Switching to a softer tone, Maldives President Muizzu stated that India is a closest ally and asked his country for debt relief.

Maldives: Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu said on Thursday that India will remain his country’s “closest ally” and called for debt relief to his country weeks after his anti-India rhetoric. Notably, the archipelago’s land was worth approx. $400.9 million to New Delhi at the end of last year. The pro-China Maldivian leader has been making headlines since taking oath as president by pursuing a tough stance on India. He demanded that Indian Army troops operating three aviation platforms be returned to India from his country by May 10.

On Thursday, Muizzu, in his first interview with local media since taking office, said India has played a major role in providing aid to the Maldives and implemented the “largest number” of projects.

India will remain the Maldives’ closest ally, he said, stressing that there was no doubt about that, Maldives news portal Edition.mv said in a report that carried excerpts of Muizzu’s interview to Dhivehi sister publication Mihaaru.’

Muizzu’s comments praising India came after the first batch of Indian soldiers left the island this month as planned. On May 10, Muizzu had demanded that all 88 soldiers manning the three Indian aviation platforms leave the country.

India has been providing humanitarian and medical evacuation services to the people of Maldives in recent years using two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft.

The proximity of the Maldives to India, barely 70 nautical miles from Minicoy Island in Lakshadweep and 300 nautical miles from the west coast of the mainland, and its location at the hub of commercial sea lanes passing through the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) it has an important meaning. strategic importance.

During the interview, Muizzu urged India to facilitate debt relief measures for the Maldives as it repays “the hefty loans taken over from successive governments.”

“The conditions we have inherited are such that very large loans are being made from India. That is why we are conducting discussions to explore leniency options in the repayment structure of these loans.

“So, instead of halting ongoing projects… to rush ahead with them, I see no reason for any adverse impact (on Maldives-India relations),” Muizzu added.

Muizzu’s conciliatory comments towards India came ahead of the parliamentary elections in the Maldives due to take place in mid-April.

He said the Maldives has received significant loans from India, which are heavier than can be supported by the Maldivian economy. “As a result, he is currently in discussions with the Indian government to explore options to repay the loans, to the best of Maldives’ ability,” the news portal said, quoting him.

Muizzu, who expressed hope that India would “facilitate debt relief measures in the repayment of these loans,” also said he expressed his appreciation to the Indian government for their contributions.

During the previous regime, led by the government of pro-India leader Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the total amount of loans from the Export and Import Bank of India (Exim Bank) was USD 1.4 million (MVR 22 million).

“Taken together, the amount owed by the Maldives to India at the end of last year amounted to MVR 6.2 billion, he said.

At the current rate of 1 MVR equal to USD 16, this is approximately USD 400.9 million.

“During our meeting, I also informed Prime Minister Modi that I had no intention of stopping ongoing projects. Instead, I have expressed my desire to strengthen and expedite them,” he said, referring to his conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Dubai on the sidelines of the COP28 Dubai summit in December 2023.

“I suggested that a high-level committee be established, one designed for quick decision-making, even in the bridge project, to ensure speedy work. The same applies to Hanimaadhoo airport,” he added.

Replying to a question about Indian military personnel, Muizzu called this “the only point of contention” that arose with India over the presence of Indian military personnel in the Maldives and added that India too had accepted the fact and agreed to return the military personnel Pull. .

“It is not nice to dismiss or ignore aid from one country to another as useless,” he said, asserting that he had not taken any action or made any statements that could strain the relationship between the two countries to make.

“Even if they are troops from another country, we will treat them the same. I said that very clearly. It is nothing personal but rather a matter of our national security,” he added.

Muizzu stated that his government acted to find through deliberations the quickest and most prudent solution to address the issue of the Indian Army in the Maldives.

He defended his agreement with India to use civilians instead of military personnel to fly the helicopters and Dornier aircraft, saying the former government of Abdulla Yameen, which demanded that Indian troops be deployed, failed to do so was successful as the Indian personnel remained in the Maldives.

While working towards the same goals in both cases, Muizzu indicated that results can be achieved through discussions and consultation. “Everything can be achieved through discussions and consultations. That’s what I believe,” he said.

Meanwhile, amid his weak ties with India, Muizzu had pursued a clear pro-China policy, starting with his visit to Beijing in January. During his visit to China, he signed a Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation Partnership and signed 20 agreements to support the Maldives’ infrastructure following his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

China also announced a $130 million subsidy and promised to send more Chinese tourists to the tourism-dependent Maldives.

After returning from China, Muizzu, without naming any country, said the Maldives may be a small country but “that’s not a license for anyone to bully us.”

Muizzu also terminated a hydrography agreement with India, claiming that the Indian Ocean does not belong to any particular country.

Picture him, just 9 years old, walking the streets of San Francisco each morning, dropping off his younger sister at school, then hustling back home to take care of his baby brother. His chair in Mr. Klaus’ third-grade class sits empty, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks.

Picture him, summoning the courage to write a letter to the man he kept hearing about — “You run just like your pops!” they’d tell him on the football field — but rarely saw. Then stamping that letter. Then mailing it to his father in prison. “I don’t know you,” part of it read.

Picture him, running out of places to stay and people to ask. For a while, Ray Davis lived with his mom, but then she went away, too. So he stayed with his grandma, sleeping on her living room floor. When the social worker would swing by to check on him, they’d lie, vowing that he had a bedroom to call his own. Anything to keep him out of foster care a little longer.

But that didn’t last. Nothing seemed to last.

By 8 he was a ward of the state; by 12 he was living in a homeless shelter with two of his 14 siblings. When he learned a foster family had enough room to take two of them — but not all three — Ray volunteered to stay back so his brother and sister wouldn’t get lost in the system like he was. “If they can get out and be together,” he told the case worker at the time, “that’s the best thing for them.”

They went. He stayed.

Picture him, sitting in the front seat of a social worker’s car a few years later, texting and calling everyone he can think of, begging for a couch or a chair or a spot on the floor to sleep on, only to be told “sorry” too many times to count, his heart breaking a little more with each rejection.

Finally, he reaches out to his favorite teacher. “Can I stay with you?” Ray asks. “Just for a night or two?”

“Of course you can stay with us,” Ben Klaus tells him, and even though it’s a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the heart of downtown San Francisco, and even though Ben and his fiancée, Alexa, are busy planning their wedding for that summer, “just a night or two” turns into three years.

Now look at him. He’s 24. He’s two months from hearing his name called in the NFL Draft. He piled up more than 1,000 rushing yards for three different college football programs. And he owns a degree from Vanderbilt.

That’s what it took for Re’Mahn “Ray” Davis to answer the question he’s been asking since he sat in that homeless shelter 12 years ago, feeling alone and abandoned, wiping tears from his cheeks, whispering the same thing to himself every night before he went to bed.

“Why God? Why me?”

---

His mom was 14 when she got pregnant, 15 when she gave birth. “She wasn’t ready,” is all Ray Davis will say about it now, tucked into a booth at a Yard House in Phoenix, where he has been training for the draft. “I love my mom, but she just couldn’t figure it out.”

For most of his childhood, his father, Raymond Davis, couldn’t either. Both parents were in and out of prison for long stretches, leaving Ray largely on his own. He remembers one afternoon, when he was 8 or 9, being told by a teacher that his father was there to pick him up.

“Wait,” Ray said, “I have a dad?”

From there, the relationship was starts and stops, weekends together followed by months, even years, without contact. Ray would hear stories about his father’s football exploits — how Raymond had broken O.J. Simpson’s Galileo High record for touchdowns in a season, how he had been named the San Francisco Examiner’s 1998 player of the year — but, for a while, he felt like a ghost.

When Ray lived with his mom, she’d drop him off at a daycare run by a family friend, then leave him there all weekend. Or for an entire week. Or for an entire month. When he had nowhere else to go, he’d stay with his grandma, but that was never going to be a permanent solution, Ray says. Not enough clean clothes. Not enough food.

“I was the kid who was kinda left around a bunch of different places,” Ray says now.

When he was in school, he’d linger at the aftercare program until 7 or 8 in the evening, his way of pushing away the reality that waited for him wherever he was staying that night. He’d carry around a duffel bag of clothes from Goodwill. Most of the time, it was all he had.

After seeing a flyer for the local Big Brothers Big Sisters chapter when he was 8, he found a phone, called the number and added himself to the waitlist. That led him to Patrick Dowley, his new Big Brother. The bond was instant, the relationship — like so few in Ray’s life at the time — stabilizing.

When they went to grab food, Patrick taught Ray proper restaurant etiquette. When they caught a Giants or Warriors game, Patrick told him about the players. When Ray struggled with his homework, Patrick pushed him and pushed him and pushed him.

He never had the money to sign up for football, so his coaches would cover the cost. They’d give him rides to and from games, then take him out to eat afterward to make sure he had a square meal. Ray remembers how much it stung, after all his touchdown runs in Pop Warner games, when he’d look over at the sideline and see nobody there.

At 12, without anywhere else to go, he spent two months in a homeless shelter on the bottom floor of Zuckerberg General Hospital and Trauma Center. Ray can still see the food pantry that kept him from going hungry, the baby crates the toddlers would sleep in, the game room where he spent hours watching movies on the VCR or playing “NCAA Football” on PlayStation.

As a homeless minor, he was prohibited from leaving the facility. He’d get one hour a day outside. He’d spend it shooting baskets with a staff member.

“Being in that shelter, it just taught me: you’re a man now,” he says. “No more being spoon-fed. No more having your hand held. You’re gonna have to figure this out yourself.”

So he did. After the shelter, he couch-surfed with extended family or anyone willing to take him in. He stayed with friends of friends of friends — sometimes without even knowing their last names.

Ben Klaus had Ray in his third-grade class at Bret Harte Elementary, then again in fifth grade. The more days Ray missed — sometimes he was gone for weeks at a time — the more Ben started to piece it together. Ray would walk his sister to school, then walk back to wherever they were staying. There was no one else to watch his brother. Ray would change his diapers. He’d make sure he was fed.

He was 9.

Ben would take Ray out for burritos. He’d catch him up in school. “That was part of our non-negotiable. He had to get his homework done,” Ben says. He invited Ray to spend Thanksgiving with him and his family.

After that last-ditch phone call, when Ray was in sixth grade, out of options and needing somewhere to stay, Ben and Alexa Klaus became family. Ray made it to their wedding that summer; he gave a speech, too. “He became a shining light for us,” Ben says. “People still talk about that speech.”

That was home for the better part of three years, until a five-hour car ride in the back of a Chevy Suburban changed his life.

---

None of it added up to Lora Banks. The more she kept peppering this young man with questions — “probably 1,000 over the course of the entire drive home,” she admits — the more he kept dodging them, then slipping on his headphones so he could tune out the country music she was blaring up front.

They’d wrapped an AAU basketball tournament in Santa Barbara one weekend when Banks’ youngest son, Bradley, asked her if one of his teammates could catch a ride with them back to San Francisco.

Beyond him being the best player on the team, Lora knew nothing about Ray. No one really did. He’d hitched a ride to the tournament with one of the coaches, someone said. He didn’t have a spot in any of the hotel rooms, someone mentioned. And when it came time to leave, he didn’t have a ride home.

Lora wanted to know more. Ray wanted the password to her internet hotspot. So she proposed a deal: if he’d answer some questions, she’d share it. He agreed. She kept asking, for five long hours, learning very little.

“You just don’t think to ask, ‘Who takes care of you?’ Or, ‘Where’s your mom and dad?’”, she says now. “But the one thing that stuck out to me was when we got back, I asked him where I should drop him off, and he just mumbled, ‘Oh, I’ll just take the bus from your house.’

“Now that was weird.”

Slowly, she started to see more of him. Ray would swing by the house on his way to practice. She knew he wasn’t eating enough, so she’d invite him over for family dinners. She knew he needed somewhere to work out, so she added him to their YMCA membership. When she’d ask if his parents knew where he was, he’d shrug.

A few months later, one of the AAU coaches asked if Lora could give Ray a ride to another tournament, this one in Nevada. Sure, she said. But to leave the state, Ray told her, he’d need permission. She needed to call his social worker.

“Now I’m starting to figure this out,” she says. “He’s lost in the system.”

Lora Banks helped him find his way out. She filed the mountains of paperwork to become his temporary guardian so he could play in the Nevada tournament. Pretty soon, she was doing the same thing to become his educational guardian, giving her a say in where he went to school.

With these wheels spinning, something else was happening in Ray Davis’ life: Raymond Davis was out of prison and beginning to rebuild his life. He’d landed a job. And he wanted to reconnect with his son. So Lora and her husband, Greg, had him over for dinner.

“When we sat down, we could tell his heart was in the right place,” Lora said.

Together, the three of them weighed Ray’s next steps. He was 15, a bit behind in school, in desperate need of structure. A friend of Lora’s who’d heard about Ray’s talents on the basketball court suggested they look into boarding schools. Another well-connected friend lined up an interview with a prestigious one in New York.

What sounded crazy at first — attending a prep school 2,000 miles away — became more realistic. The school, Trinity-Pawling, was interested in offering Ray a basketball scholarship.

Raymond Davis resisted the idea initially; he wanted his son in San Francisco. But his stance changed a few weeks later after hearing about a shooting in their neighborhood. “If he stays around here,” Raymond finally admitted, “he could end up like a lot of old friends of mine.”

So they flew to New York to visit Trinity-Pawling, an all-boys college preparatory school an hour north of the city. The campus was stunning, like nothing Ray had ever seen. They met with the basketball coach. Ray aced the interview. The scholarship offer came. Then, before they left, Ray mentioned one more thing.

“You know,” he told the coaches, “I can play football, too.”

---

Before Ray could move across the country, he needed California’s permission.

Still a ward of the state, Ray had to stand before a judge and argue in support of his father’s petition to resume custody, without which Ray couldn’t leave. But when Ray, Raymond, Lora and Greg arrived in court, they learned an attorney for San Francisco county was there to oppose the move.

“We were flabbergasted,” Lora remembers.

“His support is here, in San Francisco,” the attorney argued in front of judge Catherine Lyons. “If he gets out to New York, how will he get back? What if his scholarship falls through?”

The options at home, he continued, were far more realistic: a spot in a group home, possibly vocational school.

Then the judge allowed Ray to state his case. He was 16 years old, pleading for his future.

“You say I won’t be supported out there,” he began. “But going back to when I was young, when have I been supported here?”

Ray wanted to go to New York. He wanted an education. He wanted a chance at college. For years, he told the judge, he wasn’t even sure if he’d even make it to high school. Now the opportunity was right in front of him.

After Ray was finished, the county attorney sat in silence. The judge asked for a rebuttal.

“We withdraw our opposition,” the attorney finally said. “We support him.”

Lyons agreed. She had followed Ray’s story since he was 6 years old. She knew what this moment meant to him.

“I’ve been a judge 10 years, and this is something I never get to do,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “Re’Mahn Davis, you’re no longer a ward of the court.

“You’re going to Trinity-Pawling,” Lyons continued. “I believe you’re going to graduate high school. And I believe one day you’re going to graduate from college.”

Ray Davis had earned his chance, and that was all he needed.

At Trinity-Pawling, he lettered in basketball, baseball and track and field, but stood out most on the football field. School wasn’t easy. Neither was the rigidity of the prep school schedule, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for an unrefined teenager. Ray would get in trouble for not shaving, for sneaking his headphones into chapel, for not always following his coach’s orders.

But eventually, it stuck.

“I’m not much of a religious person,” Lora, a retired executive coach, says now. “But him getting into this school and what it did for him, it was an act of God.”

Ray graduated. Needing one credit to become NCAA eligible, he spent a postgrad year at Blair Academy in New Jersey, piling up 35 touchdowns on the football field. Pretty soon, college coaches were calling. The first scholarship offer came from Purdue.

When it did, Ray sat with his father and cried.

---

A few of them saw it early, all this untapped talent waiting to be unleashed. “We’re talking 80-yard touchdown after 80-yard touchdown every time I came to one of his Pop Warner games,” Patrick remembers. “I always sort of knew there was a chance.”

“Sports weren’t just his outlet,” Ben adds, “they were his therapy.”

Ray first landed at Temple, piling up 1,244 rushing yards in two seasons, then sought out the bigger stage of the SEC. After 1,253 more yards in two seasons at Vanderbilt — plus a degree in communications — he weighed going pro. But he knew he was a fringe NFL prospect at best, so he chose to bolster his credentials with one final season.

He transferred to Kentucky and, in coach Mark Stoops’ system, established himself as one of the best running backs in the country. A four-touchdown, 289-yard day against Florida in late September briefly elevated him into the Heisman conversation.

Lora was never too far away — to this day Ray calls her mom. She bought a condo in Nashville so she could watch him play at Vanderbilt, then one in Lexington to watch him at Kentucky. She kept a journal through it all, scribbling down the life lessons this young man taught her. She remains in awe.

“This isn’t a story of, ‘Oh, I stepped in a pile of crap and found the pony.’ Not at all,” she said. “He stepped in a pile of crap, then asked himself, ‘Do I wanna stay in it? Or do I wanna climb out of it?’”

Patrick would fly out to games. Same with Ben and Alexa. And Raymond Davis rarely missed a chance to watch his son play. “He’s my No. 1 fan,” Ray says of his dad.

The two have grown tight in recent years. Raymond, who did not comment for this story, has become a daily presence in his son’s life. Ray, slowly, has learned to move past the hurt.

“He’s a way better person,” he says of his dad.

Most stunning isn’t the story but its subject. It’s the way Ray Davis speaks about his life. He could be resentful, even bitter, and no one could blame him.

But he’s not. He’s grateful. The heartache that dotted his journey, the scars of his youth that he still wears — that’s the reason he’s here.

“After what I been through,” he says, “what’s gonna get in my way now?”

And he finally has the answer to the question he started asking himself all those years ago.

“Why me? Why me? It took me until I was 23, 24 to figure that out,” Ray says. “Well, this is why. Because of my story, and because of all the kids in a foster home or a homeless shelter that might hear about it one day.

“Everybody congratulates me for the football part of it, and that’s great, getting to the NFL and all that. But I’m an inner-city kid, a foster-care product who graduated from a top-15 school in the country. I feel like that’s what we should be celebrating. I never once thought I’d ever get into a school like Vanderbilt.”

He pauses for a moment, looking back on the improbability of it all. Then his bright, piercing green eyes lock in, and Ray Davis mentions one last thing.

“I’m just getting started. I’m not trying to be the best running back in this draft. I’m trying to be a name you’ll remember forever.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos courtesy of Lora Banks, Patrick Dowley and Ben Klaus, Joe Robbins / Getty Images)

Viral news: 29-year-old man in Madhya Pradesh's Damoh seeks bride through e-rickshaw hoarding. The billboard contained personal details of the man, such as height, date of birth and gotra.

Damoh: A very popular saying in India is that it is easier to get married at any age, but it seems that this does not apply to a man from Damoh in Madhya Pradesh. 29-year-old Deependra Rathore has taken a unique approach to finding a bride for herself. He has attached a billboard on his e-rickshaw, displaying his marriage intention and personal details.

According to Deependra, he wants to get married but cannot find a perfect partner due to the 'shortage of women in society'. He added that religion and caste differences do not matter to him and any woman can approach him with a marriage proposal.

Rathore also joined a marriage group to look for a bride, but he could not find a woman from his town. Then he decided to put up the billboard with his details.

Deependra said that he is also ready to marry a woman outside his city.

The hoarding showed details about the 29-year-old man including his height, date and time of birth, blood group, educational qualifications, 'gotra', etc.

Deependra's parents also support his approach to finding a perfect life partner. “My parents are busy with adoration so they don't have time to find a girl for me and hence I have to do it,” said Rathore.

Rathore supports his family by driving his own e-rickshaw. He said that whoever becomes his better half will always remain happy.

The EC said that the CAPF personnel thus deployed will be distributed and retained at different intervals depending on the scale and schedule.

New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) has sought 3.4 lakh Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) personnel for a phased deployment during the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim.

The poll panel has also sought adequate rolling stock with all appropriate facilities on the trains, ensuring hassle-free mobilization and timely movement of armed forces to carry out election duties.

In a communication to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the EC said that the chief election officials of all states and Union Territories have requested deployment of CAPFs for poll-related functions such as area domination and confidence-building measures. , duties related to election days, monitoring of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and vault centers, security of counting centers etc. during elections.

The committee has considered the requests of the state CEOs and decided to deploy up to about 3,400 CAPF companies in all states and Union Territories in phases to ensure free, fair and peaceful elections, the notice said.

A CAPF company has approximately 100 employees.

Up to 920 CAPF companies are expected to be deployed in West Bengal in a phased manner, followed by 635 companies in Jammu and Kashmir, 360 companies in Chhattisgarh, 295 companies in Bihar, 252 companies in Uttar Pradesh and 250 companies each in Andhra. Pradesh, Jharkhand and Punjab.

The CAPFs are the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and the National Security Guard (NSG).

The combined strength of all CAPFs is approximately 10 lakh.

The other states where a significant number of CAPF personnel are likely to be deployed are: 200 companies each in Gujarat, Manipur, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, 175 companies in Odisha, 160 companies each in Assam and Telangana, 150 in Maharashtra, 113 in Madhya. Pradesh and 100 in Tripura.

The EC said that the CAPF personnel thus deployed will be distributed and retained at different intervals depending on the scale and schedule.

Further, the poll panel said that the said number of CAPF companies is the maximum mobilization of CAPF personnel that can be deployed and retained in a particular state or Union Territory at a particular stage of an election.

The EC said the MHA should take necessary action and issue directions to all concerned to ensure smooth and timely induction and de-induction of the armed forces at an appropriate time.

In a separate communication to the Railway Board, the committee said the Indian Railways has an important role to play in the induction and de-induction of the armed forces during the polls.

The poll body, however, said several issues have been raised by the MHA and CAPFs regarding inconvenience to the security forces during their mobilization in the 2022 and 2023 elections.

The railway ministry has already been asked to address concerns to prevent recurrence of such incidents during the train journeys of the security personnel, the ministry said.

However, the issue of rolling stock availability arose again during the November-December 2023 elections, resulting in a delay in the movement of armed forces.

Keeping this in mind, the Railway Board has been asked to appoint nodal officers at the headquarters and zone levels for smooth coordination during the election process and share the list of such officers along with their contact details with the EC and the CAPFs. ' nodal officers in advance.

The committee has asked the Railway Board to ensure availability of rolling stock for movement of the CAPFs, make provision for adequate number of coaches in the trains for hassle-free travel of the troops (approximately 24 coaches are available in each train). ), provide comfortable seating and rest facilities for staff, especially on longer journeys, and provide essential amenities such as electricity, water, fans, air conditioning, etc. for train journeys in the summer months.

The notification further added that the upcoming session will last a total of 12 working days and the state budget will be presented on February 12.

Patna: Days after forming the government, the new NDA government in Bihar, led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will seek a confidence vote in the assembly on February 10. According to the notification issued by the Parliamentary Affairs Department on Tuesday, the government will seek a confidence vote. on the first day of the budget session after Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar's customary address to both Houses of the Legislature.

The notification further added that the upcoming session will last a total of 12 working days and the state budget will be presented on February 12.

To recall, Nitish Kumar took oath as Bihar Chief Minister for the ninth time on Sunday after a dramatic turn of events in which he ditched the INDIA faction and formed the new government along with the BJP, which he was not yet eighteen. dumped months ago.

It is expected to be a stormy session with RJD MLA Awadh Bihari Choudhary yet to resign as speaker under mounting pressure from the NDA, which has moved a no-confidence motion against him. It has been learned that the BJP will retain the post of Speaker of Parliament. Among the names under consideration are Nand Kishore Yadav and Amrendra Pratap Singh, sources said.