanding power ― it’s evidence that its executives are losing their grip.

It is written. Boris Johnson’s time has come and he will be the United Kingdom’s next prime minister. 

Or so the story goes. As it stands, the ex-mayor of London does indeed have enough support to make it to the final two run-off, and it seems highly likely then that Tory members will crown their favourite the leader.  

But even if Johnson appears to be within touching distance of Downing Street, Conservative Party leadership contests have a stubborn habit of not turning out as everyone expects. 

Here are some things that *could* still frustrate the ex-foreign secretary in his quest for power.  

His past comes back to haunt him 

Bear with me. I’ll try to be brief. 

Suffice it to say that opponents of Johnson who want to leaf through his past misdemeanours for ammunition will not come up short.

His closet contains a lot of skeletons. They include, but are not restricted to: 

• Cheating on his wife - Johnson had a four-year affair with Petronella Wyatt whilst married to ex-partner Marina Wheeler.

• Getting sacked - The Times sacked Johnson as a journalist because he falsified a quote from his own godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, for a front-page article about the discovery of Edward II’s Rose Palace.

• Racist comments - In an article for the Daily Telegraph in 2002, he described Africans as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. More recently, again in the Telegraph, he compared hijab-wearing Muslim women to “bankrobbers” and “letterboxes”.  

• Homophobic comments - Writing in the Spectator in 2000, Johnson attacked “Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it”. In 1998, again in the Telegraph, he said the resignation of Peter Mandelson from the then Labour government would cause “tank-topped bumboys” to “blub”. And in 2001, he said this: “If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.” 

• Taking cocaine - You could be forgiven for thinking this behaviour was limited to Johnson’s old foe Michael Gove, but the frontrunner has admitted a “single inconclusive event” when he was 19. As mayor, he was responsible for overseeing the Met Police. 

Johnson’s strategy thus far has been to avoid scrutiny, perhaps because he will face an avalanche of questions on the above points. 

Tory members conclude he was a poor foreign secretary 

The person who becomes our next PM will ultimately be decided by the Tory party’s membership.

Brexit is hugely important to this group. This fact makes Johnson – who was the talisman of Vote Leave in the 2016 referendum and has pledged to take the UK out of the EU in October deal or no deal – the clear favourite. 

But Conservative Party members, who are more likely to be managers or businesspeople, will also be weighing up who can beat both Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn and also provide stable government.

Pollster Lord Hayward found 23% of 2017 Tory voters thought Johnson would be a very bad PM. His controversial tenure as foreign secretary is thought to have contributed to this perception. 

One of his major mistakes was to wrongly state British-Iranian mum Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is in jail in Iran on spying charges, had been in the Middle East country to teach journalism, when in fact she had been on holiday. 

Johnson’s remarks were cited as evidence against the British-Iranian charity worker in court four days later. Nazanin’s husband Richard Ratcliffe told HuffPost he still resents Johnson for the comments. 

Among Johnson’s other “gaffes” was to joke about dead Libyans - saying at the 2017 Tory Party conference that Sirte could be “the next Dubai”, adding: “The only thing they’ve got to do is clear the dead bodies away and then we will be there.”

...and that he wasn’t the greatest Mayor of London either 

It is true to say that knife crime fell during Johnson’s spell as London mayor, which ran from 2008 to 2016. 

The 2012 Olympics was universally lauded as a success and he built more affordable homes than his predecessor Ken Livingstone did throughout his eight years in the job. 

Johnson may not want to ponder on other uncomfortable facts, however, such as his refusal to cut short his holiday when the 2011 riots broke out and wasting £43m on a garden bridge project that was never built. 

He also wasted about £322,000 of taxpayers’ cash buying water cannon vehicles from the German police without checking whether they could be used. The crowd control vehicles are, in fact, banned in England and Wales - something he was reminded of by the then-home secretary Theresa May. 

He also faced claims of another “vanity project” in pressing fothe the Emirates cable car across the Thames, which cost the taxpayer some £24m. 

His ‘submarine strategy’ backfires 

Team Boris has done a fine job of keeping the former foreign secretary as far away as humanly possible from journalists, TV cameras and rivals. 

And for good reason. They fear that the one person who can ‘stop Boris’ is Boris Johnson.

During his first outing, at his own campaign launch, he mistook (perhaps wilfully) the word “character” for “parrot” and his supporters booed a journalist for asking a question. 

And his appearance in the televised BBC debate was far from barnstorming.

While his allergy to scrutiny doesn’t seem to have damaged his standing with MPs - some 114 of them supported him at the first ballot, rising to 143 by the third - Tory members might worry about it. 

Theresa May, who lost the Conservative Party its majority at the 2017 election, was heavily criticised for sending Amber Rudd in her place for the final TV debates with other party leaders. 

One of Johnson’s rivals gets their act together 

It’s not not clear who is actually capable of doing as much, but each of the other candidates has an outside shot of snatching victory. 

The buzz and the momentum was around international development secretary Rory Stewart, who has said he has “no problem” being seen as the ‘stop Boris’ candidate. But Stewart was knocked out in the third round despite a shock Conservative Home poll putting the outsider in second place among Tory members last week.

With key endorsements from cabinet ministers Amber Rudd and Penny Mordaunt, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt is leading the race for second place.

Although Hunt has committed to keeping a no-deal Brexit as an option in negotiations with Brussels, his previous support for Remain could make him a suspect figure in the eyes of members. 

Home secretary Sajid Javid, who has a working class background and would be the UK's first PM from an ethnic minority background, would offer Tory members a stark choice, and has backing from the popular Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson. 

Environment secretary Michael Gove, meanwhile, has strong Leave credentials and is hoping to win over Tory MPs by stressing his CV as a reformer in government. 

But all are struggling to break through in the face of overwhelming support for Johnson and seem unlikely to be able to compete when ballots go out to the grassroots. 

Everyone is wrong about Tory members 

Johnson’s camp insists the frontrunner is not complacent and has underlined that the favourite in a Tory leadership election rarely wins. 

There is some truth to that. The Tory membership - about 75% male with an average age of 57 - has a habit of surprising us all. 

In 2005, 68% backed David Cameron, on a pledge to reform the party, over David Davis and in 2001 picked Iain Duncan Smith over Ken Clarke, despite the former chancellor’s greater wealth of cabinet experience. 

But ... 

It is widely assumed that the membership is strongly pro-Brexit and this will work in Johnson’s favour when the final choice between is passed to them. 

Countless polls back this up. Johnson has regularly been named as the top choice of Tory members in Conservative Home surveys - usually a reliable bellwether of the party’s grassroots. It is therefore highly likely that he will win. 

With so few policy commitments nailed down and the Brext question looming on the horizon, the words on everyone’s lips will switch from ‘who can stop Boris’ to ‘what next, Boris?’. 

We’re now just a day away from the fourth and (supposedly) final instalment in the Toy Story series, which critics have now had their say over.

The first wave of Toy Story 4 reviews have now been posted online, and at the time of writing, the film already has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning critics have been unanimously positive towards it, even if one or two have questioned whether a fourth film was wholly necessary.

And if you were among those who found themselves hysterically crying into your popcorn during Toy Story 3, it sounds like you might want to double-check you have tissues to hand fourth time around.

Here’s just a snippet of the first Toy Story 4 reviews…

The Times (5/5)

Sweet Lord, this is good. You know that you’re in the presence of genius when the first five minutes of what is ostensibly the third sequel to a 24-year-old children’s cartoon about talking toys is revealed to contain more depth, more thought-provoking content and more soulful passion than any Hollywood movie released this year so far.

The Independent

“The brilliance of the new film lies in the surefooted way it caters both for children too young to have seen its predecessors and for adults who’ve grown up (or grown older) watching the previous instalments. It takes some kind of genius for the Pixar animators to give such a searing emotional charge to a story in which one of the main characters is a single use plastic spork retrieved from the trash.”

Vulture

“I won’t give away the film’s climax, but I will say that the inevitable tears are jerked in layers: There’s one emotional climax for those viewers who are new to the series, another for those who have only vague memories of the previous films, and yet another for those who’ve totally grown up on these pictures.” 

The Mirror (5/5)

“With cinema dominated by universe-smashing superheroes, Toy Story’s sweet brand of wholesome and slightly scary fun seems almost quaint, but as a parent it’s great to have a film which offers more gentle and almost innocent pleasures.”

Digital Spy (5/5)

“We would have been content if Toy Story 3 was the end of their cinematic adventures. If it had been, though, we’d have missed out on the magnificent Toy Story 4, which manages to wash away any doubts you had before the opening credits roll.”

Vanity Fair

“That prospect [of a fourth film] didn’t sit all that well with me when it was announced—not after the third film had arrived at such a teary place of completion. It’s a relief, then, that Toy Story 4 not only delivers plenty of gonzo-funny moments and genuine thrills, but also interrogates and complicates the series’s core themes.”

Mashable

“Toy Story 4 feels less like a family film than a film for adults that their children might also like. The colorful cartoon characters and their wacky hijinks will surely go appreciated by the younger set — but the messaging is aimed squarely at those who were old enough to watch the first or second Toy Story in theaters, and it hits that mark with grace and confidence.”

The Sun (5/5)

“There’s little point in talking too much about the storyline because it’s largely more of the same... I don’t mind though, because I don’t think that is the films’ strength. Its strength lies in simply being able to create some of the best characters ever seen on screen - and boy do we get a load of new favourites.”

BBC (4/5) 

“It’s clear within minutes that the new cartoon… will be as gorgeously animated and as generously sprinkled with jokes as Pixar’s best work, and any lingering misgivings melt away in the warm glow of seeing Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the loveable, misfit gang back together.”

Empire (4/5)

“This fourth Toy Story isn’t as essential as the previous films in the series, but there’s no denying the joy of seeing Woody and friends back in action, while once again it’ll likely leave you with a tear in your eye.” 

The Guardian (3/5)

“It is sprightly, sweet-natured and gorgeous to look at (and how blasé we’ve all become about animation standards that 10 years ago had us hyperventilating with astonishment).... But this movie is fundamentally repeating itself: repeating characters, ideas and plotlines – even if it does it with buoyancy and charm.” 

New York Post (2.5/5)

“Toy Story 4 ends on a respectable, bittersweet note that would make the perfect bookend to this likable franchise. But so did the last movie. Throughout 4, Buzz Lightyear, who’s underused, tries to ‘listen to my inner voice’ to make sounder decisions. I suggest Pixar do the same: To infinity and beyond!”

Toy Story 4 hits theatres on June 21. Watch the trailer below:

NEW DELHI — The United States has told India it is considering caps on H-1B work visas for nations that force foreign companies to store data locally, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, widening the two countries’ row over tariffs and trade.

The plan to restrict the popular H-1B visa programme, under which skilled foreign workers are brought to the United States each year, comes days ahead of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to New Delhi.

India, which has upset companies such as Mastercard and irked the US government with stringent new rules on data storage, is the largest recipient of these temporary visas, most of them to workers at big Indian technology firms.

The warning comes as trade tensions between the United States and India have resulted in tit-for-tat tariff actions in recent weeks. From Sunday, India imposed higher tariffs on some US goods, days after Washington withdrew a key trade privilege for New Delhi.

Two senior Indian government officials said on Wednesday they were briefed last week on a US government plan to cap H-1B visas issued each year to Indians at between 10% and 15% of the annual quota. There is no current country-specific limit on the 85,000 H-1B work visas granted each year, and an estimated 70% go to Indians.

Both officials said they were told the plan was linked to the global push for “data localisation”, in which a country places restrictions on data as a way to gain better control over it and potentially curb the power of international companies. US firms have lobbied hard against data localisation rules around the world.

A Washington-based industry source aware of India-US negotiations also said the United States was deliberating capping the number of H-1B visas in response to global data storage rules. The move, however, was not solely targeted at India, the source said.

“The proposal is that any country that does data localisation, then it (H-1B visas) would be limited to about 15% of the quota. It’s being discussed internally in the US government,” the person said.

The US Embassy in New Delhi did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the US Trade Representative’s office (USTR) referred questions to the State Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

IT SECTOR

Most affected by any such caps would be India’s more than $150 billion IT sector, including Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Ltd, which uses H-1B visas to fly engineers and developers to service clients in the United States, its biggest market. Major Silicon Valley tech companies also hire workers using the visas.

Stratfor analyst Reva Goujon on Twitter called the move “potentially another big blow to the US #tech industry amid US-#China economic battle,” a sentiment echoed on social media by some Indians and their supporters.

The Ministry of External Affairs has sought an “urgent response” from officials on how such a move by the United States could affect India, said one of the two government officials, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The Ministry of External Affairs, as well as the commerce department that is typically involved in such discussions, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Since last year, the Trump administration has been upset that US companies such as Mastercard and Visa suffer due to regulations in several countries that it says are protectionist and increasingly require companies to store more data locally.

India last year mandated foreign firms to store their payments data “only in India” for supervision, and New Delhi is working on a broad data protection law that would impose strict rules for local processing of data it considers sensitive.

While governments the world over have been announcing stricter data storage rules to better access data in their jurisdictions, critics say restricting cross-border data flows hurts innovation and raises companies’ costs.

In March the USTR, in a press note, highlighted “key barriers to digital trade”, citing data-flow restrictions in India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam, among others.

At a US-India Business Council event last week, Pompeo said the Trump administration would push for free flow of data across borders, not just to help US companies but also to secure consumers’ privacy.

Everyone needs to spice up their life once in a while.

And Adele did just that while attending a Spice Girls reunion concert at London’s Wembley Stadium on Saturday night.

And boy, did the “Hello” singer — who seems like a mega-huge fan of the ’90s girl group — Live. It. Up.

“Oiii last time I saw the Spice Girls at Wembley was 21 years ago!” the 31-year-old Grammy winner wrote in an Instagram post over the weekend. “Tonight with my nearest and dearest i cried, laughed, screamed, danced, reminisced and fell back in love with my 10 year old self.”

The “Someone Like You” singer’s post basically solidifies Adele as a Spice Girl superfan by documenting her entire concertgoing experience in videos and photos. It includes videos of her amped-up self belting “Stop” in the car on the way to the show, her and her friends excitedly jumping and shout-singing “Spice Up Your Life” backstage and her watching the Spice Girls sing onstage with their kids and realizing how much time has passed since she first became a fan.

“They’re all mums now!” Adele says excitedly.

Adele even got to meet four of the five Spice Girls (Victoria Beckham, or Posh Spice, was not a part of the reunion tour) backstage and took a very cute photo that the band shared on their Instagram account.

Adele’s enthusiasm shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to her fans. When the Spice Girls announced their reunion tour in November 2018, the singer seemed totally thrilled, and posted a throwback photo of herself as a girl backed by tons of Spice Girl posters. 

“HA! This is how I feel right now! I AM READY,” she wrote as a caption to the post.

Well, after seeing her epic post, we’re pretty sure Adele didn’t wannabe anywhere else than at that concert Saturday night.

Kate Middleton and Prince William’s convoy was involved in a London crash with an elderly woman prior to the Order of the Garter ceremony in Windsor on Tuesday. 

A police motorcycle from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s convoy ― which consisted of a Range Rover and four bikes from a police escort ― hit an 83-year-old woman named Irene Mayor, according to The Telegraph. The motorcycle was reportedly driving against traffic to clear cars. 

Mayor was later taken to the hospital and remains in “serious but stable condition,” the Independent Office for Police Conduct by the Metropolitan Police told the Telegraph. 

William and Kate were only informed of the accident when they reached the ceremony in Windsor on Tuesday. They later sent Mayor flowers with a handwritten note, The Sun reported, and offered to visit her in the hospital, if she wished. 

“The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were deeply concerned and saddened to hear about the accident on Monday afternoon,” a spokesperson for Kensington Palace said of the accident. 

More than 70 million people were displaced from their homes as of the end of 2018 ― the highest number recorded by the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

In a report released Wednesday, the U.N. refugee agency put the number of those who have been uprooted by war, persecution and other factors at 70.8 million ― twice as many as 20 years ago and over 2 million more than in 2017.

The new figure included nearly 26 million refugees, about 41 million people “internally displaced” ― forced to leave their homes but still living within their country’s borders ― and 3.5 million asylum seekers or people awaiting decisions on their application for sanctuary in another country.

“What we are seeing in these figures is further confirmation of a longer-term rising trend in the number of people needing safety from war, conflict and persecution,” U.N. high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi said in a news release.

He noted that the “language around refugees and migrants” is “often divisive,” and urged the world’s nations to “redouble our solidarity with the many thousands of innocent people who are forced to flee their homes each day.”

As of April, the U.S. was on track to resettle a historically low number of refugees this year, following a 30,000-person cap on refugee admissions for the 2019 fiscal year imposed by President Donald Trump. That’s the lowest ceiling a president has set for such resettlements since the program was created in 1980.

Syrians were again the largest population of displaced people, with 13 million people displaced by the country’s years-long war, according to the UNHCR report.

More than 3 million Venezuelans also were displaced as of last year amid the country’s economic and political crisis ― the biggest exodus in the region’s recent history, per UNHCR.

As in previous years, the U.S. received the largest number of asylum applicants of any country in 2018, with more than 250,000 such claims ― about half of which were made by people from Central America and Mexico.

Under the Trump administration’s recent “remain in Mexico” policy, thousands of asylum seekers looking for safety in the U.S. have been forced to wait in Mexico as their claims are processed. Advocates have raisedconcerns about the dangerous conditions in border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, where more asylum seekers will now have to wait.

“Any human being that claims to be fleeing from war, conflict and persecution certainly has a right to have his or her story heard, and must be allowed to access safe territory and efficient asylum procedures that are fair,” UNHCR spokesperson Christopher Boian told HuffPost, speaking about the broader issue of record numbers of displaced people worldwide.

Boian noted that, according to the U.N. report, half of the world’s refugees are children.

“If you want to contemplate if this has major implications for the future of humanity, consider that fact,” he said. “This will have repercussions for a long time to come.”

Lela Vásquez, a 23-year-old childhood sexual abuse survivor, never understood why she cried after having sex with supportive partners or masturbating. It wasn’t until she was 18 and had been in multiple sexual relationships hat she realized the deep depression she felt after any sexual experience was linked to her post-traumatic stress disorder from her abuse.

Vásquez dealt with it privately until six months ago, when she learned that her experience was so pravelent among sexual assault survivors that there was even a term for it.

Postcoital dysphoria, also known as post-sex blues or postcoital tristesse, refers to intense feelings of sadness, agitation or anger after consensual ― even pleasurable and intimate — sex or masturbation. Symptoms of postcoital dysphoria include “anxiety, depression, feelings of emptiness, melancholy or crying,” according to Jill McDevitt, a sexuality educator and sexologist at CalExotics, an adult sex toy brand.

That’s precisely what Vásquez was experiencing. Though recovery from sexual trauma is rarely — if ever — a straightforward or predictable process, research shows that PTSD can largely affect both physical and mental health. That includes a person’s sex life.

Yet, the impact of PTSD on survivor’s sexual wellness is still largely considered a taboo topic, and oftentimes, health concerns related to sex and intimacy go unaddressed because of stigma.

It’s time to change that.

Anyone can experience postcoital dysphoria, but research suggests it’s strongly linked with a history of sexual assault.

Forty-six percent of women reported experiencing postcoital dysphoria at least once in their lifetime, according to a 2015 study by the journal Sexual Medicine, and a history of childhood sexual abuse was found to be the most important predictor. A history of physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual assault in adulthood also appeared to be risk factors. Additionally, new research in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy shows that a history of childhood sexual abuse is associated with postcoital dysphoria in men.

Though postcoital dysphoria isn’t widely acknowledged, it’s a common and normative response to trauma, said Patti Feuereisen, the founder of GirlThrive and a psychologist who has worked with sex abuse survivors for more than 30 years.

Many survivors will dissociate, or essentially “tune out” at the time an assault is happening, Feuereisen said, and this feeling can linger long after the abuse is over. In fact, dissociation is one of the common symptoms of PTSD, which makes it more difficult for sexual assault survivors to feel connected to themselves, their bodies, their loved ones and the world around them.

For many sexual assault survivors with PTSD, simply being present during sex can be emotionally painful and triggering — even when they’re with a supportive and respectful partner.

Survivors may experience PTSD-related flashbacks during sex that can bring on post-sex blues.

“Postcoital dysphoria is more common among sexual assault survivors,” said Stefani Threadgill, a Texas-based sex therapist, “because memories of trauma are stored in the parts of the brain associated with survival — the amygdala and the hypothalamus — that can be triggered during a sexual experience.”

Experts agree that practicing self-care, both in and out of the bedroom, is a key component to overcoming the issue on a regular basis.

“You have to just stop at that moment ... do whatever sort of self-care that you do,” Feuereisen said. “Maybe your partner sits up and brings you a cup of tea. That begins to restructure and remap the experience.”

Remapping a traumatic experience — or reframing the negative situation into a positive one — can be empowering and healing.

One way to remap is by practicing intentional intimacy for 20 minutes or so with a partner or by yourself, Feuereisen said. Simply put, intentional intimacy is about setting aside time in a busy schedule to foster connection ― whether that’s sexual, emotional, physical or spiritual connection ― with one another or on your own.

“With intentional intimacy, it’s everything you want — you get to choose it. For survivors, it’s a wonderful thing,” Feuereisen said. “You have to relearn how to enjoy your sexuality. In order to be OK, you have to go through these feelings, [and] you can no longer dissociate from them.”

McDevitt takes a similar approach with clients experiencing postcoital dysphoria. “If the client wanted to feel joyful and relaxed after sex, we’d work to qualify what ‘joyful and relaxed’ means and looks like,” she said. “Then we’d backtrack, breaking down this goal into smaller and smaller steps.”

Summer,* a 41-year-old childhood sexual abuse survivor, lived with PTSD-related postcoital dysphoria for nearly 13 years. (She asked to remain anonymous so she can more freely discuss her mental health.) The condition left her feeling either “dead inside” or shaking and crying uncontrollably, she said. But much of her healing came through remapping her sexual experiences with a trusted loved one.

“Through time with a compassionate, loving and understanding partner, I learned to feel safe and valued,” Summer said, adding that it’s been around a decade since she last had a bout of postcoital dysphoria.

Though stigma around mental illness and sexual health persists, there’s no shame in seeking help from a mental health professional for post-sex blues.

“I still struggle with postcoital dysphoria a great amount, and my intention is to accept the emotions, wait for the wave to pass and plan ahead,” Vásquez said. “Learning to cope with my postcoital dysphoria has definitely been a part of my trauma recovery.”

Dealing with post-sex blues doesn’t mean a survivor dealing with PTSD is broken or that they are “damaged goods.” It isn’t indicative of some moral failing. Experiencing postcoital dysphoria simply means they’re processing and healing, and that ― most importantly ― they’re human.

“The most important thing here is to remember that all of this is about you taking your power back if you’ve been sexually traumatized,” Feuereisen said. “When you work it through, you sometimes may have a moment where the postcoital dysphoria comes back, but they will just be moments.”

“Living With” is a guide to navigating conditions that affect your mind and body. Each month, HuffPost Life will tackle very real issues people live with by offering different stories, advice and ways to connect with others who understand what it’s like. In June, we’re covering trauma and PTSD. Got an experience you’d like to share? Email wellness@huffpost.com.

If you haven’t watched Avengers: Endgame yet, wait till 28 June and you can watch it with a deleted scene. 

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has confirmed that Avengers: Endgame will be re-released with brand new footage. Feige told Screen Rant that while it won’t be an extended cut, “there will be a version going into theaters with a bit of a marketing push with a few new things at the end of the movie.” 

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“If you stay and watch the movie, after the credits, there’ll be a deleted scene, a little tribute, and a few surprises. Which will be next weekend,” he further told Screen Rant. The report also said Feige confirmed Endgame will be re-released on 28 June.

Jason Momoa and Peter Dinklage look about as much alike as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito —so this could potentially be the perfect fit.

Comicbook.com reports that while Momoa was participating in an “Aquaman Live” panel at Celebrity Fan Fest in San Antonio, Texas, over the weekend, a fan threw the “Aquaman” star an interesting fish, er, pitch.

The fan proposed Momoa team up with Dinklage ― his former “Game of Thrones” co-star ― to do a remake of the 1988 buddy comedy “Twins,” which starred Schwarzenegger and DeVito.

“Fuckin’ tell me where to sign!” Momoa said to the fan, which you can see in the video above at 17:52 mark. “Absolutely. That’d be amazing. I love that movie.”

He said of Dinklage, “He’s amazing,” and agreed with the moderator that “People on Twitter, make that happen” — much like fans of Weezer got the band to cover Toto’s “Africa.”

Momoa, however, hasn’t said anything about this potential remake on any of his social media accounts.

In the comedy “Twins,” Schwarzenegger and DeVito play fraternal twins separated at birth. When Julius (Schwarzenegger) discovers he has a brother named Vincent (DeVito), he sets off to find him. Julius then teams up with Vincent to find their birth mother, and conflict and hijinks ensue.

The films was a huge hit, taking in more than $200 million at the box office.

During his panel at Celebrity Fan Fest, Momoa said that if he could play any character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he’d like it to be Wolverine.

Interestingly enough, thousands of fans signed an online petition in May urging the MCU to hire DeVito as the next Wolverine.

So if “Twins” 2.0 isn’t made, we’d settle for a film about Momoa and DeVito duking it out to get the role of Wolverine — with Hugh Jackman refereeing.

NEW DELHI — The people of India have given a mandate to continue with the country’s development journey that started in 2014, President Ram Nath Kovind said Thursday.

In his address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament in the historic Central Hall, he said government is moving ahead to create a strong, secure and inclusive India. 

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In his customary address after formation of the 17th Lok Sabha, the President also said that government has started a pension scheme to help farmers and small traders live a life of dignity.

Congratulating the Election Commission and crores of officials and security personnel involved in holding the general elections, he pointed out that over 61 crore people voted in the Lok Sabha polls, creating a record.

He said women came out in large numbers to exercise their franchise.

He said a record 78 women have been elected as members of the Lok Sabha ― the highest ever and almost half of the elected members are first timers.

“In this election, the people of the country gave a clear mandate. After the assessment of the government’s first tenure, the people have given it a bigger mandate this time,” he said.

He said, by doing so, the people have given a mandate to accelerate the development process initiated in 2014.