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Sources

No Berlusconi, But Belgian Prime Minister Gets Passionate Public Kiss

LE SOIR (Belgium)

MONS – Rock stars aren't the only ones with groupies – bow-tied prime ministers have some too. During local celebrations last Friday, Belgium Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo was targeted by just such a super-fan. While the professorial PM was posing with Socialist Party supporters, a young woman pounced on him and kissed him ... passionately ... on the lips!

Photographer Philippe Bourguet, who snapped the picture that went viral in Belgium (see below), saw it this way: She kissed him and "embraced him for a while – for almost five minutes. She couldn't stop repeating ‘Elio, I'm in love with you"," Belgium newspaper Le Soir reports.

But Karin Wauters, the woman in question, has another version. She said she has known Di Rupo since she was a little girl. "This was a friendly kiss and that's all. I have a lot of respect for Elio," she declared.

All's fair, it seems, in love and politics....

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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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