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The Morning Wrap: Young Burhan Wani Wanted To Join Army; Pakistani Actor Sacked Over Racist Tweets

Our selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
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Akhilesh Yadav is, by a long shot, the best face of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh — both among his party's supporters and the general electorate alike — reveals a snap poll conducted by CVoter in the third week of September. Asked to pick the more popular public face between Akhilesh and Shivpal, 77% of those surveyed chose Akhilesh, and only 7% chose Shivpal. The number was even higher amongst Samajwadi Party supporters, 88% of whom chose Akhilesh, and less than 5% chose Shivpal.

By seeking to reshape public discourse on India-Pakistan relations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech in Kozhikode on Sunday was a potential game-changer. In a masterstroke, Modi changed the narrative from 'India needs to avenge Uri' to 'we have already been winning the war. He did so, firstly, by telling us that Uri was an aberration, that Indian security forces have killed a lot more terrorists, a lot of infiltration has been foiled. The failure of Uri has been shown in a larger picture of success. Seventeen potential terrorist attacks have been foiled in the past few months, he said, killing 110 terrorists, he said.

A newborn baby girl in Bangladesh who was declared dead by doctors started crying out while being buried. Galiba Hayat, the first child of district cricket team player Najmul Huda and his advocate wife Naznin Akhter, was born on Thursday in Faridpur, about 140 kms from the Dhaka. Two hours after her birth, doctors at the hospital pronounced her dead after which she was taken to a graveyard for burial. The caretaker of the graveyard asked her relatives to return on Friday morning for the burial as the 'presumed' dead newborn spent the night in a carton at the graveyard. However, just when all formalities were completed for her burial, she began crying.

Muzaffar Wani, father of the slain 22-year-old Hizbul commander Burhan Wani, recently talked about how his son wanted to join the Indian army when he was 10 years old. "When Bhagat Singh was fighting against the British, they called him a terrorist, but Indians maintained he was a freedom fighter. When the problem of Kashmir will be solved, India will realise Burhan was a freedom fighter. I liked everything that Nawaz Sharif said at the UN," Muzaffar said.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who has been facing intensifying agitation from the Maratha groups in the state for reservations, said on Sunday that the BJP Government wanted the group to have reservation. Adding that 'unfortunately, the decision was stuck in a court battle', he said that the Government would go to 'any extent' to make it happen.

Chairperson of State Minorities Commission that serves Andhra Pradesh and Telangana recently came out openly against the triple talaq system, claiming that it had the potential to escalate and cause eventual de-recognition of Muslim Personal Law and imposition of uniform civil code. "The Muslim community today has a huge social problem where literally lakhs of women all over the country are suffering because their men divorced them by pronouncing talaq thrice," Chairperson Abid Rasool Khan said.

Coronation Street actor Marc Anwar has been sacked from the ITV soap with immediate effect, after sharing a string of racist tweets. The Pakistan-born soap star, who has played Sharif Nazir in the popular TV show for two years, shocked his followers on Friday night when he posted a number of offensive comments about Indian people on his Twitter page. He referred to Indian people as 'bastards' and 'c***s', while criticising Pakistani artists who wanted to work in India, asking: "Do you love money so much?"

Six-year-old chef from Kochi showcased his cookery skills on The Ellen DeGeneres Show recently. The young chef Nihal Raj, also known as Kicha, showed DeGeneres how to make puttu — a traditional Kerala breakfast dish.

A tribal couple in remote Dhalai district in Tripura sold their girl child for ₹650 as they were unable to bear the expenses of the infant. Expressing grave concern over the incident, TMC MLA Sudip Roy Barman said that the tribal sections are living mainly in the interior areas and are dying due to lack of food, and added that these incidents are hardly flashed by the media as the government cover them up.

Donald Trump is a man who dwells in bigotry, bluster and false promises, and that's why he should not become America's President, says an editorial in The New York Times. "Voters attracted by the force of the Trump personality should pause and take note of the precise qualities he exudes as an audaciously different politician: bluster, savage mockery of those who challenge him, degrading comments about women, mendacity, crude generalisations about nations and religions. Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want for them," it asks.

Loud jingoism and war talk erode India's credibility, distract government from urgent task at hand, writes Arun Prakash for The Indian Express. "While participants in TV talk-shows speak in their individual capacities and carry no responsibility, even prominent public functionaries did not pause before making utterances which can only be described as provocative and 'war-mongering'... We must make a careful assessment of the Pakistani 'deep state', that unholy nexus of the army's General Headquarters (GHQ) and the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, which calls the shots. The Pakistanis, while vigorously pursuing their low cost and deniable strategy of terror strikes on India, would like us to believe that their nuclear arsenal is in the custody of a bunch of 'mad generals'. The threat held out is that these putative lunatics are liable to nuke a conventional Indian riposte which is seen to be crossing any of their self-designated 'red lines'," he writes.

Digital finance could have significant benefits for inclusive growth, but many challenges remain, says an editorial in Mint. "As per the report—based on field research carried out in Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan—widespread digital finance could boost the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of emerging economies by $3.7 trillion by 2025. That's a 6% increase "versus a business as usual scenario". Of this, the most benefit would accrue to lower-income countries such as India—an estimated 10-12% boost to their GDP," it says.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.