During his speech, Rahul Gandhi said that the Congress was fighting the Indian state itself and not just the BJP or RSS’s ideology

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders sharply reacted to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s comments on the RSS and BJP during an inaugural speech for the new headquarter of the party in Delhi.

Speaking to reporters, Hardeep Singh Puri remarked that Rahul Gandhi should “get his mental stability checked” in response to the latter’s comments at the new ‘Indira Gandhi Bhawan’.

During his speech, Rahul Gandhi attacked RSS leader Mohan Bhagwat, who had earlier stated that India’s independence should be celebrated on the day of the Ram temple consecration and not on August 15.

He stated that the comments made by Bhagwat were treasonous and said that the Congress was fighting the Indian state itself and not just the BJP or RSS’s ideology, which had proven harmful to democracy.

Union health minister JP Nadda also expressed his anger at Gandhi’s claims and said in a post on X, “Hidden no more, Congress’ ugly truth now stands exposed by their own leader. I ‘compliment’ Mr. Rahul Gandhi for saying clearly what the nation knows- that he is fighting the Indian state!”

He alleged that Rahul Gandhi had ties to urban naxals and the deep state through which he was trying to sow division and discredit India.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman also questioned Gandhi, who is the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, saying, “The LoP, who was sworn in by taking oath on the Constitution, is now saying, “We are now fighting the BJP, the RSS and the Indian State itself. So what for are you carrying a copy of the constitution in your hand?”

BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya also took to X sharing a clip of Rahul Gandhi’s speech and said, Rahul Gandhi has now declared an open war against the Indian State itself. This is straight out of George Soros’s playbook.”

Rahul Gandhi’s speech
“The people in power today don’t salute the tricolour, don’t believe in the national flag or the constitution, and have a vastly different vision for India. They want India to be controlled by a secretive society, run by one person, and crush the voices of our nation,” Gandhi said during his speech.

He also emphasized that the Congress party was the only alternative to the BJP-led central government.

“The people in this room are facing systematic attack and assault on their lives because they are in the Congress party, and they are not surrendering to the BJP and the RSS,” he added.

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The auspicious 4-day stretch of Pongal kickstarted yesterday and brings us to the heartening Mattu Pongal celebration today. What is it all about?

With 394.6 million acres of India’s soil being farmland, the special significance cattle holds for us is insurmountable. And that is the sentiment that is honoured with grand celebrations on the occasion of Mattu Pongal. Mattu Pongal is being celebrated today, Wednesday, January 15. The rituals, traditions and customs observed on this day highlight the reverence of animals, particularly in the Tamil culture. While there is a lot of religiosity and routine surrounding the day, at the heart of it, Mattu Pongal is a day when the community gets together to truly thank the cattle for their unmatched contributions across the agricultural spectrum.

Also an important subtext of the festival is the day marking the beginning of the Tamil month of Thai, associated with the harvest of rice and other crops. Coming back to the topic of honouring cattle, the day traditionally involves a series of elaborate rituals, centered around the hallowed cattle.

The day begins with farmers and cattle owners, bathing the cattle with herbal pastes and scents, ensuring they are well-groomed for the whole day’s worth of festivities. The cattle are then thoroughly decorated with tikas, vibrant motifs on their horns, garlands, bells and even colour cloth draped over their bodies. The subsequent puja focuses on seeking blessings for their health and prosperity by paying obeisance to deities like Lord Ganesha and Lord Murugan.

The cattle are then further pampered by being fed concoctions of ghee, sugar, jaggery and rice followed by additional treats like coconuts, sugarcanes and bananas. The absolute highlight of the day however, are the bullock cart races. Friendly in their nature, these are accompanied with music, dance, chants and feasts with the women donning colourful sarees and the men folk turning out in traditional attires like the dhoti.

We wish you all a happy Mattu Pongal!

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Fire tornadoes are risk under California’s extreme wildfire conditions

As if they aren’t already facing enough, firefighters in California also could encounter fire tornadoes — a rare but dangerous phenomenon in which wildfires create their own weather.

The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” in which any new fire could explode in size. The advisory, which runs into Wednesday, didn’t mention tornadoes, but meteorologist Todd Hall said they’re possible given the extreme conditions.

A look at fire tornados:

What is a fire tornado?
Fire whirl, fire devil, fire tornado or even firenado — scientists, firefighters and regular folks use multiple terms to describe similar phenomena, and they don’t always agree on what’s what. Some say fire whirls are formed only by heat, while fire tornados involve clouds generated by the fire itself.

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s glossary of wildland fire terms doesn’t include an entry for fire tornado, but it defines a fire whirl as a “spinning vortex column of ascending hot air and gases rising from a fire and carrying aloft smoke, debris and flame,” and says large whirls “have the intensity of a small tornado.”

Wildfires with turbulent plumes can produce clouds that in turn can produce lightning or a vortex of ash, smoke and flames, said Leila Carvalho, professor of meteorology and climatology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“There is a rotation caused by very strong wind shear and a very hot, localized low-pressure system,” she said.

What is a fire tornado capable of?
Fire tornados can make fires stronger by sucking up air, Carvalho said. “It creates a tornado track, and wherever this goes, the destruction is like any other tornado.”

In 2018, a fire tornado the size of three football fields killed a firefighter as it exploded in what already was a vast and devastating wildfire near near Redding, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of San Francisco in northern California. Scientists later described an ice-capped cloud that reached 7 miles (11 km) into the air and caused winds up to 143 mph (230 kph).

Research also suggests fire tornadoes can carry airborne embers, also called firebrands, over long distances, said James Urban, an assistant professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They also can change the fire’s behaviour, he said.

“That’s also something that is dangerous and scary for first responders, or really anyone,” he said. “It can change and maybe go in a different direction.”

The interaction between wind, the fire plume and topography determines whether a tornado will develop, he said. For example, sometimes a certain topography will restrict airflow in such a way that a spiral pattern develops.

Can you make one in a lab?
Together with San Jose State University, Worcester Polytech is part of a Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Centre. In the lab in Worcester, researchers have created small fire tornadoes by putting up walls around a fire or arranging a bunch of little fires that together restrict airflow. But that’s on a much smaller scale than what’s happening with the wildfires.

“We’ve got the biggest fire lab in the US for a university, but we cannot get something the size of what’s been reported at these fires,” he said. “You can’t really bottle that and put it in a lab.” (AP)

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