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Extra! Bravos And Boos In Brazil As Paralympics Open

The 2016 Summer Paralympics opened at Rio's iconic Maracana Stadium on Wednesday evening, 17 days after the end of the Olympics.

Brazilian daily O Globo devoted its front page Thursday to the opening ceremony, with the headline "The Paralympics move the Maracana" alongside a picture of Amy Purdy dancing with a robotic arm. The American snowboarder, who had her legs amputated below the knee at age 19, stole the show as she performed a choreographed routine with the machine — a moment meant to represent harmony between humans and technology.

Some 500 professional staff, including performers, and 2,000 volunteers took part for the ceremony whose theme was "Everybody Has A Heart." More than 4,000 athletes representing 159 nations are set to compete in 528 medal events across 22 sports. Leading the parade was Ibrahim Al Hussein, a Syrian refugee who is part of the Independent Paralympic Athletes (IPA) Team at the Games.

The ceremony was also marked by the poor reception accorded to political figures: Organizing committee president Carlos Nuzman and President Michel Temer were booed, as Brazil has been plagued by political unrest after Dilma Rousseff was removed from office.

Another unexpected moment was when Belarusian athletes carried the Russian flag to express solidarity with the Russian team, RT reports. Russian athletes were banned from the event after a report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Association found evidence of widespread doping in the country.

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Geopolitics

The Trudeau-Modi Row Reveals Growing Right-Wing Bent Of India's Diaspora

Western governments will not be oblivious to the growing right-wing activism among the diaspora and the efforts of the BJP and Narendra Modi's government to harness that energy for political support and stave off criticism of India.

The Trudeau-Modi Row Reveals Growing Right-Wing Bent Of India's Diaspora

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 Summit in New Delhi on Sept. 9

Sushil Aaron

-Analysis-

NEW DELHICanadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has brought Narendra Modi’s exuberant post-G20 atmospherics to a halt by alleging in parliament that agents of the Indian government were involved in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian national, in June this year.

“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Trudeau said. The Canadian foreign ministry subsequently expelled an Indian diplomat, who was identified as the head of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence agency, in Canada. [On Thursday, India retaliated through its visa processing center in Canada, which suspended services until further notice over “operational reasons.”]

Trudeau’s announcement was immediately picked up by the international media and generated quite a ripple across social media. This is big because the Canadians have accused the Indian government – not any private vigilante group or organisation – of murder in a foreign land.

Trudeau and Canadian state services seem to have taken this as seriously as the UK did when the Russian émigré Alexander Litvinenko was killed, allegedly on orders of the Kremlin. It is extraordinarily rare for a Western democracy to expel a diplomat from another democracy on these grounds.

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