Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre speaks at an adult education centre as he starts his tour of Quebec on Jan. 16, in Montreal.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

As a public service, we are ceding this space to an urgent request from the Quebec provincial police for help in identifying a person calling himself Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who visited the province in recent days. The following is an unofficial translation:

The Sret du Qubec is seeking assistance from the public in establishing the true identity of an individual going by the name of Pierre Poilievre, who held several public events and granted mainstream-media interviews this week in Montreal, Trois-Rivires and Quebec City.

The SQ has reason to believe that the person in question may have usurped the identity of the federal Conservative Leader in order to persuade Quebeckers that the real Mr. Poilievre is nothing like the angry cartoon character who won his partys 2022 leadership contest by promising to blow up Canada as we know it. The individual in question seemed much nicer and more reasonable than the Pierre Poilievre who has been trolling the internet in recent months. We nevertheless ask the public to exercise caution in trusting this individual, despite his friendliness.

The SQ draws the publics attention to a recent Angus Reid Institute survey indicating that almost two-thirds of Quebeckers have an unfavourable view of the real Pierre Poilievre. This may have something to do with his highly publicized support for the freedom convoy that occupied downtown Ottawa in early 2022, and a widespread portrayal in Quebec media of Mr. Poilievre as a right-wing populist who styles himself along the lines of MAGA Republicans. The person calling himself Pierre Poilievre who visited Quebec this week sounded more like a Green New Deal Democrat.

The individual in question bears a striking physical resemblance to the Member of Parliament for Carleton and speaks with the same distinctive twang, in both official languages. Nevertheless, the SQ has several reasons to believe he may be an imposter.

During his media interviews and press conferences, this individual never once said that everything feels broken in Canada. He offered a positive green vision of Canadas future as a renewable-energy superpower and global leader in electric vehicles. We must permit Quebec to build more hydroelectric dams to provide the electricity that will be needed to power electric cars, the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre said. The future of our green economy depends on [critical] minerals and green electricity.

The individual in question did act like the real Pierre Poilievre in evading questions about whether a Conservative government would make an increase in federal health transfers conditional on Quebec agreeing to adhere to certain national standards. He did promise to speed up the certification of foreign-credentialed doctors and nurses to alleviate a labour crunch that has left Quebec hospitals severely understaffed.

I respect Quebecs autonomy. I do not want to interfere in their decisions, the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre told a prominent Radio-Canada news anchor. Quebeckers are capable of being masters in their own house, as they say.

However, contrary to the real Pierre Poilievre, the individual in question offered only mainstream answers to mainstream questions. This person did not once veer into the culture-war diatribes characteristic of the real Pierre Poilievres social-media persona. Not once did this individual leap to the defence of Jordan Peterson the University of Toronto professor emeritus who has become a hero of the anti-woke U.S. right, and who has complained that the College of Psychologists of Ontario ordered him to undergo social-media training because some of his tweets may be degrading the profession as the real Pierre Poilievre did recently in English on YouTube. The individual calling himself Pierre Poilievre was not heard even saying the word woke in Quebec.

The individual in question denied reports the Conservatives are trying to recruit high-profile Coalition Avenir Qubec cabinet ministers Genevive Guilbault and Eric Girard to run for their party in the next federal election. Ms. Guilbault is Deputy Premier and Transport Minister. Mr. Girard is Finance Minister. They are competent centrists in Premier Franois Legaults otherwise right-leaning government. Either would be a catch for the Tories.

Controversial Quebec Conservative Party Leader ric Duhaime, who is also a fan of Mr. Peterson, would appear to hold political views that align more closely with those of the real Pierre Poilievre than the two CAQ ministers. But the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre did not go out of his way to arrange for any photo ops with Mr. Duhaime on his Quebec tour.

These and other inconsistencies in the behaviour of this person calling himself Pierre Poilievre lead the SQ to ask the public for any information that could aid in determining whether this individual is the real deal or a poseur. If you can help, please contact the SQ Anti-Fraud Squad as soon as possible.

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Opinion: Will the real Pierre Poilievre please stand up? - The Globe and Mail

The Jayhawks picked up a key commitment this weekend from Damarius McGhee who will transfer from LSU.

One of the factors that led to his decision was the relationship he built with Kansas cornerbacks coach Jordan Peterson. When McGhee entered the transfer portal in early December that is when Peterson first reach out.

He started recruiting me and hit me up as soon as I hit the portal, McGhee said. Then over the last couple weeks we started to really get into it.

During that time, it gave Peterson a chance to sell McGhee on the program. It was a big reason he committed to the Jayhawks.

Oh yeah, that's my guy, he said of Peterson. He told me a lot. He told me about the defense, and I like how they do their schemes. I like what they do with their defense. He was joking around a lot on the visit. Hes the one who basically recruited me the whole time.

McGhee saw the bond the coaches have on the official visit and that was something that caught his attention.

The coaching stuff stood out, he said. I can tell that they want everybody together, be together, and grow together. That's really what I'm looking for. Coming from LSU and that new coach and everything.

As a true freshman he started on special teams at LSU and that was one of his strengths coming out of high school. He was a four-star recruit coming out of Pensacola Catholic High School and had offers from several colleges including Alabama, Georgia and several others.

Peterson talked to him about playing special teams as well as cornerback.

That's what really opened my eyes about Kansas, McGhee said. One of the first things they said something about special teams and running kicks back. So, I was just like, Yeah, this is probably going to be the place for me. I've been wanting to do that. I missed that and I've been gone for too long.

A portion of his visit was watching the basketball against Iowa State. He liked the game and the atmosphere in Allen Fieldhouse.

Not too many people can say that they went to one of those, he said. That game was crazy right there. That was probably the best basketball games Ive seen.

McGhee said Kenny Logan was his host and they hit it off right away. They have something in common being from Florida and playing defensive back.

I just knew he was from Florida just when I heard him talk, I was like, yeah, he's from Florida, McGhee said. But two different parts of Florida. Hes ready for me to come in though, so we can go to work. If you saw what he said he called me lil bro when I committed.

He is in the process of getting into KU and said he could arrive sometime later in the week.

I'm excited to go out there, he said. I'm excited to go out there and play. I'm just trying to show everybody who I used to be.

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Damarius McGhee ready to get to Kansas and work - Rivals.com - Kansas

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Andrew Tate Detained In Romania For Another Month: His Human Trafficking Charges Explained And A Timeline Of The Social Media Stars Controversies -...

In March 2022, over six months before Elon Musk officially took over the social networking site, the billionaire took to Twitter to slam the apps stance on freedom of speech.

From that point onwards, his agenda became pretty clear and his determination to acquire the platform ramped up.On October 27, he did just that, for the sum of 44.4 billion.

In the months since, employees have been fired, verified (blue-ticked) accounts have started being charged for the privilege, and some users who audaciously critiqued Musks approach to the platform have been banned.

Conversely, Musk has reinstated some of Twitters most controversial figures.

Musks freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach policy means that while hate speech on the platform wont be promoted or boosted, users will be able to seek it out - no different from the rest of the Internet, to quote Musk himself.

The Twitter Blue subscription has even allowed senior Taliban officials to briefly acquire verified status - includingHedayatullah Hedayat, the head of the Taliban's "access to information" department.

Citing local media, the BBC reported he had his blue tick revoked in December but it recently returned to his profile - before it was removed again this week.

The former US president was always vocal on Twitter until his account was permanently suspended in January 2021 following the storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC.

At the time, Twitter said this was done in order to prevent the risk of further incitement of violence. Following the ban, Trump retaliated by launching his own social media app, Truth Social.

On November 18 last year, Musk asked his Twitter followers whether Trump should be allowed back on the platform. In a Brexit-esque result, 51 per cent of users voted yes, and two days later, Musk confirmed Trumps account would be reinstated, signing off Vox Populi, Vix Dei: the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Six weeks after being banned for sharing antisemitic posts, Kanye West was granted access to Twitter once more - only to have it revoked again on December 2, 2022.

The US rapper, now known as Ye, was banned again for posting an image of a swastika inside the Star of David. It was shared just hours after he stated "I like Hitler" on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' radio show, InfoWars.

Musk soon afterwards took to the platform and tweeted 'FAFO' (F*** Around and Find Out).

Towards the end of last year, a number of high-profile brands binned their relationship with West over the antisemitic posts shared on his Twitter and Instagram profiles, including Adidas, which terminated its Yeezy trainer deal.

Currently under investigation in Romania over allegations of rape and human trafficking, the social media influencer Andrew Tate is another big name who made a Twitter comeback following Musk's takeover.

On November 18, 2022, his account - which was deactivated over the summer - returned, and became very active in re-establishing the man who was also removed from platforms including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for a multitude of reasons, not exclusive to referring to women as property.

Since then, Tate's account has been removed once again following his arrest in Romania on December 29.He and his brother, who are both detained in the country, have denied any wrongdoing.

Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson made a return to Twitter after being banned last summer for violating Twitters hateful conduct policies.

The offending tweets targeted Elliot Page, referring to the transgender actor by his deadname Ellen and preceded a 15-minute long video where Peterson said he would rather die than delete the tweet and concluded, Up yours, woke moralists. Well see who cancels who!

Since his return to the platform, Peterson has made a number of demands on Musk and the future of Twitter - including that Twitter bans anonymous accounts from posting alongside verified accounts.

Over the years, and especially in recent months, a few different public figures have found their Twitter access revoked as a result of factors including inciting hate speech, racism, sexism and more.

These are some of the other accounts the world is nervously awaiting a verdict on.

After rising to fame on the hit UK TV show 'The Apprentice,' Katie Hopkins ultimately gained a name for herself as a right-wing commentator.

Following several short suspension stints on Twitter, Hopkins was permanently banned from the site in June 2020 after telling footballer Marcus Rashford women should think about how they are going to feed a child before they decide to have it.

Alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently blocked from Twitter following abusive content directed towards actor Leslie Jones.

The founder of the far-right conspiracy theory website Infowars called the Sandy Hook school shootings a government orchestration and was banned from Twitter in 2018.

However, Musk has already commented on this, stating on Twitter I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.

Excerpt from:

Trump, Tate and the Taliban: Which controversial figures have the Twitter blue tick? - Euronews

Often playful, sometimes comical, and always profound, Zen paintings represent one of the worlds most fascinating religious and artistic traditions. "None Whatsoever" features masterworks of Zen Buddhist Japanese paintings from the renowned Gitter-Yelen Collection spanning more than four centuries. Selections from the MFAH collection of modern and contemporary art complement the presentation.

The exhibition explores the origins of Zen Buddhism in Japanese painting through ink paintings and calligraphies by painter-monks, such as 18th-century Buddhist master Hakuin Ekaku, who expressed Zen Buddhist teachings through their art. A related selection of modern and contemporary art influenced by Zen Buddhism features work by Franz Kline, Takahiro Kondo, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among others.

The exhibition takes its title from a legendary encounter between a Buddhist monk and a Chinese emperor. According to 8th-century Chinese sources, itinerant monk Bodhidharma, patriarch of Zen Buddhism, visited the court of Emperor Wu Liang. When the emperor asked how much goodwill his generous deeds had earned in the eyes of the Buddha, the monks curt reply, None Whatsoever, shocked the ruler. This exchange - seemingly casual and dismissive, yet also uncompromising, profound, and revolutionary - has come to embody the relationship in Zen Buddhism between student and teacher.

The exhibition will remain on display through May 14.

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The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents "None Whatsoever: Zen ... - CultureMap Houston

In the third volume of Michael Posners oral biography of Leonard Cohen, friends, lovers, spiritual kin, musicians, and business partners all tell stories of the besuited poet and singer-songwriter. This final segment begins in 1986 when the singer Jennifer Warnes, his sometime lover and collaborator, releases Famous Blue Raincoat, an album of Leonard Cohen songs that helps revive his reputation, and runs all the way through Cohens widely noted death in 2016. Cohens late-in-life resurgence as a recording and touring musician receives well-deserved attention but the most impressive episodes in this volume show us Cohen, in the 1990s, turning 60 and confronting the chaos inside himself while carrying on with his lifes work. Its a crowdsourced redemption story with graying flecks and a dramatic soundtrack.

Cohens reputation owes quite a lot to other musicians who covered and championed his music, starting with Judy Collins who recorded "Suzanne" in 1966, then another three of his songs a year later on her next album. In 1991, the tribute album Im Your Fan presented Cohens songwriting in recordings by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, R.E.M, and other heroes of alternative rock. This album also featured the seminal John Cale cover of "Hallelujah," but for which the song might not have been covered by Jeff Buckley, but for which the song might not have become a seemingly universal pop hymn.

The personal storms that roll through this volume are as momentous as any in the earlier books and yet more interesting and revealing. One almost pities Cohen as he spends ever more time at the Mount Baldy Zen Center near Claremont, Calif., enduring a demanding course in Zen Buddhism under Kyozan Joshu Sasaki. Old Leonard is a man in crisis: yanked by his own appetites toward dissipation and whoring; drowning in prescription-grade depression; seduced by fame and Hollywood, both personified by his latest girlfriend, Rebecca De Mornay; and, to his credit, unable to quit his vocation as a poet and a singer.

His practice as a Zen Buddhist seems to have been a way through the madness. It was not itself a path of sanity, though. Picture not a Zen garden, balanced, artful, and at peace. Picture New Age bedlam. "You do realize that we are on a hospital ship here, where all of us are broken, and none will ever get well and the ship is sinking," Cohen told fellow initiate James Truman.

The writer Pico Iyer appears as yet another friend and interpreter of the great Cohen koan. He offers a helpful gloss on the hospital comment: "Partly hes saying, 'There are no answers here. This is not salvation, just the opposite. Its about sitting still in a burning house, going up in flames."

Around this time Cohen gave a deeply interesting interview to Arthur Kurzweil of the Jewish Book Club, addressing the possible tension between Buddhism and Judaism. After he took up Zen Buddhism, Cohen said, he practiced Judaism with a passion for the Absolute that he hadnt known before. Buddhist meditation was therefore not so much an alternative to his own religion but a re-initiation into the sacred. Cohen, who toyed with many other journalists and interviewers, seemed to be playing it straight as he described the Bible to Kurzweil as a "landscape," spiritual and historical, that we are invited to inhabitpart of a larger moral universe continuous with the lives of the original Kohenim, a world that is still in existence, still holy, and still broken.

"There is a crack in everything," as he famously wrote. "Thats how the light gets in."

These years of rock bottom followed by an upward ascent provide an extraordinary glimpse of an extraordinary person at an extraordinary time. One is reminded of Henry taking leave of Falstaff to assume the crown, of the prodigal son coming home. This very fallen character reaches for the divine and it is quite moving.

There are other major episodes, such as the revelation that Cohens accounts are unstable and he may be heading toward insolvency. In the usual telling, he is simply ripped off by his manager Kelley Lynch, who was interviewed at length for these volumes. She is unrepentant and blames much of the difficulty on Cohens own profligacy, but the evidence against her (to say nothing of the jail time she served for harassing Cohen) seems overwhelming. The setback, however, does encourage him to keep working, keep recording, and, at an age when most people are watching the ink dry on their final will and testament, embark on a world tour.

Posners volume offers a lot of chapter and verse on the financial scandal and a number of excellent anecdotes of Cohen on the roadhe is so old and tired after performing that he cant bear to hang out with even the likes of Paul Simon and Bono. His problems with girlfriends decline in number but never quite zero out, as we hear from his many friends and acquaintances.

Assembling a life story through so many individual stories raises important questions about what is finally the truth, but Posner's oral history does so intentionally, making a virtue of its own inconsistency. It may be less scholarly or deliberate than weighing every piece of evidence and forcing it all through the sieve of a well-considered thesis, but there is a lot to be said for its free-flowing method. For one thing, it foregrounds the evidence, in a playful way, respecting the readers right to make up their own mind. Secondly, it keeps the principle of uncertainty front and center, ever present amid the polyphony of multiple witnesses relaying different takes on the same events.

Just as earlier volumes offered contrary opinions on Cohens lovemaking, singing, and guitar playing, so volume three tells us he was, in truth, not political at all but also that he was an NRA-card-carrying, pro-Israel realist who was deeply versed in the problems of the Middle East. (It seems possible to write a convincing essay on his political positions that could very well upset some of his most liberal fans.) We also hear that he was a man of superlative integrity and yet an apologist for sexual assault. (When his Zen master was credibly accused of multiple counts of groping and far worse, Cohen, reportedly, was more embarrassed than angry and did not lift a finger to see his beloved Roshi punished.) That he was, at times, a no-show parent and deeply committed to his childrens well-being. (The voices of his two offspring are all but absent, which seems just as wellthese three volumes, even when youre enjoying them, which is most of the time, do not leave you wanting more.)

Leonard Cohen was, apparently, a fiend and a friend. A gentleman and a rake. A voluptuary and an ascetic. And why not all of these?

At its best, however, this Babel of voices is ultimately unifying, producing a multiplicity of impressions that stack into one larger meta portrait like a Chuck Close painting. What brings it all together is the unlikely triumph of this aging troubadour who, after seeking refuge from his own recklessness, continued to climb the tower of song.

Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: Thats How the Light Gets Inby Michael PosnerSimon and Schuster, 475 pp., $35

David Skinner is an editor and writer who writes about language and culture and lives in Alexandria, Va.

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The Various Positions of Leonard Cohen - Washington Free Beacon

Japanese Zen philosophy has inspired a culture that finds beauty in imperfection. This idea is found in the crack of a teacup in the art of kintsugi.

Where we Westerners might consider it broken and useless, the Japanese pieced together such broken ceramics using lacquer and then sprinkled the joints with powdered gold to decorateand indeed celebratethe flaw.

This emphasis on the so-called broken part embellishes the history of the objects life. It is the richness of this history that enhances and beautifies, thus allowing a broken object to be reborn.

This art form differs from Western ideas and it stems from the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi, which encourages us to discover charm and blessings in the unseemliest and most desolate of places.

The philosophy germinated with the introduction of Zen Buddhism in Japan from China in the late 12th century. It found expression in the Japanese tea ceremony where lavishness was soon replaced by the simple and rustic.

Kintsugi is believed to have originated when Shgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a broken porcelain tea bowl to China to be repaired. It came back mended with metal staples whichAshikaga Yoshimasa found unsightly. He ordered artisans to devise a more aesthetic solution, and thus kintsugi was born.

The process itself is simple. Stemming from the time-honored artform of Japanese lacquerware, dating back to prehistory, the technique uses lacquer extracted from the indigenous urushi tree combined with bonding mediums, such as flour or rice, as a glue to join broken pottery pieces together. It is applied to the pottery using a fine brush. The artisans then placed them in humidified storage compartments, called furo, for anywhere from two days to two weeks. Bowls of hot water placedinside the furo increase the humidity which is absorbed by the lacquer, helping it to dry more quickly.

Once the piece has set, a layer of powdered gold is sprinkled over the crack, embellishing it with precious metal. From start to finish, the process can take as long as three months to complete.

Typically, kintsugi is used to mend cherished family items; on a group of islands fraught with earthquakes, broken pottery is something to be expected.

It is said that the art of kintsugi became so popular that some pottery collectors were accused of smashing pieces intentionally to have them rejoined using this method. It is also possible that defective or deformed pottery pieces were broken and re-mended in this way, salvaging them from being tossed away.

Such resourcefulness and frugality in saving these pieces embodies the whole philosophy behind kintsugi. It can be summed up using the Western idiom Waste not want not. This philosophy of making do has much to teach us Westerners: perfection is too easily lost and impossible to keep, but by embracing the imperfections in ourselves, and finding beauty and redemption in them, perfection and rebirth are always near at hand.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter

Michael Wing is a writer and editor based in Calgary, Canada, where he was born and educated in the arts. He writes mainly on culture, human interest, and trending news.

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Japanese Artists Use Gold to Revive Broken Ceramics in Zen ... - The Epoch Times

Pico Iyer is widely regarded as one of the most articulate observers of emerging global culture. In almost 50 years, he has had 15 books published translated into 23 languages on subjects ranging from travel to philosophy, and visited almost 90 countries.

His work is immersive for example, documenting his appreciation for Zen Buddhism after a period living in a Kyoto monastery for his bestseller The Lady and the Monk; and his decades-long friendship with the Dalai Lama, in The Open Road.

In his new book, The Half Known Life: Finding Paradise in a Divided World, the Oxford-born essayist son of an Indian philosopher and political theorist, and a religious scholar dives deep into notions of satisfying our needs and finding optimism amid difficult circumstances.

Like so many, Iyer was catalysed by the stasis of lockdown after a lifetime of flitting backwards and forwards across the globe. For The Half Known Life, he has thumbed through the catalogue of his travels, presenting his thoughts on paradise through a prism of political and social strife in countries such as Iran and Sri Lanka.

Having taught at Harvard in the 80s and travelled widely throughout his half-century-long career, he has been based between Japan where he moved in the 90s and California, where he moved from England with his family as a child. I speak to him via Zoom at his home in Nara, outside Osaka, before he set off for Santa Barbara.

It is striking that so many of the troubled places that I have described in my new book are in the news, whether it is Sri Lanka, Iran or North Korea. I think the pandemic opened doors that we might not have seen otherwise. Im hoping in the years to come, more of us will see that, despite economic and physical devastation, he says.

Lockdown proved to be the ideal time for him to ruminate on 48 years of travel, trying to figure out what all the movement and stillness has amounted to. History has reminded us of so much that can go wrong and has given us scars that we can never recover from. But to give up on hope is to give up on everything.

One of the challenges Iyer faced was stitching together multiple locations into a single narrative. It would be easy to write one chapter on Jerusalem, one on Kashmir and one on Belfast, but linking them all together and defining some of the similarities was hard. It was made easier by the fact that I could not travel. Spending all that time in one place really gave me the stillness and space to put these different places together.

He takes readers firstly to Iran, a country that in recent years has made headlines for almost entirely negative reasons. Iyer thinks about how different it is to what he has known religiously, culturally, linguistically until he visits in September 2013. As soon as he arrives in Iran and gets into a taxi, he strikes up a conversation with the driver. I soon recognise that he [the taxi driver] sounds like any other taxi driver from London or New York. He is worrying about his kids, hes talking about the economy. I am quickly reminded of the many things we all share, at a human level.

While the digital age has made it easy to access and be bewitched by places that are foreign to us places such as Japan and Iran, for example Iyer points out that it is harder to be reminded of what we have in common until we encounter those places in person.

Even in North Korea, which he describes at length in the book, he emphasises how unfamiliar many of us are with the country and consider it to be alien. He trusts that we will think differently and more compassionately once we are there, meeting its people and seeing the challenges they face.

Another impetus for the book was the age of endless information that we know less about the things around us than ever before and least of all, the countries we hear so much about, like Iran or North Korea.

Im really trying to take the reader to places theyve never been to, such as Iran, North Korea and Kashmir, to remind us that the world is richer, deeper, complicated and much more interesting than our ideas of it. If you have the time and resources, please go out and see the world because it will never stop surprising you. Youll quickly have to leave all your assumptions behind and remember that the world itself is a half-known life.

When Iyer began writing in the mid-1980s, he believed that the point of travel writing was to visit a remote place whether that was Cuba or Tibet and gather as many sights, sounds and smells as possible. It was mainly to bring back all these elements to readers and friends, who might not be able to experience those places.

Now, anybody who reads one of my books can access online such vibrant aspects of those places that I would never be able to go to. The travel writers job has changed. We cant compete with cameras. However, there are things we can do that no camera can.

Growing up, he noticed that most travel writing was written by men from privileged backgrounds. However, he notes that the genre has broadened, becoming more global and more democratic in sync with the world.

It is exciting that travel is open to many more people than it used to be. A lot of the best travel writing now is coming from women. If I read Zadie Smith, its not going to be a typical English perspective, its not going to be a typical Jamaican perspective, its going to be something fresh and different, not least because shes a woman.

Travel has also gained a conscience. People are travelling not just to gain something but to give something towards social justice in places that are in trouble.

It is transcending historic limitations, which is ultimately what he is seeking to illuminate in his new book beauty amid friction and optimism among discord.

The Half Known Life: Finding Paradise in a Divided World by Pico Iyer is published by Bloomsbury tomorrow at 16.99

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'We know less about the things around us than ever before': Pico ... - iNews

Maharana Pratap is primarily remembered for his military resistance against the Mughal Empire. (Photo credit: Wikimedia commons)

From the death of Maharana Pratap to the annual celebration of Kokborok Day, much has happened on this day over the years.

New Delhi: Human civilisation has evolved over several centuries, engraving key events throughout its journey. This day, that year will look into the important historical events, incidents and major happenings on that particular day of the year. As history keeps inventing itself, we are also keen to rekindle our past to keep our knowledge quotient high. Today in history, i.e. January 19, the following notable events took place.

Maharana Pratap was a 16th century Rajput king of Mewar, from the Sisodia dynasty. He is widely considered one of the greatest warriors of his time and a symbol of Rajput pride and self-respect. He fought against the Mughal emperor Akbar in the Battle of Haldighati in 1576 and although he was defeated, he continued to resist Mughal expansion for the remainder of his life. Pratap is also remembered for his chivalry, as he was said to be a just and fair ruler who was always willing to help his people. On January 19, 1597, at the age of 56, Pratap passed away at Chavand from wounds acquired after a hunting accident.

Indira Gandhi was first elected as the Prime Minister of India on January 19, 1966, following the death of the then-Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. She was the first female Prime Minister of India, and her election was historic as it broke the tradition of male leaders in the country. Upon her election, she served as the PM for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. During her tenure as Prime Minister, Gandhi implemented policies focused on poverty reduction, land reform, and the nationalization of banks and major industries. She also played a central role in Indias victory in the 1971 Bangladesh War.

On this day in 1977, Miami and other parts of southern Florida were hit by a rare winter storm known as the Blizzard of 1977 or the White Hurricane. This storm brought unexpected and record-breaking snowfall to Miami, with up to 6 inches falling in some areas, causing widespread damage, power outages, and travel disruptions. It was a historic event as it was the first time in recorded history that the city of Miami had received measurable snowfall. The storm caused major damage to agriculture, particularly to the states citrus crops. This event is still remembered as one of the most extraordinary weather events to have occurred in Miami.

Osho Rajneesh, also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, was a spiritual teacher and guru who was active in the second half of the 20th century. He is best known for his teachings on the science of the inner and his emphasis on the individuals potential for self-realisation. Rajneeshs teachings drew from a variety of spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and the teachings of J Krishnamurti. Rajneesh was a controversial figure and his commune in Oregon was involved in legal battles and scandals. He passed away on January 19, 1990, but his teachings continue to be followed by a dedicated group of followers and his books continue to be popular around the world.

Kokborok Day is celebrated in Tripura, to honour the Kokborok language, culture and heritage. Kokborok is the indigenous language spoken by the majority of the tribal population of Tripura. The day is celebrated on January 19 every year to commemorate the official recognition of Kokborok as a language in 1979. It is marked by cultural programs, traditional dances, songs, and speeches. This day is also celebrated to promote the Kokborok language and culture among the younger generation. The state government of Tripura also organises various competitions such as debates, quizzes, and essay writing in the Kokborok language to encourage the use of the language and to promote the culture.

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This day, that year: What happened on January 19 in history - News9 LIVE

Energy can never be stagnant. Energy means that which is not stagnant, that which is always flowing. Relaxation does not mean energy that is stagnant or asleep; scientifically, relaxation means that now energy is flowing through another channel, another dimension.

But even though the room may be different, if it is not the very opposite of the room you were in before, the mind will not relax. For example, if you work on a scientific problem, then you can relax by reading a novel. The work is different: to deal with a scientific problem is to be active - a very masculine mode - whereas to read a novel is to be passive, which is an absolutely feminine mode. Even though you are using the same mind, you will be relaxed. You are not solving anything, you are not active; you are just a receiver.

In the same way, when we love, the intellect does not come into play at all. Quite the opposite happens: the irrational part of your personality comes into action. Intelligence must be balanced by love and love must be balanced by intelligence.

Abridged from The Great Challenge, Talk #5, courtesy: Osho International Foundation, http://www.osho.com

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