Inside the Asylum

I first posted about India's monsoon crisis, and then more recently I posted about heavy rainfall and flooding that I thought meant that the crisis had passed. It turns out that I spoke too soon. Rain fell, but not in many crucial areas.
The Sydney Herald even copies the title of my first post on this with their opening sentence (about watching the skies)!

MILLIONS of Indian farmers are looking anxiously to the skies and wondering where the monsoon has gone... Punjab... the capital, Delhi, have been badly affected, along with large parts of the poverty-stricken states Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

I went to the Punjab as a child. I have memories of mile after mile of wheat on an endless bus ride through the region. A drought there would be disaster for the entire country.

The nation's Agriculture Minister, Sharad Pawar, warned on Friday that the delayed onset of the monsoon "was serious throughout India" but most acute in the north.

Fortunately, it seems that Sharad Pawar has over-stated the seriousness of the situation, at least with regards to the rest of India. The Hindu reports

The Peninsular region [the south] received widespread rains -- 23 per cent more rainfall than the normal -- with west coast accounting for very heavy falls. Central and northeast India also received near normal rainfall. However, rainfall was deficient by 59 per cent over northwestern parts of the country. West Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Chandigarh & Delhi, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat sub-divisions were the worst affected with rainfall deficiency of more than 60 per cent, weatherman said.

Still, in a country of a billion plus people, that represents 100s of millions of people in trouble.

Came across the following interesting facts about a world leader:
He went to primary school in Switzerland, secondary school in New Zealand, took a foreign service course at Oxford University and also went to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He can speak English and German and his native language. He can play the double bass and the piano. He likes to chat about military tactics, world history and international detente.

Who is it?

George Tupou V, King of Tonga. Kind of makes hereditary monarchy look good, especially when there's a guy in the White House who never seems to have done anything except get elected.

I don't have time to post much today, so I thought I'd just share my all-time favorite Youtube clip. Here it is.

Anti-Chinese sympathies for the Turks in Xinjiang seem to be running deep in Turkey. But the Industry Ministry promptly repudiates his comments as "his personal opinion".

Industry Minister Nihat Ergün... now says the government has no such official position, and that it is up to consumers themselves to decide whether or not to buy goods from China.