CANADA’S richest province Ontario, with a GDP of a trillion Canadian dollars, purchased a 10-year-old jet costing 28 million Canadian dollars (Rs5.46 billion) for the official use of its premier. Critics quickly dubbed it the “gravy plane”, taunting Doug Ford’s long-standing political rhetoric about eliminating government waste. The premier was quick to take responsibility. He promptly returned the plane. Far away, in a country where 48 per cent of the people fall in the ‘extremely poor’ category, a chief minister acquired a spanking new Gulfstream 500 — twice as expensive as the plane of the Ontarian premier. It was also followed by similar public outrage. The chief minister, however, vowed to continue using the “gravy plane” as her legal right.

On Sept 30, 2026, something seriously went wrong with the execution of Christa Pike at the Maximum Security Prison in Nashville, Tennessee. The two doses of the lethal pentobarbital injection failed to achieve their intended result. Pike did not die. Just two days later, Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, resigned on grounds of moral responsibility. Only a few weeks earlier, 14 newborn babies had been burnt to death in a hospital fire in........

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